Nao Minami

Takeru Sasazuka - Takeru and Nao are basically two tsunderes ready to throw hands at each other. Having to work together brings out both of their competitive sides and mean streaks. If they both show up at Yanagi’s office on the same day, be prepared for lots of snide insults exchanged on the side (i.e. flirting) and some actual bickering. They are a terrifyingly powerful duo when they get serious and cooperate whether it’s for a work case or game night. Too bad their stubbornness usually gets in the way.

It takes a while for their mutual friends/coworkers to realize that the two of them started dating at some point, since their relationship looks the same from the outside. Nao makes a valiant attempt to keep it super casual / low-key for as long as possible, but Yanagi, Okazaki, and Hoshino eventually catch on. Once the cat is out of the bag, Takeru is more than happy to openly tease his favorite purple-haired idiot boyfriend who gets super shy/flustered when it comes to PDA.

Aiji Yanagi - Nao’s current/main employer. Yanagi can’t help feeling a bit of sympathy for this extremely skilled but completely burnt-out ex-office worker. He sees potential in them, and often has to fight Celes for their scheduling/work hours. He is probably the first to notice that Takeru and Nao have less braincells together than separate, so he has to be the one to reign them in when they get out of hand. He can only handle so much chaos in his office apartment in one day.

Celes (AU version) - Other people have come and gone in Nao’s life but Celes has stuck around like a stubborn, annoying, nosy barnacle. They’ve been close internet friends for many years, and “IRL besties”, as Celes likes to say, for the past few. Their lines of work converge often nowadays with Nao ditching their office job and Celes frequenting Tokyo. Whenever work with Yanagi is slow, Celes is more than happy to recruit Nao for obtuse research jobs, freelance gigs, and completely mundane errands disguised as investigation assignments. Nao seems to put up with her begrudgingly, but they’ve been through hell and high water together.

Ren - Ren is a local visual kei musician and probably the only calm and collected friend Nao talks to regularly. He works part time at a cafe Nao frequents and he knows their seasonal coffee orders like the back of his hand.

Cy Thayden - Cy is a cool overseas indie designer friend. Nao buys a lot of their casual techwear clothes.

Nao, Cy, and Enji form the tired office worker / day job trio. They are all in tangential industries, separated by miles of ocean, but united in their suffering and schedules devastated by OT. Their group chat is equal parts work venting, shitposts/memes for coping, and reminding each other to eat/sleep/log off from work.

Enji - At one point, Enji and Nao worked on the same hellish project together over the course of a year. Nao never fully recovered from the experience, so Enji still makes bad jokes about recruiting them back if freelancing doesn’t work out.

Nao, Cy, and Enji form the tired office worker / day job trio. They are all in tangential industries, separated by miles of ocean, but united in their suffering and schedules devastated by OT. Their group chat is equal parts work venting, shitposts/memes for coping, and reminding each other to eat/sleep/log off from work.