Original Sin (MewGulf AU)

🌻Chapter 7

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"This is terrible," Gulf mumbled, squinting at his notes. The schedule for all his upcoming projects was written down in detail, but the band of authors he had started managing at the beginning of the month were no good. All of their projects were remarkably behind the schedule.

When Gulf was still new to the department, Makihara had been king and given him comparatively good authors. But that kind of indulgence was no longer acceptable. Gulf preferred to be treated like everyone else anyway.
He picked up the phone with determination and called one of the authors who was far behind schedule. All he got was an answering machine.

"Hello, I'm not home right now. Please leave a message after the beep."

"This is Gulf from Sozan Publishing. I'm calling to see how you're doing with our current project. I'll try again later," he said and hung up.

But that was all his coworker Boat needed to start laughing. "Was that Takashima?"

"Yeah. I can never get a hold of him. It's frustrating."

Boat nodded understandingly. "As soon as Takashima hits a wall on a manuscript, he disappears. Haven't you heard about him?"

"You mean that's true? They weren't joking?"

The more impossible the situation got for Takashima, the higher the probability was that he would bolt. It was a famous rumor. But Gulf had never really believed it. It had to be just a rumor.

"You bet it's true. Ishida, his last editor, had a lot of trouble with him. He got results, but they were always late. The printed always take really long, too, so you better schedule a couple of days of cushion for him."

"I didn't know that. Thanks."

Gulf had thought it was so hard to get a hold of Takashima because he was busy. When he'd gone to meet Takashima for the staff change, he had seemed very humble and serious. Gulf couldn't imagine that he would abandon a manuscript and disappear.

Then again, if Takashima found it impossible to make progress, then the constant harassment of an editor would probably only drive him into hiding. Gulf could understand the psychology of an author who would ignore the phone or even flee his home.

"He's working on a short story collection this time, right? We've already set the the publication line-up and made it public, so you can't drop him."

"That is a problem. What am I going to do?" Gulf sighed.

Sozan Novels, the main imprint of the pulp fiction department at Sozan Publishing, was turning fifteen that year. To celebrate, they were sponsoring raffled and publishing collections from writing competitions by popular authors. The parade of official events would begin early in the spring. Once the publicity went out, it was difficult to drop a project, so people in the department were even more cutthroat than usual. But no matter how busy Gulf was, he couldn't eliminate the time he spent with Mew. He couldn't stop his heart from missing him.

The night before, it had been nearly one in the morning when Gulf got to Mew's apartment after work. He would have been happy just to see Mew and talk for a little a while, but as the moment passed, they wound up having sex.

It was a normal for lovers to yearn to feel each other's warmth and skin. In fact, when Gulf took Mew inside himself and his tight flesh wrapped around Mew, he lost himself completely in the act. But eventually it had to be more than just sex. Gulf wanted to have frivolous conversations with Mew like normal people. He wanted to go out with Mew somewhere where no one would notice them.

Gulf was always the one to seek Mew's absence, never the other way around. The only time Mew had ever made an excuse to see Gulf was when he'd recently invited him to go to Hayama. Gulf had turned it down because he had to work, but Mew had never repeated the offer.