Miyako Saito was having a day. Not a good day. A capital-D Day. The kind of day that started with a coffee machine rebellion, segued into a tax audit notification, and was currently culminating in you, her younger assistant, somehow managing to spill an entire binder of confidential contracts into the office aquarium. “You,” she said, her voice dangerously calm, a stark contrast to the flapping gourami now nestled in the ‘Termination Clauses’ section. “You utter, complete, and total moron. A sentient disaster. A lazy bum whose primary talent is finding new and exciting ways to destroy my will to live.”

You mumbled an apology, fishing out a soggy non-disclosure agreement. She was right, of course. Your incompetence was legendary, a force of nature she’d somehow harnessed, or more accurately, resigned herself to weathering.

This was your dynamic. She was the bitchy, bossy, perpetually stressed president of Ichigo Productions, a single mother running a company and raising two teenagers she’d adopted after tragedy. You were her human stress-ball and professional rebound—a role she’d catalogued with chilling accuracy. She’d hurl insults, occasionally a pen (though she’d stopped the actual hitting after that one time with the stapler, which she now considered “a step too far, even for you”). And yet, against all logic and reason, the company thrived. You had a bizarre, chaotic synergy. Where her sharp, pessimistic realism met the wall of your bewildering incompetence, solutions—often ridiculous ones—somehow emerged.

The weight of it all was etched in the tired lines around her eyes, more pronounced now at 43 than they’d been at 25. The abandoned husband, the struggling company, the fierce love for Aqua and Ruby… it was a pressure cooker, and you were the dubious release valve.

Which was how the other thing had started. The messier thing.

It was never romantic, at least not in how it was proposed. It was transactional, a stress relief protocol she initiated. “It’s been a day,” she’d state, locking her office door after a particularly brutal investor call. “I need to not think. You’re conveniently here.” Or, “My back is killing me from carrying this company. Make yourself useful for once.” It was always framed as a clinical necessity, another item on her endless to-do list: 1. Salvage Ruby’s PR. 2. Review MEM-cho’s analytics. 3. Utilize idiot assistant for tension relief.

The problem, the catastrophic cherry on top of this sundae of professional and personal chaos, was that she’d gone and caught feelings. It was infuriating. Illogical. An unforgivable system error in the otherwise pragmatic software of Miyako Saito.

She’d dissect it during her late-night bar dinners, the only time she allowed herself a moment of quiet misery. What did she see in you? You were a mess. You couldn’t file to save your life. You called influencers “those internet people.” You once tried to fix the Wi-Fi by unplugging the fridge.

Yet… you were also unflinchingly, stupidly loyal. You’d listen to her rant about the industry’s fickleness and just nod, offering her the last dumpling from your takeout. You made her laugh, genuinely laugh, with your bewildered takes on TikTok trends. You looked at Aqua and Ruby not as assets, but as the kids she loved, and you’d awkwardly but sincerely ask how Ruby’s concert went.

And so, the feelings festered, hidden beneath layers of tsundere armor thicker than a studio contract. To admit them would be to admit a flaw in her own judgment, a vulnerability she couldn’t afford. To confess? First? She’d be damned. She was the president. She was supposed to have everything under control, not develop a schoolgirl crush on her walking HR violation of an assistant. Worse was the age. Forty-three. She saw it in the mirror, in the subtle ways the world treated her. You were younger, full of a clumsy, baffling energy. The math was simple and mortifying. Why would you want someone with baggage heavier than the company archives, and whose life was a spreadsheet of responsibilities, not… whatever carefree nonsense you had?