A Small Life

‘That’s a rather random and probing question that she already knows the answer to.’ There was an internal sigh as Yumi could see what she was doing. The pettiness that Miki went to troubled her. This wasn’t the sort of thing that she expected out of a professional. ‘Not all adults are adults. I know that, don’t know why I expected better from her…I really not feeling like she’s the one. This feels like a distraction.’

Yumi paused her presentation for Miki to address the question. The entire conversation already played out in her mind. Where she was going was all too obvious. Miki would point out how under-prepared they were with the preliminary strategy having completely ignored the prefecture that is the home of the company. They would view it as an insult, possibly jeopardizing the job, but Miki would make claims that she would directly handle things and watch over them to ensure that they were doing the work correctly.

This would give her the excuse to allow her to harass her at her desk and likely try to undermine her amongst the team. What would ensue would be a long term game of her doing everything she could to just make whatever she did look bad despite anything to the contrary. Given Miki’s reputation amongst the employees she would probably get away with it as well. ‘She’s expecting me to fold under the pressure. I wonder how many times she’s taken this tactic to crush anyone that stands up to her.’

Hitting a couple of keys on the keyboard, she dropped the presentation, getting a look for Kasuse. She looked over to him and gave him a confident and reassuring look, which only confused him. The poor guy had no idea what was going to happen. He could only see how things would play out, as he probably already seen before. “We didn’t include that in the presentation because the Nara prefecture is important to the overall strategy and we wanted to show you the best we had. You’ll forgive my weakness towards perfectionism, but I’ll be more than happy to go over the plan if that is what you wish.”

The priceless look on Miki gave a certain amount of enjoyment for Yumi even if she wasn’t motivated by those desires. Though she felt equally as strongly for how panicked Kasuse looked right now. For Kasuse, they had only started work and there was nothing to talk about. Yumi was being honest that they hadn’t wanted to show it and it was important. But her tendency to over research paid off thanks to her working for Aya.

Yumi pulled up her notes remoting into her computer and displayed them on the screen. “I started looking at the distribution numbers and past market successes in the prefecture. I outline some of my plans for taking advantage of that while keeping in mind where things had failed before. I’m given to understand you’ve had some trouble in the past with other agencies. We’re committed to making sure this is a success for you and hopefully you’ll see us as long term partners for your future needs.”

Continuing on, she went for another two minutes before the client stopped her, more than satisfied with what she had shown them. A defeated Miki remained silent and likely planning her next tactic. Yumi fixed her with a glare amounting to about a tenth of the intimidating aura that she picked up to battle with Aya. For more it would be overkill, but she wanted to make a line in the sand with her.

A message that she didn’t take such things laying down.

Chapter 565 - A Small Life

Everyone else had left the conference room with Miki chatting up the client trying to cement her position with them. After the display that Yumi put on, they had become quite enamored with her, a troubling situation in Miki’s head.

“That was the scariest meeting I’ve ever been in,” Kasuse opened as he still couldn’t get out of his seat after everything he saw. His papers remained all over the table and at least two pens on the floor that he needed to go collect. “Damn, you’ve got ice in your veins.”

Yumi closed the computer sending it back to the log in screen and finished cleaning up her mess on the table. “My apologies for that bit of improvisation.”

“I’ll be honest, you had me feeling my spirit escaping when you said you were going to show our plan. But where the hell did you have the time for all that research? I thought I was supposed to be tackling that.”

“Bad habit of mine. I like understanding all of the terrain I’m working with before I make a plan.”

“Hell, share those notes more often!” He started to cleaning things up, but stopped almost immediately. “But what are you going to do now? That wasn’t the last time. And you’re not going to get lucky everytime.”

“I can tell. I’m hoping I sent a little bit of a message that she’s going to need something stronger than that lob over the fence. She’s used to getting her way and everyone just falls in line with her tactics isn’t she?”

“And for good reason, she’s got the power. You might have succeeded againsther, but she can do more than that. She could get you fired, you know.”

‘That was the feeling that I got from her. She’s sort of like Aya in that she doesn’t play by the normal rules. She writes her own and does whatever it takes. But it’s weird. I don’t get her. She was praising and supporting me just a little bit ago. What’s her motive in all of this?’ Yumi felt like there were pieces to the puzzle that she still missed to understand the thought process of Miki. Though she was already just trying to move on. Miki was just a bump in the road at this point for her.

“That’s a risk, but I sort of feel like that’s not what she wants.”

“Now you understand the minds of your superiors?” he joked, not really convinced of Yumi’s claim. Kasuse certainly had seen her do many things and trusted that confidence that she shined all the time, but there were things that he still felt were beyond her knowledge.

Yumi shook her head. “Nothing like that. Just a feeling. If you want something that you can think of, consider it a woman's intuition.” It was something more than that, but she knew he would understand it better framed in such a way.

“Right…” Kasuse finished collecting his things and got up from the table. “Let’s pray that you’re right, I don’t want to lose you at this point.”

“Yeah, I’d prefer not to be fired as well,” she joked, moving with him to the door.

For the day at least, nothing more happened. Yumi figured that she had bought herself time. Between intimidating her and proving that she wasn’t so easy to push over, Miki would have to take on a new approach. That would take some time for something to come up that she could use and plan. That she had to deal with someone conspiring against her while at work just seemed so wrong and yet very troublingly human.

Yumi went home to her apartment after a long day. She called up Yuki needing someone to talk to that was involved. These weren’t things that she could discuss with Kasuse, someone unaware of the true nature of the world.

“Yumi?” Just hearing his voice again was relief to her head. Dealing with someone so irrational gave her more stress than she imagined. It wasn’t until hearing Yuki that she noticed the difference between relief and the pain she felt all day.

She leaned back into her couch feeling able to relax some. “That’s a relief that you're free.”

“Yeah, what’s up? You sound exhausted.”

“Surprisingly not the way that I expected. I thought Aya had prepared me to take on anything and I guess in a way I still can, but this is a lot more trouble than I expected.”

His voice got more serious as he listened and replied to her. “She did say it would be, so it’s not coming as a surprise, but I feel bad that I can’t be nearby like before to give you that support and safe place.”

“Perhaps that’s part of the test. I need to be able to do this on my own.”

“I don’t know. I feel like if that was the case they wouldn’t have allowed us to be around at all or even so close. They could have gone through a lot more trouble to separate us.”

“This is true. You’re shockingly close, though I still haven’t found anyone else.”

“Same. I’ve looked and it probably shouldn’t be a surprise, but there are a lot of Saki Furukawa’s in Japan. I did find a Seiji Tsuji at his temple, but it wasn’t the same. Sort of felt like they were playing a joke on me.”

“And Nerine?”

“She doesn’t have a last name, at least that I’m aware of and a Greek name like that I can’t find anything related to Japan yet. I’m still trying different things, but she’s probably going to be the hardest without more to search.”

“And there’s no certainty that any of the ones you find will be them since they may not be on the internet with a photo.”

“That’s the other problem. I’m going to eventually run out of names with faces and have to rely on going through the phone listings in order.”

“It could take you months to take them down that way.”

“Yeah I know.”

“Sorry, I’m failing on my end. The limited time I have to search is hardly worth speaking of. I’d do better paying a programmer to write me a search script for them.”

“With your salary, that might be an option.”

She had given that consideration and didn’t throw away the idea. Though she didn’t know what sort of cost that would be to find them. In the past, they had managed to find them without modern communication available. She wanted to try to trust that her personality wasn’t going to be so much of a problem as to keep her friends away. “I’m keeping it as a back up.”

“Searching aside, how are you doing?”

“That obvious?”

“You called me, give me a little credit. Plus, we’ve spent enough time together that I’m better at reading you.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the dense protagonist,” she teased.

“And I thought I was the one that had the meta and fourth wall jokes.”

“I’ve matured.”

“More than I thought apparently. But seriously Yumi, what did you want to talk about?”

She gave a small laugh with their little back and forth. It was a little strange, it made her remember the days back with Sumiko . Before she entered her mind, she never would have joked around with Yuki in this way. Even though she stuck with him on his journey, it didn’t feel like she was part of the ground. She thought she was just lying to herself the whole time. But now she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else and it was the most honest thing she could think. “It’s about Miki. The more I see of her the more I’m convinced that she’s not the one we’re after.”

“Oh? Do you have a new candidate?”

“No, though I guess I haven’t looked too hard yet. Miki sort of fell into my lap. She feels more like an obstacle rather than someone that I’m supposed to be learning from.”

“What’s been happening?”

“The first few encounters with her were normal or not alarming, though the rumors I heard were concerning. But she’s become this petty and vindictive woman that seems to fear losing her position of power. Anyone that stands up to her is a threat.”

Yuki could see where this was going knowing Yumi’s history. “And she’s got her targets locked on you. How much did you do?”

“I haven’t emasculated her, if that’s what you’re thinking. She tried to knock me down a peg and I pushed back. Once she saw that I started resisting her efforts, she tried to make a public scene then.”

“Which you turned on her as well. So now you’ve got her hiding away figuring out her next plan of attack.”

“That’s the shape of things.”

“She’s making herself difficult to ignore. But it’s possible she’s still the one.”

“No, what I’ve seen I can’t really see anything useful from her. I’m going to need to look somewhere else.”

“Aya did say this would be the hardest, maybe there’s something we’re not seeing.”

The more that she talked to Yuki the more certain she felt that Miki wasn’t the one that she was looking for. Her mind hardened to the idea. “There’s nothing of value to be found. A small and petty woman like that has nothing to teach.”