“Hey, Boss Lady, Mr. Tachibana says we have to have the final draft of that new shoujo manga from your favorite problem company by the end of day tomorrow or they’re going to lose the contract. I’m sorry ma’am, but I can’t help, I’m pinned down with the details for staffing the upcoming convention. Do you want me to get Genji to help you with it?” The young man yelling from across the room was tactless but reliable and always earnest.

Fujiwara Kaori looked up from the latest staffing shortage reports on her desk and considered what her junior co-worker was asking for only a second. “No, that’s okay. I’ll work with them on it after I finish with this and the Osaka branch report. Genji is supposed to get a new child soon so he should spend more time with his wife. You should go home too, it’s late already. If you miss the last train you’ll have to call a cab again.”

Kenshin wasn’t happy that once again the boss lady was shouldering all the responsibility for the whole company but he certainly wasn’t going to disrespect her resolve. He definitely wasn’t going to argue with her, she was his boss after all. “Okay Boss. But hey, don’t you work too late either. It’s not good for a woman to walk home alone in the middle of the night all the time.”

She could see the concern on his face and she was glad to have good dependable people to work with, even if there were never enough of them. “That’s all right, I have a car so don’t worry about it.”

After their talk, it only took Kenshin another couple hours to finish up his work. He looked over to his boss’s desk but she didn’t notice. He thought to himself “I wonder if I should try telling her how I feel? But then I would have to transfer to another team because it would be inter-team relations. Ah well, maybe there’s some other way I can reach her.”

He settled for going to the vending machine down the hall and buying her a hot can of coffee. As he sat it on the crowded but neat corner of her desk she stopped for a moment. She then looked at the can and then up at him with a smile of gratitude. Suddenly Kenshin’s heart pounded and he realized he had to get out of there quick.

Kaori was almost at the point of mental exhaustion. She had been going over the same correction requirements for the third time when Kenshin sat the can of coffee on her desk. She looked at the can for a second before recognition dawned on her. She turned a dreamy smile towards him that was more for the happiness that she felt about the coffee than the fact that he had purchased it for her. Just as she was about to thank him, he practically ran from the office. She realized that her expression might have seemed a bit to grateful and wondered if her smile was scary.

Three hours later a thoroughly exhausted Kaori bought another coffee, left the office, and began the drive to her apartment. She still had to stop at the local convenience store and buy things for supper and breakfast for tomorrow.

As she made her way home from the store with her two bags of groceries she reflected on her day. It was a rotten day, a horribly, rotten day. Thinking back on it, Kaori realized that it wasn’t that different from the rest of the week, or even the rest of the month she had been having. She had been having a really bad year so far! “I only have nine more months left to go! Then I can start another equally dreadful year, yay!”

Kaori gave a sarcastic cheer to no one in particular as she kicked off her work shoes from her sore feet and left them at the entry to her apartment. She put the cold groceries in the refrigerator but left the dry stuff in the bags on the kitchen counter. She then made her way into the living room and sat in the only chair in that room. As she sat in it she grumbled to herself because of the type of chair it was. She was once again sitting in an office chair.

This chair was one of the old chairs from the office of the large personnel firm she worked for. When they were going to throw them all away and replace them she went down and put a couple in the back of her car. At the time they were the only furniture she had in her apartment except for her old futon. She had worked there for months before she could afford to splurge on any furniture but by then she had grown accustomed to the office chairs and had yet to go to the store and replace them. It had taken every yen she could lay her hands on to secure the car at the dealership and between that, her rent, and simple living expenses her check was essentially spent every month before she got it.

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“Maybe I’ll go to the store and replace them on my next day off.” She told herself for what must have been the thousandth time and as always seemed to follow that thought she remembered her schedule. “whenever my next day off happens that is!”

As many successful people find out, it is good to try your hardest but not all the time. When she first started with this firm she had given her full effort all the time and seeing her capabilities the company had “Rewarded” her with ever-increasing positions. It seemed like a great thing at the time but eventually, she realized it was a trap! The more you do the more is expected of you and the greater responsibility is shoved off onto you.

Massaging her sore feet she pondered her carefree college and high school career with fond recollections. This was nothing new for Fujiwara Kaori. She had been repeating the same routine for years. Work nonstop all day and sometimes into the night, much like this night. Then come home and relax for a few minutes before taking a shower and fixing supper. After getting a few hours of sleep she would wake up and start the whole cycle again. Worse, she had been working without a day off for the past two months due to funding and personnel shortages. She found that last one quite ironic for a personnel firm!

As she sat half dozing off in the chair she noticed the cat looking at her out of the corner of her eye. “I’ll get up and make us something for dinner in a few minutes, just let me rest a bit first.” As she sat dozing off she wondered to herself when she had gotten a cat? She began trying to remember what she had in her refrigerator that she could even give the cat.

“Oh, I don’t need anything to eat but thank you kindly for your consideration.” Kaori sat bolt upright in what should have been her chair and looked at what she thought was a cat. When she did, she found herself sitting in a plush armchair in front of an old, heavy-looking, oak desk with a very strange person sitting behind it.

The person sitting at the desk in a large, high-backed armchair seemed to be an almost average twenty-something man with a medium build and glasses. He was wearing a dark gray business vest with a matching tie over a pressed, white, long-sleeve shirt. As she glanced around her she spotted his jacket on the coat stand in front of the rows of file cabinets and bookshelves that surrounded his messy, paper-laden desk complete with a computer.

In other words, he was a very average-looking young man in a very average-looking office. The thing about him that threw the whole look off was certainly not the file he seemed to be inspecting so thoroughly and it wasn’t his face that seemed to be an average Japanese man’s face. Finally, she homed in on what had been tickling her sense of wrongness this whole time. This man had a pair of cat ears perched atop his head.

At first, she thought he was just being silly by wearing some kid’s toy to the office but after looking only a little longer she realized the truth. He didn’t have any other ears on his head and the hair of his head arched right up the back of his ears as he sat in profile reading the file in his hands. As if to confirm her suspicions the ear nearest her craned slightly to the side as if hearing a sound and trying to track it without conscious thought before flicking a couple of times and coming to rest in its previous forward-facing position.

The young man turned to face her a moment later with a genuine smile on his face. Kaori was no longer surprised at all. She assumed at this point that this had to be a dream. That his face had whiskers or that his teeth were all the needle-sharp canine teeth of a cat was just a matter of course. Then he spoke to her once more and she, only then, processed what he had said before about food.

“Miss Fujiwara, or would you prefer that I call you Kaori?” he paused for a second until she replied.

“No, no, whichever one is fine with me! Uhm, if you don’t mind, might I ask what I’m doing here? It’s not that I mind, I’m just curious and I need to get back to making supper so I can go to bed. I have work tomorrow, you see?” Even though it was her dream, Kaori decided there was no call to be rude to the cat-man in front of her, but she still felt this should have waited till she was in her bed, not while she was in her chair in the living room.

“Kaori then! I was just getting to that, but first, let me introduce myself. My name is Descartes Malefecto. I do apologize for my appearance. I haven’t had a chance to read your file until just now, so I didn’t realize you come from a world with no anthromorphs on it. I have been too busy dealing with all of the problems caused by personnel shortages to even read the file on a prospective new employee, how ironic is that?” She took that as a sign that her subconscious was now venting about her job as well.

“But I digress, the reason you are here is for a job offer. You see, you and I have much the same job. I handle all of the personnel for a certain group and when there isn’t enough personnel to go around, I end up doing their share of the workload. This may be a bit shameless of me but I’m begging you, please at least hear me out and give consideration to the job! I desperately need some competent help.

That was to be Fujiwara Kaori’s first meeting with the strange being who would forever change her destiny.