Tonkotsu (Patreon)

Alex had always been a PlayStation person; having grown up in an all-PlayStation (and the occasional Nintendo) household, working at Sony had always been her dream. “What do you wanna be when you grow up?” was the popular question to ask kids, and every time the tigress was asked it, (save for a three-year phase during which she either wanted to be a “Tomb Raider” like Lara Croft or a princess) she said that she wanted to work at Sooby (Sony) and help make games like the ones she enjoyed playing. She was only a kid, so she had no idea what any of that meant, but she knew that when she played the video games on that grey box in the living room, she was happy, and she wanted to help other people feel like that too. 

So, she worked hard, got through school, powered through jobs that she hated but would build her resume, and eventually landed a job at the Japanese conglomerate that she had always dreamed of working at.

That was three and a half years ago. 

If only someone told Alex that transferring to a foreign branch of the company would be one of the hardest things that she’d ever have to do. Except everyone did, constantly. She’d hear it at least a few times a day, every day leading up to the day she was hauling her bags to the check-in desk at the airport; she just didn’t listen to any of them. She thought that since she could pull from her experience being an exchange student and forced to learn a foreign language in under a year, she would be fine. But Japanese, as it turns out, is not a Germanic language like English or Dutch, which meant that she had to start learning from scratch. 

She was wrong; it was not going to be fine.

A year and seven months after she first landed at Narita International Airport and disembarked from her All-Nippon Airways flight, she was speaking broken Japanese with what her co-workers called a “cute” accent and a stutter that she didn’t have when she spoke any other language. But broken Japanese was better than no Japanese, and since most of the tigress’s work involved English, she performed pretty well in her position. She still tried her best to speak Japanese wherever she could, though. Otherwise, the Duolingo bird would probably break into her house and murder her.

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“Yes, I understand that you want to keep the device, but the contract you signed with us clearly states that you have to send it back as it’s a pre-production model that we sent for you to try, and not to keep.” The tigress put her fingers against her brow and tried her best not to scream into the phone at one of the many bone-headed internet celebrities she had to communicate with on behalf of the company. Most of the time, influencers were handled through a marketing agency that they worked with, but contract disputes as severe as this had to be handled directly. An influencer refusing to return a pre-production unit sent to them was a big deal; it was theft, and if Alex couldn’t talk sense into them and get the device back in one piece, she would have to pass the issue up the chain to legal, and she hated talking to people from legal; Hiroshi from legal had a big crush on her, she could tell, but he was always a bit of dick to her. Maybe that was his way of flirting? Whatever it was, it sure was unpleasant.

The influencer on the other line continued repeating herself over and over again. “But I really want to keep it! I’ve really grown attached to it, it’s a part of my setup now!” the more Alex heard her talk, the more she wanted to pull her hair out. Every now and again, the tigress had to glance at her watch for the time. Contractually, her workday ended at 6 PM, but the call had made her go into overtime by almost two hours. Seeing her Japanese coworkers (who were notorious for overworking) start to pack up and leave, Alex decided to cut the call short and left the influencer with an ultimatum. “Okay Miss Ortega, if you do not return the unit that we sent to you, we will be forced to take legal action. The return address is on the contract that you signed and we will be sending it to your email again. Thank you, and have a nice day.” 

The tigress tapped on the red hang-up button on her work phone so hard that the glass screen protector on it cracked. One of her coworkers noticed and had a concerned look on her face as she packed her bento box into her bag. Yumiko, a fennec fox who was the nicest coworker Alex had ever come across in her life, was one of the few people who actively tried to talk to her even when it wasn’t work-related. Alex’s other coworkers only spoke to her when it was work, which was fine, but it made her feel alone at times. The tigress didn’t have many friends in Japan, but since it had only been a little over a year, she thought it was alright. 

She did have another friend, other than Yumiko, that she really liked hanging out with, even if the majority of their time together was spent in meetings going over marketing budgets, plans, and all that boring stuff. His name was Mallory and he worked at the advertising agency that Sony trusted to handle most if not all of their advertising needs. She didn’t know him too well, so he was more of an acquaintance. She found him charming though, especially when they occasionally saw each other in person as they made their way back home from their offices; they shared the majority of their commute back home since they lived in the same neighborhood. 

“Uh, Alex, will you come to drink beer with us?” the fennec asked the tiger as she zipped up her bag with her bento box inside of it. She had the cutest Japanese accent when she spoke, adding inflections at the end of words that weren’t there. Her big ears perked up as she stood behind her desk chair and waited for the tiger to reply. 

Alex stood up from her desk and started collecting her things, too; laptop, work phone, notebook, and water bottle. With all of her things stuffed into her work bag, she zipped it up and let out a sigh as she turned to the fennec fox who had a hopeful look on her face. She hated turning that girl down, every time she did it felt like she was taking away candy from a child. The look of disappointment and sadness on her face made her heart ache every time. But she didn’t feel like drinking after a day like this, especially since the next day was still another workday. 

“Sorry, Yumi, maybe next time. You have fun though! Have a couple of drinks for me, yeah?” Alex slung her bag over her shoulder and rolled her chair against her desk. She looked over at the fennec and braced for the sad face that she inevitably was going to have. 

“Aww, oki! See you tomorrow then!” the fennec slung her bag over her shoulder and gave the tigress a wave as she tried her best to smile over the disappointment that she was feeling. Her drooping ears were a dead giveaway though. Alex felt a little bit bad, but it wasn’t as if she was blowing the fennec off because she didn’t like her, she just really wasn’t feeling it. 

The tigress left the office with her coworkers but parted ways with them once they were down the elevator and out of the lobby. After waving goodbye and watching as they laughed and cackled their way around the corner, the tigress walked in the direction of the subway station. Once she made her way underground and got on her train, she put her headphones in and started practicing her Japanese on Duolingo. 

It wasn’t rush hour anymore, so the train wasn’t as packed as it normally would have been had she left work on time. She had a seat and her knees weren’t being pressed up against some stranger’s legs. It was one of the few upsides of working overtime, that and the 2x pay rate if she submitted her hours to HR. She practiced the phrases used to order food and a few phrases about nuclear reactors. She didn’t think much of it until the few people that were on the train with her gave her very concerned looks. That damn green owl made her say she wanted to cause a nuclear reactor meltdown. She tried her best to explain that she was using a language study app, but with her panic, she only made it worse. Luckily, by the time she did this, the train pulled into her stop. So the tigress jetted out of there, leaving the other passengers confused. 

The tigress popped out of the underground in a more suburban area of the city and let out a sigh once she took in a deep breath of the fresh air above ground. She was surrounded by clean streets, petite and cute houses, and some powerlines (which was a stark contrast to the business district that didn’t have any at all). They weren’t messy, either, and gave the area a nice homey vibe. After a few seconds of looking around, she continued back home on foot. The tigress lived just a few blocks away from the station and there was a small ramen shop that sat right in between the station and her home. She licked her lips just thinking about it, and within a second her mind was made up, she was going to stop by. 

Just as she was approaching the small yellow ramen stall with its curtains blowing in the wind and steam wafting from its little windows, she felt someone walking beside her, and before she could see who it was, she heard a familiar voice. 

“No drinks today?” 

Alex turned to look at who it was and smiled when she saw it was Mallory, the cheetah guy who worked at the marketing agency. She chuckled and shook her head. “Nah, not really feeling like drinking today. I don’t know how they do it, drink until they drop, and then come into work the next day like it never happened.”

Mallory, who was also on his way home from work, had a backpack slung over one shoulder all cool and stylish-like as he walked alongside the tigress who had hers over both her shoulders like a kid coming back from school. “I still haven’t figured it out either.” The cheetah chuckled. “It’s like they’re immune to hangovers.”

The tigress stopped in her tracks right in front of the little ramen shop and turned to face Mallory fully. “They DID invent the energy drink.” She smirked as she looked at the cheetah. There was something about his bright red eyes and his messy head of hair that was incredibly charming. Whether it was because they were both in a similar situation or because he was handsome, Alex felt a certain way about him that was often described using butterflies. 

Mallory nodded as he thought about it. But before he could say anything, Alex pointed at the ramen shop behind her and spoke up. “I’m about to get some ramen here, I was going to take it to-go, but would you like to join me?” 

The cheetah was incredibly quick in responding. “Yeah!”

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The ramen shop had a considerably extensive menu for such a small joint, which made it difficult for either the tiger or the cheetah to pick which flavor of ramen they wanted. Sitting at the bar, facing the red panda who ran the one-man ramen stand, Alex ran her finger over the laminated menu for a few minutes before she settled on her picks. “Tonkotsu ramen, and lemon tea, please.” 

“I’ll have the same,” Mallory said with a smile as he set his menu aside. The ramen man got to work making their meals, clinking and clanking as he made the noodles, boiled the soup, and prepared the eggs and meats and all the other things that made ramen oh so savory. The drinks came almost immediately after they ordered them, and the tigress brought her straw to her lips for a big sip. 

“SO, how’s your year in Japan been? The tigress leaned one elbow onto the bar surface in front of her and turned her attention to the cheetah. The cheetah took a sip of his tea, too, and turned to look at Alex with his eyebrows raised. His eyes widened and he let out a sigh that puffed out his cheeks. “Well, it’s been an adventure, to say the least. Japanese is fucking HARD to learn.”

Alex scoffed and put her tea down. “Tell me about it, I was just on the train doing my Duolingo and it made me say I wanted to cause a nuclear reactor meltdown.” She chuckled. Mallory almost spat out his drink and started coughing and laughing as he set it down. 

“My Duolingo made me say that eating sushi with a fork is a war crime.” Mallory shook his head. Alex let out a snort-laugh and turned to watch the red panda as the smell of the pork bone soup ramen wafted through the air. That man was in his zone, pulling fresh ramen noodles out of the boiling hot water, pouring them into bowls, and then pouring the white, creamy, and oily soup over them. Chopped spring onion, a poached egg, and some soft pork belly to top it off. The egg rolled out of the shell and onto the ramen bowl in slow motion, and both Alex’s and Mallory’s eyes went wide.

The two bowls of ramen were placed in front of the two patrons and the red panda gave them a little bow as he gestured to the chopsticks and soup spoons. The two big cats grabbed their utensils as fast as they could and started eating. 

“Oh my fucking god, this is so good…” 

Alex looked up from her bowl of ramen as she inhaled the noodles and nodded. The loud slurping noises echoed throughout the little ramen shack and even made the chef smile a little.

As they enjoyed their noodles, they continued their conversation about what life is like, after a little over a year in Japan. The red panda ramen chef even joined in, too, after hearing how both Alex and Mallory thought that they were bad at Japanese. With the usual kindness of a Japanese person, he said that they were doing just fine and that Alex was getting better every time he heard her order food from him. It made both of them feel warm and gooey inside, whether it was from his compliments or his absolutely smashing food, neither of them knew. With their ramen bowls emptied and their cups of lemon tea drained, Alex and Mallory paid for their meal and shook the chef’s hand before they slipped out.

Backpack slung over one shoulder this time, Alex stretched her arms and legs out. She let out a yawn as her arms stretched up over her head, and Mallory caught the yawn from her and did the same. Alex watched as the cheetah yawned and smiled just a little as she did so. She didn’t notice that she was smiling, but that sort of thing happened a lot when you liked someone. 

“So!” the tigress broke the silence and kicked her feet against the ground a few times as she readjusted the strap of her bag on her shoulder. “Did you want to come over to my place? I haven’t really had company over since I moved here, it’d be nice to have you over for some tea. I have cake, too.” The tigress’s cheeks flushed a deep red and she smiled wide, likely to try and hide the fact that she was redder than a fire engine. 

Mallory looked at the tigress with his own smile spread across his face. The difference between his smile and her smile was that he was very aware of his. And he was smiling because he thought she was cute and dorky. When he heard her invitation to come over to her place, he chewed on his lip and gave her the most awkward of awkward smiles. “As amazing as that sounds, I can’t… I have a very early morning tomorrow and I really need to get my notes together for this presentation.” The cheetah wanted to kick himself for turning her down and it showed on his face. 

The look of disappointment washed over Alex’s mug, she tried her best to hide it but Mallory wasn’t an idiot; he could tell. With quick thinking, he made her a counteroffer. 

“How about I walk you home tomorrow, instead? All the way home.” The cheetah smiled toothily at the tiger. 

Alex’s eyes widened and filled with a sparkle only seen in anime and she nodded. 

“See you tomorrow, then,” Mallory said with a smile before giving her a wave and walking across the street toward his place. Alex watched as he walked away, her tail swishing and swaying behind her. Once he turned a corner and she couldn’t see him anymore, she turned around and started to walk in the direction of her place, too. She took maybe three regular steps before she jumped up and down like a giddy schoolgirl who just asked out her crush, purring all the way home.

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Art by LumaLynxx

Mallory by LolBit