YaGAYte Kimi Ni Naru

Online meetings sure are annoying—what's with all these boomers insisting that people should keep their cameras on all throughout the meeting?

Claire Velasco yawns for what's probably the fifth time within the last ten minutes. Usually, she'd try to hide her boredom and be discreet about it, but this meeting has been going on for almost two hours and a half now; no one is probably paying attention to whatever anyone is doing at this point. 

Thank goodness for cats, Claire thinks. Her cat, Caleb, is sleeping on her lap as she strokes the top of his head. It's somehow making this tedious meeting a tad bit tolerable. 

The company Claire works for transitioned from working onsite to working from home during the pandemic. Now that everything's back to normal, the higher ups probably realized that they're saving a lot more money by letting the employees work in the comfort of their own homes. 

Everyone meets once a month for an onsite gathering in the head office; but to be honest, Claire really prefers the work-from-home setup.

The only downside that Claire can think of for this setup is not being able to interact in person with the marketing team's lead, Ann Cortez. 

Being in the lead of the graphics design team, Claire often coordinates with Ann for various projects of the company. Ann is in charge of the concept and ideas, and Claire brings them to life through graphic design. Ann's admirable and competent which inspires Claire. Not only that, but the marketing team lead is also incredibly fun to be around with.

And, sure, they'd be together in an online meeting every once in a while, but there's never a time to have their little chit-chats anymore.

Claire admits that she's got a crush, sure. But it's not like she'll ever act on it. She's busy with work, Ann's busy with work—that and, she's not even sure if Ann swings that way.

Claire yawns again—sixth one, she mentally notes—when finally, the current speaker wraps up his presentation. Claire thinks it's the end of the meeting, when all of a sudden, Ann shows up as the speaker of the meeting.

That gets your attention.  

“Hi, everyone! I know the meeting’s been going on for quite some time now,” she starts, smiling at the camera; Claire feels recharged. “I just have to discuss a couple of marketing strategies we can use for next month’s campaign. I would love it if everyone can provide feedback. Just tell us what you think! So let me just present my screen…”

The view switches to her slide presentation, but a small window for the speaker is shown on the side. 

Ann is so animated when she explains the ideas that her and her team thought of. She moves her hands a lot to emphasize certain things. She’s also constantly smiling as she presents. Her humor is spot on, providing some sort of entertainment to this previously incredibly boring meeting. 

Claire rests her chin on her palm, leaning against her computer desk. It's at this moment that her precious cat Caleb, wakes up and stretches. “Had a good sleep, Caleb?” She chuckles as her cat turns his back to her to face her computer. “Aha, you wanna see the screen too? I don’t blame you. Ann is cute, isn’t she?”

Claire turns her attention back to the meeting, however, it seems that Ann stopped speaking, her mouth partly open. Claire looks at the other participants, and see that everyone looks like they're trying to process what's going on.

You blink at the screen, confused.

“Um,” Ann clears her throat, sheepishly looking at the camera. Claire notices that she seems to be... blushing? “Thank you, Claire. I'm flattered.”

Huh?

Claire’s eyes nearly pop out of her socket in panic. “Was I unmuted?! I’m pretty sure I muted myself—" she glances at her keyboard.

Lo and behold, Caleb’s paw is pressing down on the spacebar which is set as the push-to-talk button. She almost lets out a scream, but settles for a nervous chuckle instead. “U-uh… sorry, Claire. T-that… was my cat.” You take his paw off the key. 

“Please, let the floor swallow me now. Swallow me whole! Let me leave this planet and never come back!”

Ann covers her mouth, trying not to laugh. “Right... your cat…” she composes herself and tries to divert everyone's attention back to her presentation.

Caleb stands and rubs himself on the now horrified Claire before hopping off of her and strutting towards his food bowl. Claire swears that he looked quite proud of himself. The little rascal…

It’s hard to focus on Ann’s presentation now, especially when Claire feels so embarrassed that she just wants to float and disappear into thin air. 

Eventually, the meeting finally ends. Claire decides to open the company messenger app to shoot Ann a message and apologize for making it awkward when—

*PING*

Ann’s message bubble appears. It says: Was it really your cat that said I’m cute? :(

Great, now Ann’s teasing her about it. It’s nice that she doesn’t feel awkward about the whole situation; maybe that is what gives Claire a slight push.

Claire decides to reply: Yup, but I agree. 

Ann immediately sees her message marked as read. Claire nervously watches as another chat bubble pops up and says: Ann is typing…

Thankfully, she didn’t have to wait long because Ann’s replies almost instantaneously: Good. I think you’re pretty cute yourself. ;) 

For the second time today, Claire’s eyes nearly pop out of her sockets. This might be a reach, but is Ann… flirting with her? Claire zooms in to make sure that Ann really did just send her a winking face emoji.

Ann definitely sent her a winking face emoji.

Huh… what a turn of events.

Claire turns to Caleb, who is now lying down on her couch. He stares directly at her eyes for a good few seconds, before blinking slowly and rolling to his back.