Pity the Living Chapter 05: The Office Scandal

By Katsura

Pity the Living Chapter 5: The Office Scandal

After the brutal events in Aokigahara, Masami returns to his workplace questioning the reality of everything in his life. He clings to normality, in a desperate effort to convince himself that he isn't a murderer and finds comfort in the words — then ultimately the arms — of Toshita.
Will the heating up of his relationship with the man of his dreams lead to a lasting affair? Or is it simply no more than an office romance...

The Pity the Living Yaoi Series

When the drudgery of office life becomes too much for IT expert, Masami Shirosaki, he decides to commit suicide. But a timely opportunity to aid the career of the man he has stalked for years, ex-schoolmate Toshita Ayano, stops him in his tracks.

With the beautiful Toshita a temporary yet wonderful distraction in the workplace, life finally seems to be worth living.

Only one thing stands in the way of an idyllic future for Masami.

Toshita's rich and married boyfriend.

Masami, a virgin who's never even kissed a man, has one night of passion with Toshita... only to be callously rejected the following morning.

And so begins a spiral of self-pity and destruction, which ultimately ends in murder.

Can Masami and Toshita find love amidst the clutches of a controlling relationship? Or will one of them become the next target of a killer’s insuppressible hate.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seishin Ink
• Release date: Mar 28, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311524249

Book preview

Dedication

For Meena, as always.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to the readers who encouraged us and enjoyed this little story when it was a web novel.

Author Note

This story was part published as a web novel between 2012 and 2013. This is a fuller, complete and extended version, which will be released in approximately ten instalments of around five-thousand words each.

Chapter Five

The Office Scandal

In dreams we can fly. We soar effortlessly through the clouds, and occasionally, a whisper of wind graces the cheek to bring further realism to the imaginary experience.

If the human mind could so easily convince itself that a nocturnal flight of fancy was as real as the morning journey to work, what else was it capable of? Masami had no idea how he found himself in front of the photocopier, questioning the brain’s mastery at illusion. But more worrying than this, he had no recollection of how he came to be in the building at all.

He glanced at his reflection in the mirror which was situated on the wall over the printer tray. A promotional gift from some company or other, so beneath the polished surface, the frame bore an attempt at motivational humour:

Does this look like a hard-working employee to you?

Masami answered the question by shaking his head slowly from side to side. He looked like a man who had no clue whether the memory of strangling some guy in a distant forest was real, or just a figment of his over active imagination.

An angry scratch ran down his left cheek, possibly the result of being struck by a branch as he ran frantically through the trees in the dark. Foliage and mud under foot. Air heavy with the scent of decay. No sound but the gasp of each desperate breath.

So even someone highly proficient in the art of navigation could get lost in the Sea of Trees? Apparently not Masami, a salaryman with not an ounce of experience in the pursuit of trekking.

Left at the clearing, where the sturdy branches sat like an arrow against the sky. Right and onwards by the discarded shoes.

 Or did any of that actually happen? Was all of that stumbling and fumbling not just as fraudulent as the ability to take to the clouds like a bird, while in reality, still wrapped snugly within the folds of the duvet?

But how else could he explain the wound? The gash was too irregular to be the product of a careless razor.

Hey, what happened to you? Toshita nudged him out of the way and placed some documents on the table.

Me? Masami moved to let him use the photocopier. The gentle whir of the mechanism brought him back to a semblance of reality in a way that Toshita’s voice hadn’t.

Toshita could be faked. Not