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Conall's been having work issues. Yoi knows just the solution
One of these days, I promise I'll write something that's just 'Guy gets big, does something with it' without 10 pages of lead up. If you wanna skip to the good part, just Ctrl-F 'Wiping' and it'll bring you right to it.
This piece was suggested by
BlueSky72! You can put story suggestions in my suggestion box at any time! I can't write every submission I get, but the ones that interest me most likely will be!
Breakfast of the Gods
Conall let his shoulder go limp as his messenger bag fell to the tile floor behind his apartment door. It slumped to the ground, pathetic and useless, as Conall tried to shut the door gently behind him.
He failed, of course. It slammed with a resounding ‘THUD!’, and Conall let out a quiet string of curses. His day at work had been awful, but he tried to make it a point not to bring that home. He made it a point to not bring work problems home with him; compartmentalization was important for work-life separation. More importantly, whenever he expressed some frustration or discontentment, his boyfriend always got an inkling to try and ‘fix’ the problem. Typically, Yoiryu’s remedies lead to fewer resolutions, and more hilarity. Conall always enjoyed the hijinks, either as a participant or an observer, but it seemed self-indulgent to ask for it, and moping around the apartment was basically the same as asking.
Dating an apparently all-powerful Trickster God was, Conall reasoned, a bit like dating a famous musician. You could enjoy the music when they chose to play, but treating them like a personal jukebox was too much.
Today had been worse than usual, though. He knew, on some level, that the only reason the company he worked for kept him on was to make the place seem more ‘international’. The conglomerate treated him more as a commodity than as an employee; someone adequately ‘foreign’ to assure investors that the company had international reach despite having an almost exclusively Japanese market. It was a cushy job, and well paying, and he had few responsibilities beyond showing up to meetings. More importantly, it meant has was exempt from all the petty office politics and horrendous work culture of the Japanese office space; he would never get promoted anyways, so there was no point in waiting until the boss left first. But he hadn’t gone through half-a-decade of schooling just to be a pretty face at the bottom-middle rung of some investment group’s portfolio. He had ideas. He wanted to innovate, and transform, and flex his creative muscles.
He strode into his apartment’s kitchen trying to keep his shoulders up and chin high. The witheringly pitiful look his boyfriend gave him told him he failed.
“Rough day at work?” Yoiryu asked, his voice serious-yet-gentle. He was sautéing some fish on the stove, but he turned around the moment he heard Conall enter. Strangely, he was in his purely human form; no tails or little fox ears sticking from the top of his head. He only did that when he felt the need to be serious, which was rather rare. It genuinely caught Conall off guard. Still, he gave his boyfriend a strained smile.
“Yeah. Sorry. I don’t want to bring negative feelings home with me, but today was…” he sighed and looked away. “Today was rough. I’m going to take a shower and lay down, if that’s all right.”
Yoiryu turned the knob on the stove off with a click. “Hold on,” he said. “Do you wanna talk about it? I hate to see you so upset.” Conall gave him a sad smile, but a lump caught in his throat before he could say anything. He wanted to protest and acquiesce at the same time. Instead, he said nothing as his boyfriend lead him into the living and onto the couch, until they were both sitting side-by-side.
“What happened?” Started Yoi as he stretched out his legs on the couch. Conall half-imagined him with a clipboard and a pipe. He mentally prepared himself for the barrage of ‘And how did that make you feel?’s. He looked up at the ceiling and tried to remember what it was that had set him off.
“I think it was the meeting, right after lunch,” he said. Meetings were his primary activity at the office, besides responding to the few international e-mails the company got. “It was a meeting about marketing for our new widget,” he said.
“Widget?”
“The good we’re trying to sell. It’s a retail finance thing, not really that important to the story.” Yoi nodded and gestured for Conall to continue. “Everyone was upset that we weren’t getting an RoI, but nobody wanted to address the elephant in the room.”
“Which is?”
“That we’ve completely screw up the target demo advertising. The way the app is designed, it’s clearly supposed to appeal to downwardly mobile upper-middle class 20-to-30 somethings. People who want the economic security their parents had but don’t.”
“Ah,” said Yoi, understanding. “You’re selling cryptocurrency.”
“Well, not exactly that. You do get a physical object; a little doodad that we paired up with Toei Animation for. Some anime thing, I don’t know,” he shrugged. “The point is, there’s a finite number of them, and the company clearly wants to hype them up so people will sell them on the secondary market.”
“Why though? The company doesn’t get anything for sales made on the secondary market. You’re a manufacturing concern, not eBay.”
“We’re not. But the doodads have chips in them that convey ownership digitally. You scan it with your phone, and it tells you who it belongs to.”
Understanding crossed Yoiryu’s face. “Let me guess, you can only ‘transfer’ them by selling them on an approved application. One that a parent company owns and takes a cut for each sale.” He somehow managed to scowl while looking impressed. “That’s evil. Weaponizing economic anxiety like that feels wrong.”
Conall shrugged. “When there’s a gold rush, you can dig or sell shovels.”
Realizing they’d been sidetracked, Yoi redirected the conversation. “So, they screwed up the target demographics.”
“Right. The problem is that the things were being marketed like a toy. We weren’t getting pre-orders from people who wanted to re-sell the things. All the pre-orders were almost exclusively for children. So, the parent company is accusing us of shithousing; Advertising the products without regard to the secondary market. Apparently, they had a lot riding on it.”
“Did you?”
“Not intentionally. The problem is that there’s quite a bit of overlap between ‘Downwardly mobile middle-class strivers’ and ‘Literal, actual children’. We advertised on the sorts of places your average Hikikomori types tend to frequent: streams, message boards, and Animax. We had quite a few television commercials, in fact. That was where most of the advertising budget went.”
“So, what happened that got you so upset?”
Conall sighed. “It was during the meeting with our parent company. They wanted to chew us out for dropping the ball, and everyone in our office wanted to cover their ass and shift blame. Typical corporate stuff, really. I was only there as a technicality. But it was just so frustrating to hear everyone talk around in circles when the issue was so obvious. There was no desire the fix the problem; just a continually passing of a hot potato.”
“Let me guess,” said Yoi, sympathetically. “You spoke up.”
“I tried to use diplomatic language,” said Conall, working himself up into a frenzy. “I simply said what I thought was true; it was an issue borne of inaccurate demographic research, but that the project could still be salvaged if we just refocused our marketing campaign towards the right areas and with the right message. It wouldn’t have been some herculean task; just some graphic redesigns on the ads, and a sponsored tweet or two.”
“What’d they say?”
Conall inhaled deeply, giving himself a moment to calm down, before turning his gaze towards Yoiryu with quiet intensity. “Absolutely nothing.” A scowl crossed his face, and he continued before Yoi could ask for elaboration. “I could’ve lived with disagreement. Even chastisement.” His face was turning red, and he spoke faster with each word. “A simple ‘Thank you for the input but I’m afraid that’s not an option’ or, hell, I would’ve taken ‘You’re a moron, Fitzmorris, don’t speak up again’. Just… something.” He took a deep breath, giving himself a second to calm down. “Instead, they stared at me for a few seconds, and continued like I hadn’t said anything at all.”
“Is that what’s got you upset? You feel undervalued there?”
“No,” stared Conall. “Yes. Almost that. I knew when I took the job that I wasn’t going to be taken very seriously. It’s just that I feel so, so-” he gestured with his hands trying to find the right word. “So demeaned. I’m an object of fascination basically everywhere I go! People assume I can’t understand them, and God’s Bones do they talk like it. I can’t go to a restaurant anywhere in Sapporo without some woman pointing at me and telling her kids, ‘Watch how that Gaijin eats’. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve heard on elevators.” His pace was picking up again and he grew even redder than before. “And yet! When I try to say something, everyone shuts up and acts like they can’t hear me!” He put his elbow on his leg and rested his hand against his forehead. “It feels like I’m not even a human being. Like my entire existence is just… pointless and unimportant.”
“Hey, hey,” interrupted Yoiryu. “Don’t start talking like that. Just because they don’t appreciate a great thing when they’ve got it doesn’t mean you need to start internalizing it as some kind of moral failure.”
“I know, I know,” said Conall, sighing. “But it’s hard to push those thoughts back when this kind of thing happens every other day. It’s hard not to feel a bit insignificant.”
“Well, it should be,” said Yoiryu, putting his feet up on the opposite side of the couch as he sidled up to Conall’s chest, his tone a careful mix of soothing and playful. “They don’t know what a catch they’ve got.” With the tip of his finger, he gently booped the underside of Conall’s chin. “You’ve got the face of someone who would’ve been a Petty King in medieval Ireland. ‘The Lord of Munster’ or something.”
Without so much as a Poof, Conall’s well-tailored suit was gone, and in its place was a set of ancient-looking clothes. A blue-and-black tartan weave covered him from shoulders to his ankles, and a fur cape draped around his neck, reaching down to his waist.
It all sat awkwardly under him as he tried to readjust his position on the couch to get comfortable again. Yoi was clearly trying to cheer him up, and Conall had to admit that the sheer bizarreness of it was helping his mood a lot more than he’d expected. Deciding to egg his boyfriend on a bit more, he tugged at the edges of his new robes.
“Tartans are more of a Scottish thing, aren’t they?” He asked, a bit slyly.
Yoiryu simply shrugged. “They weren’t exactly common, but they’ve been in use for a few thousand years.”
“If you say so,” Conall said, figuring it was best not to argue with the immortal, all-powerful being on the nature of 8th-century B.C. Celtic fashion. “Still, I can’t help but think of Cú Chulainn while wearing this. They made us read the Táin in school, and every time I think of him, I remember the little drawings of him in his ríastrad. Muscles spasming out, foaming out the mouth; real horrifying. Not exactly my idea of hot stuff.”
Yoiryu squinted at him, unsure if he was being serious of if he was simply taking the piss. A smirk spread across the corner of his mouth, and he snuggled up closer to Conall, practically laying on top of him. “All right then, fine. You easily could’ve been a Roman Emperor though. One of the later ones, maybe.”
Conall’s outfit morphed again, until his robes were replaced with a long, reddish-purple woolen toga, and a golden laurel wreath sat on top of his head and a golden sash stretched across his chest. He stifled a laugh as he smiled at Yoiryu. “As much as I like to imagine myself a Marcus Aurelius, I’m pretty sure I’d end up being more like Nero or Caligula.”
“Nonsense,” said Yoiryu, waving his hand dismissively. “You’re at least a Libius Severus, or Valentinian the Moderate.”
Conall winced a bit. Not at any perceived insult: he figured the obscurity of the emperors mentioned was part of the gag. It was more a pang of sympathy for the last one mentioned. “How dull do you have to be to go down in history as ‘The Moderate’? You’d think he would’ve started an unwinnable war so he could at least go down in history as ‘The Mad’ or ‘The Foolish’ or something. That’d be far better than ‘The Moderate’.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re from Roscommon. All the Kings in Irish History are named things like ‘Niall of the Nine Hostages’ or ‘Conn of the Hundred Battles’. Flavorful stuff. The rest of Europe was calling every King who built a Cathedral or stole their neighbor’s pastureland ‘The Great’ like they were Alexander reborn.”
Conall simply shrugged. “All the same, if you’re trying to inspire confidence in me, you might want to aim for something a bit more modern. These are just… costumes.”
Yoiryu drug out an exasperated, disgusted “Eugh,” while rolling his eyes up at the ceiling. “All the powerful men now just wear suits, though! There’s no theatricality to it. Anybody with a bit of dosh can get one, and there’s no real granularity between the cheapest suits and the most expensive!”
“True. Ever since the Industrial Revolution made textile manufacturing cheap and simple, there’s been a real flattening of acceptable styles. Only real exception is-”
Before he could finish his sentence, Conall found himself decked out in a sharp Military Officer’s uniform. Red and Gold pauldrons accented the few tons of metal chest candy on his left breast. His lower shirt was tied snugly around his waist, and a flat-brimmed cap with a single, internationally vague star insignia reached out over his forehead. He shuffled a bit in his seat, trying to get comfortably as his new outfit practically creaked.
“Did you starch this thing before you summoned it from the ether? I’m going to have full-body corduroy lines if I wear this thing too long.”
Yoi simply nodded in agreement. “Sorry, you’re right. It’s not really doing anything for me, either. This was a silly decision.”
“Are you sure? It’s really inspiring me to go out and be more self-assertive. If military officers are always wearing clothes that ride this high, a lot of war crimes suddenly make sense.” This got a single ‘snrk’ from Yoi, and Conall added a mental point to a mental tally.
“Maybe something fictional, then?” Asked Yoi. “There’s gotta be something-”
“Not that this isn’t fun and everything, but it’s getting late, love.” With the novelty of playing dress-up wearing off, his initial exhaustion had creeped its way back in, and his somber mood slowly began to return; lesser than before, but still there under the surface, threatening to return at the end of each new distraction.
Yoi gave Conall an apologetic look and placed his head lovingly against his chest. “Right. Sorry you’re feeling so down.”
“Not your fault,” he said, putting a bit of a cheery lilt in his voice to feign contentedness. Yoi shot him a sad, knowing smile, but didn’t press the issue. “This outfit, on the other hand, is your fault. Think you could make it a little comfier?”
Without even the barest hint of movement from Yoiryu, Conall’s outfit transformed one last time, into a lizard-(or perhaps dragon-) themed Kigurumi. The pajama-onesie fit lightly over his body, and the felt teeth extended down just enough to be seen in Conall’s peripheral vision. “See? Now that’s more like it,” he said, puling at the soft fabric with his fingers. He gently placed his boyfriend’s place between his hands, squeezing his face as he brought it closer, before giving him a gentle peck on the forehead. Yoi, in response, nuzzled his head into the crook of Conall’s neck. The warm and erratic fluctuations of his breath quickly gave way to slow and cool inhales and exhales. Conall shifted his weight a bit, letting himself get comfortable in the loveseat, and felt the lids of his eyes begin to droop…
Yoiryu was gone when Conall woke up.
Wiping sleep from his eyes, he tried to roll his shoulder back into place and grimaced as it remained stubbornly sore. He must’ve slept on it wrong.
Early-morning light peeked through the vertical blinds. Still bleary-eyed and half-asleep, Conall stood up from the couch. The tail from his Kigurumi flopped onto the floor with a dull ‘thunk’ and dragged along on the carpet behind him.
The apartment was much the same as it had been last night. With one exception. On the dining table next to the kitchenette was a small dish that looked almost like a bowl of edible candy. Getting closer, it seemed that Conall hadn’t been too far off. Chunks of pineapple and banana mixed with cherries and orange slices, all stirred together in a white, marshmallowy goop. A post-it note in Yoiryu’s handwriting next to the dish simply said “Sorry you’re feeling so undervalued. You’re a greater man than your bosses could ever know. Please enjoy the ambrosia salad I made, and try to feel better.” and was signed with a little heart in the bottom corner.
It was worded just oddly enough to give Conall pause. It wasn’t unlike Yoi to play little tricks on him, and they were almost always preceded by odd behavior like this. On the other hand, ‘Odd Behavior’ was about 90% of Yoi’s activities regardless of whether or not he was playing a joke on Conall specifically. Plus, the meal looked mundane enough; a dish made of sweet fruits was hardly the strangest food Yoi had ever made for him…
Tentatively, he sat down and grabbed a orange slice with a fork. It was covered in a white goop that a quick sniff test quickly identified as marshmallow fluff, while a golden, honey-like liquid began to drip from the fruit. Bracing for impact, he put the slice in his mouth, and instinctively turned his nose upwards as he began to chew.
He’d expected the orange to taste far too sweet, but as his chewing sped up, a quiet smile reached across his face as felt it slide down his throat. The golden liquid he’d assumed was honey was actual more fruity; like a sort of nectar or apple juice. The natural citrus from the orange and the sweetness of the marshmallow combined perfectly to create something that would’ve made an excellent dessert. He made a mental note to ask Yoiryu for the recipe as he jabbed his fork into a slice of pineapple.
The salad was finished in just under 10 minutes, and Conall sat back in the chair for a moment, letting the food settle in his stomach for a few minutes, and taking the time to appreciate the mastery that must’ve gone into the dish. He idly wondered if Yoi had actually bothered to make the dish from scratch or had simply summoned it from wherever he summoned everything else. Pushing the thought out of his mind, he put his hand around the bowl and rose from the chair, to put the dish in the sink.
Conall realized something was wrong when, right after standing up, he hit his head on the ceiling fan.
He angrily rubbed his hand against the felt of the Kigurumi that covered the back of his head, keeping his neck bent as he let out a few of the gentler swears. After the pain subsided, he opened his eyes again, and let out some of the stronger ones.
He beheld his apartment in miniature as he pressed one hand against each wall, feeling the drywall crack beneath his weight as he watched the room begin to shrink even further down. For anyone else, they would’ve taken this to mean they were in some kind of dream, or vivid hallucination. Conall, however, had been around Yoi enough to know exactly what was going on. Although, in fairness, he was usually going the other way.
He tried to sit on the floor, giving himself more room as his body expanded to fill the space he was in. His head hit the ceiling again, and he tucked his knees in as his legs ran out of room to expand into. The green dragon-paw pajama shoes he was wearing pressed up against the door of the apartment, and he could hear metal groan as his body ran out of space to exist comfortably within.
The entire apartment seemed to collapse at once. The wall behind him cracked and his back snapped back and laid him out straight as he suddenly ran out of something to keep him curled up like he had been. His feet finally broke through the door of the apartment that went into the stairwell, and he could feel the sun shining on his face, and the cool morning air passing gently through the threads of his fabric pajamas. He fell from his third-story apartment (which, to him, felt like only a foot drop), and landed on the ground with a face full of asphalt. Swiftly pulling his head up, he felt a pit drop into his stomach and he began to panic worrying that his sudden growth might’ve hurt someone on the ground below. He rolled over, and after a quick glance, gave a sigh of relief.
He stood up from the asphalt and nearly instantly began to feel dizzy. His new height was… difficult to adjust to, and the feeling that he was high up and about to fall gave him a difficult bout of vertigo. Steadying his hand against the roof of the apartment building, he looked down at the ground that, even now, was growing further and further away by the second. He closed his eyes and tried to steady himself; It kept the vertigo at bay, at least, but with his mind now less occupied, a deep sense of embarrassment began to pass over him. Here he was, probably at least 50 feet tall, wearing a pair of dragon-themed pajamas like a discount Godzilla rampaging through a discount Tokyo. He had to assume he looked stupid.
Opening his eyes and expecting to see a crowd of people gawking up at him, Conall was surprised to see the ground around him empty. The Sapporo skyline stretched far into the distance, cradled by the Hidaka mountains in the distance, and the streets below were lively with cars and trucks the size of toys. But not a single soul populated the ground, and the streets below were lively with cars and trucks the size of toys. But not a single soul populated the ground, and the miniature vehicles seemed indifferent to his presence, continuing along their route as if he was absent. Leaning down, Conall plucked one of the vehicles between a pair of his fingers. The metal groaned slightly from the weight but maintained its structural integrity. Peering into the front window, he gave a sigh of relief as he realized that car was completely empty. Placing it back on the road, the car drove away like nothing had happened.
That explains why there aren’t crowds of panicking people, Conall mused to himself. It wasn’t a real city. Or, at least, if it was a real city, there weren’t any people in it. It was like of those films sets for an old Tokusatsu tv-show; just with a lot more intricacy. Whether it was just a copy of Sapporo, or the real Sapporo, temporarily evacuated of people, wasn’t Conall’s primary concern.
The important thing was, he could have his fun without worrying about collateral damage.
Gingerly, almost hesitantly, he lifted a pajama’d foot above one of the nearby apartment buildings, before bringing it crashing down with a sudden motion. Glass and steel groaned under the weight his big, cotton dragon-paw, before caving in with sudden rapidity. Rubble flew upwards from the top of the building like the debris from an implosion.
Conall smiled quietly to himself. It was a bit silly, he had to admit, but he was starting to understand why Yoi enjoyed this so much. With the stress of work always bearing down on him, it was nice to feel powerful for once. Like he was in control of his own life. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to feel that way.
His eyes glanced suddenly towards the Sapporo skyline; He could see the tall, red TV-tower some ways off; more importantly, he could see his workplace. A tall, brown, block of a building that stuck out like a weed. He felt a sneer cross his face, and a wicked idea began to cross his mind. He stood up to his full height and began to march towards it, idly kicking away smaller buildings and leaving deep imprints in the asphalt of the roads below.
It was normally a 20-minute train-ride to work on a good day; at his new height, Conall was able to reach the building by walking in just under five. If it wasn’t for all the property damage, Conall mused internally, I’d ask Yoi if I could make this my daily commute. Beats taking the train.
As he reared up on the building, he felt a smug smile cross his face as he realized that the building was just a little shorter than he was. Memories passed through his mind; the time he’d been passed over for promotion, or the time his supervisor had taken Conall’s project, all but complete, and gave it to his pet employee. He grasped onto the top of the building with two hands and began to twist it, feeling the shriek of metal beneath his hands as the building began to crack…
Ichiro Sumitomo barely looked up from his papers when he heard the building start to groan. The Sumitomo Group had been on the downswing since the start of the economic dip. Paying to keep up maintenance was much too expensive at the moment, and they needed to spend their money where it was most useful. If that meant that the building whined a bit from time to time, so be it.
It was when the bricks started cracking and the floor started moving that he began to panic.
He initially assumed it was an earthquake, until he, in a panic, glanced out the window.
It was like looking at a bad Kaiju film. The costume wasn’t very convincing; more like a set of pajamas than anything else. And yet, he couldn’t deny that, whatever it was that loomed outside his office window, it was the real deal. He felt the ground lurch upwards as the top of the building detached, his stomach nearly doubling over as he grabbed onto his desk, searching for purchase.
The massive visage that covered his window was distinctly human. Bright green eyes peered in through the windows, as if searching for something. He briefly felt a pang of terror as they passed over him, before breathing a sigh of relief as they passed by without noticing him. He backed towards the wall opposite the windows, his hands reaching for the doorknob. And then, in an instant, now that he was able to see more of the Titan’s face, something clicked.
“Conall?” Ichiro asked himself quietly. That didn’t seem right, but the giant’s bright red hair and European features were unmistakable. But how, and why-
He didn’t have time to consider the implications as the ground lurched downwards. For a moment, Ichiro was in a state of free fall. Debris and office supplies were lifted into the air as the chunk of building he was in fell to earth. Brick and metal slammed into each other with great ferocity as the top chunk fell onto the bottom, and the entire building crumbled beneath the weight of the meeting, leaving only a pile of rubble. Ichiro, though his body ached with unimaginable pain, found himself still in possession of all his faculties. His limbs moved slowly and painfully, but they moved. He ribs cried out in pain as bricks jutted uncomfortably into them, and he let out a quiet groan. This couldn’t be real. This had to just be some bizarre dream.
Flipping himself over, Ichiro looked up into the sky and gave a last, quiet sigh. Kaiju-Conall was looking off into the distance, like a predator eyeing new prey. He lifted a massive, wooly paw above the ruins of his old office building, eyes pointed forwards, and unaware of his boss, down on the ground, who braced for impact as all that weight came crashing down on top of him.
Yoiryu’s tails flicked idly as he maneuvered himself, trying to get comfortable on the loveseat. The little version of Sapporo that sat on his coffee table was impressive, all things considered. It hadn’t taken much to make, but given how Conall was clearly having a ball, rampaging through it like Godzilla, it was obviously good enough.
He briefly considered removing the pseudo-atmosphere above the city; taking away the sky and letting Conall get a good look at his boyfriend looming above, big enough to cup the city in his hand. But that was against the spirit of the thing. Conall needed to feel like he was in control of things, even just for a little bit. It would be unimaginably cruel to take that away from him just as he was starting to get into the swing of things. He’d let Conall have his fun, and then ‘reset’ everything when he was done. He’d never even need to know the city was just a model.
Conall’s boss, on the other hand, would wake up in a few hours in a cold sweat, having had the most vivid and bizarre dream of his life.
And, just maybe, with a newfound respect for the young foreigner in his employ.
One of these days, I promise I'll write something that's just 'Guy gets big, does something with it' without 10 pages of lead up. If you wanna skip to the good part, just Ctrl-F 'Wiping' and it'll bring you right to it.
This piece was suggested by
BlueSky72! You can put story suggestions in my suggestion box at any time! I can't write every submission I get, but the ones that interest me most likely will be!Breakfast of the Gods
Conall let his shoulder go limp as his messenger bag fell to the tile floor behind his apartment door. It slumped to the ground, pathetic and useless, as Conall tried to shut the door gently behind him.
He failed, of course. It slammed with a resounding ‘THUD!’, and Conall let out a quiet string of curses. His day at work had been awful, but he tried to make it a point not to bring that home. He made it a point to not bring work problems home with him; compartmentalization was important for work-life separation. More importantly, whenever he expressed some frustration or discontentment, his boyfriend always got an inkling to try and ‘fix’ the problem. Typically, Yoiryu’s remedies lead to fewer resolutions, and more hilarity. Conall always enjoyed the hijinks, either as a participant or an observer, but it seemed self-indulgent to ask for it, and moping around the apartment was basically the same as asking.
Dating an apparently all-powerful Trickster God was, Conall reasoned, a bit like dating a famous musician. You could enjoy the music when they chose to play, but treating them like a personal jukebox was too much.
Today had been worse than usual, though. He knew, on some level, that the only reason the company he worked for kept him on was to make the place seem more ‘international’. The conglomerate treated him more as a commodity than as an employee; someone adequately ‘foreign’ to assure investors that the company had international reach despite having an almost exclusively Japanese market. It was a cushy job, and well paying, and he had few responsibilities beyond showing up to meetings. More importantly, it meant has was exempt from all the petty office politics and horrendous work culture of the Japanese office space; he would never get promoted anyways, so there was no point in waiting until the boss left first. But he hadn’t gone through half-a-decade of schooling just to be a pretty face at the bottom-middle rung of some investment group’s portfolio. He had ideas. He wanted to innovate, and transform, and flex his creative muscles.
He strode into his apartment’s kitchen trying to keep his shoulders up and chin high. The witheringly pitiful look his boyfriend gave him told him he failed.
“Rough day at work?” Yoiryu asked, his voice serious-yet-gentle. He was sautéing some fish on the stove, but he turned around the moment he heard Conall enter. Strangely, he was in his purely human form; no tails or little fox ears sticking from the top of his head. He only did that when he felt the need to be serious, which was rather rare. It genuinely caught Conall off guard. Still, he gave his boyfriend a strained smile.
“Yeah. Sorry. I don’t want to bring negative feelings home with me, but today was…” he sighed and looked away. “Today was rough. I’m going to take a shower and lay down, if that’s all right.”
Yoiryu turned the knob on the stove off with a click. “Hold on,” he said. “Do you wanna talk about it? I hate to see you so upset.” Conall gave him a sad smile, but a lump caught in his throat before he could say anything. He wanted to protest and acquiesce at the same time. Instead, he said nothing as his boyfriend lead him into the living and onto the couch, until they were both sitting side-by-side.
“What happened?” Started Yoi as he stretched out his legs on the couch. Conall half-imagined him with a clipboard and a pipe. He mentally prepared himself for the barrage of ‘And how did that make you feel?’s. He looked up at the ceiling and tried to remember what it was that had set him off.
“I think it was the meeting, right after lunch,” he said. Meetings were his primary activity at the office, besides responding to the few international e-mails the company got. “It was a meeting about marketing for our new widget,” he said.
“Widget?”
“The good we’re trying to sell. It’s a retail finance thing, not really that important to the story.” Yoi nodded and gestured for Conall to continue. “Everyone was upset that we weren’t getting an RoI, but nobody wanted to address the elephant in the room.”
“Which is?”
“That we’ve completely screw up the target demo advertising. The way the app is designed, it’s clearly supposed to appeal to downwardly mobile upper-middle class 20-to-30 somethings. People who want the economic security their parents had but don’t.”
“Ah,” said Yoi, understanding. “You’re selling cryptocurrency.”
“Well, not exactly that. You do get a physical object; a little doodad that we paired up with Toei Animation for. Some anime thing, I don’t know,” he shrugged. “The point is, there’s a finite number of them, and the company clearly wants to hype them up so people will sell them on the secondary market.”
“Why though? The company doesn’t get anything for sales made on the secondary market. You’re a manufacturing concern, not eBay.”
“We’re not. But the doodads have chips in them that convey ownership digitally. You scan it with your phone, and it tells you who it belongs to.”
Understanding crossed Yoiryu’s face. “Let me guess, you can only ‘transfer’ them by selling them on an approved application. One that a parent company owns and takes a cut for each sale.” He somehow managed to scowl while looking impressed. “That’s evil. Weaponizing economic anxiety like that feels wrong.”
Conall shrugged. “When there’s a gold rush, you can dig or sell shovels.”
Realizing they’d been sidetracked, Yoi redirected the conversation. “So, they screwed up the target demographics.”
“Right. The problem is that the things were being marketed like a toy. We weren’t getting pre-orders from people who wanted to re-sell the things. All the pre-orders were almost exclusively for children. So, the parent company is accusing us of shithousing; Advertising the products without regard to the secondary market. Apparently, they had a lot riding on it.”
“Did you?”
“Not intentionally. The problem is that there’s quite a bit of overlap between ‘Downwardly mobile middle-class strivers’ and ‘Literal, actual children’. We advertised on the sorts of places your average Hikikomori types tend to frequent: streams, message boards, and Animax. We had quite a few television commercials, in fact. That was where most of the advertising budget went.”
“So, what happened that got you so upset?”
Conall sighed. “It was during the meeting with our parent company. They wanted to chew us out for dropping the ball, and everyone in our office wanted to cover their ass and shift blame. Typical corporate stuff, really. I was only there as a technicality. But it was just so frustrating to hear everyone talk around in circles when the issue was so obvious. There was no desire the fix the problem; just a continually passing of a hot potato.”
“Let me guess,” said Yoi, sympathetically. “You spoke up.”
“I tried to use diplomatic language,” said Conall, working himself up into a frenzy. “I simply said what I thought was true; it was an issue borne of inaccurate demographic research, but that the project could still be salvaged if we just refocused our marketing campaign towards the right areas and with the right message. It wouldn’t have been some herculean task; just some graphic redesigns on the ads, and a sponsored tweet or two.”
“What’d they say?”
Conall inhaled deeply, giving himself a moment to calm down, before turning his gaze towards Yoiryu with quiet intensity. “Absolutely nothing.” A scowl crossed his face, and he continued before Yoi could ask for elaboration. “I could’ve lived with disagreement. Even chastisement.” His face was turning red, and he spoke faster with each word. “A simple ‘Thank you for the input but I’m afraid that’s not an option’ or, hell, I would’ve taken ‘You’re a moron, Fitzmorris, don’t speak up again’. Just… something.” He took a deep breath, giving himself a second to calm down. “Instead, they stared at me for a few seconds, and continued like I hadn’t said anything at all.”
“Is that what’s got you upset? You feel undervalued there?”
“No,” stared Conall. “Yes. Almost that. I knew when I took the job that I wasn’t going to be taken very seriously. It’s just that I feel so, so-” he gestured with his hands trying to find the right word. “So demeaned. I’m an object of fascination basically everywhere I go! People assume I can’t understand them, and God’s Bones do they talk like it. I can’t go to a restaurant anywhere in Sapporo without some woman pointing at me and telling her kids, ‘Watch how that Gaijin eats’. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve heard on elevators.” His pace was picking up again and he grew even redder than before. “And yet! When I try to say something, everyone shuts up and acts like they can’t hear me!” He put his elbow on his leg and rested his hand against his forehead. “It feels like I’m not even a human being. Like my entire existence is just… pointless and unimportant.”
“Hey, hey,” interrupted Yoiryu. “Don’t start talking like that. Just because they don’t appreciate a great thing when they’ve got it doesn’t mean you need to start internalizing it as some kind of moral failure.”
“I know, I know,” said Conall, sighing. “But it’s hard to push those thoughts back when this kind of thing happens every other day. It’s hard not to feel a bit insignificant.”
“Well, it should be,” said Yoiryu, putting his feet up on the opposite side of the couch as he sidled up to Conall’s chest, his tone a careful mix of soothing and playful. “They don’t know what a catch they’ve got.” With the tip of his finger, he gently booped the underside of Conall’s chin. “You’ve got the face of someone who would’ve been a Petty King in medieval Ireland. ‘The Lord of Munster’ or something.”
Without so much as a Poof, Conall’s well-tailored suit was gone, and in its place was a set of ancient-looking clothes. A blue-and-black tartan weave covered him from shoulders to his ankles, and a fur cape draped around his neck, reaching down to his waist.
It all sat awkwardly under him as he tried to readjust his position on the couch to get comfortable again. Yoi was clearly trying to cheer him up, and Conall had to admit that the sheer bizarreness of it was helping his mood a lot more than he’d expected. Deciding to egg his boyfriend on a bit more, he tugged at the edges of his new robes.
“Tartans are more of a Scottish thing, aren’t they?” He asked, a bit slyly.
Yoiryu simply shrugged. “They weren’t exactly common, but they’ve been in use for a few thousand years.”
“If you say so,” Conall said, figuring it was best not to argue with the immortal, all-powerful being on the nature of 8th-century B.C. Celtic fashion. “Still, I can’t help but think of Cú Chulainn while wearing this. They made us read the Táin in school, and every time I think of him, I remember the little drawings of him in his ríastrad. Muscles spasming out, foaming out the mouth; real horrifying. Not exactly my idea of hot stuff.”
Yoiryu squinted at him, unsure if he was being serious of if he was simply taking the piss. A smirk spread across the corner of his mouth, and he snuggled up closer to Conall, practically laying on top of him. “All right then, fine. You easily could’ve been a Roman Emperor though. One of the later ones, maybe.”
Conall’s outfit morphed again, until his robes were replaced with a long, reddish-purple woolen toga, and a golden laurel wreath sat on top of his head and a golden sash stretched across his chest. He stifled a laugh as he smiled at Yoiryu. “As much as I like to imagine myself a Marcus Aurelius, I’m pretty sure I’d end up being more like Nero or Caligula.”
“Nonsense,” said Yoiryu, waving his hand dismissively. “You’re at least a Libius Severus, or Valentinian the Moderate.”
Conall winced a bit. Not at any perceived insult: he figured the obscurity of the emperors mentioned was part of the gag. It was more a pang of sympathy for the last one mentioned. “How dull do you have to be to go down in history as ‘The Moderate’? You’d think he would’ve started an unwinnable war so he could at least go down in history as ‘The Mad’ or ‘The Foolish’ or something. That’d be far better than ‘The Moderate’.”
“You’re just saying that because you’re from Roscommon. All the Kings in Irish History are named things like ‘Niall of the Nine Hostages’ or ‘Conn of the Hundred Battles’. Flavorful stuff. The rest of Europe was calling every King who built a Cathedral or stole their neighbor’s pastureland ‘The Great’ like they were Alexander reborn.”
Conall simply shrugged. “All the same, if you’re trying to inspire confidence in me, you might want to aim for something a bit more modern. These are just… costumes.”
Yoiryu drug out an exasperated, disgusted “Eugh,” while rolling his eyes up at the ceiling. “All the powerful men now just wear suits, though! There’s no theatricality to it. Anybody with a bit of dosh can get one, and there’s no real granularity between the cheapest suits and the most expensive!”
“True. Ever since the Industrial Revolution made textile manufacturing cheap and simple, there’s been a real flattening of acceptable styles. Only real exception is-”
Before he could finish his sentence, Conall found himself decked out in a sharp Military Officer’s uniform. Red and Gold pauldrons accented the few tons of metal chest candy on his left breast. His lower shirt was tied snugly around his waist, and a flat-brimmed cap with a single, internationally vague star insignia reached out over his forehead. He shuffled a bit in his seat, trying to get comfortably as his new outfit practically creaked.
“Did you starch this thing before you summoned it from the ether? I’m going to have full-body corduroy lines if I wear this thing too long.”
Yoi simply nodded in agreement. “Sorry, you’re right. It’s not really doing anything for me, either. This was a silly decision.”
“Are you sure? It’s really inspiring me to go out and be more self-assertive. If military officers are always wearing clothes that ride this high, a lot of war crimes suddenly make sense.” This got a single ‘snrk’ from Yoi, and Conall added a mental point to a mental tally.
“Maybe something fictional, then?” Asked Yoi. “There’s gotta be something-”
“Not that this isn’t fun and everything, but it’s getting late, love.” With the novelty of playing dress-up wearing off, his initial exhaustion had creeped its way back in, and his somber mood slowly began to return; lesser than before, but still there under the surface, threatening to return at the end of each new distraction.
Yoi gave Conall an apologetic look and placed his head lovingly against his chest. “Right. Sorry you’re feeling so down.”
“Not your fault,” he said, putting a bit of a cheery lilt in his voice to feign contentedness. Yoi shot him a sad, knowing smile, but didn’t press the issue. “This outfit, on the other hand, is your fault. Think you could make it a little comfier?”
Without even the barest hint of movement from Yoiryu, Conall’s outfit transformed one last time, into a lizard-(or perhaps dragon-) themed Kigurumi. The pajama-onesie fit lightly over his body, and the felt teeth extended down just enough to be seen in Conall’s peripheral vision. “See? Now that’s more like it,” he said, puling at the soft fabric with his fingers. He gently placed his boyfriend’s place between his hands, squeezing his face as he brought it closer, before giving him a gentle peck on the forehead. Yoi, in response, nuzzled his head into the crook of Conall’s neck. The warm and erratic fluctuations of his breath quickly gave way to slow and cool inhales and exhales. Conall shifted his weight a bit, letting himself get comfortable in the loveseat, and felt the lids of his eyes begin to droop…
Yoiryu was gone when Conall woke up.
Wiping sleep from his eyes, he tried to roll his shoulder back into place and grimaced as it remained stubbornly sore. He must’ve slept on it wrong.
Early-morning light peeked through the vertical blinds. Still bleary-eyed and half-asleep, Conall stood up from the couch. The tail from his Kigurumi flopped onto the floor with a dull ‘thunk’ and dragged along on the carpet behind him.
The apartment was much the same as it had been last night. With one exception. On the dining table next to the kitchenette was a small dish that looked almost like a bowl of edible candy. Getting closer, it seemed that Conall hadn’t been too far off. Chunks of pineapple and banana mixed with cherries and orange slices, all stirred together in a white, marshmallowy goop. A post-it note in Yoiryu’s handwriting next to the dish simply said “Sorry you’re feeling so undervalued. You’re a greater man than your bosses could ever know. Please enjoy the ambrosia salad I made, and try to feel better.” and was signed with a little heart in the bottom corner.
It was worded just oddly enough to give Conall pause. It wasn’t unlike Yoi to play little tricks on him, and they were almost always preceded by odd behavior like this. On the other hand, ‘Odd Behavior’ was about 90% of Yoi’s activities regardless of whether or not he was playing a joke on Conall specifically. Plus, the meal looked mundane enough; a dish made of sweet fruits was hardly the strangest food Yoi had ever made for him…
Tentatively, he sat down and grabbed a orange slice with a fork. It was covered in a white goop that a quick sniff test quickly identified as marshmallow fluff, while a golden, honey-like liquid began to drip from the fruit. Bracing for impact, he put the slice in his mouth, and instinctively turned his nose upwards as he began to chew.
He’d expected the orange to taste far too sweet, but as his chewing sped up, a quiet smile reached across his face as felt it slide down his throat. The golden liquid he’d assumed was honey was actual more fruity; like a sort of nectar or apple juice. The natural citrus from the orange and the sweetness of the marshmallow combined perfectly to create something that would’ve made an excellent dessert. He made a mental note to ask Yoiryu for the recipe as he jabbed his fork into a slice of pineapple.
The salad was finished in just under 10 minutes, and Conall sat back in the chair for a moment, letting the food settle in his stomach for a few minutes, and taking the time to appreciate the mastery that must’ve gone into the dish. He idly wondered if Yoi had actually bothered to make the dish from scratch or had simply summoned it from wherever he summoned everything else. Pushing the thought out of his mind, he put his hand around the bowl and rose from the chair, to put the dish in the sink.
Conall realized something was wrong when, right after standing up, he hit his head on the ceiling fan.
He angrily rubbed his hand against the felt of the Kigurumi that covered the back of his head, keeping his neck bent as he let out a few of the gentler swears. After the pain subsided, he opened his eyes again, and let out some of the stronger ones.
He beheld his apartment in miniature as he pressed one hand against each wall, feeling the drywall crack beneath his weight as he watched the room begin to shrink even further down. For anyone else, they would’ve taken this to mean they were in some kind of dream, or vivid hallucination. Conall, however, had been around Yoi enough to know exactly what was going on. Although, in fairness, he was usually going the other way.
He tried to sit on the floor, giving himself more room as his body expanded to fill the space he was in. His head hit the ceiling again, and he tucked his knees in as his legs ran out of room to expand into. The green dragon-paw pajama shoes he was wearing pressed up against the door of the apartment, and he could hear metal groan as his body ran out of space to exist comfortably within.
The entire apartment seemed to collapse at once. The wall behind him cracked and his back snapped back and laid him out straight as he suddenly ran out of something to keep him curled up like he had been. His feet finally broke through the door of the apartment that went into the stairwell, and he could feel the sun shining on his face, and the cool morning air passing gently through the threads of his fabric pajamas. He fell from his third-story apartment (which, to him, felt like only a foot drop), and landed on the ground with a face full of asphalt. Swiftly pulling his head up, he felt a pit drop into his stomach and he began to panic worrying that his sudden growth might’ve hurt someone on the ground below. He rolled over, and after a quick glance, gave a sigh of relief.
He stood up from the asphalt and nearly instantly began to feel dizzy. His new height was… difficult to adjust to, and the feeling that he was high up and about to fall gave him a difficult bout of vertigo. Steadying his hand against the roof of the apartment building, he looked down at the ground that, even now, was growing further and further away by the second. He closed his eyes and tried to steady himself; It kept the vertigo at bay, at least, but with his mind now less occupied, a deep sense of embarrassment began to pass over him. Here he was, probably at least 50 feet tall, wearing a pair of dragon-themed pajamas like a discount Godzilla rampaging through a discount Tokyo. He had to assume he looked stupid.
Opening his eyes and expecting to see a crowd of people gawking up at him, Conall was surprised to see the ground around him empty. The Sapporo skyline stretched far into the distance, cradled by the Hidaka mountains in the distance, and the streets below were lively with cars and trucks the size of toys. But not a single soul populated the ground, and the streets below were lively with cars and trucks the size of toys. But not a single soul populated the ground, and the miniature vehicles seemed indifferent to his presence, continuing along their route as if he was absent. Leaning down, Conall plucked one of the vehicles between a pair of his fingers. The metal groaned slightly from the weight but maintained its structural integrity. Peering into the front window, he gave a sigh of relief as he realized that car was completely empty. Placing it back on the road, the car drove away like nothing had happened.
That explains why there aren’t crowds of panicking people, Conall mused to himself. It wasn’t a real city. Or, at least, if it was a real city, there weren’t any people in it. It was like of those films sets for an old Tokusatsu tv-show; just with a lot more intricacy. Whether it was just a copy of Sapporo, or the real Sapporo, temporarily evacuated of people, wasn’t Conall’s primary concern.
The important thing was, he could have his fun without worrying about collateral damage.
Gingerly, almost hesitantly, he lifted a pajama’d foot above one of the nearby apartment buildings, before bringing it crashing down with a sudden motion. Glass and steel groaned under the weight his big, cotton dragon-paw, before caving in with sudden rapidity. Rubble flew upwards from the top of the building like the debris from an implosion.
Conall smiled quietly to himself. It was a bit silly, he had to admit, but he was starting to understand why Yoi enjoyed this so much. With the stress of work always bearing down on him, it was nice to feel powerful for once. Like he was in control of his own life. He hadn’t realized how much he’d needed to feel that way.
His eyes glanced suddenly towards the Sapporo skyline; He could see the tall, red TV-tower some ways off; more importantly, he could see his workplace. A tall, brown, block of a building that stuck out like a weed. He felt a sneer cross his face, and a wicked idea began to cross his mind. He stood up to his full height and began to march towards it, idly kicking away smaller buildings and leaving deep imprints in the asphalt of the roads below.
It was normally a 20-minute train-ride to work on a good day; at his new height, Conall was able to reach the building by walking in just under five. If it wasn’t for all the property damage, Conall mused internally, I’d ask Yoi if I could make this my daily commute. Beats taking the train.
As he reared up on the building, he felt a smug smile cross his face as he realized that the building was just a little shorter than he was. Memories passed through his mind; the time he’d been passed over for promotion, or the time his supervisor had taken Conall’s project, all but complete, and gave it to his pet employee. He grasped onto the top of the building with two hands and began to twist it, feeling the shriek of metal beneath his hands as the building began to crack…
Ichiro Sumitomo barely looked up from his papers when he heard the building start to groan. The Sumitomo Group had been on the downswing since the start of the economic dip. Paying to keep up maintenance was much too expensive at the moment, and they needed to spend their money where it was most useful. If that meant that the building whined a bit from time to time, so be it.
It was when the bricks started cracking and the floor started moving that he began to panic.
He initially assumed it was an earthquake, until he, in a panic, glanced out the window.
It was like looking at a bad Kaiju film. The costume wasn’t very convincing; more like a set of pajamas than anything else. And yet, he couldn’t deny that, whatever it was that loomed outside his office window, it was the real deal. He felt the ground lurch upwards as the top of the building detached, his stomach nearly doubling over as he grabbed onto his desk, searching for purchase.
The massive visage that covered his window was distinctly human. Bright green eyes peered in through the windows, as if searching for something. He briefly felt a pang of terror as they passed over him, before breathing a sigh of relief as they passed by without noticing him. He backed towards the wall opposite the windows, his hands reaching for the doorknob. And then, in an instant, now that he was able to see more of the Titan’s face, something clicked.
“Conall?” Ichiro asked himself quietly. That didn’t seem right, but the giant’s bright red hair and European features were unmistakable. But how, and why-
He didn’t have time to consider the implications as the ground lurched downwards. For a moment, Ichiro was in a state of free fall. Debris and office supplies were lifted into the air as the chunk of building he was in fell to earth. Brick and metal slammed into each other with great ferocity as the top chunk fell onto the bottom, and the entire building crumbled beneath the weight of the meeting, leaving only a pile of rubble. Ichiro, though his body ached with unimaginable pain, found himself still in possession of all his faculties. His limbs moved slowly and painfully, but they moved. He ribs cried out in pain as bricks jutted uncomfortably into them, and he let out a quiet groan. This couldn’t be real. This had to just be some bizarre dream.
Flipping himself over, Ichiro looked up into the sky and gave a last, quiet sigh. Kaiju-Conall was looking off into the distance, like a predator eyeing new prey. He lifted a massive, wooly paw above the ruins of his old office building, eyes pointed forwards, and unaware of his boss, down on the ground, who braced for impact as all that weight came crashing down on top of him.
Yoiryu’s tails flicked idly as he maneuvered himself, trying to get comfortable on the loveseat. The little version of Sapporo that sat on his coffee table was impressive, all things considered. It hadn’t taken much to make, but given how Conall was clearly having a ball, rampaging through it like Godzilla, it was obviously good enough.
He briefly considered removing the pseudo-atmosphere above the city; taking away the sky and letting Conall get a good look at his boyfriend looming above, big enough to cup the city in his hand. But that was against the spirit of the thing. Conall needed to feel like he was in control of things, even just for a little bit. It would be unimaginably cruel to take that away from him just as he was starting to get into the swing of things. He’d let Conall have his fun, and then ‘reset’ everything when he was done. He’d never even need to know the city was just a model.
Conall’s boss, on the other hand, would wake up in a few hours in a cold sweat, having had the most vivid and bizarre dream of his life.
And, just maybe, with a newfound respect for the young foreigner in his employ.
Category Story / Macro / Micro
Species Human
Size 120 x 120px
File Size 31.9 kB
Listed in Folders
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