4.) Dismissal List

November 17th, 2020

Toru never came into the office on Monday, which left a tired Kaya feeling grateful. However when Tuesday rolled around and she pulled into the parking lot at 8:30 A.M. and spotted the light blue Tesla she inhaled deeply and let the air back out with force through her nose. She could think of absolutely no reason for Toru to suddenly show up at work as though he were the most responsible worker in the office, but she assumed his reasoning couldn't be good.

Kaya parked in her usual spot and made her way through the lobby to the elevator, pressing the button to the third floor with a silent prayer that she wouldn't have to run into the CEO. Her prayer was immediately unanswered as the doors to the elevator slid open to reveal Toru wearing a grey suit with a blue shirt, no tie, and the first couple of buttons undone. "Good Morning, Kaya." He greeted her with a small smirk on his face. "You weren't kidding about being here by 8:40. A model employee really." Kaya stepped off the elevator, counting to 10 before speaking.

"Good Morning, Mr. Oikawa. Still up from last night?" She asked with a syrupy false tone. Toru shook his head. "Nope, been up since 6." He tells her matter-of-factly. "At any rate, I need your help. You're the perfect person for the job at hand." He tells her, moving to stand next to her, then holding his arm out in front of him as if to ask her to lead the way. "Let's take this to your office shall we? I'd like to have this particular task done before our guests arrive at 11." He tells her.

Kaya looks at Oikawa with mistrustful eyes, uncertain as to who these guests might be, though his sudden professionalism makes her guess his father and some of the other higher ups at Seijoh Crop must be coming in today. "If you're looking for any financial reports I have them all up to date and ready to go for anyone who needs to look them over." She responds, attempting to get away from him.

Toru shakes his head softly. "No, no. Nothing to do with your position as our CFO. You're the perfect person for this job because you've been here your whole life. You know the ins and out, the people. You can tell me things that aren't in a file." He smiles at her.

Kaya unlocks the door to her office, entering the room and crossing to the desk, Toru taking a few larger strides to beat her over to the desk and pull out the chair for her to sit. "I'm afraid to ask at this point, but what is it we're doing this morning?" She asks hesitantly as she takes her seat. "I need you to help me finalize my termination list of course." He says it with no emotion.

No concern at all for the employees who he plans to just leave unemployed with families to take care of. Kaya feels a pit in her stomach and becomes nauseous at the thought of having to let people go. She knew it would happen, though she didn't expect to be a part of the decision making process, nor for it to happen so soon.

"Don't you want to wait a little longer and get to know the other's yourself more before you make the decisions?" She asks, with hope in her voice. "I thought about just letting them go based on numbers alone." He tells her coolly, removing the jacket from his suit and folding his sleeves up.

"But then I thought about how you seem really upset that everything has been taken out of your hands and maybe there's something the reports can't tell me. So here we are." He gives her a smirk, leaning over her in her seat, Kaya placing her hand up to her mouth, softly gasping at how calmly he's approaching letting people go.

Kaya looks up at him a moment, the anger flushing her face as she sees him just looking at her as though they are having a friendly conversation about the weather. "Do you not care that people who've been working here for years are just going to be out on their ass?" She spat at him. Toru looked at her, seeing the anger and thinking of how Hajime told him to try to be more professional with her as a start to get things on a better note between them. "You really shouldn't use such language in the office. And not really. They are being given a more than generous separation package that should hold them over until they find something else." He answered calmly

He moved closer to her, opening her laptop on her desk. "I already sent over an email. I want you to go through each of them and if you have any questions I'll be right here. I'm not opposed to discussing keeping some on that list if you can make a good argument and have a suggestion of who to remove instead." Kaya studies his face for a moment, feeling unsettled. This is the longest she's been around him without him flirting, and he's there very early. It makes her feel uneasy, as though he has some kind of alternative motive that she would hate to be made aware of. His face reads professionalism, but his chocolate eyes are another story.

She swallows hard, eyes locked into Torus, both holding their gaze and not backing down. Kaya contemplates them for a moment, trying to read the varying emotion that lies beneath, frustrated she can't find an answer. However, for the first time she finds herself really looking at the man before her, his easy smile alluring and the shine in his brown eyes memorizing. The way his messy hair falls around his face is endearing and she understands why Hana and so many of the other girls in the office have been fawning over him. He may be an insufferable asshole, but he was a handsome insufferable asshole.

Toru could tell that Kaya was trying to get a read on him as he gazed back down at her and into her eyes. He did his best to keep his perfect walls up around him, not wanting her to see all the things he hides about himself. Not just the imperfections that would likely fuel her disdain for him, but his pain as well. He found the task to be increasingly difficult the longer they looked at one another, Kayas eyes telling him how she truly was trying to understand him at that moment. When he saw her eyes change as she continued to look at him with a small glimmer of the look most women give to him he looked away. While he was glad she saw his attractive features, he kept his talk with Hajime at heart and felt it was best not to allow the moment to continue.

Kaya snapped back to reality when Toru directed his attention back to her laptop. "You're gonna have to sign in so we can get to work." He urges. Kaya nods and puts her password into the computer, Toru turning and sitting on her desk, smiling at the eye roll Kaya gives to his actions.

As she goes down the list most of the choices make sense, people in sales who haven't met their goals the last six months, someone in technical that had complaints from their coworkers of often having to have their work redone by one of them, a note next to Daisuke Ito's name saying to offer an early retirement as he was due to retire in 10 months' time.

The only two names that made no sense to Kaya were Tadashi Yamaguchi, who though Kaya wasn't a big fan of him knew he performed his job well and Hana Ito, Daisuke's niece who'd worked for the company since she was 16 and everyone was fond of, her work never being unsatisfactory.

Kaya looked back up at Toru, finding him looking at her rather than the computer screen as she thought he was, and realizing though he wasn't saying any sexually suggestive things to her today, he was still thinking them, a shameful look on his face, eyes hooded and locked to her meager breast.

"Why Yamaguchi and Hana Ito?" She inquired, ignoring the way he was staring at her, hungry. "Yamaguchi is more personal I'm afraid, I've never liked nor trusted Yamaguchi. As far as Hana goes, I test most of the employees on my first day everywhere I go, she was the only one who failed."

Kaya furrows her brow at him in confusion. "Test? In what way?" She inquired. "Simple, I make a pass at them, anyone who is willing to do something unsavory with the new boss on the first day is a brown noser you can't trust." He keeps an even tone, then looks at her with a smile. "You're the only one to ever pass with flying colors you know. Seriously A++, great work, Kaya."

Kaya thinks about Hana a moment, the way she'd seen her following Toru around the first day and how eagerly she seemed to speak about him yesterday. The way she was disappointed when he didn't show up for work the day before and left early for no real reason. "So you made a pass at her and she was receptive. It doesn't mean she would have done anything inappropriate." She tells him.

Toru takes a deep breath. "I know that, that's why I'm willing to see my test out to the end. She blew me in my temp office Friday, then when I texted her yesterday she quickly left here to meet me. She won't be in the office today, I already let her go yesterday telling her she can't just leave work like that."

Kaya looks at him, her face red at first with embarrassment to hear him admit so easily to sexual behavior in the office, then anger to know what he'd done. Not just that he enticed Hana into giving him a sexual favor, but also because he fired her for it without so much as speaking to anyone about it.

"So what, you're CEO and you can just be unprofessional all you want, but we fire others for it. What if she felt like she needed to keep her job?" She raged at him. Toru chuckled at her, moving her chair back and leaning into her, making her lean back in the seat. "You think I'm an idiot? I had a voice recorder on me all day. I didn't threaten that girl. I make it a point to not even ask for anything. She practically begged for me." He sneered.

Kaya feels her hatred for him grow more. He really sees no issue coming in as the new CEO and just walking around talking to the female employees that way, accepting sexual favors from them and then firing them for it. "You had no right to do that to Hana. She's never done that sort of thing, she just really likes you and lost her head!" She countered.

Toru crossed his arms while he sucked his teeth, walking towards her door. "You obviously don't really know her then. After my little misstep with you I asked some of the guys around the office who would be best to hit up 'for a good time.' There were a few names that popped up, but most everyone said Hana Ito was easy. No one mentioned you though, not that I was surprised after having already met you."

Toru opened her office door and stepped through, stopping to look back at her as he spoke, "If we're done here I should really get ready for our guest's arrival. I'll be back by your office to collect you for a lunch meeting at 12:15." He informed her, closing the door behind himself.

Kaya sat looking at the door a moment, unhappy that she's expected at a lunch meeting in an hour and a half and having no idea who or what to expect. She stood from her desk and grabbed her Delta Sigma Pi mug, spotting Torus suit jacket still sitting on her desk. She looked at it and huffed, angry with its owner and pushed it to the floor, stepping on it as she walked out to get coffee.

_____

At 12:17 PM Kaya heard a knock on her office door and groaned to herself. Unsure who the guests were and if they would be accompanying Toru to her office or not she stood from her desk and walked across the room, taking care to step on his jacket again before opening the door. She sucked in a sharp breath when she came face to face with a tall muscular man, his smile meeting his green eyes. "Hello, you must be Kaya. I'm Hajime Iwaizumi, Toru's best friend...unfortunately." She looked at his kind and sincere face, then up at his shoulders and at the physique most people would kill for.

Hajime cleared his throat, catching her attention back up to his face and the fact he'd just spoken to him. "Sorry, hi!." She said happily, holding out her hand for him to shake it. "I'm Kaya Moniwa. It's really nice to meet you, unfortunate best friend." She replied, receiving a laugh from the newcomer.

Hajime understood the moment he'd seen her whey Toru had become neigh on obsessed with her, especially after listening to their interactions, but seeing her sweeter, happier side that was able to joke with him and be more genuine made him certain his old friend was in over his head and might need to learn to leave well enough alone for once.

"Anyway, I thought you might need a small Toru break and convinced him to allow me to come and escort you to lunch." He told her, smiling. "I hope that's ok." He added after it occurred to him that she probably already didn't even want to go to lunch. "Yeah, no. It's nice to meet you, it'll give us a little chance to talk without Mr. Oikawa around." She replied, happily stepping into the hall with Hajime and locking up her office.

Hajime stifled a giggle at how tiny Kaya was, feeling tall standing next to her then becoming annoyed that he'll feel short again once they join up with Toru. "So how did you and Mr. Oikawa meet?" Kaya asked, genuinely curious as to how someone who seemed so kind could come to call that asshole their best friend.

"His mom and my mom were college roommates. They became really close and still are, so when they both found out they were pregnant around the same time they were really excited. They'd hoped one of us would be a girl and the other a boy and maybe we'd get married, but that didn't happen obviously. Then they hoped we'd be gay and be together that way. At this point I think they are just happy we're such good friends. Toru was even the best man at my wedding and my wife and I plan to name him god father to our little girl when she's born in February."

Kaya smiled listening to the cute story Hajime laid out for her, wondering to herself if Toru should even be trusted around children as he acted much like a child himself at times. "I didn't think the whole crib friends thing happened in big cities. Happens around here a lot though, a lot of people who've lived their entire lives in Athens and know everyone." She beams, looking up at Hajime who easily returns her smile.

"We're the only ones I've heard of having such a thing happen. I know he can be a little difficult at times, but he's really not so bad once you get to know him." Hajime offers, hoping saying so while she seemed relaxed and happy might at least get her to be willing to try being a friend to Toru, seeing as that's what he convinced him to settle for after a very LONG conversation about her the day before.

"No offense, but I really don't know if there could be a saving grace to a guy like that. If you looked up slimeball in the dictionary I'm positive his picture is in it." Hajime laughs at her remark. "I did look it up, it's a pretty flattering picture, just as all his pictures are, I'm afraid. The definition reads 'Toru Oikawa, spoiled pretty rich boy who pushes everyone away for no reason other than his fear of ever being hurt again." Hajime watches Kaya's face registering what he's telling her. She looks up at him, her facial expressions showing how she's full of questions. She opens her mouth to ask one, only to be interrupted by a voice coming from behind them.

"Uncle Toru wouldn't like you talking about him like that Hajime." Hajime and Kaya both turn to face the speaker, a younger taller boy with short black hair and brown eyes looks at them with his arms crossed. "Even if you are being too kind to him." The speaker finishes with a smile on his face. "Takeru Oikawa, this Is Kaya Moniwa. Kaya, this is Toru's Nephew Takeru. He's….a lot of fun to know." Hajime states, tapping Takeru on the top of his shoulder, Takeru smiling back at Hajime, then looking closer at Kaya.

"So, you're the one giving my uncle a hard time?" He asks, Kaya nods her head at him sheepishly. "Excellent." He says, a mischievous grin coming over his face. Kaya smiles back at Takeru, other than the eyes she can't really see the family resemblance, but the boy seems a lot kinder than his uncle already.

"So why don't you have a big pretty engagement ring?" He asks plainly, looking innocently at Kaya's left hand. "Oh, well Kenji didn't have a ring when he asked and we agreed we'd pick one together. We're both really busy though, and with living in different cities it just makes it more difficult to go and look." Kaya smiles at Takeru, his brown eyes contemplating her for a moment.

"Well, even if you had a ring the size of Jupiter Uncle Toru still wouldn't have checked for it. Don't think he'd care either. Not considering the things he said yesterday and how he'd even brought up Ai-" Takeru falls short of finishing his sentence when Hajime bumps his shoulder into him. Kaya watches the interaction and wonders what kinds of things Toru could have been saying to these two men about her.

"Toru is waiting, we should get going." Hajime urges, continuing to the building's front door.