Piffle World (scene 2)
(sometime in the next day or two)
The first thing Tomoyo had made clear to Doumeki at the interview was that no matter what might be written down on paper about his employment, his main responsibility was going to be to get Watanuki to go home and get some sleep once in a while. There had even been the implication that if he could get this up to the unprecedented rate of once every night, there could well be some kind of significant financial reward in it for him. It was the sort of information that made a lot of shortcuts he'd take at work over the first couple of weeks almost too easy to justify.
"…no, she's called that off," Doumeki interjected, halfway through Watanuki's spiel of Tomoyo's upcoming engagements.
"What? When?"
"She says she's spending that morning with that Sakura girl from the race. Something involving tea. Possibly cake too. She sent me a note about it this morning."
"She sent you a note?" Watanuki exclaimed, furious with betrayal. "But I'm the one she's supposed to send important messages like that!"
"Not anymore," Doumeki reminded him.
"But…"
"She probably thought you were too busy to deal with it. You were right in the middle of yelling at the race coordinator at the time."
"You could have said something earlier!"
"It hadn't come up yet," said Doumeki dismissively.
"Is there anything else on there I should know about?" said Watanuki tersely, clearly expecting the answer to be 'yes'.
Doumeki handed over the note with a shrug and waited while Watanuki's eyes scanned frantically over it, line by line.
"But… this means we'll have to reschedule practically everything!" he bemoaned.
"Dragonfly race takes priority," agreed Doumeki, with another shrug. "That and tea with Sakura a couple of times a week."
Watanuki was barely listening, pads and calendars and at least one extra keyboard were appearing around him like magic. "Why couldn't she have only let me know sooner? Of course the race takes priority, but we can't just put everything else off indefinitely. I'm gong to have to find space the week after for…"
"Why?" said Doumeki.
"Why what?" Watanuki did not remotely appreciate the intrusion on his thought process.
"Why can't we just cancel everything?"
Watanuki glared at him. "We can't just go around cancelling important meetings! Things have to be booked! Confirmed! There are half a dozen different people I'll need to personally phone to get every one of these cancelled! The very reputation of the Daidouji empire is at stake!"
"So?" said Doumeki. "With the media circus around the dragonfly race, we've got reputation to burn. Cancel any of those meetings now and tell them we can't reschedule until the end of the month, and they'll come charging back at the first chance you give them begging for any time you might available."
The look this earned him was shrewd and surprised, like it had only just occurred to Watanuki that their new personal assistant's personal assistant might actually be in possession of a working brain, and he hadn't quite decided wither this was a good thing yet.
"Plus, this way we can go home early," Doumeki added, which may have been a mistake.
They didn't get out of there early that night. The mere suggestion of leaving early was such utter blasphemy to Watanuki's personal work-based religion that Doumeki lost all the points he'd had towards the recognition of his brain-ownership, and didn't get them back for some time.
It was a fair while before the subject of leaving early came up again.
(How Doumeki eventually convinces Watanuki to take some time off work to relax, how Watanuki responds to his attempts and whether any of this ever takes place in the office supply closet I leave to the capable imaginations of my readers. )