It's funny, really, how sound lingers.
Even after the sharp voice fades, after the murmurs scatter and keyboards resume their uneven tapping, the echo of being scolded stays lodged somewhere behind the ribs. Sierra felt it there. Right there. A dull, humming pressure, like standing too close to a train track long after the train has already thundered past.
She stood frozen at her desk, fingers curled too tightly around a stack of folders that suddenly felt heavier than paper had any right to be.
Breathe, she told herself.
Didn't work.
Her supervisor's words still rang sharp and clipped, slicing through the open-plan office like glass shards, unnecessary, public, cruel in that polished corporate way that pretends humiliation is "professional feedback." People had looked. Some pretended not to. Some definitely did. One girl near the printer had even winced, poor thing, as if secondhand embarrassment was contagious.
Sierra hated that part the most.
