"You keep talking about quality, about art, but with what you are doing right now, you are betraying quality and insulting art."
Tanaka's voice suddenly rose, "Kurosawa Rinko, you are not worthy to talk about art."
...
The entire meeting room fell into a deathly silence.
Miki stared, mouth hanging open, completely unsure what expression she was supposed to wear in front of this man.
For the first time in her life, she discovered that shamelessness and talent could fuse together in a person so seamlessly.
Yua and Shizuka, on the other hand, were already thoroughly brainwashed by Tanaka's twisted rhetoric. The way they looked at him was now full-on worship.
As for Rinko, she just stood there, leaning against the wall as if all the strength had been drained from her body.
"I... am not worthy to talk about art?"
Those few words were like a razor-sharp dagger, driven straight into her proud heart.
From childhood, she had always been the genius in everyone's mouth.
Her life was made of drawing. Art was her faith, her everything.
And today, that faith was shattered by a man who, at first glance, looked completely useless, using reasoning she could not refute.
Humiliation, rage, unwillingness, confusion... countless emotions surged through her, eventually condensing into one stubborn thought.
She was going to prove it to him.
She was going to prove that she deserved the word "art".
Rinko suddenly raised her head, and in those beautiful phoenix eyes burned a flame that bordered on obsession.
She glared at Tanaka, and under the stunned gaze of everyone in the room, she made her decision.
Rinko took a deep breath, as if it cost her every ounce of strength she had, then forced the words out through clenched teeth. "You... come with me."
The sentence exploded through the meeting room like a bolt of lightning, leaving the other three scorched inside and out.
Ayase Miki's jaw almost dislocated. The script in her hands slipped to the floor with a loud rustle, her pretty eyes filled with pure horror that screamed: "Holy shit. She actually bit."
She could not believe it. The woman who always looked down on everything, who treated men as air, the most tsundere of the entire company... Kurosawa Rinko had actually been swayed by that bastard in just a few lines?
On the other hand, Yua waved her tiny fists excitedly, silently cheering Tanaka on. "Tanaka-kun, do your best! The future of Flower Company depends on your database!"
In the corner, programmer Mochizuki Shizuka calmly pushed up her glasses, a sage-like glint flashing across the lenses.
She opened her laptop, created a new folder titled "On Dynamic Male Responses Under H-Stimulation", and began typing rapidly, already preparing to document the theory.
As for the two people at the center of it all, they had no attention to spare for anyone else's mental drama.
The moment Rinko finished speaking, it was like her courage had been completely emptied.
That face of hers that usually wore a mask of frost was now as red as a ripe apple, the flush spreading from her cheeks down her slender, pale neck. Even her small, delicate earlobes had taken on a temptingly pink hue.
Inside, Tanaka was already setting off fireworks, his mental BGM switching automatically to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy".
On the outside, though, his expression remained that of a man heroically sacrificing himself for the sake of art, solemn and heavy, with a faint air of tragic nobility.
He knew that with a woman as fiercely tsundere as Rinko, he had to build the steps for her, let her feel that everything she was about to do was for lofty artistic ideals, not because she was simply tempted by his body.
"Kurosawa-san, what are you..." he asked, feigning confusion, his tone utterly proper. "I am only a simple art reference. Please do not harbor any improper thoughts about me."
Rinko's head snapped up. She glared at him with those beautiful phoenix eyes, the look in them practically screaming, "Say one more word of that crap and I will bite you to death."
She did not say a thing. It was as if she had made up her mind. She suddenly reached out and grabbed him by the wrist.
Hiss...
Tanaka sucked in a breath through his teeth in his mind.
Rinko's hand was cold, like fine mutton-fat jade. Her skin was smooth and soft, but the tips of her fingers were pale from how tightly she was gripping him, and there was an unmistakable tremble in them.
That mix of coolness, softness, trembling and hidden strength shot like electricity straight down his arm and, in an instant, woke the little Tanaka between his legs from its slumber.
"Come with me." Rinko forced the three words out from deep in her throat, then without another word, like a small female leopard driven into a fury, dragged Tanaka toward the door.
The motion looked fierce and domineering, but Tanaka could feel that her grip was not actually very strong, a little unsteady in fact.
She was using this show of toughness to cover up the panic and turmoil in her heart.
Tanaka let himself be pulled along, obedient as a lamb, as they walked out through the office area.
Under the mixed gazes of "Do your best", and "Data acquisition ready", he was dragged straight into the pantry.
The pantry was tiny, maybe five or six square meters, with a coffee machine, a water dispenser, and a small fridge squeezed inside.
The narrow space was filled with a faint scent of coffee beans.
With a loud bang, Rinko swung the door shut behind them.
The click of the lock sounded especially clear in the quiet pantry, like the signal that some kind of ritual was about to begin.
...