Chapter 5: Hugs

“Hey, cutie. You’re looking nice and chipper today! The big boss said she wanted to see you in her office when you came in, so give that tail a shake and get moving, mmkay?”

Sasha, who was still knocking snow off her boots in the main lobby of the Hyperborea corporation headquarters, obligingly shook her hips in response. She wasn’t sure why it was funny, but Masha giggled, so it was probably okay.

Masha was a fun person to be around. It was very informal, but everybody called her Masha anyway so Sasha had decided not to think about it. She had a lovely heart-shaped face with cute, rounded features that made her look younger than she was, and she was technically Sasha’s boss. Technically Masha was almost everybody’s boss since she was the vice president, but for some reason Sasha had been told to report directly to her, unless she was reporting directly to somebody else.

A lot of things about Sasha’s job confused her. She didn’t actually know what her job even was; supposedly she was Head of Employee Enrichment or Workplace Comfort or something like that, and her job title kept changing from time to time when she wasn’t looking. Her role was to ‘improve productivity by bolstering workplace morale’, which mostly seemed to be about making tea and bringing it to people. She liked that, because she was good at tea and people always seemed happy to see her. Especially the Engineering Department, because they just put in a teabag and smooshed it around for a few seconds without brewing it properly like she did.

Occasionally she did things that weren’t making tea, and that was fun too. Sometimes the employees asked her if she’d like to play chess with them, or tell them stories about her hometown, or to please read this document aloud because they weren’t sure any human being had been involved in its production and their brains were starting to leak out of their ears from too much non-Euclidean contract law. Sometimes she just went out into the yard to do exercise, and people came out to watch her. She kept asking if they’d like to join in, but apparently they liked watching more.

In short, it was a varied and mostly fun job that didn’t make her shoot things, and she was very happy she had gotten it. She knew – vaguely, dimly – that she had only been hired because she let Nadezhda, who was the big boss, know about Ivan, and they’d hired him as a result. Then Nadya (Sasha wasn’t supposed to call her that but Nadezhda was too long) had come and hired Sasha, too. Masha kept saying she was meant to tether Ivan to the company since he was one of their more reliable employees, but everyone else just said that Nadezhda was keeping her as a pet.

She didn’t feel like a pet, though. Mostly when Nadezhda called her, they played games or chatted for an hour and then Nadezhda would sigh and say she was ready to work again before regretfully shooing her out. Nadya didn’t like it when Sasha saw her in her ‘work mode’, and she didn’t talk about work when she called Sasha into the office. That was Masha’s job, and Masha liked to talk to Sasha about all the little worries and complaints the staff had that they made when she was around, but wouldn’t make around Masha because she had a big scary title and could do something about it.

That was a little strange, but the other strange thing that Masha asked for were hugs. Masha was something of a texture freak. She had all sorts of little spinny things and doodads on her desk for her hands to fiddle with when her brain was doing other stuff, and she especially loved soft things. She went out and bought cashmere scarves just to stroke them, and she kept saying that she had silk bedsheets that felt super good against her skin.

Sasha also happened to be soft. She usually wore soft comfy sweaters to work and her hair was long and fluffy and fun to pet, so Masha liked to pull her into a hug and spend a few minutes getting her soft fix. Sometimes she also stroked Sasha’s tail, and even gave her a nice comb and some shampoo to help with the texture of her fur.

“I know how tough it can be to take care of your tail,” she’d said conspiratorially. “Do you wear perfume?”

Sasha shook her head; at heart, she was a country girl, and there weren’t many shops that sold perfume in a village like hers.

“Huh? Really? You always smell good, though. Kinda sweet, almost a little bit like honey. Maybe it’s your shampoo? I bet it drives all the guys crazy.”

Sasha wondered if that was really the case. There were guy smells and there were girl smells, and honey seemed like it was a girl smell. Guys liked the smell of cordite and motorcycle engines and whiskey and leather belts. That was what she thought. But she took the little bottle of perfume anyway, and dabbed it on her collarbone most days, this one included.

Once today’s Masha hug dispensed, she was free to ask about her appointment with Nadya. “Should I bring tea?” she asked, because tea was Important and if she was going to bring tea she would probably want to bring jam as well, because jam was also Important.

“I think you can just bring yourself and a big smile, and you’ll be good to go,” Masha winked. Then her expression became a little sly. “God, I love it when she calls you into her office, y’know. She gets so much work done afterwards. Especially when it comes to board meetings with the investors. It’s like she’s a different person.”

“That’s my job. I think,” Sasha replied, although she wasn’t really sure.

“Right you are, honey. Go up there and knock her dead, okay?”

Masha sent her off with a smile, her eyes lingering on Sasha’s tail as she walked away. With her own fuel reserves topped up, the vice president then set her sights on the mountain of paperwork before her.

Nadezhda was a tall woman.

Tall was probably the wrong word. Well, it was the right word. But big was better. She had broad shoulders and muscular thighs, and when she wasn’t tired she moved around with the poise and power of a prize fighter. She was tired most of the time, but sometimes she wasn’t, and it always felt like an unexpected treat to see.

She got tired because she liked people who were honest and direct and did that they said they’d do, which wasn’t really the kind of people that CEOs like her ended up talking to. Instead, she had to talk with a lot of people who used complicated words for simple things and looked down on her if she didn’t keep up appearances. She always said that worst thing about people like that was that she couldn’t punch them in the nose, which Sasha understood. She didn’t like violence, but some problems couldn’t really be solved without a little bit of nose-punching. That was how the world worked.

With Sasha, she usually stopped caring as much about appearances. Sometimes she would put her feet up on a little puff stool she kept hidden beneath her desk. There were a few times when she’d just draped her blazer over her shoulders without putting her arms through it, and it made her look a bit like a pirate, which Sasha enjoyed. She liked pirates even though they were bad people because the ocean was far away so she’d never have to actually meet one, but Nadezhda was like a pirate captain that lived at home and didn’t didn’t do any bad stuff that she’d have to think about.

“Good morning, Sasha,” Nadezhda greeted her. Her voice had a low, enjoyable bass quality to it. She didn’t smile, but Nadya didn’t smile very much anyway. Some people didn’t. Their faces just weren’t built that way. “Take a seat.”

“Oh. Are we playing board games?” That was what usually happened when Sasha sat down in the office. Sasha was bad at most of the strategic ones, but she usually won when the game made you take a risk for a bigger reward. She was good at telling when the gamble would pay off.

“Not today.” Nadezhda sighed, and motioned again at the seat until Sasha took it. “Now, I’ve been made aware that you’ve been engaging in some odd behaviours around the office.”

Sasha tilted her head. “I have?”

It was a genuine question. They didn’t have offices in the village, so this was the first one Sasha was really familiar with, and she didn’t know all the rules yet. A lot of people could figure them out without being told, but she had trouble with that kind of thing.

“Apparently, you’ve been wandering around hugging people at work,” Nadya said.

“I haven’t been hugging people. Only Masha. She’s a person, not a people.”

“But you have been hugging her at work, then,” Nadya said, rubbing the spot between her eyebrows. “Why?”

“She asked me to.”

“Is that the only reason? Would you just hug anybody who asked?”

Sasha nodded. After all, nobody at the office was really creepy or smelly, and she wouldn’t run out of hugs. She had infinite hugs. “Is that bad?”

Nadezhda didn’t say anything for a long while, which probably meant she was thinking. She thought a lot more deeply about things than Sasha did, and sometimes that took time. It was fun, though, because you could kind of work out where she was in the decision process by watching her expression flicker. It didn’t change very much, but it was pretty obvious once you noticed it, and Sasha had good eyes.

“Well. It might be inappropriate, depending on the context,” Nadya said finally. She was wearing her guilty look, which she only really did when she was procrastinating about starting her paperwork. “I’ll have to… try it and see. Come here.”

She held her arms out, looking to the side as if she was embarrassed – although Sasha couldn’t really see why. But it didn’t really matter. She’d asked for a hug and that was that, so Sasha stood back up, approached her chair, and gently folded her boss into her arms.

Nadya was tall and Sasha wasn’t, so even though she was sitting down, Nadya’s head could still rest on her collarbone while they embraced. She was very warm, and it felt like the muscles in her back were very tight, so Sasha focused on stroking them soothingly as the hug continued. She probably needed a massage, but Masha was in charge of Nadya’s schedule so they’d have to bring it up with her later.

Meanwhile, Nadya breathed deeply.

“...Just like I thought. It’s bad,” she declared at last, clearing her throat. It had been a long hug. Sasha hadn’t been counting because you weren’t meant to watch clocks at work, but she must have been thinking very deeply about something again. “From now on, don’t hug people around the office, even if they ask you. It’s inappropriate and it might distract people from their work if they see you doing it.”

It was a shame, but she didn’t seem mad, so maybe it was okay. Getting fired for hugging people would have been very unfortunate.

“The only exception,” Nadya carried on, staring off at a very interesting part of her office wall, “is if I ask you. My office is private so we won’t be disturbing anybody. And I’m the boss, so nobody will complain.”

“What about Masha, though? She likes hugs.”

“I’ll talk to her separately later,” Nadezhda shrugged. Then her eyes narrowed slightly again. “She gave you that perfume you’re wearing, didn’t she? Don’t wear it at work. You smell better without it, anyway.”

Sasha nodded. She supposed it was kind of a waste to wear it at work, and she’d probably run out before long if she kept doing that anyway. She’d keep it for when she went out for lunch on her days off. Lunch was important, so it was worth wearing perfume for.

“Okay. Well. My paperwork isn’t going to do itself, so I suppose I’d better get on with it,” Nadezhda said, although she still seemed reluctant. Then she cheered up again. “Please bring some tea, and… hm. A game of your choice. We can play a little as a reward every time I finish a form.”

“It’s important to keep your morale up,” Sasha agreed.

She wasn’t aware of it quite yet, but Nadezhda would keep monopolising her hugs quite regularly for some time afterwards.