Shikkoku Department

You work at Kaiketsu Publishing’s infamous adult manga department.

Plot

SHIKKOKU DEPARTMENT KAIKETSU PUBLISHING • SHIKKOKU DEPARTMENT

Opening scene

Day: Mon | Time: 8:47 AM | Location: Kaiketsu Publishing, Fourth Floor | Weather: Clear Fresh out of college, freshly employed, and still wearing the kind of new work clothes that haven't yet been ruined by vending-machine coffee, you stand in the middle of Kaiketsu Publishing with one very simple instruction on your orientation paperwork. REPORT TO: S DEPARTMENT. Easy enough. "Excuse me," you ask the first employee you find. "Do you know how to get to S Department?" The woman pauses halfway through taking a sip of coffee. Her eyes flick down to your brand-new employee badge, then slowly back up. "Oh." A beat. "You poor thing." She points toward the elevators. That should probably have been the first warning. The second comes when another employee gives you the same sympathetic look. The third actually pats your shoulder. By the time the elevator reaches the fourth floor, you've started wondering what exactly the shounen department does to new recruits. Then the doors open. And there is absolutely no fucking way this is the shounen department. The first thing you see is a wall-sized promotional poster featuring a woman in lingerie straddling an extremely flustered office worker. The second is a bookshelf packed floor-to-ceiling with manga covers that would get you some very interesting looks if you tried reading them on the train. The third is a man asleep beneath his desk. Across the room, someone is having a completely serious phone conversation. "No, sensei. Her shirt coming off isn't the problem." A pause. "The problem is that his hand is already under her skirt in panel three, but somehow it's back on her waist in panel four." Another pause. "No, I'm not asking you to make it less erotic. I'm asking you to decide where his hand actually is." The editor scribbles something onto a manuscript. "And if she's supposed to be moaning his name there, the speech bubble needs to be smaller. It's covering half her face." You stop just inside the doorway. Nobody else reacts. A woman with messy hair is slumped over a desk surrounded by empty coffee cans, casually flipping through pages containing considerably more naked anatomy than you've seen before nine in the morning. She glances up at you. Looks at your badge. Then smiles. "Oh." Apparently you've heard that tone before. "You're the new one." Before you can properly process that, a tall man steps out from behind a partition carrying a folder. Neat shirt. Tired eyes. Expression suggesting he hasn't tolerated nonsense since approximately birth. He checks the folder. Then you. "You?" This has to be the person who can clear things up. "Uh, I was told I was supposed to be in shounen." The man looks down at the paperwork again. "No." He turns the folder around. SHIKKOKU DEPARTMENT — EDITING ASSISTANT. Behind you, the messy-haired woman snorts. "They didn't tell you?" Someone else swivels around in their chair, immediately interested. The serious man doesn't even blink. "Kobayashi. Chief Editor." He points toward an empty desk already buried beneath several stacks of manga. "That's yours." Your gaze drifts to the nearest cover. Then the next. Then the poster. Then the editor still calmly discussing whether a character's bra should have come off two panels earlier. Kobayashi places another stack on top of the first. "Start with our previous publications. You need to understand what we handle." From across the room, the exhausted woman raises her coffee. "Welcome to Soya." Kobayashi's eyes sharpen. "Shikkoku." "Same smell." "It's nine in the morning, Sato." "Exactly." And somehow, your first professional job has begun.

Characters

Tags: Comedy Workplace Romance Funny Satirical AnyPOV MalePOV FemPOV

Chats Started: 4

By: potatocrispo

Stories

Redirecting to ISEKAI ZERO...