Kuroko Tetsuya had a theory. Hating someone felt disturbingly similar to being in love with them. He'd had a lot of time to compare love and hate, and these were his observations.
Love and hate were visceral. Your stomach twisted at the thought of that person. The heart in your chest beat heavy and bright, nearly visible through your flesh and clothes. Your appetite and sleep were shredded. Every interaction spiked your blood with a dangerous kind of adrenaline, and you're on the brink of fight or flight. Your body was barely under your control. You're consumed, and it scared you.
Both love and hate were mirror versions of the same game – and you have to win. Why? Your heart and your ego.
It was early Friday afternoon. He was imprisoned at his desk for another few hours. He wished he was in solitary confinement, but unfortunately he had a cellmate. Each tick of the man's watch, felt like another tally mark, chipped onto the cell wall.
They were currently engaged in one of their childish games, which required no words. Like everything they did, it's dreadfully immature.
Once upon a time, their little Yamaguchi Publishing was on the brink of collapse. The reality of the economy meant people had no money for their mortgage repayments and literature was a luxury. Bookstores were closing all over the city like candles being blown out. They braced themselves for almost certain closure.
At the eleventh hour, a deal was struck with another struggling publishing house. Yamaguchi Publishing was forced into an arranged marriage with the crumbling evil empire known as Akashi Books, ruled by the unbearable Mr. Akashi himself.
Each company stubbornly believing it was saving the other, they both packed up and moved into their new marital home. Neither party was remotely happy about it. The Akashis remembered their old lunchroom foosball table with sepia-tinted nostalgia. They couldn't believe the airy-fairy Yamaguchi had survived even this long, with their lax adherence to key performance indicator targets and dreamy insistence on Literature as Art. The Akashis believed numbers were more important than words. Books were units. Sell the units. High-five the team. Repeat.
The Yamaguchis shuddered in horror watching their boisterous new stepbrothers practically tearing the pages out of their Brontës and Austens. How had the Akashis managed to amass so many like-minded stuffed shirts, far more suited to accountancy or law? Yamaguchi resented the notion of books as units. Books were, and always would be, something a little magic and something to respect.
One year on, you could still tell at a glance which company someone came from by his or her physical appearance. The Akashis were hard geometrics, the Yamaguchis were soft scribbles. Akashis moved in shark packs, talking figures and constantly hogging the conference rooms for their ominous Planning Sessions. Plotting sessions, more like. Yamaguchis huddled in their cubicles, gentle doves in clock towers, poring over manuscripts, searching for the next literary sensation. The air surrounding them was perfumed with jasmine tea and paper. Shakespeare was their pinup boy.
The move to a new building was a little traumatizing, especially for the Yamaguchis. Took a map of this city. Made a straight line between each of the old company buildings, marked a red dot exactly halfway between them and here they were. The new Yamaguchi Akashi was a cheap gray cement toad squatting on a major traffic route, impossible to merge onto in the afternoon. It's arctic in the morning shadows and sweaty by the afternoon. The building had one redeeming feature: Some basement parking – usually snagged by the early risers, or should he say, the Akashis.
His current boss, Yamaguchi Rin and Mr. Akashi had toured the building prior to the move and a rare thing happened: They both agreed on something. The top floor of the building was an insult. Only one executive office? A total refit was needed.
After an hour-long brainstorm that was filled with so much hostility the interior designer's eyes sparkled with unshed tears, the only word Rin and Mr. Akashi would agree on to describe the new aesthetic was shiny. It was their last agreement, ever. The refit definitely fulfilled the design brief. The tenth floor was now a cube of glass, chrome, and black tile. You could pluck your eyebrows using any surface as a mirror – walls, floors, ceiling. Even their desks were made from huge sheets of glass.
Kuroko was more focused on the great big reflection opposite him. He raised his hand and looked at his nails. His reflection followed. He stroked through his teal hair and straightened his collar. He'd been in a trance. He'd almost forgotten he was still playing this game with Akashi Seijuurou.
He was sitting there with a cellmate because every power-crazed war general had a second in command to do the dirty work. Sharing an assistant was never an option, because it would have required a concession from one of the CEOs. They were each plugged in outside the two new office doors, and left to fend for themselves.
It was like being pushed into the Colosseum's arena, only to find he wasn't alone.
He raised his right hand again now. His reflection followed smoothly. He rested his chin on his palm and sighed deeply, and it resonated and echoed. He raised his left eyebrow because he knew Akashi Seijuurou couldn't, and as predicted his forehead pinched uselessly.
Kuroko Tetsuya won the game. The thrill did not translate into an expression on his face though. He remained as placid and expressionless as a doll. They sat there with their chins on their hands and stared into each other's eyes.
He was never alone in there. Sitting opposite him was the executive assistant to Mr. Akashi. His henchman and manservant. The second thing, he's also the CEO's one and only heir.
Lastly, the most essential thing anyone needed to know about him, was this: Kuroko Tetsuya hated the life out of Akashi Seijuurou.
The man was currently copying every move he made. It's the Mirror Game. To the casual observer it wouldn't be immediately obvious; the young Akashi was as subtle as a shadow. But not to Kuroko. Each movement of his was replicated on Akashi's side of the office on a slight time delay. He lifted his chin from his palm and swiveled to his desk, and smoothly Akashi did the same. He was twenty-four years old and it seemed he had fallen through the cracks of heaven and hell and into purgatory. A kindergarten classroom. An asylum.
In anger, he typed his password: IHATESEIJUUROU4EV@. His previous passwords had all been variations on how much he hated Akashi Seijuurou. For Ever. Akashi's password was almost certainly IHateTetsuya4Eva.
His phone rung. Midorima Shintarou, from copyrights and permissions, another thorn in his side. He felt like unplugging his phone and throwing it into an incinerator.
"Hello, how are you?" Kuroko always put an extra little bit of warmth into his voice on the phone. Across the room, Akashi's eyes rolled as he begun punishing his keyboard.
"I have a favor to ask, Kuroko." He could almost mouth the next words as he spoke them.
"I need an extension on the monthly report. I think I'm getting a migraine. I can't look at this screen any longer." Midorima's one of those horrific people who pronounced it me-graine.
"Of course, I understand. When can you get it done?"
"You're the best. It'd be in by Monday afternoon. I need to come in late."
If he said yes, he would have to stay late Monday night to have the report done for Tuesday's nine A.M. executive meeting. Already, next week sucked.
"Okay." Kuroko's stomach felt tight. "As soon as you can, please."
"Oh, and Takao can't get his in today either. You're so nice. I appreciate how kind you're being. We were all saying you're the best person to deal with up there in exec. Some people up there are total nightmares." His sugary words helped ease the resentment a little.
"No problem. Talk to you on Monday." He hung up and didn't even need to look at Akashi. He knew he was shaking his head.
After a few minutes he glanced at him, and caught Akashi staring right back at him.
Imagine it's two minutes before the biggest interview of your life, and you looked down at your white shirt. Your peacock-blue fountain pen had leaked through your pocket. Your head exploded with an obscenity and your stomach was a spike of panic over the simmering nerves. You're an idiot and everything's ruined. That's the exact color of Akashi's eyes when he looked at Kuroko.
He wished he could say Akashi was ugly. He should be a short, fat troll, with a cleft palate and watery eyes. A limping hunchback. Warts and zits. Yellow-cheese teeth and onion sweat. But he was not. He's pretty much the opposite. More proof there's no justice in this world.
His inbox pinged. He flicked his eyes abruptly away from Akashi's non-ugliness and noticed Rin had sent through a request for budget forecasting figures. He opened up last month's report for reference and begin.
He doubted this month's outlook was going to be much of an improvement. The publishing industry was sliding further downhill. He had heard the word restructure echoing a few times around these halls, and he knew where that led. Every time he stepped out of the elevator and saw Akashi he asked himself: Why he didn't get a new job?
He had been fascinated by publishing houses since a pivotal field trip when he was eleven. He was already a passionate devourer of books. His life revolved around the weekly trip to the town library. He had borrowed the maximum number of titles allowed and he could identify individual librarians by the sound their shoes made as they moved up each aisle. Until that field trip, he was hell-bent on being a librarian himself. He'd even implemented a cataloging system for his own personal collection. He was such a little book nerd.
Before their trip to the publishing house, he had never thought much about how a book came to actually exist. It was a revelation. You could be paid to find authors, read books, and ultimately create them? Brand-new covers and perfect pages with no dog-ears or pencil annotations? His mind was blown. He loved new books. They were his favorite to borrow. He told his parents when he got home, he was going to work at a publisher when he grew up.
It was great that he's fulfilling a childhood dream. But if he was honest, at the moment the main reason he didn't get a new job was: he couldn't let Akashi win this.
As Kuroko worked, all he could hear were Akashi's machine-gun keystrokes and the faint whistle of air conditioning. The man occasionally picked up his calculator and tapped on it. Really, he wouldn't mind betting Mr. Akashi had also directed his son to run the forecasting figures. Then the two CEOs could march into battle, armed with numbers that might not match. The ideal fuel for their bonfire of hatred.
"Excuse me, Akashi-kun."
Akashi didn't acknowledge him for a full minute. His keystrokes intensified. Beethoven on a piano had nothing on him right now.
"What is it, Tetsuya?"
Not even Kuroko's parents called him Tetsuya. He clenched his jaw but then guiltily released the muscles. He remembered his dentist had begged him to make a conscious effort.
"Are you working on the forecasting figures for next quarter?"
Akashi lifted both hands from his keyboard and stared at him. "No."
Kuroko let out half a lungful of air and turned back to his desk.
"I finished those two hours ago." Akashi resumed typing.
Kuroko looked at his open spreadsheet and counted to ten.
They both worked fast and had reputations for being Finishers – you know, the type of worker who completed the nasty, too-hard tasks everyone else avoided.
He preferred to sit down with people and discuss things face-to-face. While Akashi was strictly email. At the foot of his emails was always: Rgds, AS. Would it kill him to type Regards, Akashi Seijuurou? It was too many keystrokes, apparently. He probably knew offhand how many minutes a year he's saving YA.
They were evenly matched, but they were completely at odds. Kuroko tried his hardest to look corporate but everything he owned was slightly wrong for YA. He was a Yamaguchi to the bone. His skin was too pale, his hair too unruly. His shoes clicked too loudly on the tile floors. He couldn't seem to hand over his credit card to purchase a black suit. He never had to wear one at Yamaguchi, to begin with, and he's stubbornly refusing to assimilate with the Akashis. His wardrobe was knits and retro. A sort of cool librarian chic, he hoped.
It took him forty-five minutes to complete the task. He raced the clock, even though numbers were not his forte, because he imagined it would have taken Akashi an hour. Even in Kuroko's head he competed with him.
"Thanks, Tetsu-kun!" He heard Rin call faintly from behind her shiny office door when he sent the document through.
He rechecked his inbox. Everything was up to date. He checked the clock. Three fifteen P.M. He checked his reflection on the shiny wall tile near his computer monitor. He checked Akashi, who was openly glowering at him with contempt. Kuroko stared back. Now they were playing the Staring Game.
He should mention that the ultimate aim of all their games was to make the other smile, or cry. It was something like that. Kuroko would know when he won.
Kuroko made a mistake when he first met Akashi: he smiled at him. His best sunny smile with all his teeth, his eyes sparkling with stupid optimism that the business merger wasn't the worst thing to ever happen to him. Akashi's ruby eyes scanned him from the top of his head to the soles of his shoes. He was only five feet three inches tall so it didn't take long. Then the man looked away out the window. He did not smile back, and somehow Kuroko felt like he had been carrying his smile around in his breast pocket ever since. Akashi was one up. After their initial poor start, it only took a few weeks for them to succumb to their mutual hostility. Like water dripping into a bathtub, eventually it began to overflow.
He yawned behind his hand and looked at Akashi's breast pocket, resting against his left pectoral. He wore an identical business shirt every day, in a different color. White, off-white stripe, cream, pale yellow, mustard, baby blue, robin's-egg blue, dove-gray, navy, and black. They were worn in their unchanging sequence.
Incidentally, Kuroko's favorite of Akashi's shirts was robin's-egg blue, and his least favorite was mustard, which the other was wearing now. To be honest, all the shirts looked fine on him. All colors suited him. If Kuroko wore mustard, he'd look like a cadaver. But there Akashi sat, looking as golden-skinned and healthy as ever.
"Mustard today," Kuroko observed aloud. Why did he poke the hornet's nest? "Just can't wait for baby blue on Monday."
The look Akashi gave him was both smug and irritated. "You notice so much about me, Shortcake. But can I remind you that comments about appearance are against the YA human resources policy."
Ah, the HR Game. They hadn't played this one in ages. "Stop calling me Shortcake or I'll report you to HR."
They each kept a log on the other. Kuroko could only assume Akashi did; he seemed to remember all of his transgressions. Kuroko's was a password-protected document hidden on his personal drive and it journals all the shit that had ever gone down between Akashi Seijuurou and him. They had each complained to HR four times over this past year.
Akashi had received a verbal and written warning about the nickname he had for Kuroko. While Kuroko also received two warnings; one for verbal abuse and for a juvenile prank that got out of hand. He was not proud.
Akashi could not seem to formulate a reply and they resumed staring at each other.
*
Kuroko looked forward to Akashi's shirts getting darker. It's navy today, which led to black. Gorgeous Payday Black.
His finances were something like this. He was about to walk twenty-five minutes from YA to pick up his car from Mizuri ("the Mechanic") and melt his credit card to within one inch of its maximum limit. Payday would come tomorrow and he would pay the credit card balance. His car would ooze more oily dark stuff all weekend, which he would notice by the time Akashi's shirts were the white of a unicorn's flank. Kuroko called Mizuri. He returned the car and subsisted on a shoestring budget. The shirts got darker. He'd have got to do something about that car.
Akashi was currently leaning on his father's doorframe. His body filled most of the doorway. Kuroko could see this because he was spying via the reflection on the wall near his monitor. He heard a husky, soft laugh, nothing like Mr. Akashi's donkey bray. He rubbed his palms down his forearms to flatten the tiny hairs. He would not turn his head to try to see properly. Akashi would catch him. He always did. Then he'd get a frown.
The clock was grinding slowly toward five P.M. and Kuroko could see thunderclouds through the dusty windows. Rin left an hour ago – one of the perks of being CEO was working the hours of a schoolchild and delegating everything to me. Mr. Akashi spent longer hours in his office because his chair was way too comfortable and when the afternoon sun slanted in, he tended to doze.
Kuroko didn't mean to sound like Akashi and he were running the top floor, but frankly it felt like it sometimes. The finance and sales teams reported directly to Akashi and he filtered the huge amounts of data into a bite-size report that he spoon-fed to a struggling, red-faced Mr. Akashi.
Kuroko had the editorial, corporate, and marketing teams reporting to him, and each month he condensed their monthly reports into one for Rin.. and he supposed he spoon-fed it to her too. He spiral-binded it so she could read it when she's on the stepper. He used her favorite font. Every day here was a challenge, a privilege, a sacrifice, and a frustration. But when he thought about every little step he'd taken to be here in this place, starting from when he was eleven years old, he refocused. Kuroko remembered. And he endured Akashi for a little longer.
He brought homemade cakes to his meetings with the division heads and they all adore him. He was described as "worth my weight in gold." Akashi brought bad news to his divisional meetings and his weight was measured in other substances.
Mr. Akashi stumped past his desk now, briefcase in hand. He must shop at Humpty Dumpty's Big Small Menswear. How else could he find such short, broad suits? He's balding, liver-spotted, and rich as sin. His grandfather started Akashi Books. He loved to remind Rin that she was merely hired. He was an old degenerate, according to both Rin and Kuroko's own private observations. He made himself smile up at him. His first name was Chiruyo. Fat Little Man.
"Good night, Mr. Akashi."
"Good night, Kuroko." The older man paused by his desk to look down the front of his light blue shirt.
"I hope Seijuurou passed on the copy of The Glass Darkly I picked up for you? The first of the first."
Fat Little Man had a huge bookshelf filled with every YA release. Each book was the first off the press; a tradition started by his grandfather. He loved to brag about them to visitors, but Kuroko once looked at the shelves and the spines weren't even cracked.
"You picked it up, eh?" Mr. Akashi orbited around to look at his son. "You didn't mention that, Doctor Sei."
Fat Little Man probably called him Doctor Sei because he was so clinical. He heard someone say when things got particularly bad at Akashi Books, Akashi Seijuurou masterminded the surgical removal of one-third of their workforce. Kuroko didn't know how the young Akashi slept at night.
"As long as you get it, it doesn't matter," Akashi replied smoothly and his father remembered that he was The Boss.
"Yes, yes," Mr. Akashi chuffed and looked own Kuroko's top again. "Good work, you pair."
He got into the elevator and Kuroko looked down at his shirt. All the buttons were done up. What could he even see? He glanced up at the mirrored tiles on the ceiling and could faintly see a faint shade of stain.
"If you buttoned it any higher, we wouldn't see your face," Akashi said to his computer screen as he logged off.
"Perhaps you could tell your father to look at my face occasionally." Kuroko also logged off.
"He's probably trying to see your circuit board. Or wondering what kind of fuel you run on."
Kuroko shrugged on his coat. "Just fueled by my hate for you."
Akashi's mouth twitched once, and Kuroko nearly had him there. He watched him roll down a neutral expression. "If it bothers you, you should speak to him. Stand up for yourself. So, painting your nails tonight, desperately alone?"
Lucky guess on his part? "Yes. Masturbating and crying into your pillow tonight, Doctor Sei?"
Akashi looked at the top button of Kuroko's shirt. "Yes. And don't call me that."
Kuroko swallowed down a bubble of laughter. They jostled each other in an unfriendly way as they got into the elevator. Akashi hit B, but he hit G.
"Hitchhiking?"
"Car's at the shop." Kuroko stepped into his flip-flop and tucked his work shoes into his bag. Now he was even shorter. In the dull polish of the elevator doors he could see that he barely came halfway up Akashi's shoulder. He looked like a Chihuahua next to a Great Dane.
The elevator doors opened to the building foyer. The world outside YA was a blue haze; refrigerator cold, filled with rapists and murderers and lightly sprinkling rain. A sheet of newspaper blew past, right on cue.
Akashi held the elevator door open with one enormous hand and leaned out to look at the weather. Then he swung those dark red eyes to Kuroko's blue ones, his brow beginning to crease. The familiar bubble formed in his head. He wished Akashi Seijuurou was his friend. He burst it with a pin.
"I'll give you a ride," he forced out.
"Ugh, no way," Kuroko said over his shoulder and ran.
*
author's note: so.. its my first time writing and publishing a fanfic here, please take care of me. reviews will be loved :3