Disclaimer: This is FANfiction. As in, written by a fan. I don't have any rights to Inuyasha or the characters in it; that honor belongs to Ms. Rumiko Takahashi and her associates.
A/N: Hello! This is my second fic – just thought I ought to put that out there. It's my lazy, no-deadline pet and sleep-deprived creation. I also think it would be wise to put out there that I'm a bit fuzzy on how publishing actually works. So this is how I imagine it to be, not (or at least, I don't think so..) it actually works. Feel free to correct anything in your reviews!
Summary: She's an editor/reader/coffee girl at a tiny new publishing company, and he's a struggling author, a fellow editor, and an investment banker. The ultimate love quadrangle is about to play itself out on the road to fortune and fame.
The Written Word
Chapter One
Kagome rushed through the packed streets of Tokyo, a giant carryall on her shoulder and two full cardboard things of steaming Starbucks coffee. If her watch was synced properly for once, there were exactly two minutes left for her to be at her desk. A cool burst of air hit her face as she walked into the towering glass building that was her workplace.
"Hello, Miss Higurashi," the front desk receptionist greeted her.
"Morning," she offered a quick smile in return.
She exchanged similar greetings with the security guard before almost running down the hall to the elevators. The ding! that announced their arrival sent a quiver of relief down her spine. At least the elevators were here. She squeezed her way into one of the cars and elbowed the button for the 31st floor.
One stop on the fifteenth floor, another on the twenty-third, -fourth, and –fifth, and a last one on the twenty-ninth before her stop came.
She got out and quickly did a loop around the office, dropping off a coffee at each of the executives' desks. She was the newbie at the office, and so had assumed the role of the sacrificial lamb, fetching the morning coffee for all the higher-ups. This had, of course, reduced her pocket money to next to nil.
"Hey," she slid into her chair and booted up her computer, offering the girl in the cubicle next to her a smile.
"Hey," the girl, Ayame, responded. She gave Kagome's disheveled state a once-over and tut-tutted pityingly. Tossing Kagome a compact, she said, "Here, check your hair."
"Thanks," Kagome replied, flipping the compact open to check her reflection.
The make-up Eri had forced on her this morning was thus far undamaged; it was only her hair that Yuka had so painstakingly tended to that was mussed. She quickly ran her fingers through it to unknot it before whipping it up into a ponytail. In high school, she had discovered that a good ponytail solved most hair problems.
"Ayame, catch!" Kagome tossed the compact back with an easy flick of her wrist.
A little window popped up on her desktop, announcing "You've Got Mail." Her inbox was swamped with emails from various clients, all of whom were demanding some part of her day.
Manuscripts were piled high on her desk, most of which were sent in without any form of agent representation. Usually, one look at them told her that they were hopeless and unsalvageable – as such, those were promptly deposited into the heavy-duty recycling bin under her desk. She felt bad every time she put another manuscript in there – not only would the poor author likely never get word of what happened to their work, but every manuscript in that bin represented wasted trees and more energy used. Kagome was by no means an environmentalist, but she liked to think that she did her part for the earth.
She had chosen to be an editor at Yamado/Fujiwara Publishing Co. for no other reason than her passion for the written word. That, and she had been given a choice between this or working as a secretary at another company. Even though the secretarial position paid more, she found it demeaning to take calls and arrange things for other people. Not that she held anything against secretaries – she just abhorred the idea of being one.
"Morning," Another of her coworkers and longtime friends, Miroku, waltzed through the glass door and into an adjacent cubicle.
"Morning," Kagome greeted. "How's it going?" she asked, a knowing smile on her face.
"Terribly," he groaned, while stealthily nicking her cup of coffee. "I was up all night formulating another plan… She totally shut me down again this time! I hadn't even finished asking."
'She' referred to the recent object of Miroku's affections: Sango Kobayashi. It was no wonder she kept shutting him down, either. She was a smart girl who worked in investment banking and who, as fortune would have it, was also Kagome's current roommate.
"Poor baby," Kagome laughed. "But today, my pity's all you're getting. No coffee-stealing." She snatched back her sugar-less Columbian blend.
"Oh, woe is me!" Miroku cried out dramatically. He smiled back at her slyly, but before he could say anything more, his colleague interrupted him.
"More like, 'oh woe is the girl you victimize!'" Holding out a cup of coffee towards him while simultaneously sipping from his own stood one Inuyasha Hashimoto. He had been employed two weeks before Kagome had, and had been at the company for a total of a month now. In that time, he and Miroku had gotten to be very close friends.
Kagome's contact with him was limited, even though he was a fellow editor. She had been working too hard to make an early impression on her superiors – aside from Miroku, who she had known from her childhood, she barely knew the names of her other colleagues.
There were really only a few of them: Ayame, Inuyasha, Miroku, a man with a long brown ponytail, a man who always tried (and failed) to hit on her, a bald man, a woman who wore red contacts, a freckled woman, and a person whose gender she couldn't discern. She and her colleagues made up the lower-level members of Yamado/Fujiwara Publishing Co. Along with her five superiors, they were the only ones who were a part of the company.
"How your words wound me!" Miroku happily grabbed at one of Inuyasha's cups. They began to talk, which Kagome took as a cue to get to work. She opened up the first of her emails and scanned it before pecking away at a response.
An agent by the name of Kikyo Sato had contacted her, giving her a run-down of a new author. His book, according to the email, was "refreshingly original," "by far the best manuscript she had seen in a while," and the author himself would "write some of the best books of the decade."
Kagome generally took these emails with a grain of salt and a gulp of coffee. After all, every agent would tote their client as the next big thing. But then, the agents only really made money if the book was a success, so she didn't completely disregard them.
A finger poked her shoulder. "Hey, Kagome." It was Inuyasha. Miroku, like her, was busy working.
"Yeah?" She stopped her work and swiveled in her chair to face him. "What's up?"
He seemed almost surprised at her ease. "Well, it's the two-year anniversary of the company in a few weeks, so we're all going to get together to celebrate."
"Is there an invitation or something?" she asked.
"Yeah," he smirked. "This is it."
Kagome blinked owlishly for a moment, taken aback by his suddenly cocky behavior. "No, I meant that maybe there's something that would tell me the when and where of this event."
"Again," he drawled slowly. "That'd be me." Without waiting for a response, he rattled off the logistics. "We're getting together at that new place, Chidori Sushi, in three weeks. It's a Tuesday. Wear something nice – it's business casual dress. So like not a suit, but not jeans, either. Just make it pretty. It doesn't matter if you've already got plans, 'cause this is the one thing you have to be around for."
Kagome nodded curtly and turned back to her computer. "Send me an email, please." Her tone wasn't unfriendly, but it didn't exactly radiate warmth, either. She didn't take well to her peers giving her orders.
The rest of the day went by uneventfully. She edited most of a romance novel about a priestess and a demon, as well as sorting through a number of the slush pile.
When she walked through the door of her two bed, two bath condo, her roommate was already waiting for her. She dangled their cordless phone between her fingers and wore a smile that could rival the Cheshire Cat's.
"Guess what I've just done for you."
"Ordered takeout?"
She scrunched up her nose at the thought. "First, no. Do you know how unhealthy takeout is? How much crap they put in that stuff? And second, I went and dug around at your office."
"How is that even possible?" Kagome asked, setting her bag on the counter and taking out a particularly notable manuscript from the slush pile. "I'm the only one you know at my office."
"Not true. Try Miroku!"
"I thought you didn't like him?"
"Not like that. He's getting to be a friend… sort of. Anyways, according to him, you're actually quite the hot commodity around there!"
"Sure."
Sango ignored her sarcasm in favor of her own excitement. "So I went and created a list of who's who in that place, where they sit, and what they look like for you. This way you'll know who the guy who's hitting on you is!"
Kagome gave her a deadpan look. "You can't be serious."
"Of course I am! I'm a quantitative analyst. We don't kid. Besides, it's been slow for me lately. I got bored, and I had time."
"Of course you were," Kagome drawled. Sango never "had time" in all the five months she had known her. Her roommate was constantly stressed or busy with something or other – predicting trends, building models, or something else that went in one ear and out the other. "So, aside from your meddling in my office life, what's up?"
"There's going to be a business thingy soon," the other girl said. "Black-tie gala or something. It's you plus one, so…"
"Who's your plus one?"
"No one yet."
Kagome gave Sango a sympathetic look. "You could always take Miroku."
Sango laughed. "I don't think so. If I don't have a date by then, will you come with?"
"Sure…" It wasn't a big favor or anything, so Kagome agreed with only slight hesitation.
"Thanks."
A/N: If there's enough interest in this, I'll keep it up. If not, we'll see what happens…