Not Everybody Can Be A Protagonist

Chapter....EiGhT? OWO? What's this? This is different!

Hi, ah, compared to the last months things are a lot better, so, um, hi?

Weren't they supposed to be a background company?! Why were they chosen?! They're a background character! A mob! Faceless and nameless! Maekawa tried to pull their hand from the death grip they were held in.

"You're going to love our office place!" A pink-haired girl gushed. "We have top-notch facilities and coffee imported from Momo's personal branch from the Philipines! Or was is it Columbia? I only remember her assistant telling me that a guy named Oscar Romeo lived there."

"Óscar Romero," Momo corrected. "And he was from El Salvador, Mina. Learn your geography."

"Hehe," Mina laughed. "This sounds worse than the time I thought soccer.........football............the game with the brown ball was common in England!"

Momo sighed. "Don't mind her, she's an airhead."

Maekawa bit their tongue. A very upset look was clearly placed on their face. 

This girl....she's dark-skinned, a gyaru? A tan? Dark-skinned people in this world are usually just tanned......it frustrates my brother all the time when he comes back from Egypt. Something about the blond hair stereotype pissing him off......when are they going to let me go? I can't make a break for it, that'll get them searching for me. I can't seem too happy because it'll have them talk to me and I certainly can't ask to leave........

"Hey! You good?"

Maekawa decided to do the thing that they do best: be a background character.

Smiling big enough to blur their face, Maekawa hummed in an agreeable tone. "I'm good!"

Mina stopped and rubbed her eyes before turning around and walking forward.

"What's wrong, Mina?" 

Mina shook her head and kept walking. "Just thought I saw somethin' weird! Let's get this goodie back to the office!"

Maekawa followed behind perfectly. Their steps matching Mina's and Momo's pace for pace with flawless rhythm.  The same smile was on their face the entire time yet it never grew old.

"Hey! What's your favourite food?"

"I like seafood."

"Have you seen this movie?!"

"I'm not really a movie person."

"What's it like at your job?"

"The pay's decent and my co-workers are nice."

"Do you have any juicy gossip?"

"Not really, but there was the incident yesterday where Osada didn't notice her cup was ripped at the bottom and spilled water all over her papers."

"Do you have a lover?"

"I do, but they're helping their sick father right now."

"What about pets?"

"I have a cat named Miku."

Maekawa smiled and dodged each question with the blandest answers they could give. Lying is dangerous in this situation. If they don't do their job right and these protagonists decided to snoop into their history and life they'd find out that Maekawa has been spewing white lies. They had to lie correctly- with hints of truth and complete cover-ups. They had to make a new face that fit their old one so the pros wouldn't notice it was make-up.

"I love your outfit!"

Maekawa blushed a little bit. "I just threw on what I had cleaned yesterday."

Momo quirked a brow. "You do laundry regularly?"

"As often as I should, yes. I don't like the smell of the clothes and neither does Miku."

"Your lover doesn't mind the smell?"

"They do, but they light incense often."

"Spiritual? Religious? Sensitive?" Mina searched hungrily for answers. Beastly eyes searching for an opening.

However, Maekawa was an expert fawn. "No, it was just a habit their grandparents used to do. They like to joke about how their grandma remembered to light the sticks more than she remembered her husband's name."

Half of Maekawa's sentence had become hidden and bland and according to plan, Mina and Momo hardly noticed.

"Look! That's our building!"

Maekawa gave a little gasp of awe. "Very nice."

"It is, isn't it?" Momo smiled. "A friend of ours, the Ochako company, built it for us. We paid them, of course!"

Mina hit Momo's arm. "Let's just get *** inside! We gotta return *** before *** office closes! That was part of our contract!"

I never was offered a contract... Maekawa scowled internally. When I say internally, I don't mean in their mind. I mean deep, deep down in their subconscious. A part where manga never touches. Anything above that would be noticeable by empath-type characters. 

The pros dragged them inside and sat them at the head of a big table. 

"Fellow pros, meet our person!"

Maekawa looked into the room and smiled. "Hi, I'm-"

Wait.

Maekawa squeezed their palm and looked around.

This isn't supposed to be happening.

"I'm-"

No, no, no, no! This isn't supposed to be happening! I'm a background character! Where is my cutoff?"

"We don't have all day," one of them scowled.

"*****'s just shy!" Mina waved her hands frantically. "Psst, hurry up and introduce yourself!!"

Maekawa squeezed her hands together and bowed apologetically. "Forgive me....my name is Maekawa."

"What's your quirk?"

Maekawa shot up. "Excuse me?" Shit.

A purple-haired man with circles in his hair was holding up a pen. "What's...your....quirk..?"

A rippling pain shot through them. Gods, please, they begged, don't do this to me. They shook in pain for a perfect minute.

Maekawa took a deep breath in and looked toward the pink hero. "C-could you guys turn the accc up? My qui-quirk makes it it hard to sta-stand the coldd."

What were they doing before this? Oh right, they were working at Wakuneco. They were here for a mandatory survey.

"Do you have any friends? What about the dude who was hosting the party? What was his name?"

"Who?"

A red-haired hero smiled. "The man who hosted the party! We can't seem to find him on any of the databases.....

"Oh," What was his name again?...... The one in the background........ "Oh yeah," They said aloud, a haze lifting off of their mind. "His name was Taniguchi."

A little quiz for you all, why is [Wakuneco] in bold?