-Tanaka Taro has entered the chat.
Tanaka Taro: Good evening, everyone.
Setton: Good evening, Taro-san.
Saika: Welcome Back.
Tanaka Taro: Thank you.
Tanaka Taro: How has everyone been these days?
Saika: I'm fine.
Setton: I've been doing well.
Tanaka Taro: Ah, that's good to hear…
Setton: Hmmm…
Tanaka Taro: Something wrong, Setton-san?
Setton: It seems like someone's missing…
Saika: Missing?
Tanaka Taro: Ah, yes. I've noticed it too.
Tanaka Taro: The room's been quiet recently.
Saika: Oh… Some people have not been in.
Setton: Yes, it has been quiet…
Tanaka Taro: I remember now!
Saika: Remember what?
Setton: What is it?
Tanaka Taro: Kanra-san.
Tanaka Taro: She hasn't been in for a while.
Setton: Ah, yes. I see, that explains the quiet.
Saika: Kanra-san is really lively, isn't she?
Setton: I hope everything's alright.
Tanaka Taro: I'm sure Kanra-san is fine. Maybe she's just busy.
Setton: Hmmm, indeed.
Saika: I hope so too.
Tanaka Taro: Speaking of being busy, I need to leave early too.
Tanaka Taro: I still have things to do for tomorrow.
Saika: Ah, I've just recently finished all my work.
Tanaka Taro: Eh? Really? And it's still so early…
Setton: That's good for you, Saika-san.
Tanaka Taro: That's amazing, Saika-san. You're a good worker.
Saika: Ah, no. I'm not. Not really.
Tanaka Taro: Ehhh.. I should get started as well then.
Setton: Good luck, Taro-san!
Saika: Good luck.
Tanaka Taro: Thank you!
Tanaka Taro: See you tomorrow.
Saika: Good night.
Setton: Good night.
Tanaka Taro: Thanks, good night.
-Tanaka Taro has left the chat.
Bleary lights from the cityscape outside poured in from the giant office window and greeted the man as blinked away his sleep. With a start, the information broker jumped in his seat at the sight of the dark evening sky and the glow of the city outside. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, Izaya turned his seat to the computer, momentarily ignoring the mess of paperwork from where he woke up from, and banished the screensaver from the display. His eyes scanned the files and documents onscreen, all of which looked fine and untouched, and then they fell onto the small digital numbers on the bottom of the screen.
1:55 am
"Shit."
Letting out a frustrated moan he stretched his limbs to expel the stiffness that knotted itself in his muscles, his chair moaning in protest to his movements. It was the third time this week that he found himself slumbering over this project and it annoyed him to no end that he was losing precious hours accidentally falling asleep at his desk. Not that he was getting enough sleep these days anyway. He had kept reminding Namie to wake him up if she saw him dozing and constantly asked her for coffee refills, but here he was waking up after God knows how long again.
He let out a big yawn and rocked in his chair, spinning a couple of times just to shake off the last bits of sleepiness from his system.
Recently Orihara Izaya found himself spending the majority of his days out in the city, gathering information for his latest assignment. It kept him stalking several people and locations for most of the day, and afterwards he would head back to his apartment to analyse and sort out reports of whatever he had found, which was an additional 5 or 6 hours of work in front of his computer. He could have gotten some of his subordinates to do the footwork for him, but his client was a particularly anal one and the only arrangement they could agree on was that he personally went to do these tedious stalking jobs.
Now the client who gave him the job was one of the finicky types, constantly reminding him of what they wanted and pestering him on how they wanted it. It took even more energy to talk to these people than it did to actually gather information for them, which was saying a lot. These kinds were usually too much trouble to deal with which is why he seldom took their jobs. But this assignment had looked intriguing to him and Izaya could gather a lot of material for his own use. What kind of self-respecting informant would pass up the chance to get their hands on good blackmail material on some of the nation's leading figures? Definitely not him, which was why he accepted in the first place.
It was a matter of pride. Hell, if I couldn't get this job done they wouldn't find anyone else who could.
Orihara Izaya wasn't one who let his clients boss him around though, he was much too proud for that, but these people were paying well for what he could give and it wasn't like he couldn't use the extra material he could dig up. So he shrugged it off and decided to give them what they wanted, or to be more specific, to give them what they thought they wanted. To be even more specific, he was leading them on about what they thought they needed to gain from this assignment, which was all well and good since they'd be happy and Izaya would get his payment and several precious company secrets from both his client and their rivals. Somehow this made up for how unbelievably anal and unreasonable they were being.
It was almost the perfect deal. Almost, because it was proving to be very taxing on his part. He was exhausted of the tedious routine after day four, which is saying a lot.
It had been almost two weeks since he had accepted the offer and he had seen that it ate up most of his attention to the point that he was having less and less time for enjoying himself. He logged onto the internet purely for keeping up with his other assignments and clients and for gathering more details for them. Kanra-san was making herself scarce in the chatrooms and forums he frequented and it had been a long time since he meddled with suicidal adolescents as Nakura-san. He couldn't even find time to make a side trip to Ikebukuro to annoy the hell out of Shizuo.
"It can't be helped," he muttered as he gathered papers and slammed them onto the table in neat stacks. He noticed a mug sitting at the edge of his desk and upon further inspection he found the cold contents to be coffee. He supposed that Namie must have left it there earlier whilst he was working and he had probably ignored it or forgot about it. He had been ignoring her more than usual although she didn't seem bothered by it. Actually, he thought that his secretary rather enjoyed working in the silence free from his usual less-than-sane monologues. He simply didn't have the energy to spout his philosophical ideologies when he could focus them more on writing up those extremely detailed reports for his extremely annoying client.
Ignoring the dull ache at his temples he slid out of his chair and lifted the mug to drain the cold contents into the kitchen sink when underneath it he found a small sticky note attached to the table. On it was Namie's neat and measured handwriting in black ink. He picked up the small piece of paper and read out the words to the empty room.
"Izaya, I'm getting tired of you falling asleep at odd hours of the day. What's the point of asking me to wake you up when you simply refuse to be disturbed from your sleep? I do not enjoy answering your calls and dealing with your clients. Get your act together or I'm not coming back in until this assignment of yours is finished."
He blinked as the last word left his lips. Setting the mug back down onto the table he reached for his cellphone which had all but been abandoned beside his paperwork. Izaya scrolled over his call registry mentally noting down people he should call back arranged according to urgency. There were a few texts from clients asking for meetings, some teenagers who wanted to check up on one of his aliases and the like. He had also received a text from Celty who was asking if everything was alright. Of course everything is alright. Have you started to miss me after I got so busy? He sighed and continued to sift through his phone's logs.
"Odd hours of the day?" he muttered. "Really now, Namie. I think it's you who should sleep more. I'm not so careless as to pass out like th-"
His eyes widened as he scrolled his call lists further. Judging from the missed calls and the ones he couldn't remember answering (those which were probably taken by his secretary) he realized that he'd been passed out for more or less five hours. That wasn't including the time that Namie probably took his calls, which brought it down to a total of seven hours.
Damn it.
He sighed and replaced the phone on his desk. He rubbed his temples again and cursed his stupid OC client and his body's stupid need for sleep. As fit as he thought himself to be he had to admit that this kind of lifestyle was starting to get out of hand. His life was getting eaten up by this stupid fucking assignment from some panicky old men who—
Stopping himself in mid-thought he kicked off the desk, sending his chair rolling backwards and promptly got up. He took the mug in his hands again, and trudged over to the kitchen. After he deposited it in the sink, he took a can of cold coffee from the fridge and returned to his desk, sinking into the chair with a loud groan. Izaya was determined to get this job done with as soon as he could so that he could resume his normal life.
"Damn it, I am never accepting another fucking job like this again," he complained loudly to the head hidden somewhere in the loft.
He was pondering on tripling his client's tab by adding some more interesting details in his final report, but decided against it since it would need extra effort with revisions and deciding which bits of information he could part with was mentally distressing to even consider.
Orihara Izaya had never in his 23 years of life ever thought that he was thinking just a bit too much.
Taking a swig of chilled coffee he spun his chair to face the wall of glass that separated him from the city and the humans he loved.
"You must all be extremely lonely now that I'm so busy, huh?" A smile had crawled onto his face and he lazily played with the drink in his hand. At the back of his mind he wondered if he was being a bit too cheerful. "I've missed you all too."
"Don't worry though. This nonsense I've gotten myself into will be over soon, and then we can play again! We'll have so much fun!"
A string of half-sane laughter rang in the empty apartment.
"Ahh, that felt good," he said after a small silence, grin still in place. "I suppose it's time for a break, I've grown bored of all this work for days and days."
A few clicks and keystrokes later his grin had almost gone completely and his drink forgotten on his desk again. He sighed and rubbed his eyes before closing his browser and returning to the file he'd been working on before he fell asleep. Somewhere in the city, a few dozen cellphones rang, some people had near heart attacks while gaping at their phones, and a few had decided on the date they wanted to die. It wasn't much, but it was all he could manage then.
Orihara Izaya had had his off days, and days where he would think that a job was just a job. Perhaps today was one of those days. One thing he was sure of was that he wanted this assignment to be finished and soon. So he sighed again, donned his reading glasses and got down to work, ignoring the rest of the world.
-Kanra has entered the chat.
Kanra: Hello, everyooonnnneee~! Kanra-chan is here~~~ ^_^
Kanra: I've been so busy these days, it's a wonder I still manage to stay cute and get my beauty sleep~~
Kanra: Did you all miss me?
Kanra: Eh… No one seems to be around..!
Kanra: Oh well..
Kanra: Bye-bye-bi!
-Kanra has left the chat.
Thank you for taking the time to read!
I have to apologize that this isn't really a proper fic. It's more or less a drabble I did one day while I was bored out of my wits. Please excuse the sheer pointlessness of this and the spelling and grammar errors, and the OOC that I felt as I was typing this.
All in all I think this has been an embarrassing first story, but it's a first nonetheless.
Thank you again!