There was really no delicate way to say it, at least not one that I could think of when I was preoccupied with panicking. I'd been backed into a corner by the man yet again. As sweet of a person as I knew he was, there were some times when I just wished he would leave me alone.

Like right then.

"Saga-San," I uttered, keeping my voice low but raising its pitch by a notch. I avoided my addressee's eye, picking at my blueberry-colored nail polish instead. "I'm sorry, but I'm just not looking for any kind of relationship right now."

I was tempted to remind him that it was the same thing I'd told him all of the other times he’d asked me out. I'd never been especially skilled with turning people down tactfully but I would have thought it might get easier when it became a habit. There may not have been a plethora of examples I could give where I'd had to refuse date offers, but Saga still beat that record single-handedly within the six months I had known him.

It wasn't that I disliked Saga. Not at all. I'd seen enough of him to judge that his character was decent and that his pursuit of me probably didn't come with bad intentions. I didn't have any reason to believe that he was only trying to flatter me or win some kind of bet, but that was what made the entire thing so bizarre. At the risk of sounding annoyingly humble, what could he possibly see in me? We barely knew each other.

"Sometimes you don't have to be looking for something when you find it," Saga commented, and I couldn't help but give a small smile. He really was persistent -- and a little strange in his attempts.

"It's not as simple as that," I said, still looking to my lap as I played with my fingers. The smile that had been tugging at the tips of my lips dipped down into a frown, but I forced it back into place when I lifted my gaze up to meet Saga's. "Maybe you'll understand that when you get as old as me."

It was ironic. When I was younger I'd never considered thirty-five to be an old age; when I turned thirty-five I invested in some anti-wrinkle creams and skin-firming lotions(just to get a head start, of course) and became more conscious about what I ate than I had been at any other point in my life. The idea of a man almost ten years my junior showing romantic interest in me was terrifying. Why would he be interested in a woman who had to use anti-wrinkle creams and follow a diet plan just to maintain her none-too-extraordinary looks? And since when could a man almost ten years younger than me be considered a man rather than a young man, or boy? Were there really only five more years until I hit forty? Forty was pretty old...

"You're not old, Tsuruta-San," Saga said, reeling me away from my self-destructive thoughts. I stared up at him in wonder from behind the safety of my desk, at a loss as to where such amazing insight had come from. But then I remembered that I had been the one to bring up my seniority in a semi-teasing sense, and Saga's words of wisdom seemed to lose some of their impact. "Besides, everything only gets better with age -- especially women. And wine. Do you like wine, Tsuruta-San? Would you like to go wine tasting with me some time?"

I gaped at him stupidly for some unknown amount of time, trying to decide whether or not to be insulted. Was he was serious? Usually he'd leave me alone after I denied him for the day. Was he really trying again so soon after the most recent rejection? Why was he so determined?

"You may as well, Tsuruta-San," a new voice cut in, sounding somewhat distant. Saga and I turned in tandem to look down the hallway, something that caused Tora to smirk as he made his approach. He came up to his band mate, giving Saga a playful wiggle of his eyebrows before throwing an arm around his shoulders. Tora spared a few seconds to take in Saga's scowl before turning his attention to me, his grin both lighting up his face and making him look a little evil.

"You know he won't stop asking until you say yes," the guitarist reasoned, "and either way we'll all have to put up with his day-dreaming, so it's better to give him hopeful fantasies than have him mope like usual, right?"

At that point Saga began struggling against the taller man's hold, slapping and shoving like a school boy on the playground. Tora laughed and played along, his half-hearted grappling still giving him the upper hand in the fight. Between the scuffling itself, Tora's punk-grunge style, and Saga's deep V tee and studded belt, it was hard to believe the two were as old as they were and not actually fourteen. I couldn't possibly have anything in common with such colorful people.

On that note, I cast a few frantic glances around the room. My "office" was actually more like a cubicle; it was one of about a hundred small squares set up for the people who weren't important enough in the company to have real offices. The walls that separated me from my coworkers were collapsible and barely cleared my head when I was upright, so there was really no such thing as privacy. I could already see a few of the heads nearest to my station popping up from above and around the barriers, eager to see what was going on (or, more likely, just to get away from their mundane spreadsheet tallies).

"So, Tsuruta-San." Saga grunted through gritted teeth, giving Tora one last elbow to the gut that sent the other male stumbling back a step or two. The bassist took in a deep breath before going on, placing his hands at his hips and probably trying to pretend his cheeks weren't flushed. "Do you agree to the date?"

I was stumped long enough for Tora to recover, and his return distracted me from my response. Grinning again and readjusting his glasses, Tora clapped Saga's shoulder in support (ignoring the latter's glare) and mimicked his query with a, "Do you agree to the date, Tsuruta-San?"

Feeling under more pressure than I ever, it was a natural reaction for my eyes to dart around for any signs of help. From all over I was met with oblique stares and spaces that only seemed to reflect the dreaded question back at me a thousand times over. I squirmed in my seat, feeling my ears burning from an inner fire that boiled my blood up to my face all at once. There were tiny, flaming demons poking and pinching and scratching at me from the inside, and there was only one way I could fix the problem using only one word.

"Fine," I squeaked, wishing I could curl up in a ball and hide from the world like a rodent. Was it even cute to be so shy when I was so old? "I'll go."

I kept my eyes fixed on my suede pumps as if my life depended on it, but Saga's dumbfounded question of "Really?" piqued my interest to the point where I overcame my pusillanimity and looked up. After seeing that I was watching him, Saga cleared his throat and gathered himself.

"Great," he said, sounding less enthused than I would have thought. "I'll just, uh, look at my schedule and get in touch when I figure something out."

I nodded once, watching on without an expression as Tora mussed the brunet's locks in congratulations.

"Well, now that that's done," Tora said, hitting Saga's stomach with the back of his hand when the bassist reached up to try to straighten out his hair, "we've got to go. Nao-San called a group meeting a little while ago and I was supposed to come find you."

With one last, brief bow Tora was gone, and Saga only tossed some kind of jargon towards me before dipping his head and scurrying after his band mate. I watched the two of them as they departed, and I watched as my coworkers watched the two of them as they departed. Even in PSC headquarters, seeing the bands in person was somewhat of a rarity for most of the workers. That much was especially true in my department, where we were all shut away to do the less hands-on drudgery in a shunned corner of the building. The only interaction we got with any people of fame was during chance run-ins in the halls or the cafeteria. (The latter of which was where I, incidentally, had had my chance run-in with Alice Nine.)

There was a snort from somewhere to my right, so I opted out of catching the last few seconds of Tora and Saga's departure in favor of finding out where it came from. The man who worked in the cubical across from me still had his eyes trained on the musicians, a mug of either coffee or tea steaming in his grasp.

"That's one way to get a promotion, I guess," he muttered, probably not having any intention of keeping his voice down so that I wouldn't overhear it in the first place. He took a sip of his drink before turning back to his desk. I wished I had a drink to drown myself in before letting my head fall onto my own desk.

Not only had I just agreed to go on a date with a twenty-eight-year-old man, but he was also an international rock star on the highest echelon of social and professional hierarchy. Plus he had countless women all around the world of varying ages and physical standards throwing themselves at his feet. So not only was I a gold-digging cougar, but I was also going to get dumped once someone more interesting and energetic came along, since someone inevitably would. Maybe I would even get fired on top of it all for in-house dating or something equally ridiculous.

I should have just screamed "no" and stomped around in a circles doing my best King Kong impression, manners be damned.