Kaori woke up early the next day and went down to the restaurant for a lavish western style breakfast of ham, bacon, sausage, omelet, crepes, eggs, hashbrowns, and pancakes. The chef came out to make sure that it was really one woman eating all of it. Some of the other guests were put off by her display of gluttony but kaori didn’t care. She was going to have a huge stock of pre-prepared food items going forward.
When she was finished, Kaori headed back to her room because it was still too early for what she had in mind to do today. She spent a couple hours playing around trying to find the trigger for a certain quest she had read about online. The game had a lot of really nice visuals but not a lot of original content. The content that it did have was exquisitely executed though. She had been a fan of the previous two iterations of this series and liked the open-world experience that this series was best known for.
After piddling for a bit, Kaori decided that it was time to get ready. It literally took her no time to get ready because as soon as she thought about where she was going, her usual business suit attire appeared on her instantly. With her wardrobe in place she was set and went down to check out of the hotel.
Kaori found herself hesitating and unsure. She remembered that the car was still full of items she had purchased yesterday and drove to the same abandoned building to offload all of it. This time, she took the time to situate everything instead of piling it all in the living-room. It only took her about half an hour and she had to rouse herself to go do what needed to be done.
Kaori drove to the building she had in mind and parked in the lot across from it. As she walked through the front doors of her old workplace, the male receptionist, who looked more like a pro-wrestler than an office worker, jumped up from his seat. “Fujiwara-sama! I didn’t expect to see you here again. I’m sorry ma’am but you don’t have a code to go up to the fifth floor anymore.”
Kaori smiled at him but couldn’t remember his name for some reason. It suddenly hit her; she would remember it if she knew it. In all the time she had worked here and all the times she had exchanged pleasantries with him, she had never asked his name. It didn’t make her feel great knowing that. “I was just going to go up to visit for a while and say my goodbyes to everybody. I had to leave so suddenly that I never got a chance. If I can’t go up, I understand though.”
The man looked conflicted for a moment but then his features softened into a smile. “Strictly speaking, I’m not supposed to let you do that but I see no real reason not to. You don’t intend to cause any problems do you? It will probably cost me my job if you do, so please don’t.”
He smiled sheepishly and scratched the back of his head as he spoke. “As long as you don’t cause any problems and end your visit before closing time, I see no real problems. I’ll take you up to the fifth floor. I know they’ll be happy to see you again.”
When Kaori stepped off of the elevator and walked into the office, the noise level in the room dropped instantly to almost nothing. All eyes in the room locked on her the moment she walked in and more than one mouth fell open. There was a pregnant pause before the noise level redoubled and multiple people were rushing her way.
Almost every one of her old co-workers rushed over to talk to her. A couple glared at her before returning to their work and she noticed that there were stares of incomprehension from a lot of fresh faces. More than half of the room was piled around her though.
At first she was bombarded by questions to the point that she couldn’t make them out. A voice cut through above the din and told all the rest of them to “Shut-up and give her a chance to speak!”
Kaori had only caught a few questions out of the overlapping voices. “Are you coming back?” and “What happened, are you okay?” also one comment hit a little too close to home “We were worried that you were in the hospital or dead you know! Glad to see you’re all right.” Kaori was grateful to Kenshin for the interrupt and began to explain herself while avoiding eye contact with the one who had worried she was dead. Kaori was afraid that if she looked in her direction, that her expression would betray her.
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“I came here to apologize to everyone. I won’t be returning here after today but I was back to pick up my stuff and wanted to stop in and talk to everyone one last time. I got a really great job offer but it came with a transfer that I could not refuse. I had to go abroad immediately to get the job. I do apologize for leaving so suddenly.” She followed with a deep bow to everyone.
Kaori did her best to answer what questions she could about her job without revealing very much. She told everyone that her new job was confidential but that she was doing essentially the same kinds of things she had been doing before. She told them that the new job involved a lot of travel and had a lot of benefits and the pay was outrageous!
There were a lot of jealous grumbles about the last part which Kaori could readily understand. She decided to make it up to everyone with a lavish lunch. She brought out the phone she had purchased at the electronics store and ordered out from a fancy catering service. She was back in their good graces again rather quickly!
The catering service had several options to choose from, including beef-bowls, bento, curry, ramen, sandwiches, and sushi. So, Kaori did a poll and the overwhelming majority preferred the sandwiches. That was fine with her because she didn’t have any sandwiches in her repertoire of prepared foods so she made sure to order at least a few of every kind of sandwich and she also followed that up with their special desert sandwiches.
Kaori had made desert sandwiches once before in college but she didn’t really spend the time to make extravagant things when she got into the workplace. The ones she made before were strawberry with a cream cheese sauce. Since the catering service had them, she ordered caramel, chocolate, cherry, custard, melon, strawberry, and red bean paste sandwiches.
Kaori spent way more than she meant to but she didn’t regret it. There was awe written on the faces of some of her contemporaries as she finished the order up. even those who didn’t like her or resented her leaving were warming up to her. She didn’t mind. After all, this was her apology to everyone for leaving them so suddenly, even if she had died.
It was nearly an hour until the food would be delivered. Kaori had made sure to order a special delivery of several varieties of sandwiches to the receptionist guy downstairs. She made sure that he got a couple of the desert sandwiches too. After that, she had a little while to wait until the food arrived so she chatted with those who had time. She also went around and fixed several programing programs that she knew how to take care of.
She was just finishing up one such task when she spotted one of the new guys got up from his desk and walked over behind one of his co-workers with a coffee cup. At first, kaori thought that he was going to go get some coffee but then he turned in the wrong direction, away from the coffee pot. After that, he walked behind a woman in deep concentration at her desk and began staring at her screen from behind her. Every so often, he would look around to see if anybody was watching him then go back to looking at her screen.
Kaori asked Kenshin what his deal was and he chuckled before responding. “He’s new. He was hired to do some spot fill coding and proofing on some of the games. Some of your old clients and a few other we got since then. Anyway, he gets here with a strong background in programming but only on paper. He’s basically learning the ropes here.”
Kaori pinched the bridge of her nose. She had had to train more that one “qualified” person on doing their job while she was here. “I get all that but why is he going behind Ayaka? Couldn’t he just ask? I mean, I get that Misano-san is working on something similar but couldn’t he just ask? I know she’s nice enough that she would explain it to him. Look, she’s grinning. She already knows he’s there…”
Kenshin shrugged. “He’s supposed to know how to do that already so he doesn’t feel comfortable asking. Honestly, it might become a problem if he did ask Ayaka. He’s withing her ideal age range you know. She like them young and impressionable. I shudder to think where that could lead and we need them both in this department right now, so better they don’t go that route!”
Kaori smiled a knowing and slightly creeped out smile at the young man and the woman he was trying in vein to hide behind. Suddenly, Kaori had a flash of inspiration! If she couldn’t find a way to make the hybrids, she would just watch as somebody else did it instead! Surely, she would be able to copy it if she saw somebody else doing it right?