VOLUME III: 53 – Racoon Gifs

It had officially been a month since onboarding started, which meant I was no longer the fresh meat… but also not even close to being cooked through. Half-seared, maybe. Slightly singed on the edges.

The gen group chat had become a lawless swamp in that time. Half the time, it was actual work talk — deadlines, training schedules, “please fill out this form or else management will cry” — and the other half was someone posting a cursed meme at three in the morning. Usually me.

Which is why I'm currently sitting in my pajamas, Discord open, staring at my monitor as Rika, our project manager, tried to wrangle eight human disasters into our first proper group call.

“Okay, can everyone hear me?” she asked, in that falsely chipper tone people use when they’re seconds away from throwing a chair.

Somewhere in the corner of the call window, Weaver was muted, sipping coffee like he’d seen war. He blinked slowly, like every noise from our mics shaved seconds off his lifespan. There were also at least two other staff accounts named “ParfaitOps2” and “TrainingBot” who never spoke, but whose presence felt like they were taking notes for a terrifying internal report titled: “This Generation Will Be the Death of Us.”

“Yeaaah,” Sasha replied instantly, so loud my headphones rattled.

“Yep,” Basil said, their voice calm and perfectly balanced, the audio equivalent to that of a lukewarm cup of tea.

Amy’s mic was crisp and clear. “Here.”

Then came Jules.

—bZZTtkrhhHTtk—

We all froze.

“…What?” Jules asked, her voice breaking in and out like she was calling us from the bottom of a well.

Sasha immediately lost it. “Mate, are you livestreaming from inside an oven?”

“It’s fine on my end,” Jules insisted.

“It’s not fine on anyone else’s end,” Amy deadpanned. “You sound like a cryptid trying to communicate through a baby monitor.”

Basil hummed. “Maybe she’s in the astral plane again.”

“Stop making it sound like a skill issue,” Jules mumbled through static.

Meanwhile, I was quietly posting a reaction image of a raccoon holding a mic into the onboarding Discord. Not the one for memes. The actual work server.

“Aoi.” Rika’s voice cut in sharply.

“Mm?”

“Stop posting memes and open your onboarding document.”

“I am,” I lied, already scrolling for the perfect follow-up GIF.

Sasha cackled. “Absolute menace.”

“I’m contributing to morale,” I said with all the confidence of a politician mid-scandal.

We finally managed to get through the mandatory introductions, which should’ve been thirty seconds each but somehow turned into Sasha trying to convince us all to do an “official team karaoke night.”

“Online or in-person?” Noah asked, sounding like a man regretting opening his mouth.

“In-person, duh,” Sasha said. “Bonding! Imagine the content.”

“I imagine the lawsuit,” Amy muttered.

Jules’ mic cut back in with a horrific screech. “I’ll sing that ‘U ii a i u ii a i cat song.’”

Basil perked up. “We could harmonize.”

“This is already getting out of hand,” Rika sighed, which was her default onboarding setting with us.

Then — briefly — we were almost professional.

Rika cleared her throat and shared her screen. “Okay, everyone, focus up. This is important. We need to finalize the streaming schedule for launch week in about 3 months.”

We actually shut up for a whole twenty seconds. For about ten blissful minutes, the conversation actually got serious. Budgets, debut milestones, a reminder from Weaver about “maintaining brand cohesion” that made us all feel like we’d accidentally joined a marketing cult. Rika even pulled up an itinerary in a shared doc and started assigning people tasks. It was… suspiciously productive.

For a moment, we looked like a real team.

Then Sasha unmuted. “Can I dibs the Thursday slot if I promise to stream shirtless? Not me, my model.”

Amy groaned. “Please stop talking.”

From the corner, Weaver unmuted for the first time to say, “Don’t,” before disappearing back into his coffee.

Rika tried valiantly to continue, but then Basil deadpanned, “We could make it thematic. Everyone picks an outfit from the same color palette. Launch week, but make it fashionable.”

Which spiraled into a twenty-minute debate about whether Basil’s definition of “teal” was actually “blue,” and by the second hour, nobody was even pretending to stay on topic. Rika had given up on teaching us how to use the new scheduling tool because Sasha had discovered the soundboard feature on Discord and was now spamming it at every available opportunity.

Amy was halfway through explaining some insider trick she learned from a friend when Jules’ mic fuzzed again.

“Wait, say that again?” Basil asked.

“I said—” bzzzTTkkhhH “—never trust someone who's—” kkrrRSHhh “—in lightmode.”

“What?”

“I think she said never trust someone in lightmode,” Sasha said, nodding solemnly like that was a real proverb.

“Who even uses light mode at this point,” I said, because honestly? Why even?

By the end, Rika was rubbing her temples. “Okay. Homework. Finish your onboarding documents. No more memes on the work server.”

“What memes,” I said.

“Aoi.”

“Yeah?”

“Aoi.”

“…Okay.”

I was absolutely not okay.

She sighed, glancing offscreen. “I’ll update your managers about today’s progress.” Which, judging by her tone, meant she’d be writing something like: Progress minimal. Morale inexplicably high. Threat level rising.

When I finally left the call, my cheeks hurt from grinning. It was chaos. It was productive. It was a complete disaster.

But for the first time in weeks, it felt like we weren’t just strangers trapped in a corporate Discord.

We were a team.
A very stupid team.

And I couldn’t wait for the next call.