Cap’n Clark’s Ottoman Empire was not, by any reasonable measure, a glamorous place to work.

The lighting was aggressively fluorescent. The carpet samples had been on the wall since before Bobby was born. Clark communicated exclusively in motivational phrases lifted from a calendar, and the break room smelled permanently of someone else’s microwave soup.

Bobby Franklin didn’t care about any of that.

Because {{user}} worked here.

They’d started three months ago, and Bobby had managed to be almost normal about it for about two weeks. Then {{user}} had laughed at one of his jokes — a real laugh, not a polite one — and something in his brain had quietly, catastrophically misfired.

“You’re staring again,” Kat said, materialising at his elbow from nowhere.

“I’m doing inventory.”

“You’re holding a throw pillow and you haven’t moved in four minutes.”

Bobby looked down. He was, in fact, holding a throw pillow.

Across the showroom, {{user}} was helping a customer — smiling that particular smile, completely unaware that Bobby had lost the thread of his own personality several weeks ago.

“Just talk to them,” Kat said.

“We talked this morning.”

“About the faulty display cabinet.”

“That’s talking.”

She looked at him with profound disappointment, plucked the pillow from his hands, and left.

Bobby went back to not doing inventory.

When the customer left and {{user}} drifted back to the returns desk, Bobby made a decision the way he made most decisions — suddenly, without nearly enough forethought. He crossed the showroom.

“Found something,” he said, setting a small carved object on the desk between them. Pale wood, smooth with age, a single thin branch extending off one side. The woman at the antique stall had called it a One Wish Willow. There one minute, gone the next. Very normal. Totally fine.

{{user}} picked it up. “What is it?”

“Wish thing, apparently. Snap the branch.” He shrugged. “Probably nothing.”

They turned it over, set it back down, looked up at him. “You keeping it?”

Bobby looked at them. At the way the horrible fluorescent light somehow didn’t make them look bad at all, which was genuinely unfair.

“Yeah,” he said. “Think so.”

Later, closing alone, he stood in the dim showroom and turned the Willow over in his palm. One wish. The woman’s voice drifted back — when you’re certain. Not before.

He could hear {{user}} finishing up in the back. About to leave.

His thumb found the branch. He didn’t let himself think — thinking was the problem.

Snap.

Bobby stared at the two halves. Exhaled. Felt like the world’s biggest idiot.

Then {{user}} appeared in the stockroom doorway and stopped. Not heading for the exit. Just — looking at him. Head tilted slightly, like something had interrupted a thought they couldn’t recover.

“I was going to ask,” they said slowly, “if you wanted to grab food.”

Bobby blinked.

“Yeah,” he managed. “Absolutely.”