Friends With Benefits | Chishiya x Reader

Chapter Twenty

☆ In which you are made aware of a man's rather googly appearance. ☆

The sun was beginning to set. Remnants of afternoon sunlight reflect off your mirror and through the pink post-it, casting squares of rainbow around your room and a small rosy glow in the space beneath your dressing table. You watch the patch of pink as Kuina talks, dreadlocks swaying lightly as she recounts the game she has just played. 

Kuina had gone to find you almost immediately after she had returned from her game, but Chishiya was nowhere to be seen. He had floated away after the two of you spoke at the games departure earlier, off to some mystery place you presumed was that obscure corridor you'd found yesterday.

Although something in the back of your mind had urged you to, you had made no attempt to follow him.

"It was a Four of Diamonds," Kuina reports, "and I'm starting to wonder if I'm not as smart as I think I am." She sighs, and stretches out her legs from where the both of you sit on your hotel room floor. The two of you sip at mugs of the Beach's terrible coffee, courtesy of Kuina.

"It was the only drink I could find," she'd said woefully after handing you a cup. "And what better way to appreciate life after surviving a death game is there than to imbibe Komori's Coffee Emporium Instant Coffee?"

You did not add that you were in no need of any additional zest of life (especially not when it came in the form of muddy liquid), and had clinked your mug with Kuina's in a very reluctant cheers.

"We had to do something weird with this lightbulb and some switches," she continues, taking a sip and crinkling her nose. "Seriously, it felt like I was the only one who didn't understand! If Arisu hadn't been there, I might have come back a bit crispier. Wait, no," Kuina pauses. "Ann was there too. I guess we would've been alright, then. But my point still stands!" 

You smile languidly, but then look up from the pink glow you are strangely fixated on. "Arisu?" You ask, both coffee cup and brows raised questioningly.

"Ah, the new guy," Kuina says dismissively, waving a hand. "I'm sure you've seen him. Y'know - tall, appalling beach shorts, kind of googly."

"Googly?" You snort. She must mean the man you'd seen earlier, standing by the pool with the short-haired woman. He was a bit googly, in the sense that he looked as if he moved through the world in a perpetual state of confusion. Judging by Kuina's recount of the game, he must be hiding a rather sharp mind under all that google.

Perhaps you had passed judgement on him too quickly, and that he actually could be a Diamonds player after all. 

"Yes, googly," Kuina grins. "I hear he brought in some pretty high cards."

"Oh, really?" Your palm comes up to rest under your cheek. "Will he be made into an executive, then?" You think back to Chishiya, and his endless meetings. He never says much about them, but the look on his face he always wears after leaving one pretty much tells you all you need to know about his unenthusiasm for them.  

Kuina shrugs, and chews the end of her straw. "Maybe. I wouldn't wish it on the poor guy, though." She leans back thoughtfully. "Meetings with both Niragi and Chishiya sounds like hell itself."

You laugh, and nudge her with your leg lazily. "He isn't that bad. Chishiya, that is." You amend. "Niragi is a different story."

Kuina makes a sort of scrunched-up expression and flaps her arms about, coffee threatening to spill. "You don't know the half of it!" She complains, as you set down your own mug to guide her arms down from their treacherous height. 

"The two of them are grown men and yet they act like high-school morons. Do you know what happened the other day? Niragi tried to gossip to me." she bemoans. At this you make a rather strangled noise, one of half-laugh-half-horror. "I have absolutely no idea why. The only explanation I can come up with, other than the fact that Niragi really just has no friends, is that he was trying to get insider info on Chishiya from me in exchange." She taps her cheek in contemplation. "But then Chishiya appeared out of nowhere like he always does. I think Niragi was trying to get him off the executive team by means of scandal, although as long as Niragi remains an executive I doubt there's much scandal that could put Chishiya in a worse light than him."