I arrived at the restaurant. It wasn’t bad. Ignoring the overly “modern” chrome and plastic furniture and the tacky abstractly shaped lighting fixtures for a moment the restaurant had a nice vibe to it.

“Tracy’s Place” was a high-class establishment that did its best to ape the cozy hole-in-the-wall qualities of eateries like my friend Cass’ diner. While I’m pretty sure I still liked Cass’ diner over this place, I think the restaurant still did a good job of making itself feel familiar and intimate.

For a girl who didn’t really like going out that much, Margot had fairly decent taste in venues. My wife was foodie, or rather she’d always been a bit of foodie before but after the trials and tribulations of getting Uhrwerk up and running she’d become even more of a foodie.

My wife was now the kind of person who avidly watched cooking shows. Cooking blogs, and travel magazines that featured cuisine now shared the same hallowed space that was once occupied solely by manga, sci-fi novels, and other bits of nerd culture.

*************************************************************************************************************

I said hello to the hostess, reciting the reservation number Margot gave me. The woman showed me to my table, leading me towards the back of the restaurant. I sat and waited, quickly shooting Margot a text.

She answered with a text of her own, and a screenshot of a game she was playing. I answered that the game gave me an idea for a future mode in the Game of Doors. That turned its own conversation.

This continued for a few minutes with the two of us spitballing ideas. Then eventually I realized that more than fifteen minutes had gone by and my date was a no show.

I asked Margot if she thought it’d be cool for me to bail. Margot said I should give whoever it was another five minutes. I asked why, and she sent me a shrugging teddy bear emoji. The conversation continued until I heard a familiar voice. I looked up. Hurriedly telling Margot that my date had arrived

“Er...Mister Kaylan?”

I almost face-palmed right then and there. In hindsight, I could only say that this was what Margot and I got for using a matchmaker service rather than going through the work of trying to meet someone online ourselves.

Margot tried to push us to do more, but I was never fully on board, despite the necessity of the matter, and even Margot hadn’t been all that enthusiastic about finding someone else to share me with.

Thus it was easy to talk her into taking things easy. Thus we’d decided to go through the relatively safe route of having a reputable matchmaker service find my dates instead. Margot set up my profile and the service handled the rest.

Standing before me, her rich chocolate hair done up in a tight bun, a light dusting of makeup on her creamy skin, and her heart-shaped face frozen in shock, was my one and only business partner on Terminus-Earth. Henrietta Albani.

I sighed. I took a sip of the complimentary glass of water that had been given to me shortly after my arrival at the restaurant. Then I smiled, put some extra effort into feigning nonchalance.

“Good evening, Ms. Albani. Fancy seeing you here…Quite the surprise.” My discomfiture making my voice flat, toneless, and maybe just a tad too loud..

*************************************************************************************************************

“Er...H-, Hi,” said Henrietta. Feeling daft and off-kilter as she waved at the handsome, pink-haired, man at the table.

After almost six years of working together, there was no way she couldn’t recognize her long time business partner, Montgomery Kaylan. He was exactly as inhumanly tall, and as monstrously good-looking, as he’d been the last time she’d seen him. Which had been slightly over a month ago.

She looked behind her at the back of the departing wait-staff, wondering if she’d been led to the wrong table. Then she turned back to the table and looked at the man as he took another sip of water.

She took in the shirt he was wearing and the very noticeable flower-shaped pin he was wearing. A pin that matched the pin that she was wearing on her blouse. Then she sighed because one didn’t need a genius-level IQ to put the clues together.

“Mr. Kaylan, I don’t suppose you’d be the person I’m scheduled this evening?” said Henrietta. Trying her best to look cool and composed.

“Ah, I’m afraid that might be the case,” the pink-haired man. Also doing his best to try and look cool and composed.

“Er...I don’t suppose we can pretend this didn’t happen can we?” said Henrietta. Smiling wanly.

“What didn’t happen? That we’re two adults who just happened to go out for dinner, and the waitstaff accidentally brought you to an already occupied table? I don’t why you’d need to forget such a thing, but if that’s your wish, consider it done,” said the pink-haired man.

Henrietta laughed. There was nothing particularly funny about what the man said, but somehow she was suddenly at ease.

“I suppose you’re right. That is an odd thing to need to forget...Er, do you mind if I sit down?” said Henrietta.

“Please, by all means...Who knows where you might end up being seated otherwise,” said Monty.

“Thank you...That’s quite, er...hospitable of you,” said Henrietta. Placing herself on the unoccupied chair after it slid out of the table on its own.

“So, how you’ve been, Miss Albani. It’s a bit early for our bi-monthly check-in but since I’m here…”

“I’m fine. The business has been fine. I’ve been looking into procuring some subsidiaries overseas to expand our market share in Asia. Especially in the China-Russian Unified State. We’re also looking in expanding into the intergalactic market and market places of earth’s extradimensional allies,” said Henrietta. Answering as cogently as she could. Trying not babble because she felt like she was on the verge of a meltdown.

She generally liked to prepare for these kinds of talks, and damn if the man sitting across from her didn’t give off the same kind of weighty vibe that her grandfather the great Nicholai Albani. He had the same way of watching you silently pulling apart everything you were saying in a way that let you know that if you were full of shit he’d know it and you’d know he knew it.

“How about you, Mr. Kaylan?” said Henrietta. Asking as if she didn’t have at least some clue of what her enigmatic partner had been up to.

Before she got into business with Monty, Henrietta hadn’t really bothered keeping an ear to the ground when it came to the goings-on of the magical and eldritch worlds. The price for such information and difficulty of finding good informants when it came to such matters had been too high, and it had been enough to just listen for anything that might cause waves in the world of the superhumans and mundane markets.

It was just a matter of practicality. There was no need for an American coffee seller to know all the goings-on that were taking place on Mars. They just needed to know if Mars was about to start selling a whole lot of coffee beans on the interplanetary market.

Henrietta had only changed her toon when she got into business with a proverbial “martian”. To begin with, she’d only gotten into business with the man because he and his wife, Margot, had done her quite the favour by helping her preserve her life during that damn death game, assisted her in retrieving the soul of her idiot cousin Peppino. Truly going into business with the man meant learning enough about the man to know that he was trustworthy.

Now it was almost six years later, and she still kept an ear out because it seemed prudent to do so, and honestly, the goings-on of the upper-echelons of the magical world were quite fascinating if you could ignore the existentially terrifying, and sanity-loss inducing, bits.

Fascinating enough that she’d ended up doing a fair bit of research on the anomalous arts and magical phenomenon to see if she could marry it to her technology.

“Things have been going well for me, I guess. I had a big project I was working on that’s about to plateau. Now I figured I’d take some time focus on er...starting a family and all that stuff. Settling down…” said Monty. Blushing faintly. His light brown skin growing a touch darker.

Time passed. The two got comfortable. Or at least Henrietta found herself getting comfortable. The idle chatter and the homey atmosphere of the restaurant made it easy for her to forget the stressful issues that lead to her arrival at the restaurant and the mortification she’d felt when she realized that those damned match-makers had matched her up with her business partner.

“Okay, well that explains why I’m here...I don’t suppose it’d be overstepping to explain why you’re here?” said Monty.

Henrietta froze. The pink-haired man had stepped on a landmine. How innocent and inadvertent it was, was up to debate, but regardless Henrietta now had to decide how to answer that.

Life as a scion in a clan of industrial and underworld powerhouses had taught Henrietta that there was such a thing as too much success. Standing in the winner’s circle would bring its own problems.

A combination of her own efforts with her family’s company, Albani Electronics, and her own company, Doorknocker Solutions, had earned her enough material wealth and capital to get an Executive position. Leaving behind her former status as a junior executive.

She could, if she so chose, become a Senior Executive right now. All she’d have to do was allow the rest of her family to nose their way into Doorknocker Solutions. It turned out that even an idiot could become successful if they had a partner with nigh-infinite resources, and an ability to directly produce whatever facilities and manpower one needed, at will.

Henrietta was no idiot, far from it, she had a keen intellect and business acumen, that would have likely put her at the head of the pack had she been a member of the Albani family’s main branch. As a result, she’d been able to leverage the support Monty could give to make Doorknocker Solutions into a stealth powerhouse. They weren’t doing well enough to compare with the Seth family yet, but she now felt all but certain that the day would come. And perhaps it would come soon.

All of this sounded like good news, but the news was actually too good. Doorknocker Solutions’ prospects were set so high, that letting her family in on the venture would mean one of three outcomes. The first outcome was the family recognizing that she’d done a good job, the family’s elders giving her a pat on the back, and appropriate support in return for a moderate portion of her half of the company’s stock.

The second outcome was the family doing anything and everything to try and steal Doorknocker Solutions from her, starting with using family edict to try and force her to leave her role at the helm of the company, and ramping up to attempting to assassinate her and replace her with a clone. The third outcome was the family freaking out at how big her company had gotten, and her various enemies within the family joining arms to try and destroy Doorknocker solutions.

In light of, the virulent, almost rabid, competitiveness that Nicholai Albani had instilled into the clan when it was just getting started, the first outcome was the least likely outcome. Henrietta had been a member of her family long enough, to know that the sole reason the Albani clan wasn’t constantly at war with itself was all their enemies outside of the clan.

Though Henrietta was beyond surprised with how things had gone with her new partner, she wasn’t going to let that lull her into believing the whole world was full of surprises. Her family was her family and as much she loved them and was still very loyal to them, she also knew they couldn’t be trusted.

Worst of all was the extreme likelihood that their greed and caginess would lead to them stepping afoul of the handsome pink-haired monster in front of her.

The other two outcomes were the most likely. The family would either try to sink the company or take it over. Neither action would be taken well by her partner, and most likely the Albani family would end up ceasing to exist, if Mr. Kaylan decided he took offense.

If the rumors could be trusted, Kaylan and the Seths had a minor conflict nearly a year ago. A conflict that the Seths backed down from. It was a very minor thing and would have been inconsequential, save for the fact that this was the Seth family, the same Seth family that basically owned the world.

The same Seth family that apparently had an in with all of the forces of heaven and hell, the same Seth family that was in cahoots with many of the most powerful beings in this universe.

Being able to have a conflict with them that didn’t end with one’s existence summarily ending was a sign that you possessed a similar status, powers, wealth, whatever. When insects collide with a car they’re squished, it’s only bigger animals that cause a dent and make the driver halt their vehicles.

While the details of what happened were still obscured and hidden from the eyes of both the public and those who should have had the means to find out the details, it was very clear that Montgomery Kaylan was a bigger animal. A proverbial moose or reindeer, with enough weight behind him to make the family that owned the world think twice about trying to run him over.

The Albani didn’t have that kind of weight. They’d just barely managed to break into the world of legitimate business a few years ago. They were still of a scale where the Seth family could run them over and not even know they’d done so. Meaning that by extension, the man in front of her, could almost certainly trample them to death. A fate she wished to spare them from since she still currently loved them.

To make things even more problematic, there were signs that her myriad rivals within the family had somehow gotten a sense of how much wealth she’d accumulated. They probably didn’t know the exact details, but they knew enough to get the family senior members to start giving her the stink-eye. Placing pressure on her because they suspected that she was holding out on them. A few words in the wrong ears might have even conflated things into her being a betrayer of the family.

One of the symptoms of Henrietta’s disfavored status being this “date”. They were trying to marry her off to a suitable suitor and retire to some house in the suburbs somewhere where she couldn’t become a potential threat or problem.

Henrietta was at her wit’s end and was starting to rethink the value of protecting her stupid family from itself. If they wanted to bully a dragon that badly, she was almost willing to let them. The only problem was doing so without getting caught up in the ensuing flames.

But then, she did still love her family, even while contemplating letting them all die in a proverbial dumpster fire. Thus, for the time being, she’d been spending her days scrambling trying to build up enough capital and achievements within the clan to get the family’s seniors off her back.

Enduring the pressure the family was putting on her, while quietly plotting suitable revenge on those who responsible for turning the family against her.

Naturally, she didn’t say any of this. She simply laughed in half-feigned demureness and answered as vaguely as she could.

“Oh, well, You know. Someone talked me into it and I thought I’d see what happened.” said Henrietta

Monty laughed. A wry expression on his face. His eyes giving of that feeling he always gave her. Giving her the sense that he knew far more about her situation that she’d normally be comfortable with.

“In that case, it seems we’re both here not entirely of our own will…” said Monty.

“You didn’t want to be here either?!” said Henrietta. Inadvertently revealing how very against her will this little dinner date actually was. Wondering who on earth could twist the pink-haired man’s arm and make him do something he didn’t want to do.

“My wife made me come…Expanding the family is something that’s quite important to both of us for various reasons, but I’ll admit that I haven’t been putting as much effort into the matter as probably should have..” said the man. Sighing.

“Oh...Well, certainly sounds you’ve got your own complicated home issues to worry about,” said Henrietta. Her tone commiserative. The remainder of the existence of Missus Kaylan, mysteriously putting a slight damper in Henrietta’s mood.

Monty raised his glass and Henrietta did the same.

“A toast to having a good time...whether we want to or not,” said Monty.

“Cheers,” said Henrietta. Smiling and clinking her glass against his as the initial awkwardness of their meeting finally began to pass.

*************************************************************************************************************

Henrietta took a taxi home. It was risky, but not all that risky, the company she’d called was one of those that their company had quietly taken over. The employee contract had magics that probably fell in a gray area of legality and ethics in terms of the consequences for those who would harm a customer while on the job, and risk ruining the company’s good name.

Besides that, Monty and Henrietta had made the company adopt their background checking methods. Meaning that most of the people they employed were reliable and largely loyal, to begin with. The company’s information gathering process allowing them to let go of potential liabilities and traitors.

She arrived at the apartment suite she was staying at. She’d come into town on business and the date was technically just something she’d been harangued into doing while she was here. The apartment belonged to one of her friends, Rhea Cantu. A distant relation to the Albani family who’d eventually shown herself to be a more than half-decent friend.

“So how was it?” said Rhea.

Henrietta frowned as she considered the question, and found she’d left the restaurant in a pleasant enough mood. The dinner was an awkward one but as far as dates went, the dinner wasn’t the worst she’d ever been to.

“It wasn’t terrible…” said Henrietta. Sighing as she finally admitted her feelings aloud.

“Do you think you’ll call him?”

“Well, probably…” said Henrietta.

“R-, Really?! Wow, didn’t expect you to like him that much...Looks like spring’s finally come for our little Henri~!” laughed Rhea.

Henrietta blushed.

“N-, No. It’s not like that. It turns out the guy the stupid service set me up with, was a business partner. I work with the guy, so of course, I’ll be calling him...eventually,” said Henrietta.

“So you didn’t have a good time?” said Rhea. One brow raised.

“Er...Well, maybe I did, but it’s not like it matters because like I said, we’re in business together,” said Henrietta.

“And? So? What does that have to do with anything?” said Rhea.

“It’s like that one movie about hunting ghosts or exterminating goblins or whatever...crossing the streams is a bad idea,” said Henrietta.

Rhea raised a brow, resting a hand on her voluptuous hips.

“Isn’t the main reason your family’s trying to marry you off for the express purpose of ‘crossing the streams’?...” said Rhea. Her tone skeptical and her expression sarcastic.

“Er...This is different?” said Henrietta. Not feeling entirely confident of her own answer.

“Uh-huh…” said Rhea. Nodding. A knowing smile on her face.