“So how was your adventure with Cindy?” One of the tinies grinned as he playfully elbowed Jeremy in the side.
“For the last time, we didn’t do anything. She passed out like as soon as she got to her bedroom.” Jeremy groaned in reply.
“Just teasing!” He laughed as he walked away. Jeremy grumbled to himself as he closed the lid of the copy machine, watching absentmindedly as the machine sluggishly printed a copy of the file in the tray. He had been the third person to comment on the events of Friday, and only one of them was even there.
Meanwhile, Cindy sat idly in Ichibe’s office, quietly looking down at the cubicle on the pedestal while Ichibe sat facing away from his computer.
“Look, I’m not going to penalize you in any way. I already spoke to Jeremy and he’s not upset. Said that you treated him pretty well, so I don’t think he’s unsafe with you or anything like that. Just please be careful in the future when it comes to handling tiny coworkers, even if you’re friendly with them. We can be pretty fragile.” Ichibe remarked.
“Thank you sir, I am so sorry for any trouble I might have caused for anyone. I promise you that I never did anything to harm Jeremy.” Cindy replied, staring down at her feet.
“That’s good to hear. You and Jeremy seem to work well together so I’m glad to see you two getting along. It can often be intimidating for us tinies to work with humans, but it seems like you’ve done an excellent job working with him. I’m impressed. Have a good rest of your day!”
Cindy stood up with a sigh and walked out of his office with renewed confidence.
“Oops! Excuse me!”
Ichibe’s blood ran cold as Rachel’s voice filled his ears. In a panic, he spun around to his computer, pretending to work on a form as he stared deeply into the monitor.
“Morning boss!” Rachel cheered in her usual chipper tone.
His confidence wavered. “Did she not even remember last night?” Ichibe thought in his head as he remained frozen in place, paralyzed by the vortex of thoughts in his head.
“Boss? You ok?” Rachel leaned over the cubicle, staring down at him with a worried expression.
“Y-yeah. I’m fine.” Ichibe replied, straightening his tie. “Tell me, when is my meeting with Keystone Manufacturing? I know we’re meeting to discuss selling their metal fab stuff in Japan, but I don’t remember when.”
“That would be 2:30, sir, so you have plenty of time. Want some coffee?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
Rachel beamed with pride as she grabbed a coffee pot from a nearby table and skipped out the door.
Ichibe sighed with relief as the door closed behind her. For a moment, he stared into the blank computer screen, completely wordless as he pondered his future relationship with Rachel. Whether they actually started dating or not, her drunken words seemed to have impacted their relationship and how they approached each other. Ideas of what a life with Rachel would be like swirled around his head. His solely career focused drive had left him single, so there was really nothing stopping him from going out with her. Nevertheless, the idea of actually talking to her about such things send chills down his spine.
---
“I swear to God, if one more person asks me about Friday night, I am going to lose it.” Jeremy complained, throwing himself against the back of his chair in frustration.
“Who’s been talking to you like that? I’ve been getting it too, but I’m not going to stand for my intern getting harassed.” Cindy replied, grimacing.
“Some of the marketing guys, when I was photocopying those documents.”
Cindy scowled. “If you see them again, tell them I am going to stomp on them if they talk like that to you again.”
“You don’t need to go that far!” Jeremy replied in horror.
“Nobody fucks with my people.”
“Please don’t step on people though.”
Cindy sighed, relaxing her shoulders. “Fine. I will talk to them though. I act nice with the tinies but if I need to scare the shit out of them, I will. I have no tolerance for that sort of stuff.”
“It’ll be alright. Anyway, what’s he status on that order?” Jeremy replied as he tried to change the copy.
“Oh yeah, that, right now it’s backordered still. I’m waiting on a call from the manufacturer.” Cindy replied, taking a deep breath to calm herself. She returned to her keyboard, once again filling the office with the rhythmic clacking of keys.
---
A nervous tension hung in the air as Ichibe and Rachel each buried themselves in their work. Silence, broken only by the sound of keyboards filled the air as the two did their jobs.
“Is the materials for the meeting ready to go?” Ichibe commented flatly.
“Yeah, check your inbox.” Rachel replied in a similarly monotone voice.
Once again, the two stewed in the tension in silence, throwing themselves into their work in order to push past the nerves running hot in the room. Ichibe came to a stop and stretched with a big yawn.
“Hey, do you want to talk about Friday? It seems to be stressing you out.”
Rachel was thankful the high walls of his office sheltered the tiny from view as her cheeks burned red in embarrassment. She froze, before burying her hands in shame as the memories of her drunken confession looped over and over again like a gif in her mind.
“I know, I know, I was really drunk, and I am so sorry. Please don’t get mad at me, I know you probably have a family and I just let it slip.” Rachel whimpered as she continued to hide herself in shame.
Ichibe frowned, before rising to his feet. He dashed to his office elevator, tapping his foot nervously as it hurtled down towards the ground. As soon as it opened, he ran across the tile floor, barely even paying mind to the vastness of the space around him as he rushed towards the mahogany wall of Rachel’s desk. He scoured around for a moment as he searched for the elevator, before frantically banging the up-arrow. Finally, a few moments later and he was standing on Rachel’s desk.
Despite how long he had spent in the room, he was never able to properly see Rachel’s desk from his office, or from the floor he walked across to get there. To his relief, Rachel’s desk was meticulously organized, with the enormous office stationary neatly stacked in one corner, while her sticky notes were carefully organized along the bottom of the vast monitor in front of him. For now, however, this was of little mind, as his main concern, the terrified mountain of Rachel had buried her face in her arms as she cowered on the table.
“Hey! Rachel! It’s ok, you’re not in trouble.”
The mountain shuddered before Rachel’s reddened face emerged, staring straight at the tiny on her desk. She wiped tears from her puffy eyes.
“I’m not mad, and you did not do anything wrong.”
Rachel sniffled.
“If it means anything, I’m single. Haven’t had a chance to meet anyone with how busy I’ve been. Really, I think I feel the same way as you.” Ichibe replied quietly.
Rachel’s face lit up immediately with an enormous smile.
“I’m so glad you feel like I do!” Rachel beamed, her fears vanishing into pure joy.
“I’d like to take this slowly if you’re ok with that. I still need to figure out how to make this all work since I am still your boss.”
“I’m ok with waiting as long as we need. I’m just glad to be able to admit this to you but I love you!”
“I… love you too, Rachel, thank you for being so amazing.” Ichibe replied, sighing with relief. “Glad we can get this resolved and I do want to discuss this further to make sure there’s no issues in the future, but I do need to go to this meeting real quick. Can I get you to take me to the pickup lane?”
“Sure thing, boss!” Rachel replied with pride, setting her hand down on the desk, stifling a squeal of delight as she felt his tiny feet sink into her soft palm.
---
“Hey, Jeremy, having a good day?” Tim inquired, downing the last of the coffee in his cup.
“Eh, I’m doing alright, still catching some shit from people about Friday, but other than that, things are fine.”
“Gonna go ahead and guess that what everyone thinks happened didn’t happen, right?”
“Nope, she kissed me a bit and then passed out. Nothing sexual happened at all. She was cute when she was sleeping though.” Jeremy chuckled, placing his water bottle under the tiny dispenser.
“Hey Tim! How are you? And Jeremy, on Friday, mountain climbing or cave diving?”
“Uh… I…” Jeremy stuttered.
A dark shadow suddenly engulfed the tiny’s water cooler platform. By now, Jeremy had managed to get used to the sheer scale between him and Cindy, but standing in her shadow with her furious expression made him feel smaller than ever.
Cindy’s enormous hand shot down like a missile, effortlessly lifting the offending tiny into the sky. He instinctively squirmed between her fingers as her billboard-sized face scowled at him.
“Listen here you little shit, if I ever catch you harassing MY staff like that again, I will fucking swallow you whole and add you to the fat on these ‘mountains.’ Do you understand?”
The tiny employee was nearly catatonic with fear as she dropped him back onto the platform. He instantly spouted an incoherent babble of apologies to Jeremy before quickly darting back to the cubicles.
Cindy turned her attention back down to Jeremy, who instinctively recoiled under her harsh glaze. Sensing the fear in his eyes, her expression softened, and a soft smile quickly returned to her face.
“Sorry you had to see that, guys. I’ll probably get bitched out by his department, but oh well, he had it coming.”
Tim smirked. “Cindy can be quite scary when she gets angry. I worked for her for a bit, though when I needed defending, it was good to have a building-sized woman on your size.”
Cindy giggled in response. “You were a good employee, Tim, really glad to see you succeeding in your current role.”
“Yep!”
“Filled your bottle Jeremy?” She added, waiting for his response. “Alright, let’s go!” Placing her hand next to the railing, she allowed Jeremy to climb on before carefully curling her fingers around him and walked back to her office.
---
“Oh yeah, by the way, the marketing head did send me a shitty email, but I forwarded it to Ichibe and he’ll deal with it. Sorry you had to put up with all that nonsense.” Cindy leaned back in her chair.
“Thanks. That really was a weird night, huh. Mountain climbing and cave diving, what a weird thing to say.”
“You didn’t get what he was saying?” Cindy inquired.
“Kinda, I knew it was something sexual.” Jeremy replied.
“Yeah, it was. Some people have no filter and add in the unusualness of human-tiny relations, and everyone wants to know everything. I had some of the girls ask me where I put you, and I said, ‘I put him on the nightstand’ and they didn’t believe me. Some people.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m hoping after all this shit blows over, we can go back to being normal coworkers.”
“I mean, I feel like it made us a bit closer at the very least. It was definitely an experience.”
“Amen to that, Jeremy.” Cindy patted him on the head. “It’s been an interesting day, wanna get dinner after this? My treat.”
“Thank you, I would love to.”
---
“So now that we’re… dating I guess…” Rachel asked, sitting next Ichibe’s cubicle in her chair, “What do you want to do?”
“Would you like to get dinner somewhere after work? I’ll pay, of course.” Ichibe replied.
“I’ve been waiting so long to hear that, sir.”
“Please, call me Ichibe.”
“Yes, Ichibe!”