Chapter 2: Cappuccino Confessions

The café smelled of roasted beans and unresolved dreams. Makishizumu — Maki for short — used to work here. These days, we met at her old haunt beneath the hiss of espresso machines, where steam fogged the window separating Tokyo's chaos from our fragile adulthood. 

"Still clinging to cappuccino foam?" She slammed her biology textbook beside my cup, its pages smelling of formaldehyde and ambition. At 23, Maki had already secured a research professorship through sheer intellect, while I... 

"My liquid security blanket." I shrugged. "Ready to bankrupt yourself funding my retail therapy?" 

Her laughter cut through the tension. We both knew my ¥300,000 monthly salary as a "bilingual legal assistant" barely covered the power suits required to survive Shangguan Zhi's orbit — the 26-year-old Yale-educated prodigy who'd become my accidental lifeline. 

"His name's Shangguan Zhi," I confessed over risotto later, watching Maki's eyes widen at Roppongi's glittering skyline. "Looks like if a spreadsheet gave birth to a J-drama actor." 

The chopsticks froze mid-air. "You work with corporate royalty and complain?" 

"Try surviving his fangirl brigade." I described my first week — the lethal side-eyes from other assistants, the mortifying gray suit that made me look like a sentient storm cloud. "They expect me to be his human Google Translate *and* runway model." 

Maki stabbed a shrimp. "So transform. You outsmarted Kyoto University's entrance exams at 24 wearing secondhand clothes." 

By midnight, five new power suits hung in my closet. The azure one clung to my ribs like armor as I recounted workplace humiliations over hotpot steam. 

"Thirty-six hours to decode six international patent disputes," I muttered, tracing condensation on my beer glass. "The man annotates contracts in three languages before breakfast." 

Maki grabbed my wrists, her calloused researcher's fingers grounding me. "You translated Murakami's unpublished letters sophomore year while waiting tables. This Shangguan may have Yale, but you..." She tapped my temple. "...have survival instincts no Ivy League teaches." 

Outside, neon signs blinked the hour. Somewhere beyond the shoebox apartment, Shangguan Zhi was probably still working — unaware that his least fashionable assistant had just declared silent war on every condescending glance in that glass-walled labyrinth of law.