One-on-one | Happy ending | The cold-faced, warm-hearted demon vice-captain vs. the high-ranking, power-hungry, dramatic lackey
The Shinsengumi has recently gotten another friend-of-a-friend recruit.
Apparently, she's the daughter of the older brother of the younger sister's husband of the neighbor of a drinking buddy of one of Matsudaira's old comrades-in-arms from his youth... or something like that.
The owner of the company where she was interning ran off, so she couldn't get proof of her internship and her university graduation was delayed. After much running around, she had no choice but to ask the old man for help.
No official document from the shogunate, no clear job assignment, just her superior's casual, "I'll leave her in your hands, Kondo."
If only life could be that simple.
No, this was just the beginning of trouble.
.
They say that interns without a mentor usually latch onto whoever looks easiest to bully.
But nobody in the squad had ever mentored an intern, so in the end, it was just a rumor.
And rumors stop with the wise.
So the Shinsengumi, normally notorious for their violence and rough manners, suddenly became amiable, one and all.
But just as they were secretly competing to see who she'd choose, the intern quietly fell in behind the stone-faced Toshiro Hijikata.
"Vice-Captain, is today's tea strong enough?"
"Vice-Captain, I saw your favorite mayonnaise on sale at the convenience store, so I picked up some for you."
"Vice-Captain, are your shoulders sore? I'm really good at massages. Want me to help you relax?"
"Vice-Captain, you have such refined taste in cigarettes! That's our Vice-Captain for you!"
Toshiro Hijikata desperately suppressed the urge to stab her, his mouth twitching as he glared at the beaming intern in front of him.
He must have had the worst luck in the world to get haunted by a demon like her.
.
At twenty-six, a woman should be reaching the peak of her career, but Asuka was clearly an exception.
She could afford to take it easy because she was now just one step away from the top.
Every day, she watched the old man at the top get grilled during meetings, then rush to clean up the mess left by his troublesome subordinates afterward...
She suddenly thought that staying second-in-command for another twenty years didn't sound so bad.
Maybe ambition was best kept in moderation.
.
Toshiro Hijikata realized that the sycophantic intern who followed him around all day seemed to have motives he couldn't see through.
Just as he was considering threatening her with her internship certificate to make her behave, she beat him to it and came to find him.
Her opening line was:
"Vice-Captain, you wouldn't want your Captain to lose his job, would you?"
Wait, is that how this works?
At the morning meeting, Toshiro Hijikata read out the schedule for the coming week as usual, then announced that he would be taking about a week of annual leave.
It was no secret that the Vice-Captain was a workaholic.
Even taking two days off in a row was rare, let alone a whole week.
As everyone wondered what could possibly have happened to make him suddenly give up being a workaholic and peppered him with questions, he casually left them with four words.
"Honeymoon."
=
Warnings:
1. There may be OOC moments and lots of personal headcanons.
2. The main storyline is original.
3. All references and jokes are there to serve the story.
4. The heroine is strong, and both leads are equally strong.
5. Romance between adults.
Theme: Work hard
