Page 5 of Trapped By The CEO (Forbidden Fantasies 47)
“It’s my problem, my responsibility…”
“You’re my link. We’re in this together. If there’s something I can do to help, I’ll do it.”
“Really?”
“Yes. We’ll figure it out.”
“Really?”
“After linking with me, you’ve made me sort shit, have sex with you and clean your apartment, for what? It’s a technical licensing issue, isn’t it? You didn’t fill out the form in time to switch to a stand-alone empath’s licence, so you kept getting reassignment meetings, which you couldn’t cancel without facing a penalty. You only went because you were forced to attend, right? That’s how you ended up with me, yes?”
Deeply ashamed of himself, Kagesawa could no longer face Satoru and looked away.
“Yes.” Before Satoru could continue with the lecture, he hurried to add, “I know, I know! It’s bad… They’re trying to find me a link that works, and I keep messing it up. I keep thinking everyone’s out to get me. I don’t even care if my organism stops developing or shrivels up and dies without a link. I can’t handle this anymore. I never wanted to be linked again!” Noamount of Satoru’s projected calm could shield him from this. “But there’s nothing I can do about that now. I’ve already gone and ruined your life, too. You’reperfect.Your record would have been perfect, but now there’s this stain on it forever. Even when you get a new link and better scores and jobs, you’ll always have to explain away the loser who gave you 78.7%, I—” Kagesawa choked.
“Um,” Satoru re-grabbed his hand to stop him. When Kagesawa glanced at him, Satoru looked a little embarrassed. “I have to admit I kinda wanted to hear that, but now that you said it, I feel bad.” He smiled. Kagesawa frowned. “Look, I didn’t mean to make you feel guilty for causing me grief. I was saying that because I’m invested enough to stick around regardless of the shit that’s thrown at me. You’ve got issues? We’ve got issues. Let’s try to figure them out together.” Satoru patted him on the shoulder. As the tension eased, Kagesawa’s shoulders slumped.
“You’re really something.” He wanted to hug Satoru for being so precious.
“Go ahead.”
What? Really? Well, why not, with explicit permission… Kagesawa pulled Satoru into his arms and squeezed. “We need to do something about this link. It’s not right that you can read me this well,” he mumbled, inhaling the scent of Satoru’s shirt.
“Maybe tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”
“Aaa—! Shit, you’re still projecting! You can stop, I’m fine now.”
“I just wanted to make sure.” Satoru became serious for a moment. “If you want me to do that again, all you have to do is ask.”
Chapter 8
Harumine felt better when he woke up. There was still that persistent feeling of something not being as it should, but it wasn’t as ominous as the night before.
The chat with Kagesawa in the middle of the night had helped him gain some perspective. It was possible that the symptoms he was experiencing had something to do with Kagesawa’s mental states and would resolve on their own if the root cause was addressed. So long as it got no worse, he’d wait and see.
There was a steady, soft sound of typing in an otherwise silent room. Harumine listened to it for a while before he committed to waking up.
“Sorry, did I wake you?” Kagesawa asked. By the looks of it, he was preoccupied and multitasking heavily: using the BCI while typing on a keyboard, eyes fixed on the fairly wide screen in front of him. Why was he using a keyboard? It seemed like a waste of energy alongside the much more efficient BCI. To Kagesawa’s credit, he was using both with the ease of someone who had long since perfected the method.
“What are you doing?” Harumine asked.
“Just some… wait just a…” Whatever it was, it was intense enough to require most of his attention. Harumine sat at the edge of the bed and waited. Some five minutes later, Kagesawa pulled the wireless connector from his neck port, slapped shut the screen and turned to Harumine.
“Aa, you asked something?”
“Yeah, I was wondering what you were doing. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“I was nearly done. It’s something I do for stress relief, nothing that’d interest you.”
“You seemed pretty into it.” Harumine hadn’t paid much attention to Kagesawa’s kit before, but now that it was there in front of him, the multitude of it did look somewhat unusual. Half of his bedroom had been taken over by his gadgets.
“Ah haha, I guess. Anyway, you seem better than yesterday. Breakfast?” Kagesawa asked.
“Is this an older model? Looks ancient.” Harumine reached for and examined the extension on the wireless connector, which in turn seemed brand new.
“Umm, yes.” Kagesawa scratched the back of his head. “But I’ve upgraded it to be compatible with protocol 27.0-5d so it’s still up to standard and works with the new P4. I have a regularEndo Instruments T-60 with the included extension piece, but it chafes, so I hardly use it. You can have it if you need a spare.” He fished the 100-yen-sized button out from the depths of a desk drawer, revealing one of his credit chip stashes in the process.
There were indeed quite a few of them amongst miscellaneous paraphernalia. Kagesawa was about to close the drawer when Harumine stopped him and started sorting through the clutter for the chips.