I didn't realize you had responded to my ask because anonymous responses don't give you notifications, aaaaaaaaa-
I'm still really anxious about my writing unfortunately so I don't know if I'll ever be off Anon or not... ;-;) but if it's okay, may I ask for the name of mouse anon?
Life has been really busy for me so I haven't had much chance to proofread this, but please take this short snippet based on Teto's section as a token of my gratitude for your amazing writing...!!!!
(Oh! Right! before I forget, I recommend listening to Water The Roses by Flavor Foley and SWAY! by Ozumiiwizard while reading this-! And secondly, please pay no attention to the name color coding, there are no secret messages hidden in it I swear- with that out the way though, I hope this is an enjoyable read at least, and I hope everybody reading this message has a good day!!! o/)
Dry The Roses:
Part 1 of a grammatically-dubious sleepy love letter to Another Cup starring Gumi as the Reliable Narrator, Kagamine Rin as the Protagonist, Kasane Teto, Hatsune Miku, various vocaloids as supporting cast, and last but not least: you, the reader!
Or: a series of studies examining the themes of messing with your coworkers, improper workplace language and conduct, the blinding effect of pure-hearted sincerity, and the gratuitous use of scalding coffee and burn marks as a metaphor for the cycle of hurt people hurting people.
Gumi’s shift began, like all things in life should be, as a simple affair.
Walk in. Watch the floor for any wet signs and janitors mopping it. Adjust the collar on her uniform.
Hold her head up a bit higher. Be the shining example of a cog in the corporate machine.
Greet Sachiko at the receptionist desk. Take the elevator. Get out, walk to her desk. Get one of the newbies - Teto this time - to fetch her a cup of coffee before the migraine she can feel forming when Rin, as is tradition every single day, spots her and immediately decides to be her problem.
“So!” Said the yellow-tied menace in question, grinning ear-to-ear with entirely far too much excitement for the unholy hour of 9 AM. “I’ve got some tea…”
Not again. “Everybody has tea. Nobody has any good coffee these days.” Gumi doesn’t even bother to hide the rolling of her eyes, as she sits down in her cubicle.
Not that any kind of snark could deter someone like Kagamine Rin, especially judging by how her grin just widens as she also sits down in her cubicle next to Gumi’s.
“Oh come oonnnn! Aren’t you the least bit curious about what I’ve got to spill?”
“Not even the latest gossip?”
“Still no.” Her computer’s power button flashed blue when her finger pressed on it with a click.
“What about what our dear colleagues were saying while they were drunk?”
“Again, no. Someone needs to file an NDA with your mouth.”
“Fineeeee. What about what the new hires have been up to? 😉?”
“How are you saying emojis out loud? Also, still a no.”
“What about why Teto’s been redder than usual today?”
That one gives her pause.
Gumi really, really didn’t want to add fuel to Rin’s fire. But, now that she mentioned it, their dedicated caffeine-deliverer did look like she was steaming as much as a mug filled with hot coffee when Gumi told her to get her one earlier…
Her computer comes to life, CryptonMail and Excel already opening up. Her idle hands click away with her mouse, pointedly ignoring the way Rin leans back in her chair; just far enough that Gumi can see the shine of her teeth. “Elaborate.”
“So,” she begins, smiling like she’s caught a particularly big fish. Gumi absentmindedly wondered if her theory of her coworkers having shark genetics in their DNA held true. “Remember the office party Una threw last Friday?”
“Mm. Had to drive Yowane home. Pretty much everybody got shitfaced, didn’t they?”
“Yup!” Rin clapped her hands together like a pleased gameshow host. “Including the newbie. Er, red twin-drills newbie. Especially red twin-drills newbie. Dunno where it came from, but rumor has it, she threw up on that other newbie when they were carrying her back to her place- after she confessed to them, too!”
Gumi loaded the information in her mind. You. That other newbie. Teto confessing to you. The newbies being an item.
The thought of it snags in her gut, like a grammatical mistake that refused to be deleted. It twists and turns in her stomach- as if it were the mental equivalent of the coffee machine throwing an error, during the most inopportune time of the night.
The mere idea of it was so preposterous that Gumi found herself - slowly, silently - reeling her chair back to stare at the corner where they kept the coffee machine. There, standing together as you all waited for the machine to finish processing the orders, mugs as far as the eye can see, were the three of you: Kasane Teto (the third most recent hire), Calne Ca (the company’s newest hire, a janitor and maintenance worker with prosthetic limbs), and you.
Second newest hire. Already the bane of Gumi’s existence. Already the orbit of Teto’s own.
Oh, where does Gumi even begin with you?
Ever since the first day Una introduced you to the office, Gumi felt like there was something odd about you. Not… weird, per se. Just something about the way you carried yourself that she couldn’t put her finger on- and if only she had known that was exactly why you were a problem.
(“Miku asked me for a cup of coffee, and I noticed yours was empty. Thought I should get you one too.”
You gave it to her and said that with such plain-faced sincerity one day, that Gumi couldn’t even pretend you were trying to kiss the asses of your seniors. She would never say that you were charming, or anything asinine like that in a million years- and she would rather testify before a court of law that she’s thought of dumping scalding coffee on your head (like she did with Teto once) at least a few times than entertain the notion.
But you were so disarming, so sincere, so… you, that in that moment Gumi’s anger had no real answer; only retreat. Then, off you went to deliver your cargo to Miku.
Speaking of, Gumi has to make sure she doesn’t crumple her mouse in her fist when she thinks of how handsy Miku has been with you. First Teto, now you. Seriously, Gumi had to admit she could see why her colleagues loved venting out their anger on them, but what was up with Miku and her above-average obsession with newbies?)
Her eyes narrow at the three of you again. She can see it. The way Teto’s feet adjusted themselves so she could stand closer to you every time she moved. The way she adjusted her collar when she and Calne Ca laughed at a joke you told the both of them, like the room was too hot even with the AC Calne was diagnosing on full blast. The way Teto glanced back at you, yet tried her best not to meet your gaze at every single moment…
“Are you telling me the newbies are having a thing with each other?”
“Bingo!” Finger guns. Because of course Rin would wink at her and add finger guns just for good measure. “Maybe? Actually, I don’t know. Never really heard if the other newbie said yes or no or whatever. But can you imagine? You’d think those two would be avoiding each other like the plague, given how Miku likes to get her kicks out of them, but…”
What? “No. Ew. No, it’s none of my business.” Or at least, Gumi really didn’t want it to be her business.
“Eh, suit yourself.” Rin shrugged. “I’m having the time of my life watching if our dear little Teto will make up her mind regarding whether she wants to social distance from her crush or not!”
Speaking of the twin-drilled devil, Gumi and Rin paused for a moment as Teto gave Gumi her order before leaving for her cubicle next to yours. Una be damned, she really was as red as her hair.
“Maybe you can erect an apartment inside that empty head of yours. Charge the newbies for it, considering how they live rent-free in there.”
Rin blew a raspberry at her. “Killjoy.”
So that’s how you wanna play, Gumi thought to herself. She snorted.
Well, two can play that game.
“How would the younger generation say it… Rin, I think you just like snooping in their business because you have no rizz.”
“Wh- huh?”
A hum. “You heard me,” Gumi continued, idly selecting a column that wasn’t in its proper place for whatever reason. “You’re ogling them because you wish you had as much rizz as the actual newbie.”
Rin continued to do a really great impression of a woodpecker having a stroke, in shock over Gumi’s casual usage of ‘newgen slang’ as Rin herself had put it the other day, and the sheer audacity of the words hitting her in the face. “You- what-”
Gumi took a sip from her coffee. Ah, this was nostalgic. Just like the good old days.
Control + C. “Brokeback mountain of no bitches.”
“Princess Rinpunzel and her tall tower of no hoes.”
Control + V. Rin’s stammering couldn’t even form words now. “Kagamine Rizzless and the legend of having no good pickup lines, no ‘aura’, and probably no game because you spend all your time reading fanfiction on AO3 instead of getting dating experience.”
Aaaaand… done. Control + S to save the document, and that was it for this one. Although, as amusing as it was, Gumi felt obligated to flick her coworker in the forehead before her tongue could finish tussling with her brain.
“Now shut up and help me finish checking Vflower’s other manifest. We still have Yowane’s and Una’s requests to sort through.”
It takes a second or two, but the fight quickly drains out of Rin when all Gumi offered her after that was her wheeling into the privacy of her own cubicle, following after her example with a grumble.
“Everybody in this office always has something wrong with them, I swear…”
That almost gets a snort out of Gumi. You’re only remembering this just now?
Still, work waits for no one. Sweet, blissful silence filled the air, joined only by the hum of the ACs and clacking of keyboards. Reports and typing errors flew by, dealt with one-by-one as the clock continued ticking away ahead of them. Fewer and fewer people remained, their backlog of work lesser than theirs. Luka, Defoko, Meiko, more and more colleagues left until Calne left the four of them - Gumi, Rin, Teto and you - with a grateful wave of one of her robo-arms and a thank you for your help.
Time kept passing. The keyboards kept clacking. Day became night, and Gumi’s thoughts interspersed themselves with dreams of overtime pay.
… Though of course, it didn’t take long before the peace was shattered by Rin wheeling her chair back to poke at her arm and whisper-yell at her.
Like always, she doesn’t bother suppressing the rolling of her eyes, a half-sarcastic retort already forming as she turned to ask Rin what the fuss was about-
-And the words died on her lips right then and there.
There, sitting peacefully in your cubicle, Teto had rested her head on your shoulder while you continued typing away at your computer. The only movement from her that Gumi could see was the rhythmic rise and fall of her shoulders, and you turning your head to look at her. Still as a rock, still as water misplaced in a coffee cup.
(That was how Gumi knew Teto felt safe with you.)
Gumi watches as you - carefully, gently - lift your coat off where it laid on your bag and drape it over Teto as a makeshift blanket. She watches as Teto subconsciously leaned further into the crook of your neck at the motion. She watches as Teto, still asleep, drifts her hand into yours, and lets out an exhale that could only mean contentment.
She watches you work, hand in hers, and she comes to the realization that you would rather cripple yourself to working with only one arm than risk waking Teto up.
Rin’s eyes could only be described as starstruck. “They’re… they’re kinda cute together like that, aren’t they?!”
“... I guess.” Gumi says, mouth moving automatically. Her brain attempted to decode whether or not the sickening feeling pooling in her gut was disgust, shock, some other third thing that she wouldn’t dare name, or an unholy combination of all three. “I guess they are.”
“Ahh, young love…! Honestly, it reminds me of way back then of you with-”
Gumi sees it. Gumi sees the exact millisecond Rin realizes her blunder. She didn’t know what kind of expression her own face was making at that exact moment, but maybe, just maybe, it isn’t too overdramatic to say that the way Rin looks at her is one of pure horror.
“I’m so sorry.” It was Rin’s turn for her mouth to blurt words out on autopilot now, the barest hint of panic within them. “I didn’t-”
Not that the situation was fine, mind you. But because Gumi cannot stand the disgust that comes with seeing herself like this, she armors herself in silence.
“Just… let’s get this over with.”
Back into her cubicle she went again.
She tries not to notice how it takes a second too long for Rin to wheel herself back into her own. Gumi tries, very hard, to ignore the sound of Teto groggily waking up. She tries not to listen to Teto’s awkward apologies for falling asleep on you, tries not to hear you reassure Teto that it was no problem by cracking a joke, and she tries to pretend like hearing the two of you laugh didn’t twist the knife in her stomach.
She tries and tries and tries, until suddenly the sound of a pair of footsteps disappearing into the distance heralds the silence that follows, and she realizes both her and Rin had finished their work for the night when she hears the jingle of both their computers shutting down.
And for once, Gumi hates the silence that falls between the two of them.
“... Hey,” Rin starts slowly. Like a car trying to start its engine in the winter- or the coffee machine after it's been forced to endure too many orders. “The usual haunt’s having a pretty big discount right now. If you’re up for it, we can grab dinner there…?”
(Not the first time she’s talked to Gumi like this, of course. Rin had always been trying her best to walk around in the office like she belonged there with the rest of them. Walked around like her uniform wasn’t ever so slightly too big for her- like she wasn’t walking around in uncomfortably tall heels, then shoes that made her seem taller than she actually was when a senior decided it would be funny to break them.
Try as she might, Gumi never could bring herself to see Rin as one of them. She could never bring herself to be that cruel, even after Rin, quite literally, became a shadow of the bright-eyed girl she used to be. Could never see her as a senior; only something as bright as the too-rare smile the shadow couldn’t claim.
Rin, and you, to this date, were the only newbies to have never had to scrub coffee from your uniforms because of Gumi.
Perhaps it came as no surprise that Kagamine Rin was the only one that never went out of her way to actually haze the newbies of her own volition, out of them all.)
It takes a moment for her mind to catch up to the present, but when it does- Gumi sighs. The peace offering was, perhaps, so painfully obvious for what it was that she had to resist the urge to ruffle the senior-lite’s hair, and instead settle for staring at her.
“... Sure. I’m starving anyways.”
Damn it all. Maybe Gumi really was losing her edge, but, sitting here in a near empty office at the unholy hour of 9 PM, she really couldn’t bring herself to care all that much.
Not when she could see the spark of relief in Rin’s eyes, before her younger coworker tore her eyes away from Gumi and got to picking up her bag.
However… “Who knows. Maybe you’ll get someone’s number while you’re there.”
The start-stop-squawk of indignation and the fist jabbing at her shoulder was, in Gumi’s eyes, absolutely worth it.
oh my god i just got peak in my inbox
mouse anon this was such a joy to read!!! T^T your writing is amazing! i love it so much!!! genuinely! all the small references and background characters make me AAAÆ-
i should work on a masterlist soon but i really cant get over how good this is!!! you’re a great writer, mouse anon! 💚 i love how you characterize everyone!
