VOLUME III: 61 – Company Owned Necessities

A few weeks later, the boxes arrived.

Not one box. Not two boxes. An entire cardboard battalion. Stacked by my door like I was starting a black-market cyber café.

“Okay,” I muttered, hands on my hips, “so either Parfait sent me my new streaming setup… or I’m being evicted and this is what’s left of my belongings.”

I bent to read the labels.

High-Quality Condenser Mic (fragile).
Parfait-Branded Laptop.
Face-Tracking Webcam.
Audio Interface (do not shake).

Great. This was either going to make me look like a professional streamer or a mad scientist with a podcast no one asked for.

Naturally, my first thought was: Call Krei.

My thumb hovered over his name on my phone. Then I remembered his last text:


KREI:
swamped at work. don’t burn down your apartment.


So much for friendship.

Which left me, a noodle-armed girlypop—trying to drag a tower of expensive equipment through my front door like a raccoon stealing groceries.

That was when the neighbor’s door creaked open.

“Aoi?”

I froze mid-box-lift. Mrs. Jones stood there, still in her work clothes, hair pinned neatly, radiating that terrifying mom-energy that could both kill and comfort.

“Hi… just casually… moving a small Best Buy into my unit. Don’t mind me.”

Her eyes narrowed at the stack threatening to collapse on top of me. Then, she raised her voice toward the inside of their apartment.

“Otis!”

From inside, a groan resonated. “Wh—Mom, I’m in the middle of—fine!”

Then he came out, all in his sweatpants and oversized shirt.

Weaver. Parfait’s cold, efficient, soul-slicing strategist. Also known, apparently, as Mrs. Jones’s son and my across-the-hall neighbour.

For a man who usually looked untouchable in a boardroom, he did not look thrilled to be summoned by his mom to babysit me and my collapsing Parfait wishlist. His hair was mussed, sleeves shoved up, socks unmatched. Humanity, exposed.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I muttered before I could stop myself.

Weaver’s gaze flicked from me, to the boxes, to his mother. “What is this?”

“Our neighbour is struggling,” Mrs. Jones said, hands on hips. “Help her.”

“I’ll just dislocate my spine and figure it out,” I offered weakly.

Weaver rubbed the back of his neck—another slip into “home Otis”—before snapping back into strategist mode. “Move.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re holding the box wrong. If you drop the audio interface, it’s coming out of your paycheck.”

“Oh my god,” I hissed. “You are my manager even at home.”

Mrs. Jones blinked. “Manager?”

Weaver shot me a look sharp enough to decapitate. “She means friend. Friend-of-a-friend. We’ve… met at a thing.”

“…Right. A thing. Totally not coworkers.”

Satisfied, Mrs. Jones retreated with a “See? Teamwork.”

Weaver ignored me after that, scooping up two boxes at once like he was auditioning for World’s Grumpiest Moving Company.

“This is ridiculous,” I muttered, trailing after him.

“You agreed to the contract. This is standard onboarding,” he replied flatly, as if he hadn’t just betrayed a very normal, very human side of himself thirty seconds ago.

Inside, he set the first load down and paused. His eyes landed on my walls, which is still plastered with old Ketsusaki fanart, prints, even the cursed body pillow cover I kept half-hidden behind a chair.

“Subtle,” he deadpanned. “Nothing says ‘new identity’ like an entire shrine to your old one.”

I flinched. “It’s called interior design. Very… avant-garde.”

He gave me a sharp look. “You’re lucky Poppy isn’t here. She’s at her volleyball practice. She'll freak out if she sees this.”

I snorted. “Okay, fair.”

“Legal’s going to love this,” he muttered, slicing into another box. 

I scowled, then tried to change the subject. “You, uh… want some snacks? I’ve got ramen, Pocky, um… a suspicious granola bar.”

He gave me the kind of look that said, “I don’t eat saturated foods”, but after a pause, he sighed. “…Pocky.”

I handed him the box, half-expecting him to refuse at the last second, but he actually opened it—took one stick with all the reluctance of a man signing a blood pact—and munched silently while assembling my mic stand.

The sight of Weaver, Parfait’s big scary strategist, eating strawberry Pocky in my disaster-of-a-living-room nearly broke me.

“…You’re never living this down,” I whispered.

He shot me a warning glance, crumbs at the corner of his mouth. “Don’t.”

“So, why do they keep calling you Otis? Isn’t your name Weaver?”

He froze, shoulders stiff. “…It’s private.”

I scoffed, leaning on the back of my chair. “Private? I’m literally your neighbor. We’ve carried boxes together. You’ve seen my shameful corner of Cup Noodles. Neighbors are basically family.”

Weaver didn’t even look up. “I don’t live here. I just stop by. Big difference.”

“Stop by often enough that your mom thinks I’m some stray you picked up,” I muttered. Then louder I said: “And come on. You’re my manager. If you can stalk me on spreadsheets and remind me of deadlines like some cursed productivity ghost, then I deserve to know your real name.”

That got him to look up. His hair was messier than I’d ever seen it in the office, a faint shadow of stubble on his jaw. He narrowed his eyes, somewhere between annoyed and tired. “You already know my real name. You just heard it. That’s it. End of story.”

“That’s not an answer, Otis.” I grinned, deliberately over-enunciating it.

“Don’t—” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t say it like that.”

“Why? What are you hiding? Were you secretly a jazz pianist in a past life? A cowboy? A Disney Channel child star?”

Weaver let out a low groan and slumped back against the couch. It was almost jarring. At Parfait HQ, he was sharp, pressed, and clean. Here, in my living room, he looked like someone’s exhausted roommate, the guy who never returned Tupperware and argued about rent in sweatpants.

“You’re not entitled to my backstory just because you have cat-ear headphones,” he muttered.

I gasped. “You’ve been staring at them!”

“They’re neon pink. They’re impossible not to stare at.”

I leaned forward, eyes gleaming like a gremlin about to ruin his day. “Fine. If you won’t tell me, I’m just gonna ask your mom.”

His head snapped around so fast I nearly cackled. “You wouldn’t.”

“Try me.”

“…Unbelievable.” He scrubbed a hand over his face, muttering something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Why me.”

And that’s when it hit me. For the first time, I wasn’t looking at Weaver the manager. I was looking at Otis—the guy who sighed too loudly, argued with his mom about grocery lists, and slouched on the couch as if it's his heaven.

And honestly? I kind of like this version better.