The Underground

Assigment: Information Retrieval

A month had passed since then. Most nights, you would stay at your apartment. Every few days you would visit your father back at the family villa, or even his condo in Shinagawa. Your father called you from time to time, trying to get you to come home. You refused, of course, coming up with the excuse that you were interning at your university. He seemed alright with it, but he kept pestering you about how he wanted to see you again and that he missed seeing his daughter. You kept promising him, saying "Soon, Dad, soon."

It was a good thing you were with Takeda most the time, he would always vouch for you and promise your father you were doing alright.

You were at your childhood best friend, Mika's, apartment. You hadn't seen her in a while, and you missed her. Her family was very close to yours and since you never really had all that many close friends, she was always there to lean on. It worked the other way around, too. Her parents never paid any attention to her, like your parents, only seeing them during forced family events. Daichi always treated her like his own sister, too, since she never had siblings. You were lucky enough to have a caring older brother, but she wasn't as fortunate. Naturally, you kind of adopted her as your sister.

She went to a different college, though, which is why you didn't just move in together. The two of you had just come back to her place after meeting some of your other mutual friends. You both sprawled out on the couch and threw your feet onto the coffee table.

"Tell me about this boy, please, show me a picture. Is he hot? I wanna see," Mika pleaded. "I spent all afternoon telling you about mine."

You rolled your eyes, "I want to meet this Suguru character first. I need to make sure he fits the criteria, then maybe I'll approve of him dating my best friend."

"Okay, when he's not busy, I'll arrange dinner for the three of us. But forget that," she shook your shoulders, "tell me his name. And what happened, please."

You laughed a little and said, "His name's Tooru. We hung out this one night and then I slept with him. That's it. We're just friends."

Ever since Oikawa and your little talk, the two of you had been walking on eggshells around each other. You tried to limit your interactions to just training or sometimes when he would pop up in the middle of your conversations with Iwaizumi and the other boys. Oikawa was acting stranger than usual, sometimes he would be his snarky cocky self, flirting with you to the max, and sometimes he would ignore you completely. And you didn't want to admit it, but it was making you want him even more.

Mika irritably scrunched her brows, "Friends don't sleep together."

You sighed, "Yeah, I know."

She gasped, "Oh my god! You have a crush on him!"

You pushed her away, trying to argue, "I don't."

She gave you a Really? look.

You slapped your palm against your head and admitted, "Ugh, fine. I'm in love with him, but we work together, and he's my superior. All he wanted was to fuck me."

"You're his intern? You're interning at Date Technologies again?" she quizzed. "I heard the CEO died in the bombing last month."

You nodded, agreeing with the lie. Even though she was your best friend, you didn't think it was safe to tell her about Helix and risk her safety. You interned at Date Tech last year, so it was just easier for her to assume you knew Oikawa through that.

"Well, did he say that he only wanted sex from you?" she asked.

"Not exactly, he said it was a one-time thing," you explained. "He said that it was wrong because I'm his subordinate. But he seemed fine up until the hour before he said all that to me. Before that, he was being all romantic and what-not."