"Where's Alma?"
The question didn't arrive so much as it landed—two words, low and controlled, sliding across the room like the thin edge of a very sharp thing. Chairman Vasquez didn't raise his voice. He never needed to. The sound carried anyway, clean and cold, and the entire office held its breath the way people do when something fragile starts to wobble on a shelf.
Silence unfurled over us, a neat, suffocating sheet. Even the printers seemed to swallow their mechanical complaints. You could hear the small things instead: the hum of the air conditioner set one degree colder than comfort, the delicate tick of the wall clock above the pantry door, the soft scuff of someone trying to tuck their chair in without being noticed. We were a roomful of adults pretending to be furniture.
Then—footsteps. Fast, apologetic, echoing down the hallway in a rhythm that said I am late, and I know what that means here.
"C-Chairman! I—I'm sorry I'm late!" The glass doors he hated—because fingerprints—nudged open, and Alma stumbled through with a stack of papers hugged to her chest like a life vest. "T-traffic... I tried to—"
"You may pack your things," he said, the pen in his hand still moving across the page, his gaze on the document as if it were a patient in surgery and he was not about to end someone's employment mid-stitch.
The papers fell, scattered on the carpet. The sound was soft, but we all felt it. A few gasps, quickly swallowed. His face stayed the same—expressionless, like a mirror you don't realize has a barrier until you walk right into it.
That was it. No explanation. No lecture. No second chance, because second chances are a policy he never had to write down.
Everyone had seen this before.
I had seen this before.
Alma didn't argue. That's not something people do here anymore. She crouched, picking up her life from the floor—a photo of her family, novelty pens shaped like flamingos, a small plant that had done its best under fluorescent lights. My heart twisted. The same twist it always does. If others show cruelty by shouting, he does it quietly. Maybe that hurts more.
I wanted to say something. Something small, like message me later, or something big, like this isn't fair. But in this office, words are rationed. You do not speak unless spoken to. You do not volunteer your soul to a paper shredder.
"Richard," the Chairman said, snapping the thread of quiet as easily as if it were just another string to his violin. "The minutes of the meeting. Are they done?"
Beside me, Richard flinched so hard he almost gave our row a paper cut. "Y-Yes, Chairman." His fingers whitened around a folder. He stood. Walked the walk—three seconds too fast, apology in every step—and placed the papers on the desk.
The Chairman flipped. Pages whispered. His brows lowered, the tiniest weather change. Everyone else felt it like thunder, we had learned to hear before it arrived.
Here we go, I thought, and the thought wore practical shoes.
"Enlighten me." He tapped one line with the pen. The tap was gentle; the implication was not. "This first line—it wasn't in the meeting yesterday." The tone didn't rise. It didn't need to. The room's temperature kept dropping until my wrists wanted a sweater.
Richard's Adam's apple did a panic roll. "I—I just... copied that from Miss Rero's notes, Chairman."
The Chairman's gaze lifted, cool and exacting. "And where," he asked, "is Miss Rero?"
As if choreographed, a dozen heads pivoted toward the corner where she sat: thin glasses, thinner color in her cheeks, pen clenched like a prayer. "C-Chairman..." she managed, her voice the sound of paper tearing carefully.
"You may pack your things," he said, thunder hidden inside a whisper. "You, too, Richard. If you can't think, you're useless to this company. Copying notes isn't initiative; it's stupidity."
The words landed without debris. He turned his attention back to Miss Rero, as though kindness would be a waste of office supplies. "And you—where did you graduate again? Because I distinctly remember only hiring smart employees. Tell me, what are you still doing here?"
Her mouth opened. Closed. The pen in her hand—traitor—quivered.
"Exactly," he said.
And then nothing. The purest kind of silence. It had shape, it had edges. It was a box we were all inside.
Richard and Miss Rero stood. They didn't meet anyone's eyes; there's a shame to being dismissed in public that makes you fold yourself small and try to slip between molecules. Their steps were heavy, the kind of heavy that stays with you in your knees long after you've sat down somewhere that isn't yours anymore. Around us, keyboards remembered their jobs; the click-clicks returned, a chorus of see, we're working, look how invisible we can be.
"Miss Bones."
I sat straighter before the syllables finished leaving his mouth. Muscle memory is the most loyal employee. "Yes, Chairman?"
He glanced at me—one measured second—then back to the file in his hand. "What's my next appointment?"
I flipped open my planner, the neat gridlines I worship. "Lunch meeting with Mr. Lopez at Umlas Restaurant, sir."
He nodded once, already walking toward his glass office with that precise, unhurried stride. I followed—my desk lives at the border, just outside his door, the customs checkpoint between his world and everyone else's.
"Ready the car," he said, and then the door slid shut with the soft finality of an argument you won't win.
My spine softened an inch. Three people gone and the day hadn't even eaten its first sandwich. You'd think after three years I'd be insulated, that a callus would have formed over the part of me that flinches. It hasn't. You don't get used to the way he breaks people: quietly, efficiently, like erasing a typo you never intend to retype.
Some coworkers envy me. You're lucky, they whisper in pantry corners. You're close to the Chairman. He trusts you. They think proximity is protection. They don't see how thin the ice is where I stand, how it sings under my feet. One wrong step and you're a story people tell in low voices for two days before the new deadlines drown it out.
Still—this was the dream. CEO's secretary. The title sounds like a view from a corner office, but it's mostly running a universe on a schedule and remembering where the extra batteries are. I worked years for this—practice interviews, temp gigs, the old receptionist who taught me how to hear danger in a footstep. I stayed because achievement and anxiety sometimes share a toothbrush.
I called the driver. "Mang Raul, please ready the car. Fifteen minutes." He grunted in the kindest way. Then I glanced at the tinted glass of the Chairman's office where his silhouette stood by the window, hands in his pockets, staring at a skyline that never looks back. He seemed—just for a breath—like someone whose suit weighed more than the fabric allowed.
Outside, the sun was too honest. The glass tower beside ours gave us a perfect reflection of him: symmetrical, untouchable, like a geometry proof you can't argue with. We walked to the car. He never rushes. The world does the rushing around him.