Forced Marriage, True Love

1. Bad Start

Mitsuha POV:

Tokyo is a beautiful city with expensive restaurants, flashy broadways, and high-flying business tycoons. A land of opportunities, or so people think. To me, it's nothing more than a city of depression, high rent and noisy nights.

In this concrete jungle, lies the world famous, multi-national industry, The Tachibana Industries, known world-wide for its designer clothes, jewelry and make-up accessories for women. It's the same company I'd been working in for the past four years. Just as I was about to sit down on my place and continue working on my unfinished design, I heard someone call me from behind. "Mitsuha! Good morning!"

I turned around and saw Tessie and Sayaka wave at me. "Tessie! Sayaka! Good morning!" I said as I waved at them. Sayaka was about to walk over to me, when Tessie held her hand. "Sayaka, our chief is coming."

The chief was a middle-aged man, in his mid-fifties. However, that didn't stop him from being handsome. As soon as he entered, he politely greeted us before he started speaking. "Good morning, everyone. I know this news might be shocking for you, but our CEO, Itsuki Tachibana-san is retiring, and his son, Mr. Taki Tachibana will be taking over. For that, he has a meeting with all the executives regarding the product Mr. Itsuki was creating." He said while smiling, shocking all of us.

Mr. Itsuki was retiring? No way! Now his son would be taking over? That's the worst! He's a cold-blooded Dracula! The chief continued his speech. "I need to go for the executive meeting, but unfortunately, my secretary fell ill. So, would any one of you like to volunteer to accompany me to the meeting?"

Hell no! Never in a billion years!

The chief threw two bombs on our faces without a gap, and it was too much information to take in at once. If Itsuki Tachibana-san is a devil, then Taki Tachibana-san is the devil's father, which is funny, since the latter is the former's son. In fact, you'd never want to run into him your whole life. To the outside, he's a handsome, rich man who is every girl's dream man, but not to the employees of The Tachibana Industries.

He's the leading business tycoon across the world. He started at a young age and has been successful ever since. Not a single failure. He's a feared man even in the business world and is even in The Forbes List. The only difference he has from the others in the Forbes List is that he doesn't speak much and only talks to those whom he thinks is important.

He's famous for firing people for the smallest of things. One glare from him could send your soul flying out of your body. Even breathing in front of him could get you fired.

In The Tachibana Industries, the riskiest, and the most dangerous job you could ever have is being a secretary. Not his, mind you, but the secretary of any of the executives.

Tachibana-san's secretary is Hodaka Morishima, his longtime friend. So that position is out of the picture. No wonder the secretary called in sick. He was ditching the meeting.

"Would anyone like to volunteer?" The chief asked, looking around hopefully. I honestly pitied him. However, no matter how nice the chief was, none of us was willing to risk our jobs. "Natori-san, you go." Our VP said, making Sayaka widen her eyes in horror. She quickly clutched her stomach. "I-I'm sorry ma'am. I'm having a horrible stomachache." she cried, clutching her lower abdomen.

The VP muttered a curse under her breath before turning to me. "Miyamizu-san, you go then." I looked back at her in horror. "Excuse me?!" I couldn't help but exclaim, making our VP huff in anger as she placed her hands on her hips. "Are you questioning me, Miyamizu-san?" "No, but..." Another thing was, I'm bad at lying.

"Then it's settled. You go." I sighed and stood up. "Miyamizu-san, thank you for coming with me." the chief said while smiling. "Let's go before Tachibana-san gets mad."

I faked a smile and followed him to the elevator, up to the top floor. On the way, he explained what I was supposed to do. It was nothing hard, honestly. Just giving him the right files at the right time would help him. However, I was scared I would do something clumsy. Because I always do something clumsy whenever I'm nervous.

The elevator bell dinged before the door flew open. I breathed in deeply before walking in the deadliest floor of the whole company. The CEO's floor. We walked to the end of the hallway, where the meeting room was located. The heads of the departments kept filling in one after another and took their places, with the secretaries standing behind them and I did the same.

Everyone arrived five minutes early for the meeting, so the devil wasn't present yet. However, five minutes was not a long time. And soon after, the devil himself entered.

Although I call him a devil, he looked nothing like one. It was Taki Tachibana. I had never seen him up close before. It was always far away at an event or a faraway parking lot, where the VIP cars were parked.

Up close he looked gorgeous. Like a Greek god. Smooth, milky white skin shining in the sunlight, nape-length chocolate brown hair, with bangs that covered his forehead. Dark blue eyes which could just suck you in, and a sharp, angled face. He was 5'11 feet tall and had strong arms, a firm chest rippling through his suit.

He strode over the room and pulled back his chair. My chief was sitting right next to the head chair, so for a moment, I was standing right next to Taki, feeling the seven-inch difference in our heights (I am 5'4, by the way). Seeing him up close, I did the worst thing possible.

I sneezed.