Depends on your perspective.

By the time Shuichi returned to the office, things were already going strangely. Pulling into the parking lot, he very nearly rear-ended someone pulling out of their space without looking. That minor scare over, however, Shuichi found himself with one of the most convenient parking spaces: right next to the entrance to the building. He’d usually have to settle for a spot all the way near the back, so it was certainly a welcome surprise - especially since he was running late. He just barely missed the elevator in the lobby, though, so he reluctantly took the stairs instead.

He dashed up the staircase as quickly as he could, then quieted his breathing as he snuck back to his desk, praying that no one would notice that he was just getting back.

“Phew… I think I made it,” Shuichi as he sat down and turned on his laptop. “Now, I just need to finish half an hour’s worth of work in five minutes, and no one will ever know I was this late.”

Shuichi turned on his computer and clicked on the cloud data drive that held the reports he needed to review - but to his surprise, nothing happened when he tried to click on it.

“Huh?” Shuichi clicked a few more times, but nothing happened. “Hey, what’s going on? Did something happen to my laptop?”

“Ah! There you are, Shuichi,” Makoto suddenly interjected, poking his head up out of the cubicle next to Shuichi’s. “I’m afraid it’s not just you; the whole network has been down for a little while now, including the shared file servers.”

“Seriously? But… there’s almost nothing anyone can do here without the internet working,” Shuichi pointed out.

“Yeah, but at least it gives us all a good excuse to take an extra-long break, right?” Makoto pointed out. “Plus, you could finally go and eat that lunch you didn’t finish earlier. Kaito put it in the break room fridge, if you’re interested.”

“Augh… all that running for nothing…” Shuichi groaned silently to himself. “Alright; hopefully the network will be back up by the time I get back.”

Shuichi stood up from his desk and made his way to his floor’s break room, which he found mostly empty aside from Haruka standing next to a machine. He could hear her grumbling as she fiddled with some of the mechanisms inside the dispenser.

“Hello, Ms. Nakamura; how are you doing?” Shuichi greeted the regional project manager politely.

The black-haired woman paused and pulled her hands out of the machine. “Oh; greetings, Mr. Saihara. I’m just fine; I’m just trying to open the dumb ice machine because it’s not dispensing properly. I’ve got my water here,” she explained, showing him the large cup of water she had. “So now it’s… ngh, just a matter of getting some ice… there we go!”

Reaching her free hand into the machine once more, she emerged with a fistful of small ice cubes. However, as she attempted to transfer them to her cup, a single cube slipped out of her hand, and fell directly into the gap below the neck of her shirt. Before she could react, the clear ice slid downward below her shirt and into the gap between her breasts before disappearing.

“Eeeeeeeep! Ahhh, cold, fuck!” She cursed, and in her panic dropped everything she was holding; ice cubes scattering across the floor, and her cup of water flying towards Shuichi. He tried to react in time, but was unable to prevent a good portion of the front of his suit from getting splashed. After he was done reeling from that surprise, he looked up and saw another: in her frenzy to remove the offending ice cube, Haruka had elected to start unbuttoning her suit with great haste. She removed button after button, rapidly exposing her chest and lacy black bra to the shock of her coworker, before digging her hand between her mounds and fishing out the wet, dripping remains of the ice cube. The project manager sighed, glad to have successfully removed it, before realizing exactly what she’d just done in front of her subordinate.

Her face turned red, perhaps even redder than when she scolded employees for messing up on the job. “Q-q-q- quit staring, you creep! ” she hissed, at which point Shuichi quickly averted his gaze, and began attempting to squeeze the water out of his suit coat. A minute later, Haruka had finished correcting her wardrobe, and leaned in towards the young man, a deadly serious look on her face despite the still-visible pink blush on her cheeks. “You. Saw. Nothing. Are we clear?

“Ye-yes, Ms. Nakamura. Nothing seen at all…” he looked up at the ceiling, pretending to act aloof, as he grabbed his food from the fridge and hastily left the room. “Talk about bad luck… though, I guess maybe it wasn’t so bad for me, minus my suit…” Shuichi blushed as he thought back to the wonderful sight of Haruka’s bouncing, exposed breasts for a few moments. “I should probably avoid her for a little while though… and I don’t want to eat at my desk. I wonder what another good spot to finish this would be?”

Shuichi thought about what to do for a few moments before finally deciding on doing something he hadn’t done in quite a long time: heading to the roof of the building to eat. It did sometimes get windy up there, to be sure, but it was a good day out and the view was very scenic; it would be a great way for him to unwind after his stressful encounter with Monaca earlier.

Or at least, unwinding was what he planned on doing when he first arrived at the roof of the building. Instead, things got off to a rather different start when he opened the door and was met by the sound of soft moaning and squishing.

“Ooooh… Shuichi… Shuichi…” A familiar voice called out softly, along with several pants and moans. Shuichi was naturally taken aback by hearing this, but when he looked around he didn’t see anything other than the brown roof tiles and the iron fence separating him from the surrounding landscape. The only thing there that anyone could hide behind was the entrance to the stairs he just exited out of - so he carefully peeked around the corner, and what he saw nearly made him rocket up off into space.

It was Azura, with her dark blue hair, sitting against the wall with a cushion underneath her cheeks, her legs spread wide, and her business skirt professionally folded and sitting off to one side. And in-between her legs, her black panties were pulled to one side, and Shuichi had no doubt that he would have had a completely unobstructed view of her pussy if it wasn’t for the massive, shockingly realistic dildo that she was currently pumping in and out of it.

“Oooh, Shuichi… right there! Harder, harder!” Azura begged her imaginary lover, her eyes closed and her left hand caressing her breasts hard through her shirt. It was clear from the way her sex gushed that she was already incredibly turned on, to the point that she clearly didn’t need any lube at all to get the toy inside her. In and out it went, the secretary angling the rod expertly to hit all her sweet spots as she rode out her fantasy. “Fuck me, Shuichi! Fuck me hard, and make me cu-” Just before she could orgasm, Azura’s eyes opened and she saw a stunned Shuichi staring back at her. “-uuuuummmaaaah!”

Azura tried to stop herself, but at this point trying to stop her orgasm would have been like trying to stop a freight train. Her whole body shook and convulsed, her pussy soaking the cushion underneath her through to the floor and her walls clenching so hard she was shocked that she didn’t break the dildo in half. It rocked her mind so hard that her tongue actually hung out of her mouth, and the poor woman began seeing double. Shuichi, for his part, just kept staring in shock at the scene before him as Azura’s body shook and her pussy squirted so hard that some of it got on his pants leg.

“O-ooh my god… that… that one was intense…” Azura said as she completely collapsed against the wall. “I came so hard that I think I started seeing things… eh?” Azura sat up straight and looked back at Shuichi. “That’s strange… that hallucination isn’t going away…”

“I’m, uh… not a hallucination, Ms. Nakano - I was just trying to come up here to eat my lunch,” Shuichi awkwardly.

“Oh… oooh! You mean, the door up here wasn’t locked?” Azura asked, the horrid realization and embarrassment finally clicked. Shuichi shook his head. “Oh my god… this is the absolute worst-case scenario! Why didn’t I remember to lock the door!?”

Azura blushed and shoved her face into her hands, so mortified that she started to wonder how hard it would be to scale the fence surrounding the roof.

“I-it’s okay… it’s, uh, perfectly natural to masturbate,” Shuichi replied, deliberately avoiding the fact that she had mentioned his name… or that the dildo was still slick and deep inside her.

“Th-thank you…” Azura blushed and hastily covered herself with her skirt. “So, uh… there’s room over there if you want to eat your lunch.”

“I, uh… I actually think Kaito needed me to go do something. I better go finish helping him with that!” Shuichi hastily turned on his heel and ran to the entrance of the stairs, descending back down to his floor as fast as he could.

“Okay, maybe eating lunch at my desk wouldn’t be that bad,” Shuichi thought to himself, eyes closed as he dashed down the stairs, trying to erase the memory of the private scene he just walked in on. “Goodness… I had no idea that Azura actually felt that way about me. She was texting me so casually this morning, and she was even egging me on to be closer to Kirumi… was that scene just nowonly a masturbation fantasy, or was it something more? And… how long has she been thinking of me that way?”

Those thoughts and a million more raced through the young man’s mind as he ran, but unfortunately for him that meant he had almost no concentration left to watch where he was going. So he only realized that there was someone else in the stairwell after he had already barreled into them, and they both tumbled down onto the next landing below together in a cloud of dust and papers.

“Augh… what just happened? And… what am I lying on?” Shuichi groaned as he slowly opened his eyes. While Shuichi had the misfortune of falling down a flight of stairs face-first, he was fortunate enough to at least land on something very soft and pliable to lessen the impact. But, unfortunately for him, he quickly discovered that the ‘thing’ he had landed on was one of his female coworkers. And, not only that, but his head had somehow wound up underneath her skirt, and he was now staring at her blue panties and the brown cartoon dogs printed along the waistband. To make matters even worse, he could feel his lips involuntarily pressing hard against the unknown woman’s labia through the thin fabric.

“Kyaaah!” Margaret’s voice called out as the woman shook from side to side, clearly in shock. “Oh dear! W-what in the world just happened? Shuichi? Is that you?”

“Oh my god! M-Margaret, I’m so sorry! This is an accident, I swear!” Shuichi tried to reply, but his voice was naturally muffled by his coworker’s muff.

“Gyaah! S-Shuichi! Stop it! Hold still!” Magaret begged, clenching her teeth as she felt his voice vibrate through her clit.

“Oh my god; I can’t believe this is happening! This has got to be the worst thing that could have hap-” Shuichi thought to himself, but he cut himself off when he got another look at Margaret’s panties. “Wait a moment… that pattern… I’ve seen that before!”

Shuichi’s mind went back in time for a few moments as he imagined playing with one of his childhood friends, a girl with rose-blonde hair, together on the playground. They made sandcastles, played tag, and tried balancing on the wooden railings that surrounded the park together. And during one of those times they tried balancing together, the girl accidentally tripped and fell over, causing her skirt to rise up and reveal a pair of panties just like the pair Margaret was wearing now.

“Yes, that’s it! That’s how I know Margaret; we used to play together as kids!” Shuichi thought to himself, smiling as Margaret pulled herself off his face and helped him to his feet. “Finally I get to take that weight off my mind!... wait, this makes what just happened even more awkward, doesn’t it?”

“I’m so sorry about that, Shuichi! Are you okay? You really took quite a fall there,” Margaret said, breaking Shuichi out of his inner monologue. “I don’t see any cuts or bruises, but I can go get some ice or a first-aid kit if you need it.”

“N-no, no, that won’t be necessary, Margaret. I’m fine, really.” Shuichi put up his hands as he began to sweat nervously. “Besides, it’s my fault for crashing into you anyway, so I should be the one apologizing to you. I guess even after all these years, I still have pretty bad balance, huh?”

“Heh, yeah, I guess so!” Margaret laughed for a few moments before a look of realization suddenly appeared on her face. “Wait, hold on a second… you remember that?!”

“Yeah, of course; like I could ever forget about you, Margaret,” Shuichi assured her with a warm smile. “Though, I’m still sorry that it took me this long to recognize you.”

“Oh, it’s fine… I’m just glad you remembered me eventually,” Margaret replied, blushing even hotter now than she had been when Shuichi’s face was on her sex. “So, uh… you didn’t see anything while you were down there, did you?”

“Er, no; my eyes were closed the whole time,” Shuichi insisted. “A-anyway, I really have to go eat my lunch. I’ll catch up with you later, okay?”

“Yeah, sure; I’m looking forward to it!” Margaret said, meekly waving Shuichi goodbye as he went down the last flight of stairs to his floor.

A few moments later and Shuichi was finally back at his desk again, exhausted but grateful to finally get another chance to relax. He let out a sigh of relief and unwrapped his burger, and he was right about to lift it up to his lips when he was interrupted by yet another familiar voice.

“Ahem,” Annie, Vice President of the company, cleared her throat loudly right behind Shuichi. “Is there a reason that you’re taking an unauthorized snack break, Mr. Saihara? Last I checked, your lunch was over an hour ago.”

“Er, right; I know that,” Shuichi replied, turning around in his chair. “But I didn’t actually get to eat during lunch for… reasons… and the network is down at the moment, so it wasn’t like I could work anyway.”

“Really?” Annie reached for Shuichi’s computer, turned it on, and used his mouse to open the company’s cloud drive. “It looks like it’s working just fine to me.”

“Gah! W-well, what do you know? It must have just come back up,” Shuichi said facetiously, like this situation was some sort of joke. Annie didn’t laugh.

“Yeah… well, fortunately for you, I came by to tell you to abandon that project that Ms. Tojo gave you this morning, so it doesn’t matter that you were procrastinating that much,” Annie told him casually.

“Wait… what? You mean, the financial summary?” Shuichi asked curiously. “Why not? Do the new board members not need the information anymore?”

“No, they do; it’s just that they don’t need to get it from you, specifically.” Annie leaned down in front of Shuichi’s face and looked him in the eye. “I know that Ms. Tojo gave you this assignment just to make you look important to the company, but I’m sure even you know how pointless that would be. So, I’m just going to do it for you instead.”

Shuichi felt a familiar rage against Annie–similar to the one he felt the day before–well up inside him. However, unlike the day before, it quickly dissipated as Shuichi controlled his emotions and set his personal feelings for Annie to one side so he could remain professional.

“I… appreciate the offer to relieve me of some of my workload, but are you sure you want to do something like that, Ms. Scholten?” Shuichi asked. “I mean, you’re the Vice President of the company; surely this type of work is beneath you, isn’t it?”

“My only concern is the betterment of the company, its share value, and its returns to investors,” Annie replied. “So if I think it will help the company, then there’s nothing I can’t do.”

“No… that’s not it at all,” Shuichi said calmly. “Look, I get that you want to eliminate my position, Ms. Scholten; that’s been pretty obvious for a little while now. But I’m not the only one with this job at the company. Why are you taking so much time to single me out specifically?”

“Tch…” Annie scoffed and looked at Shuichi with a mix of venomous disdain and disgust. “It’s because… I still don’t get you, Saihara! Everyone I meet here keeps talking about you like you’re some kind of lynchpin keeping things together, but you’re not! You’re nothing more than a loser, lower than the dirt stuck on my shoes. So, yes, I could theoretically focus more on the other auditors, but they’re not the ones who need to be put in their places.”

Then, keeping her gaze fixed on Shuichi’s, Annie did the last thing Shuichi expected her to do and sat down straight onto his lap. This caught Shuichi so off-guard that his composure broke instantly, and he began to squirm and sweat as he tried not to focus too hard on how her body felt against his.

“So I’m not going to stop until everyone else knows that too, understand? Everyone, even Ms. Tojo, is going to realize how worthless you are eventually–see you for the insignificant speck that you are. And when you’re finally gone, no one is even going to remember your-” Suddenly, Annie cut herself off and shifted around on Shuichi’s lap. “Huh? What’s that in your pants?” She rocked her hips from side to side once again until the realization hit her. “No… it couldn’t be!”

Blushing at the length of what she felt, Annie shot up out of Shuichi’s lap with a mortified look plastered on her face. Shuichi was mortified too, of course, but he did his best to keep his composure as they both hastily smoothed out the wrinkles in their clothes.

“A-anyways… just remember that I have my eye on you,” Annie said as she began turning around and walking out of his cubicle. “You might think you’re hot stuff… but you’re not.”

“Wow… that might have been the first time anyone’s ever called me overconfident… and what in the world did I ever do to make her think I was?” Shuichi wondered to himself as he was left alone at his desk once more, trying to calm his erection. “Well, whatever… I should just get back to work now. And even if she tells me not to do that report, it’s not like I can just refuse Kirumi’s direct orders.”

Turning back towards his computer, Shuchi stuck his burger into his mouth and got to work typing, the chaos he experienced earlier in the day fading into the background as his whole world became nothing but numbers.

After that, work proceeded uneventfully, and the hours seemed to fly by. He finished his final report analysis early, as a handful of people seemed to be late on their submissions; they should’ve been sent in around the time he got back from lunch. Fortunately, that gave him ample time to start compiling the previous year's audits for Kirumi’s summary.

As the clock signaled closing time, he tried taking the elevator back down but, no matter how many times he pressed the buttons, it refused to respond. Arriving back down in the lobby via the stairwell, he heard a great commotion, and as he turned he caught sight of two maintenance workers heaving the doors to the elevator open, and a handful of very distressed coworkers crawling out of the bottom of the cab, which had gotten stuck between here and the next floor. It turned out that the elevator he had just missed earlier that day had gotten stuck, that the poor souls inside had been trapped there all afternoon.

“I guess that explains why I was the only one to submit on time…” Shuichi thought to himself as he walked toward the front exit. “I guess I was lucky to miss that elevator after all… hey, wait a second; Luck? Could it be…?”

Immediately after stepping outside, Shuichi’s ears were greeted by the sound of a large winch straining as it lifted something into the air. He turned to his right and saw that the thing being lifted was none other than his very own car, which was now connected to the rear-end of a tow truck.

“S-shit! Hey, wait!” He cried out, dashing over towards the truck, but it was too late.

It began to roll down the street, and despite the young man’s improved endurance thanks to his nighttime training sessions, he couldn’t keep up with the diesel-powered machine. After losing sight of it, he walked slowly back to the parking lot. He couldn’t find any sort of markings or signs on the parking spot he’d used to indicate he wasn’t supposed to park there, but he did notice that his spot was right next to several handicapped parking spaces. Whoever marked his car for towing must have assumed that his spot was handicapped too without actually checking.

“Dammit! So much for my perfect parking spot…” Begrudgingly, Shuichi took out his phone and jotted down the number of the towing company for the lot, and looked around for the nearest bus stop. The sun was getting low in the sky, and he needed to get home before he worked out how to get his car back from the impound. He hoped that it wouldn’t be too much of a hassle, and that he’d be able to get it back before going to work out at the park that night.

The nearest bus turned out to be about a fifteen-minute walk from the lot. The sun was just barely beginning to set, so he hurried onto the bus just before it was about to leave. He paid his fare - which he, fortunately, had just enough cash on hand to afford - and heard the driver announce that this was the final outbound bus for this stop.

“Whew, looks like I just made it…” With a low rumble, the bus shuddered away from the curb and onto the road and then the highway headed north.

Shuichi’s eyelids began to droop, he was surprisingly exhausted from the extra running and walking he’d done that day, in addition to all the nonsense he’d had to put up with at the World’s Famous and at work. So, ultimately, he decided that it couldn’t possibly hurt to rest his eyes for just a few minutes.

A jolt shook Shuichi awake as something kicked the base of his bus seat. His eyes shot open and he found himself looking into the eyes of a tired-looking stranger gazing back at him.

“Hey, buddy; I’m real sorry, but you gotta get off here. End of the line,” the man explained.

Shuichi blinked a few times, finally coming to the realization that this was the bus driver. Looking at his surroundings, he saw very few people left on the bus, and where there had previously been the makings of a sunset outside the window opposite his seat, there was just a diminishing light fading beyond the horizon.

“Where… am I?” Shuichi said groggily.

“End of the line, edge of town, the Versailles Casino Resort,” he explained. “You did check where the bus was going before you got on… right?”

“E-e-edge of town?!” The black-haired man leapt to his feet, though the passengers and driver seemed largely unfazed by his distress. “This i-isn’t where I’m supposed to be! I gotta get back into the city!”

“Well, that’s a shame, but I can’t take you there. It’s late, this bus is officially out of service now,” the man explained. “There should be another bus to take you back into town in about an hour, though–assuming you have the cash to pay the fare, that is.”

“B-but I used the last of my cash just to get on this bus! And it’s not even where I meant to go!” Shuichi said desperately.

“Look, I’ve heard that story a hundred times before, and I sympathize; really I do, honest. But there’s nothing more I can do at this point.” The bus driver certainly seemed sincere in his sympathy, though it did little to comfort Shuichi’s severely bruised ego.

“Augh…” Shuichi groaned and looked out his window, seeing a long row of flashing neon lights outside. “I guess I still have my debit card. Do you think they’ll have an ATM inside that I could use?”

“Totally!” The bus driver replied encouragingly. “I mean, it is a casino, after all. The place is practically made of money, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find something.”

“Okay… I suppose I don’t have much choice then.” Shuichi stood up and grabbed his briefcase. “Thank you for the ride.”

With nowhere else to go, Shuichi sighed and stepped down out of the bus with the rest of the passengers, watching the bus turn down a narrow side road to the bus depot. The outskirts of the city were rather jarring: red, rocky soil, a handful of dry-looking bushes and trees, large sweeping mesas in the distance, and gaudy billboards with strange advertisements plastered every half-mile along the main road into town. Wheeling around, Shuichi finally took in the incredibly staggering sight before him: the Versailles Casino Resort.

This far away from civilization, there were precious few guidelines with which to measure, but he estimated that the building took up almost two square city blocks in just its width. The whole building’s design stood out drastically from the rocky desert of the countryside: a monumental stone and cement structure, with architectural flair taken straight from Baroque Europe, though decked out with significantly more neon lights. It shone in the night like a small sun, and the warm glow practically invited the young man inside as he tried to comprehend what he’d gotten himself into.

Aside from the casino itself, he could also see that it was joined to a high-class hotel resort building connected via skybridge over a small alleyway. In the distance beyond the buildings, Shuichi thought he could see planes buzzing in and out of the city’s busiest airport; there would be taxis there, to be sure, but he knew walking all the way there was not going to be an option.

So, he turned back toward the entrance of the castle-like casino to take his chances inside, hoping that he at least had enough luck stored up inside him to find the 2,000 yen he’d need for the ride home. What he didn’t know was that he’d be leaving with a lot more.

And a whole lot less.