Monday morning arrived with unexpected clarity—the kind that came after storms passed, when everything felt sharper, more defined.
Emily stood in front of the classroom at exactly 9 AM, George and Luca flanking her, their presentation queued up and ready.
Professor Chen sat in the front row with her tablet, expression unreadable.
"Whenever you're ready," she said.
Emily took a breath. Not the shallow, anxious kind she'd been surviving on for weeks. A real one.
"Good morning," she began, voice steady. "Today we're presenting our strategic analysis of TechVision International..."
The presentation flowed. Not perfectly—George stumbled slightly over a data point, Luca's laser pointer died halfway through—but solidly. Confidently.
Emily felt herself settling into it, remembering why she'd chosen this field, why strategy had appealed to her in the first place.
Not because she needed to be flawless, but because solving complex problems actually interested her.
