cinnabar shot - [katsuki bakugou x reader|unfinished]

chapter 1

Alternative Title: Of which you tease your best friend Tsuyu with her love life in your dressing room while also hating on your work.

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You adjusted your nerves as you recite your daily mantra; 'keep your shit together, you can punch at home later.' It's a mental preparation for another crappy day at work. Not that the work is difficult, the people are. As much as you love sitting in front of your desk punching in numbers in Excel - you don't want to get annoyed and get distracted with office drama.

HR is doing a shitty work disciplining your coworkers - or maybe it's because their connection are too strong with the other department that the HR never bothered investigating what's wrong with them - but yeah, every day there's something terrible bound to happen in the Finance Office.

Loss paperwork, deleted data files, missing flash drives: usually mean sabotages to make sure you look like a crappy worker to your superiors. It may sound like a cliché trope in a working space - but not in the Finance. No, some of your coworkers would do their literal best to stump you from your promotion, drag you down to their pitiful level just to enjoy your frustration and drink your tears as if it's aged wine.

You learned that the hard way.

They're awfully skilled in making your work shitty. It's almost as if they learned the arts of hidden mischief. Try as you may - you never caught them doing it. Yet, those flocked coworkers always have this satisfied shit-eating grin whenever you get stressed about your ruined table. 

You know that it's them (quite obvious with their reaction), but you don't have any proof of it - even if you go to the security room and ask to watch the CCTV camera in the last hours of work - chances are, the guards won't let you have it your way unless you have a written explanation from the boss to do so. Toshinori Yagi is a busy man, and you wouldn't dare try to email him about your current situation in respect of his time and position.

Still, because of your fear and lack of connection; you're one of the unlucky few that's been the main target of petty cruelty.

All because one; you don't have any close acquaintances in H.R (unlike them). Two; you always stand up for what you believe is right, (making you rant why it's unethically wrong to borrow things and never returning them). Three; because you made the mistake of telling your coworkers that you hated them...

... The third reason is justified! No one stood up to them except for you, and while you relish their stupid expression when you talked them off - the days after that were absolute hell.

Aside from the mean trickery, you also got a trashcan full of bio-waste, your highlighters were drained to oblivion, the stack of papers you left will greet you in the morning in a disheveled state, and there's an email from your superior that's clearly a threat of you being fired if you don't 'respect other employees'. (You shared the email to your harassers and you get it, you got another strike for being 'mean'.)

Feeding fire with fuel is not exactly fair when you're the one digging your own expulsion, so that's when you decided to stop fighting for what's right and just... disappear in the background. Which is a bitter acceptance in your side.

Five years working for Yueii have been the best - you always get promoted every year for your impressive speedy and accurate work line, and you've been nothing but a passionate employee in your own cubicle and in front your presentation. A model employee as they call it - the one that wishes to climb up the ladder right from the bottom. You have pride in yourself, and confidence, but the moment you got in the second notable finance office... Well, you've been stuck here for more than a year. Most of your coworkers in this office have crab mentality (a lifestyle that drags promising people down to your level, or preferably: below you), and while you've sent several reports about your messy office to the H.R for them to handle it - it's as if your written complaints haven't been received. That, or it was ignored.