A matter for the boss or my visit to the madhouse

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The last quick shot before a long break, because I am disappearing for the next few weeks in an uninspired wasteland / going to visit my parents.
@ Kirana: If you get bored before the next upload, read Blind - The Eye of Orion. That's the first part of this. (Did I mention that I wanted to become an advertising fanatic?) Otherwise, thanks for reading along regularly. I'm really happy *___*
@ Mei: I dedicate this chapter to you because Kori describes behavior at one point that you, as a fan of dead fish, can certainly understand. I just say "stamp your feet" ...

I hope you like our newcomer here, because you won't get rid of him anytime soon. ^ __ ^
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The serenity with which I entered the anteroom to Tanaka's office was almost too great for me. Was it possible that I was just in shock? The main thing is that it helped. I tugged at my tie one last time in displeasure - how I hated that thing!- before the secretary sent me on with the message that I should wait in the office, Tanaka would be coming soon. It occurred to me a little belatedly that I still had no excuse. Well, now it had to go without it. I took a deep breath, pushed the door open, and went inside.
A lot had changed here since I was hired. When I was at Kodansha Tech. had started, instead of the large solid wood desk, there had been rickety plastic furniture in the HR manager's office and the meeting area with the low table, the small sofa and the uncomfortable-looking designer armchairs had not yet been there.
Not to mention the young man who had put his feet on the tabletop and claimed the sofa for himself. I put him in his mid-twenties, but that impression could be deceptive. He might look a lot younger when he took off his slim glasses, which greatly disturbed the casual overall picture he was trying to give off with his shirt that was open two buttons and his dark red hair tied back loosely.A pair of earphones were hanging around his neck from which I could listen to soft music. Something classic, not easy on the ears, but also not so crooked that I wanted to flee. I greeted him curtly and then slumped into one of the chairs in front of the desk.
There was silence, carried by the subtle hissing and chirping from the headphones. In the long run the redhead would ruin his ears if he heard his music so loud that it even got over here at the desk. As if he wanted to confirm this, he plugged one of his ear canals, which made the music a little quieter, but also imperfect. What was he doing here?
I felt his eyes clearly in the side and it got on my nerves. All the more persistently I remained silent, brooding without really thinking about anything in particular. My ex-girlfriend always said I looked most focused when I wasn't thinking at all.Yasemin, Jazz ... After all the stress today, maybe I could pay her a visit. A small smile stole onto my lips, but didn't seem to make the waves emanating from me any friendlier, as the nervous sliding movements on the couch revealed.
Finally he let me win this silent tug-of-war to see who could better ignore the other and got up noisily. Annoyingly, I only partially won the game because its sudden upstroke made me wince for a moment. With four measured steps he covered the distance between us, stopped suddenly in front of me and looked down at me.
"Okay, that's enough!" He thundered out of nowhere. The same thing also gave me the slap in the face, which he slapped me in the face. "It must be a great soul if you let me run up here like that!", He continued to rage, "Do you know how difficult it was to find you at all? Is that the thanks for the fact that I -"Startled, he backed away when I jumped out of my chair at lightning speed. I had suspected it, but suppressed it: I was shorter than him. But my abrupt rise did not fail to have an effect. He fell silent, only glared at me with his dark eyes. I did the same and for a few blink of an eye we just stood there, gazing out each other's eyes. The noises from the headphones were louder again now that they were closer. I liked the music, but it only diminished my anger. For today, more than enough people had really sawed my nerves.
"Two questions," I poisoned, "First: What are you hearing? Second: WHAT'S THE SHIT, YOU FULLY DONE ?!"
As if hit by a blow, he stumbled back a few steps. The anger on his face had given way to nervous tension. I could literally see it starting to work frantically behind his forehead. Well, I was really looking forward to the explanation.His thoughts seemed to have quickly come to a conclusion, which was expressed in the fact that he pulled the earplugs a little further out of the shirt under which they were hidden and held one of them out to me. I looked at the little speaker as if it came from another planet. I had expected a lot, but not that.
"If you now expect me to stuff your lard in my ear, you clearly don't have all the cups in the cupboard," I clarified.
There was a brief flash in his eyes, but then he just smiled - and very asymmetrically. “I'll explain it to you next time. He's coming.” I wanted to stamp my foot and start screaming. Hell, I wanted an explanation NOW for the whole world going crazy around me since last night. Was that asking too much? And this guy, obviously able to make me understand part of this madness, had nothing better to do than throw himself on the sofa like a tarantula and ... What was he doing?His whole appearance was suddenly completely changed. He was crouched on the couch in an embryo position, his arms wrapped protectively around his legs. The glasses were in the breast pocket of his shirt, the plugs in his ears and his hand half in his mouth like an oversized pacifier. He rocked back and forth to the rhythm of the symphony, which could still be heard softly. "Click-click," he mumbled out between his fingers. “Click-click-click. Beep!” Just in time, before Tanaka had fully opened the door of his office, my dropped jaw obeyed me again. Wherever they let the young man out of here, if I had my way, he should get back there as quickly as possible. I was torn between an intolerable fit of laughter and the desire to just rush out of the room to demand a bit of normality from someone loudly and, if necessary, with force. Immediately and with a guarantee.
It was Ronga's magical seal, of all things, that kept me halfway down to earth, because my nervous fingers found a welcome toy in it to calm me down at least a little.Embarrassed, Tanaka looked first at the young man, then at me, then at him again, almost ran across the room and tore his drooled fingers out of his mouth again. He removed the headphones with such rudeness that he disconnected from his device and flew away. The reaction to that was a sharp, sharp whimper on the part of the younger one, which went through my marrow and bone. My confusion was complete when my supervisor began to stroke the madman gently on the head and talk to him reassuringly. "Shhht, that's fine," he mumbled and immediately afterwards said to me, nowhere near as friendly, "Virgin, please shut down the computer on my desk." His wish was my command. I gratefully took the opportunity not to have to look at them anymore. "Click-click", it rang out again from the sofa. I watched the computer shut down as if my life depended on it, just tried to listen to the quiet revolutions of its ventilation.The computer went off and the low whirring stopped.
The crazy young man did the same. Now he stared blankly at a point behind me that was only visible to him. "Well, you see, it's over again," Tanaka soothed him further, as if he were speaking to a small child, placing a white tablet on his tongue hanging out. A sigh escaped him as the redhead swallowed it and curled up on the couch, where he fell asleep almost instantly.
"And it looked like it would work this time," Tanaka said plaintively to himself. I would have liked to ask what had just happened, but I was here in Japan, the land of good morals and manners my job was at stake. So these are not good prerequisites for embarrassing my boss even more by pitting him. Instead, I took my seat again, pretending not to see Tanaka's bright red head.I also politely ignored the family resemblance that struck me now that the boy was slumbering peacefully on the sofa. I waited patiently until Tanaka had also sat down and composed a little.
"Just tell me one thing, then I'll be gone and we can all recover from the horror," I tried - not entirely unselfishly - to meet him, "Do I still have the job?"
"Yes, yes, you did," he replied a little distractedly. He cleared his throat, wiped some beads of sweat from his forehead with a crisp white cloth, and gave me an almost pleading look. I actually knew him as a very authoritarian, if not condescending, contemporary. The incident must have hit him all the more. "Well ... eh ... Would you come back in an hour?" He asked.
"Of course," I crept up his ass. He deserved it. At least I was allowed to stay in the company, "Prepare your lecture in peace and I meanwhile think about a few good, but definitely lie, explanations that you don't want to hear anyway, agree?""I agree," he replied weakly. I jumped up and walked towards the door with a speed that seemed like the school bell had rang for break. "Oh, and Virgin ...?" He called me back again. I bowed my head knowingly. "It remains between us when you finally get into the habit of calling me by the first name."
So what. The old man was smiling again. I had done my good deed for today. That didn’t happen often.