Chapter Text
You hate your job, but not as much as you hate your boss.
This is the order of things: you hunch over your keyboard, glare at spreadsheets blooming in cold blue columns, and keep one ear tuned to the growl of Enji Todoroki’s voice as he stalks up and down the rows of desks. The office is a glass-and-chrome aquarium, forty stories above a city strung with evening lights, the only warmth the oily glow of monitors and the bitter tang of burnt coffee in the air.
He’s moving again. The floor seems to vibrate when he passes your cubicle—heavy and slow, shoulders broad enough to block the hallway lights. You always hear him before you see him, his boots silent on the carpet, but every step echoing authority. The rest of the staff—younger, neater, brittle with anxiety—shrink at his approach. There’s a worrying rumour floating around that he once put a hole in the wall with his fist. Another rumour: he used to run with gangs before turning legitimate, and the jagged scar carving his left cheek is proof.
You know what they say about him. You know what you’re supposed to feel.
You watch him pass by, anyway.
Even the seasoned managers keep their heads down. When the office is dead silent, you can feel him watching you from across the room, waiting for you to mess up. You remember the first week you started—how you’d laughed a little too loudly in the break room, and he’d fixed you with a stare so cold it actually made your skin prickle, like he could peel back every layer until you had nothing left to hide. You once saw him catch an analyst scrolling on her phone during work hours; all he said was her name, flat and quiet, but the whole floor felt it. You never saw her again.
His face is all planes and shadow, jaw square beneath a few days’ stubble, red-brown hair pushed back and sharp as a crown. The scar is impossible to ignore: thick and rough-texured, old burn-pink and slicing from brow to chin. His eyes—blue, cold, ice‑bright—track the office floor like he’s waiting for permission to tear into someone.
Nobody likes Enji—not even you. Still, for some reason, you can’t stop looking.
Maybe it’s the size of him, the way his shirts strain over his chest, and his hands look far too large for the mug he lifts to his mouth. Maybe it’s the way his gravelled voice cuts through any bullshit and makes the entire office snap to attention. Or maybe it’s something wordless and instinctual; the magnetism of a man who commands fear and respect and still, somehow, seems lonelier than anyone else in the room.
You lose track of your work, attention snagged on the tension in his posture. He stops behind an intern’s desk, says something cruel and final, and the kid goes pale, nodding furiously. Enji moves on, scanning the room, always searching for another weak point, another thing to fix, another disappointment.
Your computer screen pings—a message from HR, probably another warning about the recent smoking ban. You ignore it. The thought alone makes your fingers itch for a cigarette. You know the rules, but you’ve never been one to follow them.