Volume 1 - Prologue

“Shimono-kun, come see me for a moment.”

As I was busy hammering the enter key, the section chief called for me. Thinking ‘Crap, I messed up’ to myself, I stood up from my desk. She must have realized that I was about to fall asleep. Because I was watching late-night anime, I’m currently plagued by fierce sleepiness. However, that is inevitable. After all, last night, the final episode of ‘My Senpai Likes Me’. There’s no way I’d watch that recorded, so I made up my mind to stay up late. Hence, I’m now lacking essential sleep.

In this state, lunch break passed. The steamy May air filled the office, which only worsened my drowsiness and desire to sleep, but…because of the section chief’s voice, I woke up fully. As if that wasn’t enough, the section chief’s sharp eagle-eyed gaze pierced right through me. Despite having almond eyes, they were still fairly large. Her small nose emphasized a more childish and adorable presence, but taking everything into account, she was truly more beauty than cutie. No, she’s a beauty above beauties. In my 27 years of living, I’ve never seen a woman that looked better with long, black hair.

“What are you doing? Hurry up and come on over.”

Since I was reprimanded because I was taking my time, I walked around the small island known as my desk and hurried towards where she stood.

“A-Apologies, Chief. How can I help you?”

Her name is Kamijou Touka. With her mere 28 years, she already has an entire department with 30 people under her wings, a so-called super-elite woman. In this department, there are people who have a longer history at this company than her, and yet not a single one of them saw Kamijou Touka as unworthy of her position. She is an exceptionally talented woman.

By the way, my name is Shimono Nanaya. I may be 27 years old, but I’m just about as average as it can get, not worthy of such a high-ranking position. On the contrary, with how often I tend to mess up, the section chief scolds me a lot. We’re only one year apart, so how can there be such a huge difference in ranking between us? With such a perfect human being right in front of me, I can’t help but be assaulted by a strong feeling of inferiority.

She’s excellent at her work and a beauty to behold, so I have no way of even standing on the same level as her. Even her proportions are perfect. From the skirt she wore, I could see her dazzling legs, leaving me uncertain where to even look. Not to mention those beautiful tights, they are sparkling. Ahh, I want to be those tights so badly.

As a beautiful superior who’s adept at her job, talking in terms of my preferences for women older than me, she’s in the exact center of my strike zone. After we were reunited at this company, I immediately looked online for a ‘Female superior tights video’ that night. Of course, I only looked it up, I didn’t do anything that I wouldn’t be able to describe here.

Right, right, there’s a reason I said reunited. In fact, we both graduated from the same high school. Since we never really had anything to do with each other, I highly doubt she even remembers me, let alone that we graduated from the same high school, but I’ve always, always admired Kamijou Touka. Back in high school, she possessed magnificent leadership which allowed her to get elected as the student council president, and I’ve known of a lot of students, boys and girls alike, who admired her.

Naturally, I was part of that group. And of course, romantic feelings were mixed in there. Basically, my love for older women started back in high school. Of course, being someone insignificant as me, I couldn’t confess, and simply watch her from the shadows. Even so, watching her dignified and dazzling appearance was more than enough for me. Ahh, memories of youth, wonderful.

However, that is now in the past. Right now, Kamjou Touka…Section Chief Kamijou is nothing but my superior. A symbol of awe and fright, you might even say. Being called over by her like this, my heart was racing painfully fast. I would have loved to run away from this place immediately, cuddle up to my blanket at home, and play mobile games all day. I still need to gather some materials to level up my favorite Onee-san character. I don’t like being scolded, no no.

“A bit closer, will you?” My superior sent me a scowl, ordering me to approach her further, not knowing that I was just a lowly man too terrified to move.

Naturally, there was no cuteness in that gesture to be found. After all, she had her arms crossed, resting on her chest that had a perfect size in my opinion. Damn it…this is the best. What destructive power. In my head, I always call this kind of thing breast harassment. How can I focus on my job when you flaunt this chest around? I suggest our company should seek out to reform our working methods here. Glance. For crying out loud…Glance. Ah, she’s glaring at me now.

“Um, did I do something again?”

This is my real phrase. In any different world, it might be fairly popular, but in this modern world I live in, this phrase is the correct one to use. Living as a member of society is a depressing thing, let me tell you. As I approached the section chief with these words, she suddenly grabbed my necktie and pulled my face closer. A flowery scent tickled my nose. It’s the mature scent that will make your chest race faster. The translucent lips in front of me started to move, creating a comfortable tone.

“Your necktie is crooked. Do you plan on heading to the maintenance meeting and greeting our customer looking like this?”

Her smooth and white hands fixed my necktie for me. Oh yeah, because I overslept this morning, I left the house without properly checking my appearance in the mirror.

“I’m sorry, and thank you very much. This feels like we’re a newlywed couple, haha.”

“What stupid things are you saying? You’re stupid. There’s no way that the two of us shared a passionate office love behind everybody’s eyes, only for you, after two and a half years of dating together, to propose to me at a beautiful restaurant…No, on a usual day at home would be better, which then led to us getting married and from there on leaving our house together with a goodbye kiss. Are you stupid? Jeez.”

“Yes, I’m sorry!”

Crap, I was trying to light up the mood a bit, but that apparently had the opposite effect and spoiled her mood. Her face is now beet red as she’s scolding me. She even called me stupid three times. I guess it’s a bad habit of mine to say more than I should.

“Really…Why do you think I made you responsible for such a big job? It’ll be our first meeting with them, so get a grip, will you.”

“Yes! That’s right, it’ll be our first meeting, so…Ahhhh, that’s right! Today is maintenance day!”

The company I work at, called Closed Corporation Geotam Commercial Affairs, mainly focuses on us dealing with coffee machines, printers, and other office-related devices and equipment. Since we also sell consumable goods like toner cartridges and so on, when it comes to bigger customers, we don’t only sell but also provide monthly maintenance to do a follow-up check.

Starting this month, I was given the responsibility to take care of the maintenance for one of our biggest customers, acting as one of the vital points of our sales in total. As the scale of this customer company of ours is quite massive, the number of their devices and equipment is of an entirely different magnitude than normally. Once it comes to maintenance of a great number and variety of devices and equipment developed from all sorts of manufacturers, someone with no experience like me needs a manual to properly proceed with this work. Going in there unarmed would just end up with me being publicly embarrassed.

However, I totally that this maintenance was supposed to happen today, which is why I did not have all the necessary manuals with me. I do have the digital data, but…printing all the necessary documents until the time of the meeting was pretty much impossible.

“Ahhh, crap…what should I do…”

“You…don’t tell me…”

“C-Chief…help meeeee!”

Together with a scream that could come straight out of a Do*aemon movie, our story began.