Elevator- A "Tonari No Seki-Kun" Fanfiction

Series: Tonari no Seki-Kun
Genre: General/Romance/Humor
Summary: Seki and Rumi are stuck in an Elevator! Can Rumi maintain her sanity until they get out?

Based on a prompt from ImagineYourOTP on Tumblr: Imagine your OTP stuck in an elevator after they've had a fight.

* Disclaimer: This is a work of fan-fiction. This was NOT written for profit. I do NOT own any elements of Tonari-no-Seki-Kun. Tonari-no-Seki-Kun and related materials were created by/is owned by Takuma Morishige.

Thank you.

Written by: Brittany R./FoxieSango

A 21 year old Rumi Yokoi ran as fast as she could, her heart pumping fiercely to push air into her lungs. She was late. She was late, and her boss was going to blow a gasket. She was supposed to clock into work at 7 AM, it was 7:50 AM. But it wasn't her fault! ….okay, maybe it was. She totally slept in and missed the train that usually got her to work on time. But between you and me, her boss didn't need to know all of that. Still as she rounded the corner of the reception area and made a beeline for the elevators, she could only hope that they wouldn't be delayed this morning. Sometimes they were prime and ready for the employees, other times they could be really slow and stubborn. Luckily for Rumi, she spotted the heel of a black, low boot just barely walking through the doors of the elevators.

"H-hold it! Hold it please!" she cried. She actually didn't think she would make it. Often her coworkers were just focused on getting to their own offices. But apparently whoever was taking this elevator was a bit more courteous. Rumi made a quick pivot on the balls of her feet and rapidly flew through the open doors; the friction of her speed caused her to ram sideways into the walls as she stumbled trying to catch herself. Once she made it in inside, she bent over with one hand on her knee and the other on the wall to catch her breath. The other occupant leaned forward slightly and gazed at her in concern.

"F-floor 13 please," she said. But the other occupant simply turned more to face her and bent in front of her, touching her shoulder to make sure she was alright. She glanced up and took a step back, startled. There before her, was Seki. Toshinari Seki. ….her arch rival, even if he didn't know it.

They worked for a construction company and Seki was in one of the 3D Modeling branches. His role ranged from making the blueprints, to laying out computer graphics, to constructing actual 3D models. Yokoi worked as a secretary in the finances department. Several times she had to stop by Seki's branch to deliver or pick up plans concerning finance management; several times she had run into Seki; several times he had driven her crazy by somehow engaging her in whatever ridiculous antics he was doing for that day. She hated the fact that she could never seem to ignore him. Long story short, he really irritated her and he was the last person she wanted to see in the midst of her rush this morning. Once she realized it was him, she reeled back, eyes wide.

"S-S-SEKI KUN?!"

-Elevator-

Seki simply blinked up at her. For someone who seemed to purposely make her life more difficult than necessary, he always appeared completely, innocently unaware of how his actions impacted her position there. She growled lowly,

"Look, I don't have time for your foolishness today," she said, standing straight and brushing down her white hair, which fell mid-way to her back and hung in a loose ponytail. She was sure was sticking up all over the place. She also smoothed out the wrinkles in her short, mint green dress before bending down at the knees to pick up the papers she had dropped.

Seki simply tilted his head in confusion. He had known Rumi ever since they were kids and for some reason she was always stressed. Somehow, their paths crossed again after graduation and they both ended up working for the same company. Whenever she came to his office, she was always drawn to whatever he was doing in his cubicle, or he would try to get her attention in hopes that it'd brighten up her day like when they were kids. Granted, it always made her late or distracted, and she often into trouble with her boss. But regardless, he always noticed how her eyes would light up. He knew the feeling all too well himself. After all, what fun was your job if you couldn't enjoy it?

"I have a very important meeting that I'm super late for, so if you please, floor 13," she said. He squatted down to her level and held a hand out to assist her with the papers. She slapped it away.

"Sek-kun!" she pointed to the buttons indicating the different floors. "All I want you to help me with is getting to my floor, please!" he frowned, giving her a hard glare before pouting and looking away. He didn't need to be chastised for being helpful. She sighed and stood up.

"Geeze, fine. I'll do it myself," she pressed the button. "I swear, you're impossible!" she said, also pressing the one for his floor. He worked on floor 15, just a couple of levels above her. The elevator slowly began to ascend.

"You know, if you would stop goofing off at work you could probably actually get some progress done. I swear, you such a child. Stop acting like we're in grade school!" she said. He rolled his eyes. Not this again.

"Don't give me that look!" she said, turning on him with her hands on her hips. "And another thing! Stop roping me into your little games. I got tired of that after we graduated middle school. I don't come to work to play, I come here to work!" she said. Seki stuck out his tongue, and used his right hand to mimic her blabbering: blah, blah, blah. One thing about her that agitated him was that she was so uptight and such a stick in the mud. She liked to lecture a lot. Ugh, it was annoying. Rumi caught his actions and puffed her cheeks out angrily. She slapped his hand down.

"Stop mocking me, I'm serious!" she said. Just then, they felt rough jerk. Yokoi lost her balance and fell forward, collapsing against his form. He managed to catch her and cushion her fall, but fell backwards against the wall. Both adults closed their eyes and cringed. Seki was the first to recover, looking down at her before slowly standing straight. Yokoi, for her part, looked down to make sure she was well-grounded. Her hands were on Seki's forearms as he held her shoulders. She looked around the box.

"What was that?" she asked. He shrugged. She then noticed how close she was to him and quickly pushed away from him. She nonchalantly brushed invisible dust from her outfit, fighting down the small blush that she swore didn't exist. Seki ignored her and looked around the elevator, pressing his hand against the door. He didn't hear the whirring wound of the motorized pully-system to indicate it was running. He also didn't see the numbers moving at the top to show what floor they were on. In fact, they had only gone up to floor 5, and the display was stuck on 5. …THEY were stuck on 5. …They were stuck. Yokoi put her hands on her hips.

"What is going on here?" she asked, angrily. Seki looked at her and pointed to the display. Yokoi followed his direction and gaped.

"Oh no. No, no, no, noooooo, Mr. Seshi is going to kill me! I'm already late, NO!" she cried, banging on the door a bit.

"Hey! Is anyone out there, we're stuck! Hello?! Help!" she yelled. Seki launched forward and grabbed her by the waist, pulling her back. Banging on the door wouldn't help; in fact it could make things worse by jostling the wires or some other part of the mechanisms inside and making it stall for even longer.

"Let me go, Seki! I've gotta get outa here or else I'm gonna get fired!" Yokoi shouted, flailing her arms about. Seki grunted, trying to calm her down. She fiercely swung her arm back and it bashed into his nose. Seki let out a cry and released her, stumbling backwards a bit and grabbing his nose. Yokoi continued to bang on the door with her open palm.

"Hey! Hey is anyone—" she heard a moan. Whipping around, she was going to snap at Seki when she realized that he had his head tilted back against the wall and he was holding his nose. She gasped.

"Ohmigosh, Seki-kun! Seki-kun, are you alright?! I'm sorry!" she said, rushing forward and grabbing his wrists so that she could pull his hands away for a better look. But Seki jerked from her touch and glared at her, moving to the upper left corner of the elevator and slumping down to the floor. He looked at the palms of his hands. His nose wasn't bleeding, but it was throbbing something fierce. He frowned and covered it again. Yokoi had the decency to look chagrined.

"Ano….g-gomen-nasi Seki-Kun…I-" but he cut her off by pointing to the Emergency Call button on one of the panels. Yokoi blinked. Apparently Seki didn't want to talk to her right now.

"Oh! Uh…" she pressed the button.

"Hello, yes?"

"Yes. Um…This is Rumi Yokoi. I'm stuck in Elevator C with Toshinari Seki. Is there any way you guys can….well…get us unstuck?"

"Yes ma'am, we're aware of the problem but it's going to take a while to fix." Yokoi blanched.

"H-how long?"

"Um…are you claustrophobic, Ms.?" Yokoi let out a groan and leaned her head against the elevator door. The voice from the speaker continued, "Just sit tight, we'll do what we can. Sorry about this."

"Yeah yeah…." Just her luck. She was stuck…in an elevator…with Toshinari Seki.

Could this day possibly get any worse?

-PAPER CLIPS-

A half hour. That's all how much time had passed since Yokoi had called maintenance. There had been no response from them since as she and Seki sat on opposite ends of the elevator. He was still a bit miffed with her for banging his nose earlier, but he was no longer glaring daggers like he had been the first ten minutes after the call. Yokoi sat with her legs together, knees pulled up to her chest, and her right arm resting across the tops of her kneecaps. Her left arm was wrapped around her legs. She leaned her head back against the wall. She couldn't believe this. She absolutely could not believe it. Mr. Seshi was going to fire her for sure. This was all Seki's fault. It had to be somehow, it just had to. She only ever had the worst things happen to her when he was around. It had been that way since they were kids. Although he never paid attention in class, he also NEVER got in trouble. However, she'd had detention more times that she could count, which was weird because she was an A student! She tilted her head down to stare at him. What was he doing now?

Seki was digging around in his carrier-case, which actually looked strongly similar to the school bag they had when they were younger. …..In fact, she was sure it WAS the same bag. …..oh no.

"You've got to be kidding. You're about to play with your toys NOW? Unless you've got something in that bag to get us out of here I don't see what good it'll do," she said. He cut his eyes around at her briefly but ultimately ignored her. The way he saw it, if they were going to be stuck her for a while, he might as well do something to pass the time. After all, he WAS the Master of Killing Time.

Yokoi watched as he reached into the outer compartment of his bag and actually pulled out a bunch of paper clips. She blinked in curiosity. Paper clips? She narrowed her eyes skeptically. He didn't pull out any papers that needed to be clipped together…just…the clips. And there were a lot of them. Seki sat Indian Style as he spread the clips out on the ground. Then, he began to pick them up and unbend them into a straight lines, one by one. Yokoi rolled her eyes. All he was doing was ruining the functionality of perfectly good office supplies. She decided to pull her papers out and read over what was supposed to be the notes for today's meeting, just to keep herself occupied while Seki did his….meaningless task. (….ugh….she didn't get to deliver these papers to her boss on time. She was SO fired. If not that, he'd at least be deducting a huge chunk of her pay check). After about 10 minutes of trying to keep her eyes from going blurry at the tiny print of text, she glanced at Seki again. Her eyes widened in surprise.

Seki had begun to bend the paper clips again, but not into their original shapes. A few were bent into 2-D squares, triangles, and loops. But others were more complex: pyramids, cubes, trapezoids, and cylinders. Even more so, he used a few of the straightened paper clips to connect the shapes together, forming his own 3D models made of wire. Intrigued, she leaned forward. She knew of very few people with the dexterity of Seki-kun's fingers who could successfully bend paperclips into intricate shapes and then build with them. She said nothing, but he had her full attention. After a few more minutes, Seki looked up. He raised an eyebrow. He had been careful not to bother her this time (she had seemed more irritated than usual this morning), yet she still was completely focused on what he was doing.

He sighed and with only a few paper clips left, he decided to use them to make something for her so that she couldn't be tempted to pick up one of his other mini-models (yep, she would still reach for his creations sometimes). With that, he somehow managed to sculpt a tiny, wire-framed teddy bear for her. He handed the model to her, and she stared at it in fascination before glancing up at him. He had a deadpanned expression in his eyes, but there was a tinge of softness there as he smiled. It was clear she had gotten on his nerves this morning too, but he was still being nice. She blushed and looked away.

"I-I didn't say I wanted you to make anything for me!" she said. He simply held the bear further in front of her face. He knew she loved cute things. She glanced at it and bit her lip; she was breaking. Darn it! She reached up and snatched the bear away from him, cooing over it for a minute. Seki actually covered his mouth and snickered behind his hand. She glared at him but said nothing except…

"A-arigatou, Seki-kun."

-SHOGI-

It was 8:45 AM. At this point, Seki had reached into his bag again and actually pulled out some blueprints to look over. Rumi was still studying exactly HOW he had put the tiny, wire teddy bear together. She then somehow managed to slide it onto her necklace, but she tucked it under her collar so that he couldn't see it. At this time, she leaned over to the call-box again.

"Excuse me, has there been any progress?"

"Yes ma'am. We've called the repair men but it's taking them a while to get here."

"How long do you think it'll take?"

"…Our estimate is probably about another 45 minutes ma'am. But they'll try to get there as quickly as possible." Yokoi sighed at this.

"Alright, arigatou," she said. She sat down against the wall again, legs outstretched in front of her with her head leaning back against the wall. She glanced over at Seki, who was pouring a random supply of thumb tacks all over the floor. Apparently he had put up his blueprints. Yokoi stared at him.

"What are you up to now?" she asked. As usual, he didn't answer. Seki was a man of few words, but he REALLY didn't talk when he was in 'work mode.' Or perhaps the better term was 'creation mode' because Yokoi honestly thought the little games and such that she caught him playing didn't do much to advance his work. Although, she would admit that the 3-D pieces he made earlier did seem a bit relative to his job. In any case, Seki just continued moving the thumb tack pieces around in front of him. Yokoi gasped as she recognized the formation.

"S-SHOGI?! HERE, NOW?!" she asked. Seki simply smirked at her and she knew. She knew that this time, he was doing this to purposely reel her in. He had taken out a pad of sticky notes, peeled off a few small pieces, and stuck them on some of the tacks. This gave a distinguishing mark between the "good guys" (the tacks that had the papers on them) and the "bad guys" (the tacks that didn't). Yokoi sat up on her hands and knees. Seki never, NEVER played the actual game of Shogi, but he always arranged the pieces in ways that setup for an interesting battle. He also always moved the pieces so that they'd set up a story for her to follow.

One of the good guys was apparently surrounded by a circle of bad guys. It was clearly the "captured" one. Perhaps a young princess? No, it was a prince this time! Their young leader! (There was nothing to distinguish gender in this game). The other bad tacks were set up to defend the circle of villainous guards. The good tacks advanced, ready for battle. One good tackin particular got away from the team, trying to sneak around a back way. But he ended up captured too. So did a third and a fourth. Then, their papers (Yokoi saw them as armor) were ripped from them! They were now the bad guys! But the first tack, the captured prince, remained good.

Yokoi cried out in despair as the bad forces continued to grow in strength and numbers, taking down the good soldiers one by one. It appeared that no one would be able to save the young prince! But just then, Seki pulled out a couple of the paper clip sculptures he had made earlier: a few cubes and pyramids. The good thumb tacks used them to push forward. Tanks! And cannons! They had increased their weaponry! As they forged ahead, the ended up pushing aside some of the bad tacks. One good tack in particular used a cannon (triangular paper clip structure) to break through the central defenses and save the prince! The king rescuing his son after fighting alongside his troops!

They had lost many a good men to the enemy in that battle. However, they were victorious in the end! Yokoi inwardly cheered for their royal family and their army of loyal soldiers.

"Sugoi! That fight was amazing!" she beamed. Then, she froze, and slowly glanced up at Seki. His arms were folded and he was smirking at her. He had her: hook, line, and sinker. She flushed in embarrassment and anger.

"N-no fair! You know I've never been able to resist a good Shogi game! How dare you! I-in any case, you should be using those 3D models for something more constructive, like as landmarks on your blueprints or something! How immature can you be?!" she asked. Seki blinked, and looked back down at the remnants of his last game. That was actually a good idea. He reached into his bag and pulled his blueprints out again before moving some of the cubes and pyramids to cover the paper, along with the trapezoids, cylinders, and more. Yokoi sighed.

Seki might have been able to catch her off guard this time, but she was able to redirect the situation so that he could actually do something related to his job….which was more than she could say for her own.

-CARE-

Toshinari Seki was the Master of Killing Time. …Rumi Yokoi wasn't. He currently busied himself with looking over his plans in more detail. Apparently, Yokoi's suggestion had sparked something in him. She had seen his eyes widen, as if realizing something he hadn't noticed before concerning the mini-wire models he had created. Then he had thrown himself into his work.

….she wished he hadn't. Now she was bored out of her mind and time seemed to be ticking by so slowly. Her eyes zeroed in on his right hand, which was wrapped up with a band aid that she happened to have in her purse. She pressed her lips together in slight worry. Seki was also one to easily hurt himself by not realizing the risks of his play, no matter how tiny they may be. After pulling out his blueprints, he had went to scoop up the tacks and put them back in his bag…but he pricked himself.

Yokoi saw Seki wince and jumped a bit with a start.

"S-seki-kun, are you alright?!" she asked. He grit his teeth and looked down. His palm was bleeding. Yokoi put a hand to her mouth before quickly digging around in her purse.

"Hang on, don't touch it," she said, crawling over to him. She took his hand an pulled out a disinfecting wipe. After cleaning his hand, she then pulled out a band aid and gently placed it over his palm. Once that was done, she held his hand in both of her own.

"That better? Geeze, I swear you're so oblivious sometimes, she said. Seki looked down at their hands, then looked up at her and gave her the biggest smile he could muster. He was positively beaming. She smiled a bit, then looked down to the side. She didn't want him to think that she was going soft.

"D-don't breathe too much into this Seki-kun, but you have to be careful. If you can't work, you're not going to be much good to the company," she said. He simply nodded and seemed to beam even more. He then lifted her hand and gently kissed the back of her knuckles to show his appreciation. Such a gentleman. Yokoi blushed and pulled her hand back.

"Um…y-yeah, no problem…" she said.

After that, Yokoi had crawled back over to her side of the elevator. Even though she…had concern for him…she also didn't want to be in his space. At least not when he got in his 'zone.'

It was interesting, really. Whenever Seki was in his 'zone,' it was like nothing could touch him. Even authority figures weren't privy to interfering with his flow of creative energy. Really Yokoi, for her part, was just a bystander like the rest of them. Or rather, she was like the crew member who was closer to what was happening on set, but still wasn't central to the action. Everyone else was the TV audience. But in essence, crew members were often more vulnerable than the main cast. They were expendable. Maybe that was why she always was on the receiving end of disciplinary action for Seki's games so frequently: she wasn't really a part of his 'zone,' just on the outskirts of it. Even now.

And so, she pulled back to let Seki do what he did best, kill time in the way that only Seki knew how.

-FIN-

It was 10:15 AM. Had it really only been just over two hours? It had felt like days. The maintenance people had called in at one point to state that the repair men had arrived, and were working with technicians to figure out the problem. Apparently, even though the number display said they were on level 5, the elevator itself was stuck between floors 5 and 6. So they were trying to figure out the safest way to go in and rescue the two employees.

By now, Seki had finished tinkering with his blueprints. It wasn't long before Yokoi had dozed off, a time during which he had pulled out a bunch of pencils and built them up in a square foundation to build a tall tower.

...he had run out of pencils, and sure he could've used other supplies to construct something else, but he was really bored. Seki glanced over at Rumi, who was lying on her side with her right elbow bent as a pillow for her head. She was snoozing soundly and he had to admit, she looked adorable when she was asleep.

Wait, what?! He shook his head. Where did that come from? Sure, she wasn't ugly. Actually, she had grown to be quite a pretty woman, but it didn't mean he was attracted to her or anything! Although he did enjoy her company. She had always been the only one who understood him, as far back as he could remember.

He liked having her around, and he liked involving her in his games. In fact, he would love having her as a playmate right now. Seki pulled out the pad of sticky notes and quickly jotted something down on one of the pages. Then, he peeled it off, crawled over to Rumi, and stuck it to her forehead. She groaned and moved a bit. He froze. She stretched out her body for a moment before relaxing her muscles again and dozing back off. He sighed and smiled before crawling back over to his space. With that, he took out a notepad and began jotting things down.

About five minutes later, Yokoi felt herself rouse from her sleep. She slowly sat up and rubbed her eyes. Had it all been a dream or? …she sleepily blinked and looked around. Nope, she was still stuck in an elevator with Seki-kun. But something was off. He was sitting Indian Style with his hands in his lap like a little kid, and he was grinning at her. She raised an eyebrow at his weird behavior. Eagerly, he handed her his notepad. She took it, her eyes full of curiosity as she looked over the pages. There was a sketch (a very good one) of her with an arrow pointing to her forehead. Below were the instructions, "Guess Which Coworker is on your Head." She blanched. What?

"Seki-kun, what are you talking about?!" she asked, reaching up to feel her forehead. Seki panicked and launched himself forward, grabbing both of her wrists in his hands. She blinked as she looked at him. He was really close to her and she felt a blush rise to her cheeks. Seki noticed his distance from her face too and blushed as well. For a while they just sat like that, staring at each other. Then Yokoi tore away from his gaze, glancing to the right instead. Seki cleared his throat and pulled back. He picked up the notepad, held it in front of her again, and pointed to it. She frowned and took it.

"What kind of game have you come up with this time? And why do you want me involved?" she asked, instantly knowing it was a stupid question. Him getting her involved was their whole deal. Seki pouted.

"What, you're bored or something?" he nodded and she blinked in surprise. She was being sarcastic, but he was serious?

"And…you want me to play with you?" she asked. He nodded again, twice this time. Yokoi looked down at the piece of paper. There was a list of names of several employees that they worked with at the bottom, like in a word bank. Yokoi was to ask clues (either in 'this or that' format, or as a 'yes or no' question) about the employees to narrow down the list of names until she was able to successfully guess whose name he had stuck to her head. She mentally shrugged. Why not? It could be fun, and it'd be something to do at least. And so it began.

"Is the person a boy or a girl?" she asked. Seki held up one finger. The first one: boy.

"Okay. Is he, younger or older than us?" she was older than Seki by a year, but they had some high school interns working at their company too. Seki thought for a minute, then held up a finger.

"Younger, okay. Is he on my floor or your floor?" he held up two fingers.

"Your floor. Is he nice or mean?" Seki's eyes grew wide. He thought for a minute.

"Oh c'mon, it can't be that hard!" Yokoi said. On her floor, it was pretty obvious who the friendly and non-friendly coworkers were. Seki stuck out his tongue and shook his head. Yokoi burst into giggled.

"Okay, okay, so I guess its hit and miss over there with you. But humor me a bit, huh?" she said. He gave a genuine smile. He liked hearing her laughter. He chuckled a bit himself, then held up one finger, but it was quickly followed by a "so-so" wave of his hand. Rumi grinned and nodded, crossing out some of the people on the list.

After about ten minutes, there were only 5 more people left.

"Is he tall or short?" she asked. Seki put a finger to his chin in deep thought. Then he held his hand up horizontally and brought it down.

"Short…okay. I think I've got it!" she said. Seki smiled and leaned forward. He had scooter closer towards her throughout the duration of their game.

"It's-" suddenly, there was a rough jerk and Rumi fell forward again, landing on Seki and knocking him over. Seki-kun caught her and held her as the elevator moved upwards. Then, it jerked to a sudden stop. There was a pause where they both took a minute to take in what happened.

"W-was that…did we move?" she asked. Seki glanced up and noticed that the number display, indeed, showed they were on level 6. But despite the fact that they had moved, he didn't want to let her go just yet. If he was honest, he liked how she felt in his arms. She tried to set up, but he didn't release her. She glanced down at him curiously,

"S-seki kun?" she asked.

"HEY! ARE YOU GUYS ALRIGHT IN THERE? RUMI YOKOI? TOSHINARI SEKI?!" a voice called. Rumi glanced up and managed to pull away from Seki enough to sit upright. But he came up with her, keeping a hand on her back.

"Um, Y-YES! WE'RE IN HERE!" she said.

"MA'AM, CAN YOU DO ME A FAVOR? PRESS THE OPEN-DOORS BUTTON JUST TO SEE IF IT WORKS!" the voice said. Seki stood up and reached a hand down to help Yokoi stand too. She thanked him before moving over to the buttons. He put his hands in his pockets while she pressed the one to open the doors. Nothing happened. She pressed a couple of more times to be sure.

"Nothing's happening sir!" she said.

"Okay, we wanted to make sure. MS., WE'LL HAVE TO PRY THE DOORS OPEN SO PLEASE STAND BACK!" they said. Yokoi took a few steps back, and Seki wrapped an arm around her side, feeling somewhat protective all of a sudden. They heard a lot of clanging and watched as the doors were slowly pried open. On the other side were several concerned faces, from both Seki's floor and Rumi's. Even their bosses were there.

"Seki! Hey man, you alright?!"

"Rumi! Thank goodness you're okay!"

"We were worried about you!"

"You guys were trapped for so long!"

"Rumi, what's on your forehead?"

"Huh?" Rumi held her hand up and peeled off the sticky note. Looking at it, she saw Seki's name written in his trademark signature. She blushed. He had essentially labeled her. She whipped around to face him.

"Seki-kun!" she cried. He grinned sheepishly, but let out a chuckle as he pulled her in for a hug. She blushed.

"S-seki-kun, knock it off!" she said, pulling away from him. The others watched on with great interest sketched on their faces.

"You know, I always thought they had a thing."

"They were alone together for a loooong time."

"What happened between you guys?"

"RUMI YOKOI!" she cringed. She knew that one all too well: her boss. She quickly pulled away from Seki and turned to the door with a low bow as her boss pressed forward through the small crowd and into the elevator. She resolved to keep her mouth shut.

"What is the meaning of this?! Why did you not show up to work on time today?! Perhaps if you had gotten here earlier, you wouldn't have been late and gotten into this mess!" he bellowed. She cringed.

"I-I'm sorry sir. I still have the papers for the meeting if-"

"We had to reschedule! And it's all your fault, you crazy girl! You're always distracted and not doing your job! I should fire you right now!" he said. Everyone behind him was quiet. Seki frowned. He peered around the heads of those gathered and, upon spotting his own boss, waved him forward.

"Huh? Seki, what's up?" he asked. Seki then bent down to pick up his bag and reached inside. He pulled out the blueprints he had been working on earlier and handed them to his boss. Afterwards, his right hand returned to Yokoi's lower back. His boss raised an eyebrow at the blueprints before opening them and reading the details. His eyes grew wide. Seki had made some great improvements to one of the structures they were working on. The boss looked from Seki to Yokoi, then back to Seki.

"And, she helped you with this?" he asked. Seki nodded. This was the type of work his boss had been pushing for Seki to do. Everything was in intricate detail. Seki was a fantastic architect, but could easily get distracted. Pushing him to the next phase of a project was like pulling teeth because he would get so wrapped up in what he was currently working on that he could lose track of time when it came to advancing to the next step. This, of course, was never good for them meeting deadlines. ….He was the master of KILLING time, not saving it. The man looked at Yokoi. If she could somehow help him stay focused and do better at his work station…

"Yokoi, I'd like to make you a proposal. How would you like to be Seki's assistant? He could use someone to help him fully enhance his role in the stages of the projects we do," he said. Yokoi's mouth dropped.

"W-what? But….but I'm no architect….I-I just. I'm good with numbers and…"

"That's perfect! You can help him with his measurements and motivate him at the same time."

"I-I-" she turned to her boss. He was practically seething.

"Do whatever you want! We certainly won't be missing anything with you gone! And perhaps we can get some records filed properly for a change!" he said. Yokoi blushed and brought a finger up to curl around her hair in embarrassment. Seki put a hand on her shoulder. She glanced up at him and he gave her the best puppy-dog-eyes that he could muster. She sighed.

"What choice do I have? You're always roping me into something," she said, with a shrug. Seki beamed and wrapped her up in a big hug before losing himself and giving her a smooch right on the lips. Her eyes grew wide and she blushed. Everyone in the doorway gaped before a couple of whoops and hollers could be heard from some of Seki's guy friends. Yokoi clenched her eyes shut and patted Seki's back to get him to stop. Even though she was enjoying the kiss (MAN was he a good kisser! Then again, he was good at everything), she wasn't big on PDA. Seki pulled away, then brought a hand up and gently rested it on her head in an affectionate manner. He couldn't stop smiling. She face-palmed her forehead and bent her face down in embarrassment.

Still, she couldn't help but to smile. Yokoi may have been 'fired' from her old job, but thanks to Seki she had a new position. It seemed like she had graduated from 'crew' to having a lead role in his 'cast' now.

They had been stuck in an elevator for a couple of hours, but she had a feeling she'd be stuck with Seki for even longer. Much longer.

She sighed at the thought, "Tonari-no-Seki-Kun…"

Author's Note: (On the Younger vs Older question, I like to imagine that Seki may be 1 year younger than Rumi. So he was being really particular about his answer.)

Reviews are welcome, thanks!