Chapter Text
Momo had never in a million years wanted to get a ‘real job.’ Hell, even the part-time gigs she’d had throughout high school had never stuck for more than a week or two before she’d gotten too pissed off with her boss and just stopped showing up. It had never felt like something she had any real reason to care about. Something that other people, adults, had to deal with, but that she’d never be burdened with.
She gave herself a once-over in the mirror, scowling as she fiddled with the collar of the black polo she was being made to wear. Despite all the fashion expertise at her disposal, she hadn’t figured out any cute way to wear it. Not like there really was any cute way to wear a polo shirt and black pants.
“Momo!” She heard her grandmother call from downstairs, “I swear, if you’re late for your first day of work I’m donating all your Ken Takakura merch! For real this time!”
Her eyebrow twitches. Ken’s face sternly watches her from all four walls of her room, in poster form of course, and it’s the only thing that keeps her from loosing a truly virulent tirade on her grandmother. In lieu of that, she screams back, “You ain’t touching anything, ya old bag! I’m on my way out the door!”
“Better be!” Another twitch of the eyebrow. Always had to have the last word. Then again, it’s probably where she’d gotten that trait from, so it’d be hypocritical to let herself be too mad. She slings her purse over her shoulder, pulling out her mascara for a last-second touch up in her floor length mirror before she finally walks out of her room.
Her first day on the job, and already, she wanted to quit. Did people even go to movie theaters anymore? Wouldn’t they all just rent whatever they actually wanted to watch in the comfort of their own home? She turned the plastic nametag she’d been given over in her fingers as she began the ten minute walk to the theater, thinking about how she’d gotten here. She’d been graduated from high school for nearly two months now, and it still didn’t feel real. Four long years, four years that had felt like they’d color the rest of her life, where she could spend every day goofing off with her friends, dozing in class and going out every night.
As long as it’d felt in the moment, high school had ended with a whimper. They’d graduated, and nearly everyone had gone their separate ways, and there was nothing else to be said of it. Now here she was, an adult, or so she’d been told, with a diploma and just about nothing else. No idea of what career she wanted to pursue, where or if she wanted to go to college- hell, some nights, she couldn’t even figure out what she wanted for dinner. Some adult she was, right?
She wasn’t entirely alone, of course. Miko and Muko were still in town, had even invited her to move out to live with them in their apartment, but she just didn’t see the point. She was gonna have to work a job either way, considering how anal her grandma had gotten about her having to do something after she graduated, and she’d be in the same town, so what difference did it make whether she stayed at home or moved out to live with them? The first option was cheaper, so she’d turned them down, and she already regretted it. They wouldn’t have been on her ass like this.
She looks down at the nametag in her hands, her brown bangs curtaining in front of her face as she does. She’d stuck little stickers of ghosts and unicorns and the like around most of it, and had covered the remainder in little pink rhinestones, leaving only the block print reading ‘MOMO’ in the center untouched. She’d been told they were allowed to ‘customize’ their work uniforms to their heart’s content, but that didn’t extend to actually wearing anything cool , just, like, pins and shit.
What a drag. All these damn rules and regulations, just to make 800 yen an hour. She really couldn’t say it was worth it, but, as her grandmother had told her, “It’s better than getting paid zero yen an hour to sit around here being a pain in my ass!”
Bold shit to say for a woman whose main employment seemed to be watching Baketono all day. Then again, Momo couldn’t do an exorcism a month to pay the bills, much as she’d have liked to. That was her grandma’s turf, and though she’d somewhat grown out of the spite she’d once had for the woman, she still didn’t have any actual grasp of magic. Not for a lack of trying, in secret, desperate nights when she’d stolen her grandmother’s books and tried to understand an ounce of what was going on. She felt like it shouldn’t be allowed for something like magic to have more equations than her fucking chemistry class, but her grandma could apparently parse it all just fine.
She pulled her StarTAC from her bag, bedazzled in similar fashion to the nametag in her other hand, and dialed Miko’s number, tapping her fingers impatiently on the side of her purse as the phone rings. One ring, two…
It goes to voicemail. She slams the phone shut before the first stanza of the poorly recorded ‘Yozora no Mukou’ can finish playing. She knew better than to leave a message for Miko, and she preferred Tokio anyways. She shoved her phone back into her bag with disgust. Muko would be more of the same- both of them had gotten a job apprenticing at a salon downtown, so she wasn’t exactly surprised, but it was yet another unpleasant sign of the times.
Why couldn’t things have just stayed simple?
It doesn’t take much longer for the theater to come into her line of sight. It was an old, local thing, 16 screens that at one point in her childhood had seemed to be right up there with the arcade as far as the most fantastical place to wile away an afternoon.
Now, it was… less glamorous. The ‘Cinema Kingdom’ had gone from Emerald City to just plain shitty. Or something. She’d workshop the one-liner, the point was, all she felt as she saw the neon glow of its multi-colored sign was a sinking feeling of dread. It probably had more to do with the whole soulless minimum wage job bit than any actual failing of the theater itself, but she was allowed to be a bit vitriolic in her own inner monologue.
She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her pants as she walked up, giving the ticket booth a passing glance as she entered. A pair of employees about her age, one of them with startling pink hair, sat behind the glass barrier chatting animatedly. The board behind them proudly advertised showings of various films, both foreign and domestic. She hadn’t been one to keep up with movies- with, of course, the noted exception of anything that was graced with the presence of Ken Takakura- so most of the titles flew over her head. Not that she was here to watch the movies, anyway, though she’d been told she got to get in free when she was off.
Somehow, she suspected she wouldn’t want to spend more time here than she was required to. She grabbed the glass door by its novelty film-reel shaped handle and yanked it open, stalking inside wearing an expression that more than likely scared a few bystanders.
The scent of butter immediately assaults her nostrils. Not that she minded that- it was probably better than most smells to be subjected to on a daily basis. She’d always enjoyed movie theater popcorn, at least. She surveyed her surroundings for a moment.
It looked, largely, exactly as it had when she was younger. Everything seemed a lot smaller and less cool, of course, but it was still the same old theater. At the concessions stand in the center of the large room, a few small lines of people waited to pick up their snacks. She wasn’t surprised by the meagre looking attendance, it being like four on a Thursday after all. To one side of the massive foyer was a cluster of arcade games and claw machines, to the other was the bathrooms and an elevator. Every inch of wall was plastered with posters for movies new and old, intermingled with advertisements for candy and deals on concessions. They still had a cardboard cutout of a well up for ‘The Ring,’ even though even she knew the movie had long since left theatres. That brought a slight smirk to her face.
To her left was a hallway labeled ‘Theatres 1-8’, and to her right was its counterpart covering the rest of the theaters. Behind her, of course, was the backside of the ticket booth, from which she heard a sickly sweet voice call, “Excuse me? Ma’am?”
She spins on her heel to face the ticket booth, seeing the pink haired girl she’d spotted on the way in looking at her. “Hi! Are you looking to buy a ticket?”
God, that voice had to get annoying to maintain for a whole eight hour shift. “Uh, no,” Momo said, awkwardly holding up her nametag and gesturing to her outfit, “I’m Momo Ayase? It’s supposed to be my first day?”
“Ohhh, right! Silly me!” The girl actually smacks herself on the forehead lightly, and Momo has to force down a cringe, “Soooo sorry, I’m like, such an airhead sometimes! Welcome aboard!” The girl taps her own nametag, which reads ‘Aira.’ Note to self, Momo: minimize contact with Aira or risk dire mental health damage.
“It’s soooo nice to finally meet you! The managers have been talking about you! We’ve been needing a new hand so bad, some of the weekend shifts have been, like, crazy busy. Hang on, let me let the big boss know you’re around! You can just chill here for a minute, mmkay?”
Momo glances around and spots a bench near the entrance. She sits down on it, crossing one leg over the other and her arms over her chest, already shooting longing looks at the door. She’s in it now, though. It’ll be good, she reassures herself. Meet some new people, make a little cash, and hopefully figure out what she actually wants to do so she isn’t stuck at this job for too long.
She glances up to see Aira exiting the ticket booth and walking over. “So, Mr. Sakata- that’s the manager on duty today, you’ll meet him soon- said I’m good to give you the tour! Not that it’s a suuuper long tour, or anything, but it’ll be fun! I’m sure we’ll be BFFs in no time!”
Oh, she’s sure. That sickly sweet voice sits about as easily with Momo as week old fish, but surely, they’ll just get along swimmingly. “Great!” Momo says, doing her best emulation of Aira’s customer service voice. If Aira picks up on the sarcasm of the tone, her grin doesn’t falter one bit to show it.
“Y’know, this might sound crazy, but I think we actually went to school together,” Aira says, “Kami High, right? I mean, don’t tell me you were a Renjaku girl.”
Right. That does, actually, make sense. Momo had always kept to her own group of friends, but now that she hears it, she thinks the shock of pink hair rings a few bells. The difference between them was the difference between popular and popular. Momo was popular enough, but mostly hung out with her actual friends. Aira was popular.
She nods reluctantly. “Yeah, I was class B all three years. You?”
“Class D representing!” She said with a peace sign, and Momo nodded once more. It tracked with her vague recollection. “Alright, enough chit-chat, we should probably get the tour going. Follow me, newbie!”
As Momo stands, she swears her feet are like lead. Last chance, Momo. Quit now and go back to the blissful life of being the coolest NEET in town.
As if a spectral apparition is hanging over her, she hears her grandmother’s voice echoing in her ears.
“I’ll tear down all your Ken Takakura posters!”
Fair enough, she thought. She really couldn’t make hikikomori her new look, anyways.
For Ken Takakura, work typically entailed rolling out of bed, brushing his teeth, and taking the elevator downstairs to clock in. Things could be simple like that, when your home and your workplace were one and the same. That was one of many things he told himself in an attempt to do as he’d been advised and, quote unquote, think positive.
Of course, that had been something his father had told him, in one of many supremely unhelpful lectures about how to become more of a ‘man.’ His father being the primary reason he was in the scrape he was in now, maybe it would’ve been for the best to disregard those nuggets of paternal wisdom.
Then again, seeing the bright side of his situation sure as hell couldn’t hurt. He was eighteen, freshly having graduated, with no friends and a snowball’s chance in hell of making any. His one shot to make something of himself was to get as far away from this town as he possibly could, somewhere where he could start totally fresh. Somewhere where the stench of the loser otaku Ken Takakura couldn’t follow him.
He’d never really had friends, but he could remember a time when things hadn’t been so depressing. In grade school, at least, everyone had invited everyone to everything. When you passed out birthday party invitations in class, it was implied that everyone was included, even the weirdo in the big glasses who read magazines when everyone else went out to play soccer. Maybe that had given him a false sense of security. He’d figured all those people were his actual friends, which made for a pretty rough wake-up call when junior high came around and they started treating him like he had smallpox.
He knew he was different from most people. He liked different stuff, and didn’t like the stuff they all liked. Some part of him wished his father hadn’t been too macho to take him to the doctor, so he could put a name to the disparate collection of experiences and at least have something to categorize it under. He’d never really liked sports, nor had he ever been remotely good at them. He’d stuttered, back then, and he still spoke quietly when he got the nerve to speak at all. He was into technology, and outer space, and fanciful stories of monsters and aliens lurking around every corner, and he probably talked too much about all of them before he’d decided not to talk at all.
By the time he’d made it to high school, the possibility of friends had been foreclosed upon in his mind. Expect the worst and you’ll never be disappointed, and he certainly wasn’t. The idea of a girlfriend (or, really, any romantic partner, though the fact that he made that clarification in his thoughts filled him with no small amount of shame and confusion) was so far out of his reach that it may as well have been a fairy tale. He sunk into his studies, and that, at least, was concrete. Measurable. When he did well, he received high marks. When he did poorly, he was informed of how and why, and what to do better next time. Simple, easy to understand, and something he was well suited to. Sure, he’d never made top of his class, but he’d done better than most.
Didn’t win him any friends, but the teachers, at least, were nice.
His other escape had been into the nascent internet. He’d use the handful of computers they had at the library and their terrible, terrible internet connection to browse message boards most of the time he wasn’t at school. It let him interact with like minded people and, equally importantly, kept him away from home for as long as possible.
Online, he could be someone completely different. Without the need for eye contact or public speech, he felt confident, in his element. He knew what he was talking about, and people valued his input in their conversations. He became especially obsessed with cryptozoology, tales of demonic possession, stories of alien abduction. Anything outside of this world.
He couldn’t bring himself to believe in God, but scientifically speaking, at least one percent of the stories online had to have some shred of truth to them. If there really was something out there beyond their understanding, maybe it would come and sweep him away someday. Maybe something else could understand what it was like to be completely and utterly alone, a foreign species in your own home, something invasive to be looked upon with disdain by your peers and pity by your superiors.
So, yeah. He liked his fantasies. He liked manga, and video games, and movies. Movies, especially. It had been a natural progression when he’d turned fifteen to take the job at the local movie theater, and the old man who owned the place had immediately taken a liking to him. Sure, he was shit at customer service, but he understood technology at an instinctual level. He had a passion for the work that most of the kids there for an easy summer job never would, and he was willing to take the shittiest shifts and the longest hours because… what else did he have going on?
When the old projectionist had been preparing to retire, then, it had become natural that the owner suggest he apprentice under him. It was a move up in pay, it gave him the opportunity to work away from customers and to do the technical work he was best at, and it meant the old man didn’t have to search for someone in a dying field that still knew how to work the projectors.
Ken had jumped on the opportunity, and taken to the apprenticeship like a fish out of water. He soaked up every bit of knowledge he could; the different lenses and how to adjust them to different aspect ratios, how to maintain and repair every bit of the projectors, even how to manage turnovers on the two oldest projectors in the building that still required changing the reels. The projection booths became his home away from home- all the free movies he could hope to watch in complete silence and solitude, hidden away from ridicule.
It became the one point of pride in an otherwise unremarkable life, and he devoted every moment he wasn’t in school or browsing the net to doing that job well. He didn’t want to do it for the rest of his life, but it was something to do until he was ready to make that fresh start for himself.
All that to say, well, Ken Takakura had foolishly held onto the belief that, as graduation approached, his life was in a pretty good place. He figured he’d get into a decent college and, after that, a decent grad program. He’d become an astronomer or a biologist or something like that, in some new town. He’d make a whole bunch of friends and everyone would finally see him as something more as the weirdo in the back of the class. It’d be his opportunity to stop being a wallflower and make something of himself. Hell, maybe ten or fifteen years down the line, he’d make a big discovery. Get on the news, or something. Maybe he’d even find someone to love him, if he was lucky. He’d had it all figured out.
Then, his eighteenth birthday had come, and his father had come into his room. With the same aloofness he used to tell Ken to take out the trash, he’d informed Ken that he had one week to pack his bags and move out. It was, he’d continued, a perfect opportunity for Ken to finally man up, get out of his room, and do something with his life for once.
Ken had asked where he should go, stunned by the sudden announcement. His father had said he didn’t know. Maybe, he’d offered, he could stay with a friend, just until he’d found his own apartment.
Stay with a friend. He hadn’t known what to say after that, and his father had left the room before he could ask any more questions. He’d shoved what effects he did have into a depressingly small number of bags, packed away the computer rig he’d spent months of pay on building, and left that very same night. He still hadn’t spoken to his father since then.
Honestly, he didn’t think he ever would. What could he hope to say? Some part of him dreamed that one day, he’d make it big and his father would see him on the news. He dreamed there would be some reckoning, then. A tearful apology maybe?
For any of that to happen, though, he’d need to get the fuck out of this town. And to do that, he had a whole lot more work to do.
He sat up in the twin bed that took up a good chunk of the projectionist’s office which was now his apartment. The owner had assured him that he was free to live on the third floor of the theater for as long as he needed; after all, he’d chuckled in that good-natured way he always did, nobody else had any clue how to work any of the machinery up there besides him, so kicking him out would shutter the theater for months.
It was reassuring. He knew, deep down, that the old man was the one person he had who genuinely saw something with him. His almost fatalistic pragmatism about the matter was just his way of saying he cared. It made a lot more sense to Ken than the empty platitudes he’d been given by other people trying to make him feel better when they didn’t really care about how he felt at all.
His bleary eyes looked around the blur of colors that was his room. Two fans blew onto his bed, the only thing keeping the small room from being insufferably stuffy. He really couldn’t care less if he caught a cold from it, since the risk of him spreading it to anybody was zero, and he valued his comfort highly enough to take the risk. The light beaming in from the room’s single window cast a column of floating dust and particulates in a halo of midday light.
Every wall of his room was plastered, floor to ceiling, with posters. It made what was intended to be a sterile office space feel a bit more homey. Even though he couldn’t read any of them without his glasses, he could’ve recited each one of them from memory. The poster plastered to the roof of his room, the one he read as he dozed off every night, was X-Files. ‘I want to believe.’ It was something of a motivational quote for him. The rest were mostly movie posters he’d scavenged from the theatre’s old marketing materials, with a few anime ones mixed in that he’d sourced himself.
Pushed into the corner of his room was his desk, littered with various papers, magazines and books, his pride and joy computer sitting at its center as the crown jewel. He had a TV that the old man had helped him set up, with a few consoles plugged in and a cabinet off to the side holding a bunch of games, VHS tapes and DVDs. The wardrobe was off to one side, mostly holding an assortment of the same plain black outfits that he wore pretty much every day. When work and home were the same, there was very little need for anything other than work uniforms.
He kicked his feet out of his bed and began his morning routine. The projectionist’s office had a small bathroom attached, though it had no shower- he’d solved that problem with a cheap membership at the local 24 hour gym- where he brushed his teeth, washed his face, and tried to comb his messy black locks into submission. He sprayed himself with body spray, pulled on his clothes for the day, and shot a glance at the contacts container sitting on his counter for a moment.
After a second’s consideration, he sighed and grabbed his glasses instead, shoving them onto his face. Much as he dreamed of the moment where he’d take his glasses off and everyone would treat him like the lead in some shitty rom-com who’d just had his big makeover, it wasn’t happening today. He trudged over to his computer, finally able to see, and clicked it on.
The second part of his morning routine is running through his message boards. Every website takes an agonizingly long amount of time to load, but he can be patient. He’s got a routine going, checking in on a series of increasingly niche message boards about increasingly niche topics, from UFOs to cryptozoology to demonology. On each of them, his alias, ‘Oracle of Saitama’ was proudly emblazoned in his post signature and carried varying degrees of sway.
Okay, maybe not so proudly. Admittedly, he sort of wished before he became something of a message board mini-celeb, he forced himself to think of a better name to carry around with him everywhere. Now, it just felt pretentious and lame, and everybody already knew him by it, so a rebrand would be tough to sell. Half the time, people just called him “OOS”, which sorta made him feel like he was being grunted at by a bunch of caveman.
Live and learn, he supposed. He tapped out a few replies to threads he’d left open from the night prior- seriously, in this day and age, who was really still debating the veracity of the Surgeon’s Photo, when there was so much more compelling evidence?- before pushing himself away from the desk and standing.
Usually, he’d spend a while longer scrolling, reading up on the newest UFO sightings or whatever else he could get his hands on. Today, though, was one of those exciting days where he had a reason to go out before work. Today, the newest issue of Mu Magazine was awaiting him in his P.O. box, and he had to pick it up before he was scheduled to start working. He exited his office slash apartment and out into the maze of dark hallways that connected all sixteen theatres’ projection booths to it, turning to his left and making for the waiting elevator. He jammed his finger into the button for the first floor, and down he went.
From the moment the doors slide open once more, his demeanor is totally different. His hands get stuffed in his pocket, and his back hunches forward, eyes locked firmly on his feet as he walks. Once, he’d naively hoped that workplace friendships might be an option for him. After years here, he’d come to find that he was just as out of place here as he was at school.
Wasn’t like he didn’t get why. He spent half of his day in pitch black rooms, dealing with the technical aspects of lens focus and aspect ratio and film reels. The rest of it he spent studying things that most people didn’t understand, nor did they want to. It had taken him a while to realize when people told him they didn’t believe in aliens, they often weren’t seeking evidence to change their mind, but just for him to stop talking about them.
Their loss, he figured. Aliens were just as real as he was. Still, he got it. He knew, on some logical level, why he’d always be treated the way he was. It wasn’t like the people working here were cinephiles or anything. They were all the same people he’d gone to school with, looking for the easiest job they could find to get some spending cash with the summer. When they were off work, they’d go out with their real friends. He was just someone they were subjected to while they were on the clock. Talking to him was essentially the same as sweeping up spilled popcorn and cleaning the toilets. It was busy work.
Keeping his eyes fixed to the ground was the better option. He could’ve probably drawn every pattern on the faded old carpet from memory with how many times he’d made his way in and out of this theatre with his eyes pointed squarely at his toes. This way, he couldn’t notice whether or not people were shooting him looks or whispering as he passed, and it made it easier to imagine they weren’t.
He slammed the door open, and made the daring choice to move his eyes to more of a 45 degree angle, still focused on the ground but at least not staring at his shoes. It was rather chilly for a morning in April. A morning, he reminded himself, which was actually about three pm. He wanted to get his sleep schedule in hand, but with the hours he worked, it was near impossible to actually do so.
As he walked, his eyes darted from place to place, never staying on one target for too long. He sees couples strolling hand in hand from store to store, up and down the streets. A family of four walks a dog that’s far too noisy considering how small it is, laughing about some joke they shared. A group of six or seven guys takes up enough space that he has to step off the sidewalk and onto the curb to pass them. All of them seem so at ease. None of them ever seem to be making the same calculations he is, wondering when to risk a smile or eye contact with a stranger. None of them ever seem to get it wrong, somehow, even though he’s never pinned down the exact rules and regulations for that sort of thing.
He feels a pang in his chest. Something inside of him rattles the bars of the cage he’s built around his heart, screams to be released, to rejoin the world proper. To venture out again, in search of some sort of human connection, anything. A friend, an acquaintance. Someone to talk to, out loud, for an hour or two. Maybe get a coffee. Hell, see a movie, if that’s what it takes. Something.
He shoves it as deep as he can manage, as he always does. One day, he’s going to move out of this wretched town, and then he can finally indulge that urge. On that day, Ken Takakura could mean something different. He could be something different. In a new place, with a new lease on life, he could force himself to finally be outgoing, to take risks and grab life by the horns. Here?
Here, it’s all too much. Predetermined. The word of the day is survival, as far as he’s concerned. Change is for another day. He plods on towards the post office without making eye contact with anyone, and fishes the key to his P.O. box out of his pocket with a muttered greeting to the attendant at the desk.
Looking supremely bored, the girl in thick eyeliner says, “Yeah, you have mail. Know where it is, right?”
He nods wordlessly, looking at her forehead in lieu of actual eye contact. Deadpan, she says, “Cool,” and returns to the magazine she’d been flipping through. He takes that for the dismissal it is and makes his way back into the rows of boxes, finding his own. He swings open the little door, and sure enough, waiting for him inside is that fresh copy of Mu he’d been waiting for. He pulls it out with a sort of quiet reverence, taking a peek at the cover.
The cover spread features an astronaut, the moon behind him, with a number of eyes overlaid onto the moon. In bold print, it reads, “UFO sightings and the panopticon; are the moon people in league with the government surveillance state?” He can’t help but roll his eyes. Anybody who reads the news knows the government doesn’t need alien help to surveil its people.
Still, as he takes a cursory flip through the magazine, it seems like an interesting enough issue. It’s not like he believes everything in these things. After all, they have to sell magazines, and boring scientific reports really don’t capture the general public’s interest. Even though they should, he muses to himself, closing the magazine and tucking it under his arm as he exits the post office once more.
The walk back to the post office is perhaps even less eventful than the one to the post office had been, if such a thing is possible. He makes his way into the building without so much as a word from his coworkers, studiously ignoring the snicker as he passes by the ticket taker. He glances over at the elevator, for a moment considering retreating to his reclusive home on the third floor to read in peace.
Be different, Ken, something in his mind tells him, nothing will ever change if you don’t change.
He figures that’s probably true, logically. It doesn’t make his next decision any easier to make. He shoots a glance in the direction of the concession stand, past the lines of people and behind his younger coworkers. There’s a door in the back. It leads into the kitchen and food preparation area, attached to which is the general staff break room. He glances down at his watch. It’s 4:30, so he’s got about an hour and a half before the old man expects him to start working in earnest- in the earlier afternoons, the old man tends to handle things, unless there’s an urgent need for repairs, and he generally is given all day Sunday and Monday to rest, again, barring emergencies.
He bites at his bottom lip nervously for a second. It’s a risk, to be sure, but today was a different day. How could he ever be a different him, if he didn’t start acting differently? Even if things went terribly, at least he could take solace in the fact that he’d tried, right?
He has to practically force himself to deviate from his routine path, making for the concessions counter. His eyes are, yet again, glued to the floor unerringly as he walks, avoiding the looks he’s sure he’s getting as he approaches. He pushes open the waist-high swinging door to get behind the counter, and heads into the kitchen.
On his beeline to the break room, he spots his pink-haired coworker, Aira, animatedly discussing the intricate mechanics of the soft drink syrup bags with… a face he doesn’t recognize. She’s a bit shorter than Aira, wearing an obviously brand new uniform with a shockingly bright bedazzled nametag that he can’t quite read from this distance. Her hair is short, a swooping brown bang cascading over the right side of her face, framing her sharp chin and fierce brownish-red eyes.
Her face, clearly, belies her sheer lack of interest in whatever it is Aira’s lecturing her about. He looks away before he can study the scene anymore, lest he be seen as a weirdo staring at girls. Godspeed to the new girl, he thinks, because even he has had his ear talked off by Aira on a few occasions. She was probably the only person who’d bothered to talk to him at length, but he suspected she’d talk to anyone at length.
He swung the door to the break room open and stepped inside, hearing faint conversations immediately fall quiet as he does. Shit. Abort, abort. Every instinct screams at him to turn on his heel and run, to flee back to the relative safety of his home. But, then, that would be worse, wouldn’t it? Walking in and then immediately running away would definitely get the gossip mill churning. Now that he’d opened the door, he had to stay for at least a little bit.
So, forcing himself to move, he walks deeper into the proverbial lion’s den, taking a seat at the backmost table of the break room and grabbing his magazine from under his arm.
He flips it open, perusing the table of contents before flipping to an article about a supposed werewolf sighting that caught his eye. Honestly, in his opinion, it was more likely that werewolf sightings were just sightings of some alien or otherwise undiscovered species that appeared similar to the old folklore about werewolves, but that was more of a semantic thing. What he was interested in was the sighting itself, whether or not there was any factuality to it.
“Dude, have you ever seen him in here?”
He steels himself as the whispering begins. He knows well enough to know that they aren’t really talking to each other, as much as they are feigning conversation to ensure he hears everything they’re saying with enough deniability to get away with it if he reported them. Reacting would just make it worse. He knew that much from experience.
Besides, it wasn’t like he hadn’t heard it all before. He leaned in a bit to see the blurry picture of the supposed werewolf, rubbing his eyes a bit. All the talk of ‘magic’ and whatnot didn’t interest him one bit, but then, a lot of what people thought was ‘magic’ was just poorly explained science, and the picture was a good fake if it was fake.
“You know he actually lives here, right? You ever seen a shower around here? Just imagine the stench!”
“Oh, god, I’m so glad we never have to go up there, I can’t even imagine what a dump it is. Why doesn’t the old man just get rid of him?”
“Psh, I heard that’s what his old man did. Guess the big boss feels bad for him?”
He loses his place on the page at that one. Shit. That bit was still raw enough to hurt when poked at, which most of the other insults couldn’t do. He doesn’t even look up as he feels a piece of popcorn hitting his hair. He just had to endure it, and maybe they’d get bored and move on. Hell, god willing, maybe their break time would end, and he’d get the room to himself. People’d probably avoid coming in with him in here on his own.
The popcorn throwing continues, barely muffled snickers coming from the table across the way. He hears them begin whispering again, this time actually trying to whisper, so he can’t hear what they’re saying. He considers finally making a retreat, to avoid whatever nasty thing they’re cooking up.
Just as he’s about to stand, though, something entirely unexpected happens. He hears the screeching sound of the chair across from him being pulled out, and looks up in shock. Standing there before him looking for all he can tell like a valkyrie sent straight from heaven, is the new girl.
His eyes find her bedazzled nametag. ‘Momo.’ A sense of familiarity washes over him. Momo. In his second year, he’d been moved to class B to avoid the bullies. Of course, they’d moved him again at the end of the year, since there were bullies in class B too. But, while it had lasted, hadn’t there been a girl named Momo?
That’s right. He remembers it now. Back corner of class, near the window, with her two equally pretty and equally scary friends beside and in front of her. Ayase Momo. Holy shit, Ayase Momo from Kami High was working at the same theatre he was. She was the new girl. He stared at her with wide eyes as she turned to face him, looking bored out of her mind as she sat down.
For once, the whispering stopped. Just his luck, that it’d happen at the moment he’s too distracted by Ayase Momo to have a chance in hell of noticing.
Some part of her wonders if Aira was sent by some vengeful kami specifically to punish her for procrastinating so long on getting a job. She has to imagine literally any other employee at this theatre would’ve made this tour ten minutes.
It was going on an hour, now, and Aira was only just wrapping up her babbling on the fucking soda machines. No amount of explanation could’ve convinced Momo she needed more than two seconds of information about the damn soda machines, but it was just her luck.
She wasn’t even an hour into her first day, and she was sure she’d be ready to retire by the end. “So, yeah! Basically, that’s soda duty! It’s pretty important, you got it all right? I can tooootally start over!”
“Yes,” Momo snaps, probably making her annoyance a bit too obvious, “I think I got it, Aira. Thank you. Can we please continue?”
Aira shoots her a glance, and for a split second Momo’s sure the customer service smile falters, before it gets plastered right back on. Must take a lot of practice to be that fake, she figures. It’s almost an admirable talent. If she’d applied it to being an actress instead of being annoying about soda machines, she’d probably be a star.
Momo lets a smirk pass across her face at the somewhat cruel thought as Aira turns her back. “We’re pretty much done, honestly! Let me just show you the break room…” Aira begins walking deeper into the kitchen, Momo following close behind her. Best to just get this shit over and done with, so she can go mindlessly sweep the rest of her shift away. She’d been assured she wouldn’t have to do concessions for her first two weeks, thank god, so all she’d be doing is menial cleaning and ticket taking, both responsibilities that feel particularly easy.
Suddenly enough that Momo nearly slams into her back, Aira comes to a stop. “The hell? You good?”
Aira glances back at her for a second, before turning her eyes to peer into the break room. “Oh, um, yeah! It’s just… huh.” Momo traces her eyeline, following it into the break room past a group of three employees, past the battered old microwave and the fridge and all the worker’s health posters, to the very back table in the room.
Seated there is a skinny guy, hunched over a thick magazine with bold print on the front. He’s sorta nerdy looking, she supposes; wearing big, thick, dopey glasses, with big brown eyes behind them, messy black hair barely combed falling haphazardly onto his face. He has the posture of a prey animal- it feels mean to think about it that way, but it’s the first descriptor that comes to mind- but all he’s really doing is sitting there. “Uh, hello? Who’s he? Is he, like, the boss or something?”
Before Aira can speak, she comes to the conclusion that her assumption there is wrong. Her ears pick up on the hissed whisper-talking going on as the three employees at the closer table openly shit-talk the guy. Her brows furrow, watching as they begin throwing kernels of popcorn his way.
Her eyes dart back to him, half expecting him to jump to his feet and lunge at them. God knows she would’ve. To her surprise, he doesn’t seem to react at all. His facial expression is utterly stoic, even as he’s pelted with buttery corn incessantly. She has to admire the strength of will, even if she doesn’t get why he’s not saying anything.
“Oh, uh, no, nothing like that,” Aira says, and Momo cocks an eyebrow at the tone that slips into her voice. There’s pity, there, but also no small measure of disgust that she’s not even trying to veil. It sounds like the way you talk about a stinky old dog that everyone feels too bad to get rid of, so they just sit there resenting it ‘til it croaks.
Again, a bit of a cruel metaphor, but it’s a pretty cruel fucking tone. It feels apt. “He’s… the projectionist. Er, he’s not usually down here, so you won’t have to deal with him much…” Aira turns to look at her apologetically, as if there’s anything here to apologize for, and continues, “Y’know, he’s… well, you can see. People don’t really take to him. He’s weird. ”
Her brows furrow once more, a frown etching itself across her face. She’d always hated bullies. Again, it was the difference between popular and popular. She wasn’t so quick to forget the way she’d been ridiculed as a child for her grandmother’s profession. It had always ticked her off when these bland ass normies thought they were better than anybody just because they were so damn good at coasting under the radar. And hell, even if he was weird, was that such a fucking crime? Wasn’t it better to be weird than to be, like, lame as hell?
Her eyes shot back to the three bullies as they lowered their voice. One of them grabbed a soft drink, the others clearly snickering as they looked towards the bespectacled man. Didn’t take a genius to figure out what was going down there. She clicked her tongue.
“Yeah, well,” She says, “Thanks for the tour, senpai. I’m gonna take my ten.”
Before Aira can say another word, she strides into the room with her head held high and shoulders back. She shoots the table of three the most withering look she can, and watches them all freeze, turning away with a self-satisfied smirk. Buncha pussies, she thinks to herself, picking on a guy just because they know he won’t do anything.
Well, she will. Even if she doesn’t know the guy. She pulls out the chair across from him, sitting down with another glance at the table. If they threw the drink now, it’d hit her, and god knows she’d kick the shit out of at least one of them if that happened.
“Whatcha’ reading?” She asks casually, reaching over to pluck the magazine from his hands and beginning to flip through the pages. It’s filled with large, full color spreads of aliens and monsters. Admittedly, that is kinda weird. Not like aliens are real, or whatever, but of course she was already aware otaku existed for this type of thing.
She glances over her shoulder and watches the three coworkers walking out of the break room, obviously giving up on whatever they were planning. Her eyes turn back to the guy at the other side of the table, looking at the way he’s staring at her with those wide, brown eyes. His hands are still in the position they were in when she took the magazine, like he’d been frozen in time. She can’t help but snort to herself at that, placing the magazine back in his hands and standing up.
“Whatever,” She mutters, “Nothin’ but scum in this world, I guess.” With that, she stalks out of the break room, shoving her hands into her pockets as she walks away.
Honestly, she’d kinda hoped that the job would give her an excuse to get out of the house and make some new friends. She loved Miko and Muko, but they were a hell of a lot busier than she was recently, and she felt bad being the needy one in the relationship, honestly. Sadly, so far, it seemed nobody here would be living up to the standard of friendship they’d set. Everyone had been lame so far.
Of course, it was probably for the best. Keep work and play separate, or whatever. She’d hide out in some corner for the rest of her break, and then spend the rest of the shift doing her best to become ‘zen’ as she swept the halls for popcorn crumbs until she could clock out.
She heard footsteps run up behind her. A reedy, hoarse voice called out, “Miss Ayase! I know what you’re into, I think!”
She blinked once and froze in place. Who the hell had her last name? And what the fuck were they talking about, what she’s ‘into?’ She spins around, and sees him standing there. Messy black hair, big doe eyes- her eyes dart down to look for his nametag, but he isn’t wearing one. Just her luck. He shoves his magazine towards her, and she furrows her brows, her lip curling up in disgust.
Visions of stories she’d heard about girls being followed home by their coworkers flashed through her head. Just fucking great. If this was the one time where the bullying was actually justified by the guy being a total creep, and she ended up on the other end of his stalkerdom, she was gonna be kicking herself for weeks. So much for good deeds.
“Uh, dude, that’s creepy as hell,” She says, “How do you know my last name?”
She watches him totally deflate, his hands still clutching his magazine dropping, his eyes moving from her face to the ground. Somehow, she feels like she said something wrong. “Sorry,” He mumbles, barely audible, “I guess you wouldn’t remember. I was in class 2-B with you? They moved me at the end of second year, but I sat a few seats over from you.”
She blinks a few times, releasing some tension she hadn’t intended to hold. Okay. Not so creepy, then. Well… maybe still creepy, but at least he hasn’t looked through company files to get her name. The creep verdict was out. The judge needed more info. She did her best to recall his name, and again, came up totally blank, other than a feeling of familiarity. For some reason, her brain was telling her she did know his name, but refused to provide it. Whatever. She did remember, vaguely, the guy with big glasses that nobody had really paid attention to.
“Right,” She says, drawing out the i, “So, uh, nice to see you again? What, exactly, were you yelling about?”
He seems to be filled with renewed vigor as she asks that, eagerly presenting his magazine once more. “I know what you’re into!”
She winces once more at the phrasing, even though she’s sure this guy can’t be dumb enough or brave enough to proposition a girl that openly. “Look,” She says, trying her best to sound compassionate, “Whatever you’re thinking, I wasn’t, like, hitting on you, okay? I’m sure you’re a nice guy, but that’s not what I was doing.”
He seems genuinely confused by what she’s saying, for a moment, before it seems to dawn on him that he’d phrased whatever he was trying to say incorrectly. With wide eyes, he flips open to a seemingly random page, and shoves it in her face again, showing a picture of some bright lights in the sky.
“I mean,” He says insistently, “Aliens! The occult! The unknown! You’re a fellow fan, right? Why else would you talk to me?”
She sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Like I said,” she insistently replies, “I wasn’t trying to get involved in all this mumbo jumbo, okay? Can we just leave it at that?”
He frowns, for a moment, and turns to yet another page. Irritation begins to boil under her skin as he yet again shoves it mere inches away from her face. “Haven’t you seen the latest pictures?” he asks, “They’re saying there are real werewolves in Japan, and the government is covering it up! And, if you look here, there are even verifiable sightings of flying craft that-”
“Look!” She finally yells, reaching out and snatching the magazine from his hands, “This is so fucking like an otaku, to go shoving shit in people’s faces even when they’ve tried to be polite and tell you they aren’t interested! I don’t want to hear about your damn alien bullshit! We aren’t friends, and honestly, acting like this is probably why you don’t have any!”
She spikes the magazine onto the ground with good measure, turning and beginning to stomp away. Immediately, the irritation dissipates, and she’s left with an intense guilt. Damn it. She’d just protected the guy from bullies, and now here she was acting like one? Sure, it was a bit annoying, but the guy obviously wasn’t getting what she was putting down. She didn’t need to be so cruel about it.
She turned and looked over her shoulder, and saw him standing there in the middle of the hall, totally frozen, looking down at his magazine on the floor. His shoulders are slumped, and though she can’t see his eyes through the glare of the glasses, she can imagine them tearing up. Her stomach churns.
With a huff, she makes her way back over, squatting down to pick up the magazine, doing her best to dust it off before offering it to him. “Here,” She says, “Sorry about that. It’s been a pretty shitty day in a series of kinda lame ones, but I shouldn’t take it out on you just because you’re into shit from her.”
She waits for him to take the magazine from her hands before continuing, pretending she doesn’t notice the way his fingers quiver as he does. Not worth making him feel worse. “Y’know, even though I don’t believe in all that stuff, I kinda get it, I guess. Being into stuff other people don’t get. Having them think you’re weird for it. I mean, I believe in magic and ghosts and stuff like that.”
She can’t believe her own ears, but she actually hears him scoff. “Miss Ayase,” He says, mirth in his tone even after he’d just been so depressed, “Magic? Ghosts? That stuff isn’t real.”
Immediately, the irritation comes rushing back. The blood boils in her ears and her fists clench. The gall of this otaku, acting like he’s somehow better than her after she, out of the goodness of her own heart, apologized for making him feel bad? She has half a mind to clock him right there in the hall, though it’d probably be setting a record for the fastest firing from a part time job in world history.
“What do you mean not real?” She hisses, stomping up to get right in his face, “Like aliens are? Get real, it’s not like your stupid thing is any more real than mine! At best, we’re both crazy!”
“Aliens have verifiable proof!” He yells, holding the magazine up once more, “Cryptids, too! There are pictures! People have really been abducted! There’s no proof of magic or ghosts or anything like that! That’s the difference!”
She growls, reaching out and grabbing him by the collar. “Oh yeah? Well, my grandma is a real witch, a spirit medium! She actually does magic! I’ve seen her do exorcisms with my own two eyes! You should’ve seen the way these people convulse!”
“Please,” He says, “Seizures can make you convulse. So can head trauma. You sure she didn’t just bash ‘em on the head a few too many times? Alien abductions, those have proof! People have really been experimented on!”
“Oh yeah? Did you ever get a ride on one of their dumb UFOs, then?”
He scoffs. “Please, just because it didn’t happen to me doesn’t mean it never happened!”
Absolutely infuriated, she yanks him closer by the collar of his shirt. “Fine. Fine! You wanna be that way, you little twerp? How about this deal? I bet you that I can prove to you magic is real, and if I can, you’re gonna be my damn servant for the day, you hear?”
He scoffs, mere inches from her face and screaming right back at her. “W-Well, fine! Then, uh, you’ll be my servant, when I prove to you cryptozoology is real!”
She scoffs, letting go of his shirt and shoving him away. “Fine by me, dork. We’ll meet after work. No putting it off, got it? I hope you’re ready to put on a maid outfit and clean my whole house. My grandma’s been getting on me about spring cleaning.”
“W-Well, uh…” He pauses for a moment, scratching his chin, “I hope you’re ready to, um… also put on a maid outfit. And clean my place.”
“Dude,” She says, completely deadpan, “That’s, like, so creepy.”
“What? But, you said it too! You said it first!” He points at her accusatorially, and she can barely hold back a giggle at how much he looks like a kindergartener ready to tattle on her.
“Relax,” She says, “I’m joking. But it’s still never gonna happen, so you’ll just have to keep dreaming about it, weirdo.” She begins walking down the hall. Probably time for her to get back to work. She glances over her shoulder at him, staring at her, still frozen where he stands in the hallway.
“After work! Be there or be square!” She doesn’t watch to see if he responds, but something tells her he’ll be there. A small smile spreads across her face.
Now, to sweep until there’s no more sweeping to be done. After that, she’d crush that dweeb at his own game.