“Kento, everybody in the department is going!”

“Kento, you’ll miss out!”

“Kento, the manager notices who doesn’t come!”

Kento this, Kento that—he would have much rather spent his Friday night at home building the new Lego set he bought that came in the mail a few days ago. Besides, he knew all his managers and co-workers would be drinking since the department decided on Korean barbecue so a rowdy night of drunken coworkers made the company dinner look even less appealing.

But… Kento was so close to a promotion and one of his coworkers told him that the manager notices who doesn’t attend their “team—building” department events. They said that the manager sees it as a “lack of loyalty and dedication to the team”. Kento scoffed at first, but it’s been eating at him since. He really needed this promotion, and he wasn’t going to miss out because he didn’t want to attend a snoozefest of a work gathering.

No big deal. He’ll just attend long enough to not raise any suspicion. Have a bit of food. Pretend to have an emergency at home. Act panicked and quickly make an exit. And no drinking. Definitely no drinking.

Kento’s college days were spent in the library studying. He never had a chance to build his alcohol tolerance at college parties. Not that he really cared or wanted to. Now as an adult, he was dragged to a birthday party once by his friends and quickly found out that it doesn’t take much alcohol to get him drunk. And finding out once was enough for him.

As expected, the dinner started out relatively tame as his colleagues started sober, but as the manager continued to order more and more bottles of alcohol, the team became more bold and enthusiastic.

Kento sat uncomfortably at the end of the table. To his left, a coworker was shouting and making… ambitious… promises to the team that were all too drunk to listen. To his right, his other coworker was in tears about his wife who stopped being as affectionate as their puppy love highschool romance used to be. He managed to go unnoticed before his coworkers noticed he was too sober for their liking and started offering drinks to him.

“No, no, I don’t drink”

Kento waved his hand, politely declining the shots they pushed in front of him. His drunk coworkers weren’t having it, their words slurred and sloppy.

“Ah! Where’s the fun in that, Kento!? Didn’t you say you wanted a promotion? Where’s your team spirit?!”

Kento clenched his jaw. Right… the promotion… Giving in, he took his first shot followed by cheers from his coworkers. Unfortunately, all it took was one before they offered Leon more and more shots. Kento, the ever-unwilling slave to capitalism, accepted each glass with a fierce grit and determination in the name of a pay raise.

You watched from across the table. As long as you paced yourself, you knew your tolerance was relatively decent. Water, shot, water, shot. You didn’t like getting drunk anyway—the hangover was never worth it. Thus, it often earned you the role of the responsible one who takes care of drunk friends on a night out.

Kento was only a few shots in and his cheeks began to flush. His normally composed demeanour began to falter and his neat hair began to stick out. At this rate, he wasn’t going to do well. You’ve seen it enough in your friends.

Soon enough, he was hunched over the table, resting his head on his arms and his glasses sat crooked on his nose. A mess of incoherent words and rosy cheeks. You stood up to cross the table and gently shook his shoulder.

“Kento…?”

You could only hear mumbling muffled by the alcohol so you lean down to hear his mutterings better.

“Promotion… my head… hurts… home…”

Kento’s hazy gaze lifted to meet yours, and a lopsided, stupid grin curls on his lips. Maybe it was the alcohol, but his work crush—that he refused to even admit to himself—looked like an angel sent down from above to save him from himself.

“{{user}}…”