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Printers are heard printing. Staplers, stapling. Papers, rustling. And telephones, tirelessly ringing off the hook.
Here was the workplace of Catherine Rose and her university friends: Delancey, Gideon, Stacey, Landon and Amara. A jungle known as an office headquarters, belonging to the renowned Marquis Cooperation, where unlucky staff have it in for them at this time of day, puting everybody in a fix.
"Of all times to feel unwell... I hope she knows we have a deadline to beat!" Delancey mouthed off, setting down the mountain of files she was juggling while trying to rouse Catherine, who had dozed off from exhaustion and jetted out of the room earlier. "We warned her that the work here would be hectic before she applied. So if this is what she meant by 'I'm prepared for anything, I'm afraid she isn't!"
"Cat's only been here a mere month; cut her some slack, Delancey." Gideon—a mocha-toned, burly male with coffee-deep eyes—jumped in on his friend's behalf upon hearing such harsh criticism. Having taken a sporadic liking to Catherine Rose, the two grew inseparable during university and spent so much time together that many bet honest money he would break up with Delancey Dupont in favour of a less-jealous type of partner.
"Oh?" His intended planted her hand on her waist, silently watching the strange specimen she called her boyfriend travel across the office in timely, paced and predictable movements. First from his desk to the printer, then printer to the copier. Then, from the copier, Gideon circled back to his bureau, unaware of the sin he'd just committed.
"How cute," Delancey growled.
"What's cute?" He queried.
"If I didn't know better, I'd say you're smitten."
Pausing from his work, Gideon held an affronted finger to himself, requesting clarification. "Who? Me?" But his girlfriend's response was a dismissive groan as she sashayed away from Catherine's workstation back to hers.
Delancey had always been a free-spirited female who, despite her least-favourable traits, could hypnotize unsuspecting prey with bedazzling first impressions, a luscious hourglass figure, and plentiful unshakeable opinions. Therefore, as far as she was concerned, her boyfriend was no exception to her bounty of enticing charms.
"Since you have the intense desire to be Jesus-Loving-Christ-Almighty," Delancey continued, the statement giving tension leeway to poison the equable air in the room, "Her work's on her desk. I'm sure you won't mind helping her out."
Delancey's extreme curves highlighted a supreme, feminine dominance she held in the situation—a truly Dupont-like trademark applicable to any state of affairs. But Gideon had seen too much of it. Therefore, he was hardly manipulated and didn't easily fall prey to doing her bidding.
Half-amused and half-disheartened at the prospect, "Are you jealous?" he rubbed his nose funny.
"Not again..."
"Care to speak up, Landon?" Gideon glared at the unwelcomed guest typing away, occupying his desk and chair. "She's the one who started this, bud!"
"Hm-mm..." The friend who refused to hurl himself into the lion's den—the lions being Gideon and Delancey, of course—sighed, rolling himself and his copious documents away from his preferred position in the room for its marvellous outlook over to Amara's squared-off cubical.
"Gotta love them, no?" Landon waved as if nothing were amiss, getting right back to work—and Amara blushed, secretly obsessed with his random cute gestures, unbothered by the intrusion.
Keeping true to her cynical nature, she should have been piqued by his intrusion and should have responded with, "Why would you rather sit anywhere but at your desk?" However, Amara suppressed the urge, happily accepting life's rare opportunities of stealing glances at Landon's platinum hair in all its lush and lengthy abundance.
Rolling her chair back slightly, a tantalizing sight of his exposed creamy skin hidden away beneath his sky-blue office shirt came into view, then a repressed drool dripped from the corner of Amara's mouth. She'd often longed to entwine his hands with her umber ones and stare into his Baltic amber eyes—which did just as much damage to her heart rate—without a specific reason. But, unfortunately, reasons much more important than romance hindered that sort of progression.
"Are you... okay?" Landon asked, catching her looking.
"Wow! So you noticed something about your actual girlfriend for once! I'm astonished!" Rouge's voice took the liberty of robbing Amara of a reasonable response as to why she was ogling his neckline so sensually, drawing unnecessary attention to her petty disagreement with Gideon for a sea of onlookers to whisper about.
That was the defining factor this couple was renowned for in every corner, department and place of company gossip. Moreover, what puzzled people the most was how plentiful bets about the much-anticipated breakup event of the toxic couple—as their nickname implies—never seemed to happen.
"Next trivia! Enlighten me; can you even remember my birthday, Hun?" Delancey asked, mocking Gideon's lack of interest by edging on a saucy yet endearing nickname to the sentence.
"Dude! I am literally supporting a friend of ours, and you're suddenly reeking with jealousy? How low can you get!"
Her ocean eyes transformed into saucers at his convicting words.
"How dumb can you get to keep lying to yourself? Why is it when you're not giving me a lecture, you're always so nice and chummy toward other girls—even boys, mind you, yet never me!?" Making stark exhales in (still) complete disbelief that he had effortlessly reduced her to a whiny child deprived of affection, "I swear, sometimes it's like I don't even know who I'm dating," Delancey ended the spiel bitterly, hoping to stab him with what she believed was justified guilt.
"Are you hearing yourself right now? When have I not been anything but nice to you?"
"You don't wanna go there, Hun." Delancey tacked on another palpable blow, roaring decibels louder than before. "Or else we'll be here forever. And that's a promise I personally assure you I will keep!"
"Stacey!"
A lightly freckled, fair-skinned beauty flinched at the call, her sensitive ears perking up like a frightened rabbit. With trepidation, "Yes?" Stacey asked, her golden-brown eyes widened beyond normality at the abrasive use of her name.
"When have I ever NOT been nice to Delancey?" Gideon's eyes narrowed in on her, seriousness and anticipation clouding his vision.
"Yeah, Hun! WHEN HAS HE?" Another feisty pair joined in, cornering the poor thing into siding with one of them.
But, as for who? "Umm... I think..." Stacey turned to two silent spectators, motioning two very different gestures and courses of action—Landon had one hand pointing towards Delancey, while the other made an "OK" sign; and Amara simply bobbed her head sideways, mouthing what Stacey assumed was sage advice, seeing as Amara was rarely wrong in such beleaguered situations.
"I know my rights, so I choose not to speak."
"What the hell's that supposed to mean?" Gideon jerked back violently, acting like an unforeseen, lethal bullet had just penetrated his soul—and his very sound argument.
When they were about to offer another type of verdict-conducive question, Manager Vladimir, the head of the Development-Operation department, interceded with a smack on both misfits' skulls. And it was a heavy one, too, because his choice of weapon was a plastic pole taken from a used blueprint paper roll.
"Shut your traps up. Both of you. Please."
Upon hearing the president's arrival, clearing his throat, Manager. V hastened to make a blood-chilling announcement, creating a panicked frenzy among staff and associates.
"We've just got word that he's in the parking lot! So if you haven't showered in years, or your workstation looks like a raccoon ravaged through it, you have roughly five minutes to do something about it!"
"And if we're unable to accomplish any of that?" A short-winded brunette politely raised her hand and asked, confounding Vladimir, who rather liked to think the alternative option was very commonsensical.
"Stephanie," the stout man folded his sweating palms, bringing them up to his unimpressed visage. "If you don't want to kiss your beloved job goodbye, keep yourself out of his sight! Jesus! Отыебис от меныа! GO! GO! GO!"
"Just great." Delancey rolled her eyes dramatically, pissed, before rushing off to save her job like everybody else, first arranging her dishevelled finger waves and removing her "provocative" hoop earrings before dealing with the war field that was her desk.
Pulling up her sleeves, she moved some papers into a drawer and locked it with a key, failing to account for another incriminating type of dirt—the one that stunk up a wicked storm. And if Delancey were being honest with herself, which she rarely is, food was ironically her greatest weakness, although she doesn't like to be associated with the epithet "messy."
There was probably a piece of dumpling lying around somewhere inside her desk, unbeknown to her. But as long as it wasn't atop and visible, "What does it matter?" Delancey sufficed, spritzing some jasmine perfume to mask any lingering odour.
"Sir, I'll need you to panic a bit more! He's coming! He's coming!" Elizabeth, an abstruse and stout woman with the kinkiest red hair and the craziest personality, roared, walking in on manager Vladimir trimming his beard in his office washroom, and he froze.
He could've been shitting.
He could've been pissing.
He could've been performing very private activities, yet she brazenly waltzed right in.
More important than that, at the blood-chilling revelation, the austere man spun, slashing an oblique angle through his perfectly groomed snowy-white beard as he headed outside into his office, grabbed his grey jacket from a coat stand, and demanded three straight lines be formed.
Vladimir's voice sounded unnaturally soft and fatherly, and his demeanour transformed into that of a one-of-a-kind canonized saint. He practically sang while urging everyone to scuttle en suit out of the department building into the main one as calmly as their minds allowed, irking an already-irritated Delancey Dupont.
"Let us go give Mr. Marquis an amiable welcome!" She mimicked his shallow, pious theatrics, gaining some chuckles from her friend group, who stuck together amidst the stampede of staff. "What a joke. Nobody welcomes me like this when I show up every morning."
"Right?"
"It's so stupid." Delancey gave a throaty scoff that failed to elude anyone in close proximity, and Amara piped in harmonious agreement.
"I'll welcome you like that any day. Just say the word," Gideon said softly, patting his ruby-stained girlfriend affectionately on the head, joining the conversation.
Even before their first day as a couple, he took notice of the littlest things about Delancey, like how Chinese dumplings specifically drove her crazy. But the cutest quirk yet was how manifestations of seething emotions showed easily on her face, whether she to conceal it or not.
Gideon could never envision being mad at this woman, no matter how hard he tried to, hence why he always found himself babying Delancey.
"You're head okay?" he sympathized, staring deep into her alluring hazel eyes; and she, his coffee-black ones, smouldering underneath the affectionate gaze. Unable to bring herself to discredit his concern, Delancey turned a questionably deeper shade of red that even the colour red itself didn't possess.
Still progressing towards the front entrance, shoes from every department within the corporation came into a resounding range and spilled into a grand mass, forming a noisy ocean that drew nearer and nearer to their dangerous goal.
The loudness of everything drowned out Delancey's chance of a response to Gideon's question, so she nodded instead, waning the apprehension writhing his confident features... which soon returned when the repugnant sound of vomit echoed through the tiniest crevices in the hand hall and main building.
"P-president M-Marquis!" Bellowed Manager Vladimir, dread riding colour from his face. "What a, um... lovely surprise t-this is!"
"Lovely?" Landon winced painfully.
"This isn't lovely whatsoever."
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