Side Story 2
“Rose may have been the top of her batch, so I expected her to be sharp, but she’s just… slow and clueless.”
“Really? She does the tasks she’s given pretty well, though.”
“The results are fine, but… I don’t know. It’s like she’s unreliable. I keep wondering if I can really trust her with certain tasks. And that’s what frustrates me even more—her results aren’t bad enough to justify scolding her properly.”
…Top of her batch? That dull girl?
After overhearing the conversation, a huge question formed in Irene’s mind.
From that point on, Irene began openly observing Rose. As a result, she ended up knowing more about her than others did.
For instance, while Rose appeared sluggish and slow, in reality, she finished the same amount of work faster than any of their other colleagues. However, she never showed it.
Instead, she spent her time staring blankly at her monitor like a dead fish, only submitting her work at the very last minute.
That’s right. Rose wasn’t lacking in any way. She was just incredibly lazy, finding everything in life too tiresome.
The fact that she didn’t bother peeling the wrapper off the bottom of her bread and would eat it as it was, or that she would stick a pen in her hair like a hairpin and then look around confused when she couldn’t find it, were all symptoms of her laziness!
Of course, even when her sleeve got soaked, when she chewed on the wrapper, or when she still couldn’t find her pen, Rose didn’t seem to care in the slightest.
Thus, the only person growing increasingly frustrated was Irene, sitting next to her, constantly forced to watch. She glared every time there was a small sound, and if there was none, she felt uneasy, wondering if Rose had made another mistake she could’ve easily avoided.
“…Are you my mom or something?”
It seemed even Rose was starting to grow tired of Irene’s constant hovering. Now, she was beginning to mutter quite resentful comments under her breath.
Still, Rose remained fairly compliant to the nagging—for the most part. Though she would inevitably repeat the same mistakes soon after…
This strange ritual of “training” Rose had somehow become a challenge that poked at Irene’s competitive side, a side that rarely got triggered, since most things in Irene’s life came easily to her.
* * *
“I can’t take this anymore!”
Rose eventually snapped, yelling.
“What does it matter to you what I do?!”
The incident occurred during lunch at the cafeteria.
Rose had quietly endured being told to roll up her sleeves before eating and to drink her water only after finishing her meal, but when Irene told her to stop being picky and eat a balanced diet, Rose finally exploded.
The civil servants around them, intrigued by Rose’s sudden outburst after quietly taking it for so long, turned their curious eyes toward the scene. Irene, unfazed, responded calmly.
“You’re lazy. If something spills on your clothes, you’ll have to wash them, and isn’t that more of a hassle? And when you keep drinking water while eating, you don’t eat as much, even though you’re clearly a glutton. Plus, you only like high-calorie, low-nutrition foods. That’s why you lack energy and end up even lazier. You need to eat a balanced diet if you want to improve your lethargy…”
“Exactly! I may be lazy, but it’s my laziness, and if I’m sluggish, it’s my sluggishness! Why do you even care?! Have I ever asked you for anything or caused you any trouble? Who do you think you are?! I didn’t want to say this, but for the record, I’m a year older than you!”
“…”
Irene knew she didn’t have the right to try to fix all of Rose’s little habits, even as her desk mate. Not even friends could do that.
But she couldn’t help herself. She kept watching, getting irritated, worrying, and feeling on edge because of it.
As Irene clamped her mouth shut, glaring at Rose, Rose stomped her feet angrily and stormed out of the cafeteria.
Irene was seething inside but finished her meal with perfect composure.
Then, she stopped by the convenience store and bought a chocolate bread—Rose’s favorite, the one Irene herself had banned because Rose used her poor appetite as an excuse.
Telling Rose to eat a balanced diet might have been too harsh. After all, Rose took food seriously.
Irene thought it would be better to focus on correcting the rest of Rose’s bad habits first, then gradually work on her eating habits…
But while Irene was planning this course of action—which Rose would have hated had she known—a sudden incident occurred.
“Rose, you must be having a hard time because of Irene, right? Everyone in our batch feels bad for you, saying that she’s always nagging at you. Of course, I feel the same.”
Irene immediately recognized the voice. It was Dahlia, a colleague from another department in the Guide Division.
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