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vio1315 · 5 years

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That job messed me up more than I think I realized

I'm gonna try to express the ways

Let me torture a metaphor for a bit here

Imagine your jobs is to press buttons on a keyboard

Yup, that's it. It seems pretty easy.

But when you get to work on day 1, and are ready for training, they say to any question you ask

'You'll figure it out'

And so it begins.

As you tap away, you wonder if maybe you're supposed to favor any of the buttons over the other, if you should type words, if there should be a theme to each. But they never tell you, and never answer.

When you finish a page, you aren't told if it is good or bad, in fact you don't even speak to anyone, they have you send it via email, so no reading faces either.

You are 100% isolated from Any feedback.

Maybe you ask your coworker, and at best you can get 'type a G here' or some such.

You don't know if you're doing well or poorly, but you try hard anyways.

Despite how hard you try to 'figure it out' there are no opportunities to. Sometimes you notice your work being picked up by your coworker, and you aren't given more for a long, long time.

Sometimes you are expected to sit for 2 hours with Literally nothing, sometimes more than that, sometimes entire days.

When you ask what to do, the things you have already finished are suggested before you get a shrug and a comment on how slow it is.

No direction.

So you try to fill the time, and nobody says anything.

Never ever will they say anything.

But you notice, you notice very well how they avoid giving you work, how you have less and less, you notice how they bite back comments about you, the times where errors regarding your pay are made.

Are they errors? You can only speculate.

You notice how people talk behind peoples back, and have to wonder if that's when they will finally mention everything you do wrong, the second you leave.

And it's been months and you still don't know how to do your job, if you're even doing it well or not. You can only guess not with how little you're given. But not once have you been corrected on Anything.

One day a boss is actually surprised to see you working, and you know exactly where it's headed by then.

Going to bed gets harder and harder, because you don't want to wake up and go to work. Getting out of bed feels impossible, but you do anyways. And you go in every day. And you wear yourself thin, feeling the judgment but never being told it, swinging back and forth on thinking you're doing well and the next hour that you're doing poorly.

You feel broken and incapable

Eating is a joke. You're not hungry anyways. Making food means taking up free time, which means less time to recover from work. Work where your only hope of having any sign of how you're doing is to be entirely keyed in for your entire shift, trying to guage the mood of everyone and deduce from there what to do.

Sometimes you get as little as two hours of sleep, usually four. Never more than six. You prop your head up with a water bottle while you work and lay on the bench during your break. You swig pop before you drive to try to avoid any micro sleeping. Yet the risk feels worth it to not sacrifice any not-work time.

Sometimes you spend the whole drive with your nose in the air, turning off the heat and letting yourself freeze, just to keep your eyes from shutting automatically.

Even before this you were coming home exhausted from the hypervigilance, so what does it matter?

Talking to people becomes a punishment, as you still don't understand your job, so you can't even answer questions or help them. Sometimes you catch what seems to be exasperation when you ask your boss what to tell them.

It is a constant struggle.

Getting home, you're too exhausted to go out again, and so you don't. And soon going out feels synonymous with work.

You don't want to go out. You don't want to have to embarrass yourself in front of people anymore. Not that you feel you have the energy to anyways.

And so yeah, that was my life for 6 months or whatever. I still don't want to go out.

I still don't feel like eating.

You remember right?

Why they fired me?

Same day the hospital had to close down and they're like 'nah, we gotta fire you for not coming in'

I know, I know for sure it was an excuse.

I just don't know what specifically it's covering up.

You know something. You wanna know what.

Sometimes, 3 days in a row I had NOTHING to do, but they were so adamant that they needed me there every day.

Like guys, I answered the phone, and spoke to people who walked in.

And the way this place is arranged, they can all see me, they are like five steps away from the door, and all have phones. Phones which on the busiest day will go off 20 times in 6 hours.

Idk why they even wanted me so bad...

Sometimes my coworker would tell me to do something like use a blowtorch which I had never so much as held. He had seniority, so I'd try (still didn't show me how or even stand in the same room)

And my boss runs in and tells me to just have him do it.

A lot, a lot, I am given 0 chances to "figure out" and am certainly never told how to do stuff or whatever

Idk, it has left me in a weird limbo now. It's why I didn't care I was fired, but at the same time now I don't want another job. I can't even put it together in my mind, it seems like such torture.

Just thinking about it makes me anxious.

But I'll do something. It's not an option for me not to. Just, personally. My parents have been 100% cool

Idk

I hated it there, but it makes me feel like such a failure

I keep ignoring it because I don't know what to do with that feeling

I've been staying in bed till 4 lately

I trust God, I'm working hard for future opportunities

But it doesn't make my feelings vanish, or rather, it doesn't fix what's been changed. Feelings wise I'm a bit distant and lost right now. I know why, but idk what to do about it per se

My mom noticed after I'd been fired how dark the circles under my eyes were and was upset that I'd stayed up till 4. She said I looked like a holocaust survivor.

I'd worked hard while I was working to not be seen so she wouldn't ask when I'd slept. So part of my wonders if it was my accumulated poor health to that point to get such a reaction

It's not like I was healthy before this or anything, but I certainly didn't improve there.

I actually started getting dizzy at times from hunger which has been a first.

That's all I have to say

Not much of a conclusion but that's all

The metaphor wasn't needed, but leaving it

#Vio's Personal

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emilyplaysotome · 6 years

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Chapter 15 - All the King’s Men

Catch up on all Chapters here: http://emilyplaysotome.tumblr.com/post/173554646607/down-the-voltage-rabbit-hole-the-sequel-master

I arrived at the office on time but very much in my head.

To be totally honest, I can’t remember how I got to the office that day. I knew that I dropped my things off at home, went to the subway, and took my usual route to work but I was in that type of headspace where you’re so busy thinking that somehow the present just happens and you’re left with this inability to describe exactly how it is that you got from point a to point b.

I dropped my bag off in my office and composed myself before sneaking out behind the building to grab a coffee at La Colombe. As I stood in line, for some reason a memory flashed in the recesses of my mind that caught me off guard.

It was from my early days with Zyglavis, before things had gotten complicated in the slightest.

At the time, I’d wanted to show him what my life here was like and I had dragged him down to TriBeCa by my office to give him a sense of my daily routine, including the black and tan (draft latte + cold brew) I started my day with. I remember ordering two and us sitting at one of the small tables in the cafe as he hesitantly leaned forward and took a sip.

“That’s delicious!”

“I thought you’d like it…even though it’s not chocolate.”

“Not everything I like is chocolate,” he’d said with a cute pout.

I’d laughed, and reached across the table taking his hand in mine. I brought his fingers to my lips and kissed them gently since he was too far away, and I loved him too much to ignore the impulse to be close to him.

Now I was here alone, waiting in line and wondering if I’d ever find that kind of happiness again - be it with him or with someone else.

I missed him of course, but I wondered if I missed the idea of him more.

This whole thing, our “breakup”, the king’s games - all of it had left me with little time for reflection. I was aware of the fact that I only had 3 weeks left, but I needed to find real answers in that time in order to feel good about how I was going to move forward from here on out.

Truthfully, out of everyone I’d lost I missed Meg the most.

She would have been the person who would have pushed me to think about Naomi. She’d been there long enough to see me with Zyglavis and to see me before him to gently guide me in the right direction. She had an uncanny ability to ask the kinds of questions that actually helped me think and not get distracted by fleeting feelings of lust or like or a desire to avoid my own baggage by fantasizing about a man.

To find real happiness I needed her back sooner rather than later, and in order to do that I had to get to the bottom of this sixth man situation asap.

I was thinking about all this when I turned the corner back at my office and smacked into someone. I almost spilled my black and tan but thankfully between the amount of it that I’d already consumed and the lid, disaster was narrowly avoided as I bent down to pick up my cup.

“I’m so sorry!”

“Oh Naomi, there you are.”

It all happened so fast, and because I’d been so in my head I wasn’t paying attention to who I’d actually run into. When my eyes settled back on the people before me I saw a smiling Anita with her hand on the shoulder of someone very familiar.

“This is Toma. I was just about to bring him by to your office for an introduction. He’s a freelance copywriter that’s going to be helping us out on the LT Hotel pitch.”

This version of Toma Kirya was far more accessible than the overly confident man I’d met back at Addison & Rhodes. It made sense to some degree as in this scenario Anita and I were executive level and so he looked at me with the same sort of respect that he’d look at Shunichiro with back then.

He wore a plaid collared shirt, like most of the men in our office and his jeans were a bit tighter than the slacks he’d worn in bizzaro Toyko giving this version of him a bit of a hipster vibe. As a few of my younger female employees walked by him I noticed that they were checking him out on the DL and I had to admit that this new look, including his new hipster-style horn rimmed glasses, was really working for him.

He smiled politely, and somewhat bashfully, pushing his chestnut hair back out of his eyes and said, “It’s nice to meet you. Sorry about before…I’ll buy you another coffee sometime to make up for it.”

“No, don’t worry about it,” I said cautiously. “When did you start?”

“Friday,” Anita said without hesitation, “He was in the meeting and I’d hoped to introduce you before but you were ill…”

“I took notes though, and I have some ideas,” Toma said eagerly.

“I’ll look forward to hearing them,” I said, still on guard.

“That reminds me,” Anita said. “One of our clients wants to come by today for a smaller strategy session with just you and Toma. I checked your calendars and it seemed that 11 was open for both of you.”

“Wait a minute,” I said. “That only gives me an hour for prep…”

Anita shook her head dismissively, “You don’t need to prep. He just wanted face time with you both leading in to our first presentation on Wednesday. For some reason he seems really stoked about 360i getting awarded the job and who am I rock that boat? Just be your usual charming selves and it’ll be fine.”

It was typical of Anita to improvise a bit.

As talented as she was as a creative director, her strength was being able to spitball and brainstorm whereas I thrived in an environment full of calculated planning. Despite the fact that last night I’d taken a few cues from her style of doing things and it had miraculously worked out, I wasn’t prepared to bring that kind attitude to the workplace.

Furthermore, I now knew that Shin, Toma, and Eisuke were all in this world. One of them was most likely the sixth man but I was unclear as to who. There was a small detail about one the three that stuck out to me, but I wasn’t ready to read into it enough to determine if that meant he was the one.

I decided to keep my wits about me, and suggested that Toma follow me back to my office in order to do a bit of prep before our client’s arrival.

“So where did you work before this?” I asked, my eyes never leaving my computer.

“Oh…here and there.”

“What does that mean?”

Toma looked uncomfortable in my peripheral vision and I watched him squirm a bit before he said, “To be honest, I don’t remember. I know this will sound crazy but I woke up in a hospital room and couldn’t remember anything about my life. I pieced together some information about myself thanks to the smartphone they gave me which was mine but…I’m hoping my memories will come back soon.”

“Really? You’re serious - you’re not messing with me?”

“No! I know it sounds farfetched but it’s the truth. I had an email from Anita booking me for Friday and I showed up ready to work. You don’t have to worry - I know what I’m doing it’s just…the personal stuff is muddied.”

“That’s quite a story.”

“Please don’t say anything. Please. I promise I’ll knock this out of the park for you just…believe me when I say I will be an asset to your team and you won’t regret working with me.”

“Relax. Even if you blow it horribly between me and Anita, well…it’ll be fine.”

There was a brief silence and when it started to make me uncomfortable I glanced over to see Toma with a warm smile pointed in my direction.

“You’re really confident huh?”

“And you’re not?”

“No, I am but still. I like being around confident people.”

The way he said it I could tell that he was cautiously flirting. It was the kind of statement that wouldn’t get him in trouble with HR but still implied something more than merely respecting confident coworkers.

We spent the rest of our time together combining our notes from the Friday meeting in anticipation of the upcoming one. As he’d been in the otome realm, Toma was excellent at his job. He had several slogans, hashtag activations, and overarching themes for LT Hotels and when I told him my idea of opening up the luxe offerings to a few New York City influencers, he quickly worked that into all of his preliminary ones.

Our hour together flew by and before we knew it we were heading to the front to greet our client.

“What are you doing here?” I gaped.

“It’s nice to finally meet you in the flesh,” Eisuke said with a smirk. “Toma, nice to see you again.”

“Same Mr. Ichinomiya.”

“Please, call me Eisuke.”

“Right this way Eisuke.”

In an instant it all started to click - the luxury hotel brand, the consulting, not to mention the fact that two men had been present in that shitty video conference and I hadn’t noticed. I bit my tongue and saw Eisuke smirking at me out of the corner of my eye as an unaware Toma led us to one of our nicer small conference rooms.

“Can I get you anything? Tea? Coffee?”

“Coffee would be great. Naomi, would you be a dear and make it the way I like?”

I stared daggers and him and watched as a horrified Toma assumed our client was being horribly sexist towards me.

“I’ll have our receptionist-“

“That’s quite alright, Naomi will do it. I just have a hunch that no one makes a cup quite like her.”

“It’s fine Toma,” I said swallowing my annoyance. “Do you want one too?”

“No, I’m fine. Thanks though,” he said, unable to hide his horrified expression.

I left the men in the conference room and headed to our kitchen, cursing Eisuke and the king under my breath. I should have added a stipulation at the start of our game that my work would be off limits but as per usual I could feel the King’s presence reminding me that I was not as in control of this game as I wanted to think.

When I returned and placed the coffee in front of Eisuke, his face lit up with a pleased expression.

“I knew it,” he said after taking a sip. “You really have a knack for making my coffee.”

“It’s the extra half spoonful of sugar,” I said without thinking and watched as Toma curiously studied us.

“Do you two know each other?”

“In a past life perhaps,” Eisuke said, back to his unreadable poker face.

“Toma, do you want to share our initial campaign ideas?” I asked, hoping to limit the amount of damage either otome king might be doing in my professional life.

From there the meeting got back on track and we learned that LT Hotels was planning to build out their fitness center on one portion of their roof. They were building an outdoor track so guests could “run in the clouds” and also were constructing an indoor area surrounded in glass, which would be open 24 hours so guests could work out in the midst of the city lights and stars.

Eisuke thought opening the fitness club and hotel spa to an elite group of New Yorkers was a great idea and he pushed us to move forward with “not just a hotel” as our brand anthem. With Toma and I kicked off in the right direction, Eisuke made his way out of the office extending an invitation to join him for lunch.

I hesitated, having thought my lunch hour would be the perfect time to follow up with Jin, but seeing as how Eisuke was a client (and a suspect for the sixth man) I graciously agreed.

We walked over to Wolfgang’s Steakhouse a few blocks away from the office. I passed Wolfgang’s all the time on my way to sweetgreen where I got my salads and marveled at the patrons who had the time and money to go to a steakhouse on their lunch break.

It made sense that Eisuke would take me here, and as the hostess quickly sat us by the window I noticed that the wait staff seemed to be extra aware of his presence. I couldn’t figure out if he’d been here before or if Eisuke Ichinomiya simply had that kind of demeanor no matter what universe he was in that caused people to bend over backwards to serve him.

Most of the items on the menu were far too rich for lunch, but Eisuke didn’t care and when our waiter returned he ordered the petit filet mignon and I settled on the burger. I still felt that my order was a bit heavy for the middle of the day but it seemed like a good compromise between a salad and a steak. Eisuke also ordered a bottle of wine for us, despite my protest that it was the middle of the day and I had to get back to work after this.

Naturally, he refused to bend to my pleas and I found myself enjoying an expensive red while I waited for my juicy medium-rare burger.

“So do you miss Soryu?” I asked in an attempt to make small talk as I took a sip of the wine.

“Yes, but that’s not why I came to this world.”

“Are you going to try and convince me that you came for me?”

“Hmm. Who knows.”

He looked disinterested, and his face was unreadable but I couldn’t shake the nagging suspicion I had about him.

“You know,” I said watching his reactions closely. “It strikes me as odd that out of the three men I’ve met you’re the only one who seems to have his memories intact.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Toma and Shin are a clean slate but you aren’t. You seem to be in cahoots with the king.”

To that Eisuke scoffed dismissively, “And what significance does that have to you?”

“Hmm. I wonder,” I said, throwing the same attitude back in his face.

A comfortable silence descended on the table and through the window I watched the people outside mill about. I took a moment and thought about everything that had happened up until this point. I thought about the fact that this one detail had been eating away at me, nagging at me to be noticed, and how I’d found it strange that Eisuke would stay here without Soryu if there wasn’t something more at play.

There were two possible explanations, and it seemed like a gamble to accuse him when Meg’s life theoretically hung in the balance…but I just couldn’t shake that nagging feeling I had.

Our food came out and Eisuke carefully cut his steak. The rare meat oozed blood and juices and like the carnivore he was, he tore off a small piece and popped it in his mouth, nodding in approval and muttering, “Delicious.”

“It’s you,” I said, unable to hold back.

“What’s me?”

“You’re the sixth man.”

Eisuke paused, and put his utensils down for a moment.

“Is that your final answer?”

He looked at me with his cold, incomprehensible eyes. The face of a ruthless businessman, great at deception yet deeply insecure and for some reason I found myself grinning in response to his stoicism.

The more I thought about it, the more certain I was. It had been over a year since I played the IOS version of his life, but I remember how the fans of the game had discussed at length his love for the MC no matter what route you were in. As a result I had played Soryu, Mamoru, and Baba’s routes (Ota had never interested me in the slightest), and sure enough in each story there was a hint of Eisuke’s presence and affection for the MC.

He never crossed the line and always hung back, taking second place to his friend but he was there trying to make you happy in the shadows of the story.

I thought about the fact that he had taken me to this expensive lunch and how he wanted my company to win the LT account - not for him as he knew he may not be in this world for long but for me.

To make me happy. To help me.

I thought about how cranky he’d been when I’d stopped replying and how he facilitated reuniting me with Soryu even though he’d been slightly sour about the whole thing. Sure, he’d hid his feelings behind sarcasm and smirks, but I remember from his stories in the game how needy and insecure he was deep down and here I was suddenly realizing that I’d taken all these interactions at face value when there was so much more beneath the surface.

He continued to look at me expressionless, despite my smile and I nodded in answer to his question.

“Yes. Yes it is.”

I heard a snap, and time froze leaving the only two people able to converse myself and the king who now loomed over our table.

If you’ve enjoyed the story, please show your support by sharing it with a friend or buying me a coffee (https://ko-fi.com/emilyplaysotome)!

Thanks for reading :)

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