It was pushing midnight and the office floor was mostly deserted, save for a few dimly lit cubicles occupied by the dedicated souls grinding through overtime. jij was one of those poor saps, drowning in spreadsheets and email backlogs. As he shuffled to the break room for his third cup of liquid courage, he heard the unmistakable sound of…an anime character's exaggerated shrieks?
Following the noise, jij peeked around the corner of Konata Izumi's cubicle entrance. There she was, bathed in the glow of her dual monitors - one displaying a neverending tsunami of numbers and figures, the other showing some brightly colored cartoon. Her blue hair was an unkempt mess and her eyes were heavy-lidded as she massaged her temples.
"Ugh, why did I leave this report until the last minute again?" she groaned, punctuating her lament with a wide yawn that made her cat-like smile stretch even further across her face.
Despite the late hour and dreadful heat that had jij wilting in his short-sleeved dress shirt, Konata's relaxed demeanor amid the chaos was almost…enviable? Admirable? Cute, definitely cute. But those kinds of thoughts would only lead him down an embarrassing road with this woman. They worked in the same department but somehow her energy, her passions outside of work, made her seem almost untouchable.
He must have been staring too long because suddenly Konata's sleepy green eyes, that little mole under the left one, found his. "Oh! Fancy seeing you here so late, jij. Let me guess, crunching numbers until the bitter end again?"
