A/N1: I do not own Itakiss. Sigh.

A/N2: You will see some non-canon action from certain characters. I created a different background for this story and exaggerated traits which were shown in certain scenes of the manga. To summarize: Pandai is a much more successful company than originally written. As a result, Mrs. Irie became interested in social climbing and sent her older son to an exclusive high school. With no one to tutor them, most of Class F at Tonan High failed to make the college cut-off. The story begins when our protagonists are in their early twenties.

Irie Naoki scanned the current Nikkei index, then cross-checked with London and New York. On another screen he pulled up a comprehensive breakdown of Pandai's current economic situation. He made a brief note on an electronic tablet before calling his administrative assistant.

"Takami-san, has Kurobane's committee in Gaming provided us with the amended character designs yet?"

"No, Irie-san," was the prompt response.

"Then light a fire under him. I don't want to miss the conference deadline for the world premiere of the game."

"Yes. Immediately, Irie-san."

"Takami-san, has the Action Figure division resolved the color disparity problem with the plastics vendor?"

"I'm not sure."

"Could you find out, please?"

"Takami-san, the robotic dinosaur sound effects… The hoverboard lights… The revised contract from Paramount..."

He shoved back his chair and strode to look over the Tokyo skyline. From the 50th floor, on a clear day he could barely glimpse the top of Mt. Fuji. He viewed the scenery with a slightly dissatisfied air. The problem with being a so-called genius, he thought, is that half my time is spent waiting for everyone else to catch up. He could read trends and predict market fluctuations with amazing accuracy. As a result, his father's firm, already one of the top toy companies in Japan, now easily beat out all others in Asia and took a sizable chunk of the American and European market as well. All this with him acting as vice-president for less than four years.

He ran his hand through his hair, unruly unless heavily waxed, a style that he personally hated and only obliged his mother with on rare occasions. He had known this would be his position from his earliest memories. Mr. Irie had been so proud to show him off at company functions as the "future leader of Pandai". Not having a particular desire for anything else, he had meekly walked the set path, only refusing to attend Tokyo University after graduation from the prestigious Kaimei High School.

"I am the valedictorian," he had told his outraged parents, "and lead the second place person by more than 40 points. College won't be any different, so, since I remember everything I read, just let me have the textbooks. It will save time and money, and why do I need an expensive piece of paper when I don't have to job-hunt?"

Eventually they had acquiesced, for, after all, they did want him in the company. His mother had been most displeased, for she had looked forward to selecting debutantes from the finest families to present to him as potential brides during that time. He had also shot down that idea. "Another undesired piece of paper," he had derided the marriage certificate, "that will seek to enslave me."

"If you don't seek out a social life, Onii-chan," she had argued, using the nickname she had given him upon the birth of his brother, "rumors will spread about your sexual preference!"

"If there are any, they will have been started by you," he shot back. "Why do you want to tie me down to some simpering airhead? Wouldn't that be an unequal partnership? No," he had insisted, "let me find the person I want when the time is right."

As Mr. Irie pointed out to her, he had also married later in life, so she finally took her husband's advice and backed off—for the most part. It was interesting how single ladies of good family always managed to be in the party when they made trips to the symphony or opera, but he was able to ignore them easily. If they were more persistent, they soon found that his comments could be acid and began refusing his mother's invitations.

As his eyes blindly continued to gaze through the tempered glass, he wished that for once he could encounter someone or some event unpredictable enough to snap him out of the doldrums that had been plaguing him for the past six months.

Aihara Kotoko could not see that she was fitting in well with her new job. Although the money was nice, the people at the firm didn't seem that friendly. Maybe because it was a full-time job and not like the part-time positions that she had tried before.

Tried and failed, if I'm honest, she thought. Nothing about her seemed to suit her previous employers. Inside the convenience store she was too loud. Handing out samples on the street she was too quiet. And she didn't even make it a day inside the boutique before she tripped and knocked over a rack of dresses.

However, she remained optimistic and considered that perhaps she was being too hard on her new co-workers. After all, the only place she had really fit in was at her father's restaurant. Considering that she was a disaster in food preparation, all she was able to do was serve and clean up. As the restaurant was only open in the evenings, spending her daytime hours there was not earning her any money, plus giving her old high school friend ideas.

She sighed. Kinnosuke, or Kin-chan, as he liked to be called, had been getting more and more persistent. Ever since nearly the entire Class F of Tonan High had failed the entrance exam to the escalator school, he had been single-mindedly in pursuit of marriage with her. He had even finagled an apprenticeship with her father, and despite Mr. Aihara constantly scolding him for calling him "Otosan", he still kept him on staff.

She knew that her father would like to hand the restaurant down to a son-in-law someday, but, try as she might, she felt nothing more for Kinnosuke than friendship, and even that was getting a little frayed around the edges. She knew that she was a good server, but lately he had always been nearby, trying to "help" her. That assistance usually put her off-balance, since he managed to get in her way, and too many times his hands landed somewhere on her body to help her upright. They hadn't touched anywhere suspicious—yet—but Kotoko's father had encouraged her to find a full-time job and only work in the restaurant when they were short-handed.

She had been searching the want ads for about a week when her dad handed her an application for Pandai. "The toy makers?" she had asked. "Are you telling me that I'm childish?"

"You'll always be my little girl," he had answered gruffly, "but here, fill this out and turn it in. I have a good feeling about your chances."

"Okay, Otosan," she had readily agreed. Although, she thought as she pulled out her pen, I don't remember ever seeing an opening advertised for them.

Her interview had taken place in a large office on the top floor. She was greeted heartily by a jolly man with a balding head and glasses. He didn't ask any of the typical interview questions that she had prepared a cheat sheet for, and after a few minutes he had escorted her to the Human Relations Department and told them that she was a new employee to be processed. It was there that she found that she had been hired by the owner and founder of the firm. "And Irie-sama never interviews anyone below department head level!" confided the clerk inputting her information.

The girl at the next desk added, "And he hasn't even been doing that since a year after his son came on board."

"Ah, Irie-san!" sighed the first. "What I wouldn't give to have just one night with him!"

"You and half the female staff," she jested. "The poor man can't even smile without some woman imagining that he is in love with her."

"That's interesting," Kotoko decided to join in. "I kind of have that problem too. That's why I applied here."

The two looked her up and down. Doubt was evident in their eyes. "At any rate, Aihara, here is your badge. Report to work next Monday to Mido on the fourth floor. By then she will have figured out a place for you."

"A place for me?" Kotoko was confused. "I thought there was an open position."

"There is if Irie-sama says there is," was the cryptic reply.

That conversation alone should have warned her that she was out of her depth. One minor disaster followed another until shifting departments almost became a bi-weekly event. She had heard the term "the cream rises until it sours" but thought that it only referred to competent workers—and figuratively, to boot. Every time she screwed up, she was moved up several floors.

At her first assignment, she had pressed a variety of wrong buttons on the photocopier and had shrunk the document to 25% size, not to mention running two hundred copies instead of twenty.

Four stories up, she fried three co-workers' computers by trying to be helpful and watering their plants. "They sure do make realistic artificial ones nowadays," she told herself as she packed up her desk.

Seven flights higher, she accidentally turned off a bank of servers when she took a wrong turn looking for the video-conference auditorium.

Eventually she reached the top floor, which she had visited only on the day of her interview. She was low person on the totem pole in what was referred to as the "Chairman's Cluster", a cadre of highly proficient administrative assistants who could be pulled at a moment's notice to perform a variety of tasks.

None of which, Kotoko discovered, she was able to do, except for making coffee. That was the only skill from home and her father's restaurant which appeared to be transferable. Considering that this group's superior beings considered that task the most menial, it was no great hardship to transfer it to Kotoko.

At Kotoko's introduction to them, the Cluster's acknowledged leader, Matsuura Dia, a well-groomed and well-maintained woman in her early thirties, directed Kotoko to do "as little as possible" and "stay out of the way". She was sometimes called to run errands for the others, and she rejoiced when those appeared to break the boredom.

Today—her second week in—she was humming as she boarded the elevator. She had been entrusted with a stack of alphabetized folders to deliver to Archives on floor 32. She was so happy to be able to stretch her legs that she totally forgot about the shelf collapse there that she had caused a couple months earlier.

At the last minute an additional person boarded. Seeing that, by the cut of his suit, it was a young executive who she didn't recall having been introduced to, she decided to bow to him as the doors closed. When she did so, the pressure that her chin had been placing on the folders eased just enough for the entire pile to slide to the floor as if it was an elaborate Vegas card trick.

"Oops! Silly me," she giggled then gasped. "Oh, no! These were all sorted." She began frantically scrambling through the mess, scooting them in random directions that made their order even more confused.

"Let me." The second occupant gently shoved her hands aside and within less than a minute had them back in order and stacked neatly.

"Wow." Kotoko regarded him with wide eyes. "I've never seen anyone who could do that." And to top it off, he was handsome as sin. Life just wasn't fair.

"Here, stand up," he ordered impatiently.

She scrambled off her knees and held out her arms with a grin. "Thanks a lot! I would have been in deep you-know-what if you hadn't done that. I'd have had to ride up and down the elevator for at least half an hour if it had been left up to me."

Irie Naoki stared at the tiny woman in front of him. "Why not take them out of the elevator and rearrange them at your destination?"

"Oh!" She jumped. "I guess I could have done that." She frowned, suddenly recalling the reason for her expulsion from Archives and sighed. "Then I would have had to listen to them saying how glad they were that I was no longer working in their department. Well," she said as the elevator dinged, "here I am. Thanks again!" She attempted another bow; this time the folders remained in place because he shot out a supporting hand.

"Who hired that airhead?" he asked himself then turned his thoughts to the upcoming lunch with leaders of a company that had sought them out for investment purposes.