At the Year-End Party He Thanked Me for Doing His Paperwork, So I Took the Microphone novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Table Three

Chiaki negotiates Kaname's job offer in front of the whole room, gets home to find her life in garbage bags in the hallway, sleeps on Haruka's sofa, and wakes to a viral photo saying she slept her way to the contract.

Three hundred people were waiting for Chiaki's answer.

She could feel the microphone getting warm in her hand.

On stage, Ryota had his mouth open.

Reina had her hand on his sleeve, and she was looking at table three.

Chiaki's brain did what it always did when a man across a table made an offer.

It asked what the offer was.

"In what position?" she said.

A few people at the back actually laughed. Not at her, this time.

Kaname Tsukishiro didn't blink.

"Director of Partnerships. It's new. You'd report to me."

"Salary?"

"What do you make now?"

"That's a terrible question to ask in front of my HR director."

The HR director made a small noise into his napkin.

"Then name a number," Tsukishiro said.

"Twelve million a year."

"Fourteen."

She stared at him.

"You're supposed to go lower," she said.

"You'd have talked me up to fourteen by the third meeting. I'm saving us both two meetings."

Haruka barked a laugh from table seven. Chiaki heard her clap a hand over her mouth.

"One more condition," Chiaki said.

"Go on."

"My name goes on the record. On the contract amendment, as the author. Not his. Mine."

"Done."

"In writing."

"Monday," he said. "Nine o'clock. Twenty-second floor."

"Then yes."

She handed the microphone back to the boy from General Affairs.

He took it with both hands and bowed to her, which was absurd, and made her eyes sting for the first time all night.

She walked back to table seven, and nobody stopped her.

Haruka already had Chiaki's coat over her arm and her bag in her hand.

"We're leaving," she said.

"You don't have to."

"Shut up. We're leaving."

The coat check was at the end of the corridor outside the Kujaku Room.

There was a line, and two Hanamori juniors in it went pale when they saw Chiaki.

She was handing over her ticket when someone took her wrist.

"Chii."

Ryota pulled her half around. His fingers were tight.

"What the hell was that?"

"The truth. You should try it sometime."

"You humiliated me. In front of the president. In front of her father."

"You did that. I just held the microphone."

He leaned in so only she could hear. His aftershave was the one she had bought him for his birthday.

"You think Tsukishiro wants you? He wants to embarrass Hanamori. Monday morning he'll forget your name. And after tonight, no company in this industry will touch you. I'll make sure."

"Let go of my wrist."

"Not until you..."

"Saeki-san."

Kaname Tsukishiro had come up the corridor behind him. He was holding a coat check ticket.

"You're in the line," he said. "There's a line."

Ryota let go of her.

He straightened his jacket, smiled the dimple at the two juniors, and walked back toward the Kujaku Room without a word.

Chiaki rubbed her wrist.

"Thank you," she said.

"For what? I want my coat." Tsukishiro handed over his ticket. Then, without looking at her: "Do you have somewhere to sleep tonight?"

"I have an apartment."

"Do you?"

She didn't answer that.

He took a card from his breast pocket and held it out.

"My mobile is on the back. If you need it."

She took it.

The taxi dropped Chiaki in Nakameguro at twenty past midnight.

She saw the bags from the second-floor landing.

Six big clear garbage bags were lined up along the corridor outside the apartment door.

Her winter coats were in them, and her shoes, loose and tangled together.

The blue throw from the sofa was stuffed in the last one. She had bought it.

Her mother's tea tin sat on top of the last bag.

Someone had dropped it, and the lid had a dent in it now.

She tried her key.

It went in halfway and stopped.

He had changed the lock.

He had done it this afternoon, before the party.

Before he kissed her in the genkan and said don't wait up.

Chiaki sat down on the top stair next to her shoes.

She didn't cry. She picked up her mother's tea tin and tried to push the dent out with her thumb.

Then she called Haruka.

Haruka answered on the first ring.

"Stay there," she said. "I'm sending my husband with the car."

Haruka lived in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa, in a small 2DK above a bakery.

Her husband carried all six bags up two flights at one in the morning without a word.

Then he patted Chiaki's shoulder once and went to bed.

The sofa had a plastic dinosaur on it.

"Triceratops," Haruka said, and moved it. "He'll want it back by six. Sit."

She made Chiaki tea in a mug with a cartoon fire truck on it.

Then she sat on the floor, took Chiaki's foot in her lap, and started painting her toenails a terrible bright orange.

"Why?"

"Because you can't call anyone with wet nails. You can't call him. You can't read the company chat. You have to just sit there." She blew on Chiaki's little toe. "Fourteen million. You absolute monster."

Chiaki laughed.

Then she cried, finally, with her feet in Haruka's lap, and Haruka kept painting.

Chiaki woke up at six to a small boy standing over her with a triceratops.

Haruka was in the doorway with her phone in her hand.

Her face was grey.

"Don't look at it," she said. "No. You'll look at it. Here."

It was a post on X. Forty-one thousand reposts.

It was a photo from the hotel corridor last night.

Kaname Tsukishiro and Chiaki stood by the coat check, his hand held out to her with something white and flat between his fingers.

His business card. He had given it to her as she left.

The photo was cropped tight, and grainy.

The caption said: "Hanamori's 'genius negotiator' leaving the party with Tsukishiro's VP. Now we know how she negotiated."

Under it, someone had posted her full name.

← Chapter 1 · All chapters · Chapter 3 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend