Trifecta

Regret

They'd walked into work together.

It was a cursory observation, made when Takano had been smoking his idle way through a cigarette, gazing moodily out of the glass-fronted break room. Smoke tendrils had dissipated into nothing as his mind wandered, like the plot of the books he so enjoyed, to its foregone conclusion. Onodera. 

Ritsu.

God, he pissed him off. The moment he'd traipsed into Emerald with his stupid stubbornness and stupider green eyes that bespoke all the things the former held back, his fate has been sealed.

Maybe it'd been sealed since that sakura-trellised day in their school library, where those three little words had rushed forth past trembling lips, carried forth by a wave of unbounded emotion.

It was the first time anyone had felt so recklessly, boundlessly for him. He was convinced it'd be the last.

So he'd given and given with eighteen-year-old abandon until there had been nothing left to give. And when Onodera had disappeared from his clasp like a whirlwind mirage, he'd emptied his heart in one clean sweep.

Only to unleash crashing waves of all the emotion he'd taken away with him upon Takano as he awkwardly stumbled his way into the older man's life and faceplanted right into the epicenter of his thoughts.

And before he knew it, he'd been swept away.

But Takano had been wrong.

People had felt for him after Ritsu, and the one who'd mattered the most out of all of them was the one he currently espied making a hurried entrance through the gate overlooked by the break room. He was accompanied by a tall figure that stood just that side of too close for comfort. With that distinct chestnut hair, there was no mistaking who he was.

In spite of himself, Takano felt his lips curling into a smirk. Those two were really not two people he could have ever pictured getting together. He hadn't even known they were on speaking terms until recently.

But if someone could coax Yokozawa, who turned up earlier than him even when the beginning of hell week pushed his mornings into misty dawns, into almost-tardiness,

Well, then the wild bear of Marukawa had finally met his match.

It isn't like I can talk, though. He was well aware that few could hold a candle to him in terms of unlikely relationships. He rather liked Kirishima-san personally, too, although he didn't care much for that lighthearted attitude of his. 

Despite outward appearances, though, the man was a stickler for his duties and could always be relied on to get the work done. Kirishima-san was one of the few people in his line of work he actually respected and looked up to. He supposed it could be... refreshing to have someone like him around, although he'd never really see Yokozawa go for that type before.

All the same, the women at Sapphire were going to have a field day if they ever found out. He could just picture the titles even now: Steamy Office Romance: Catch a glimpse of the passionate love affair between the editor-in-chief of XXX Shuppen and the head salesman in our next issue!

An amused look flickered across his expression. He'd have to get that story out of Yokozawa someday.

Ah.

The realization that this wasn't exactly a conversation he could have with Yokozawa anytime soon dawned on him.