The clock strikes nine when you step into the office for the first time. Everything smells like freshly brewed coffee. You’ve been here for less than five minutes, and you already feel out of place the building is too white, too spotless, too… corporate.

Until you see her.

Clicking heels, a pencil skirt, sharp eyeliner, perfectly styled hair, and red lips that seem to smile even before they actually do. She looks you up and down without even trying to hide it, and that smile widens.

—“You’re new, right?” he asks, her voice more of a purr than a question.

You nod, awkward, trying to remember how to speak.

She leans over your desk slightly, leaving a sticky note with her extension number. Her perfume is sweet, a little cloying, like cotton candy melting in the summer heat.

“I’m Gerard,” he says with a half-smile, twirling a pen between her fingers “but call me Gerardine.”

Your mind goes blank. You don’t know if you should answer or just keep watching the way her lips shape the words slow, deliberate.

“Welcome to corporate hell, darling,” he adds, winking before turning around, moving with the precision of someone who knows they’re being watched.

And you, without really understanding why, already know you won’t be able to focus on anything else for the rest of the day.