Mano//souta Enthusiast

Monday night, Celia rushes into the office, late again, and soaked from the rain. She's halfway through an explanation about calling her babysitter and losing track of time when she doubles over in a fit of uncovered sickly sneezes, coating everything in a ten foot radius. She apologizes, frantically trying to wipe up the mess, but Alice just sighs. She's run this gambit before and she knows that once a cold enters this office, it doesn't leave until it's gotten it's sickly little hooks into everyone in the building.

Sam comes in sick on Tuesday, he doesn't realize that his sniffles are beginning to grow wetter until about the middle of the night, and by that point, he's too caught up with work to notice his own worsening state. He tries his best to keep his germs to himself, but his sneezes come too quickly and there's just not enough tissues.

It gets Gwen on Wednesday, when she comes in, hair tied back, blotchy face poorly hidden by concealer. She does her best to muffle her sneezes into a handkerchief and pretend that she's not sick, but Alice's dramatics and Sam's concerned words break her down pretty quickly, but not quickly enough to prevent her germs from blanketing the desk...

Alice catches it next, Thursday evening, dramatically hitching as she enters the building. She's a bit more careless. The office is already chock full of sniffling sneezy hot messes at this point, what's one more? She's shooting crumpled up tissues into the nearby trashcan like they're basketballs, and she has quite a lot of them to spare.

So they sneak off somewhere with an inducing tool of some kind, maybe an allergen, maybe a feather, maybe, if they're feeling really desperate, they just use their fingernail, and they start tickling the inside of their itchy nose.

The tickle builds up slowly but surely, growing stronger and stronger, until finally, they get their well-needed relief.

It doesn't last long, though, as they realize they now have a new problem.