The Lobster Incident

Okino Midori

Die. Die a thousand times. No. A million. Wait. No. Just one. A painful one.

Okino’s polite smile wavered ever so slightly as she felt another man’s saliva fling onto her left cheek. It was about a thumb’s width away from her earlobe and jaw.

This dude. He should get killed by a speeding electric bike on a sidewalk so that at his funeral, his relatives would find the entire thing funny.

“Really?” Okino forced a genuine laugh. Inside, she screamed as she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, begging it not to brush against that contaminated spot. “That sounds interesting. I didn’t know lobsters could do that.”

This man. This dude. This monkey. Bro thought that the best way to make small talk was to drop a random, unneeded fact during their lunch break. And he looked so proud doing it, like he was some kind of master manipulator who took charge of every atom in this ever-expanding universe.

That was a hook. That, by itself, was offensive. Bro thought making small talk was the same as making a short-form video. Bro treated her like some dumb bitch who would spend hours on end on her bed scrolling through Facebook—

That part was true, which pissed Okino off even more.

But it just so happened that the fact was about how lobsters pee from their faces and use it as a form of communication, defense, and a mating ritual. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to start a conversation like this? With everyone on their team around? Hello? They all just sat down. What made bro think it was okay to drop this fact on her, out of all people?

“Yeah… Yeah.” Bro laughed. “It’s kinda funny if you think about it.”

No. It wasn’t funny.

“How so?”

Barely. Okino barely managed to retain the interest in her tone. Most of her whimsy came from her imagining that if an armed robber were to appear from the entrance of their company’s cafeteria to hold them all hostage, she would fly and dropkick said robber out of pure rage.

With the thought came a bit of an acceptance that she could not fly nor dropkick said robber out of pure rage. In fact, she would probably get shot in a mad dash toward the robber and bleed to death, landing somewhere else other than her head or spine.

But there was peace in it. At least she wouldn’t have to hear another lobster fact from this monkey. Better yet, the sight of her going cold atop her own pool of blood might just give this monkey the right amount of trauma to never talk to another woman again. That would mean her life wouldn't be in vain.

“Makes you think that when you’re sucking a lobster’s head, you’re kinda sucking their dick or whatever those are.”

And there it was.

Okino’s smile wavered once more. At this very moment, it was once again made known to her that most of the magical shit people said on the internet wasn’t real. Because if manifesting were real—to really believe in something like how a kid believes Santa exists—this guy would have been eaten by an alligator in the sewers, rammed by an electric bike, or at least an armed robber would have already held them at gunpoint.

To make it worse, bro then proceeded to chuckle and keep his stupid, half-open smile in front of her like he expected Okino to laugh along. To this. To his stupid, disgusting joke.

But Okino felt it. This electrifying feeling. Like some kind of disturbance in the Force that shaped her entire being. Like those stupid games children play while walking literally everywhere else—if I step on the line in between the tiles, I will die. The feeling was similar. If Okino didn't play along, she would die. And so, out of fear, like it was second nature, Okino let out a small laugh, covering her mouth as she did.

Besides, it would be such a shame to leave this monkey disappointed. What? Bro probably spent like five minutes browsing through Reddit for the most obscure fact he could drop to the cutest girl in their group during lunch. The dude probably scrolled through about half of it, missing other much more interesting facts until he found the golden joke about lobsters that was equally gross and stupid. This was amazing. This effort should be rewarded. This small laugh was fitting for a man who probably grew up with no parents.

Now. Okino may have sounded a little bit meaner than usual. But she didn’t deserve this.

She had made sure to get her uninterrupted five-hour beauty sleep. She gave herself enough time to prepare, to style her long pink hair, and to put on some makeup—the kind that wouldn't make her look like a peacock but wasn't too basic either, something in between that made her cute self stand out even more. It was damn hard to be thankful if you did all that just to get dunked on by a lobster fact coming from a person who didn't seem to make showering a daily habit.

Okino also couldn’t be too happy that all she got after making herself look cute was a dude who had little to no intelligence, a dude with a grimy face who earned detractors from every other caller like it was his job, and a dude who was barely keeping himself employed because he was tight with a TL from another team—the very same who was rumored to scratch the “itch” of someone in upper management.

And what? He looked proud of himself for five seconds for being able to hold a “conversation” with a cute girl before dropping the conversation entirely to scroll through fan art of half-naked gacha game women while eating.

And no one. No one from their team batted an eye. Like, hello? No one was going to find it weird that some dude just dropped a random, disgusting fact about lobsters and somehow equated it to sucking dick? You also don’t suck a lobster’s head from the front—

Bastards.

If she had known this was going to happen, she would’ve said no and had her meal somewhere else instead. But then again, she wouldn't have known. She wouldn’t have said no, either. But her team should at least be thankful that she entertained him. Damn it.

They should also be thankful that she was four hours away from a day off. Because if not… either she was going to develop a cursed technique with all the stress she was getting or—more realistically—she would find a way to get a gun and hold everyone in their company hostage.

────────────

“—so, what are you going to do about it?”

Fujimaru interrupted Okino. She sipped her matcha espresso as loudly as if it were lemonade, making Okino shiver in her seat upon realizing that her hope of ever finding the snarkiest reply to fire back at her was crushed. Staring daggers her way might work, but why the hell would you stare down a surface-to-air missile?

There was also the fact that she had picked this fight herself. Okino found Fujimaru about to go home right after she clocked out of work. Right then and there, Okino invited—dragged—her to La Boulangerie for coffee and snacks to talk.

“I have to admit that it was funny at first,” Fujimaru continued. “He started making small talk with you during lunch with weird baby facts two weeks ago.”

“Yeah—” Okino said. “Babies can swallow and breathe at the same time, only losing that ability as soon as their vocal cords fully descend. That lives rent-free in my head… among other facts.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.” Okino smiled, almost with a laugh, before sipping her café latte. “I think the baby facts were somewhat interesting and easy to share. The problem was that it just got weirder and weirder.”

Fujimaru snorted. “But how do you go from weird baby facts to lobsters?”

“I don’t want to think about that.”

“But you know what else is funny?”

“What?” Okino widened her grin—

“You’re avoiding me.” Fujimaru’s frigid voice cut deep into her skin, making her swallow out of instinct. “So, what are you going to do about it?”

Fujimaru Kyoko. Okino could describe her in a number of ways. She was her best friend, by process of elimination, because most of the people she knew were coworkers or acquaintances at best. She was also beautiful—the kind of long, black-haired office worker perverts would write hentai about—that was her joke, by the way. She smelled like lavender, like that expensive fabric conditioner Okino’s mom always talked about. And she had these piercing, deep purple eyes that made Okino feel like she was carrying the sins of the entire world, and there was nothing she could do about it other than scream, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

That was… one of the many reasons why Okino couldn’t seem to reply nor look her way.

“You’re uncomfortable about it,” Fujimaru said, her voice as gentle as the right hook of a champion heavyweight boxer. “So why let it happen? You’re not seriously thinking that there’s some kind of merit in being liked by that ‘monkey,’ are you? You’ve been saying that with everyone else.”

Okino really was. She lowered her head. That was the easiest way to go about it.

“Girl—”

Fujimaru paused, sipping her coffee and giving Okino and herself a moment to think.

Okino liked to believe that it was not an issue of being cowardly, per se. She could easily draw out her courage to overcome certain things; it was just that what she had was so small that she could not dig deep to begin with. You can’t expect a mage with 5 mana to pull off a fireball spell that costs 7.

“I have—”

“If your plan is to bed rot, scroll through reels, and burn your eyes out by watching blinking anime edits with Brazilian phonk slapped on them, I won’t take that as an answer.”

“I do not have plans this Thursday.” Okino wiped an imaginary bead of cold sweat from her forehead.

“Then that’s perfect.”

Fujimaru handed Okino a calling card. It was small; the color was off-white, maybe bone, and the print was elegant, printed in a black that wasn't quite black, maybe charcoal or dark slate. It had a name, Yoshioka Kazuma, and the title below it was “Game Master.”

There were instructions on the back, pointing her to go to “KaraKOE” somewhere in the business block of Kanzakicho; there were detailed instructions on which karaoke box to go to, which was the farthest from the entrance—the most remote, as Okino would expect.

Is... Okino slowly breathed through her nose, a valiant attempt to subdue her rage. At best, she was able to lift her head and throw a questioning glare her way. Was this bitch telling her to get laid?

Fujimaru smiled; Okino would’ve thrown hands if not for the fact that her friend seemed genuinely excited about it.

“We just finished a campaign not too long ago—well, we got wiped, but that’s beside the point.” Fujimaru widened her grin. “What if I told you there’s a place where you can not only entertain your intrusive thoughts but also act on them… and other people will love you for it?”

Sold. Okino wanted to scream, but she knew for a fact that such a place didn’t exist. She tried pulling that shit on a few social media platforms, like making a dummy account to let out her freak… but it was only a matter of time before someone with a cute anime profile picture would out-freak her into oblivion. That was to say, acting upon her intrusive thoughts hadn’t worked out too well. Doing it in real life scared her even more so.

There was also the fact that she was weak against peer pressure, and she found it extremely hard to say no to her friend—especially when Fujimaru was very excited and, at the same time, glaring at her like she was some kind of poor puppy that needed saving.

“I’m starting to think that you need a new hobby, something that you can prioritize and look forward to so you can properly say no to things. Let’s start with that, yeah?”

Okino snorted. Please, let this not be some kind of weird cult. “But I don’t think having friends with benefits is for me—”

“Yep. We’re going to play a tabletop RPG—” Fujimaru tilted her head, confused. “I’m sorry, what?”

“What?”


***
Author's Note:
Yo, Gurg here. For those that read my first chapter when RRR was released last week, please forget that. I reworked the entire novel to give the usual Gurg Experience.

I hope you enjoy the changes I've made. Thanks!