The days that followed passed at a pace Talia hadn't expected—fast, dense, packed with numbers and deadlines piling up like playing cards. The JK finance department didn't forgive mistakes. Every spreadsheet she opened revealed another beneath it, and every report she closed created three new loose ends. But Talia liked it. She liked the weight, the demands, the feeling that no one there pretended the work was easy.
On Wednesday, the director called the entire department in for a quick meeting. There was a new budget—a major project, the kind involving figures with too many zeros and a chain of approvals. It had to be put together, reviewed, and presented by Friday.
“Who’s responsible for consolidating it?” the director asked, his eyes sweeping the room.
Sofia nudged Talia under the table. Talia raised her hand.
“I can take it.”
The director nodded. No praise, no encouragement. Just the nod, which in that office already meant trust.
From then on, Talia started leaving later. Six-thirty. Seven. Seven-thirty. The floor emptied out little by little—first the interns, then the analysts, then Sofia, who always left with a whispered “Don’t die here, okay?” at the door. Talia waved without taking her eyes off the screen.
On her first night of overtime, she stayed until nine. She ate a packet of cookies she found in a drawer and drank three coffees. When she left, the building was almost empty, and the silence in the halls carried a different weight than the silence during the day—wider, more honest.
On the second night, she was bent over the numbers when she heard footsteps. Not the hurried steps of a security guard making rounds. These were calm, measured footsteps, the kind that didn't hurry because the entire building belonged to whoever was walking through it.
She looked up.
Jash was standing at the entrance to the department, his hands in his pockets, looking at her with that expression she still didn't know how to read. It wasn't curiosity. It wasn't irritation. It was something in between, as if he'd found a piece out of place and was deciding whether it fit or not.
“What are you doing here this late?”
His voice was deeper than Talia had expected. Or maybe it was the silence around them that made every word carry more weight. It was the first time he'd really spoken to her—not a nod, not a glance passing over her. A whole sentence, directed at her.
“Hi, sir. I have a budget to approve, and I need to familiarize myself with the project.”
He stood still for a moment. His eyes dropped to the desk—the papers scattered across it, the computer open to three tabs, the empty coffee cups forming a sad little row beside the keyboard.
“I understand,” he said. Then, “Have you had dinner?”
Talia blinked. The question was so far outside what she'd expected from that man that it took her two seconds to process it.
“No, I... I haven't had time yet.”
He looked at the coffee cups again, as if counting them.
“I’ll order something for both of us.”
And he left. Without waiting for an answer. Without giving her a chance to say she didn't need anything, that she was fine, that she could get by with another coffee and half a packet of cookies. He simply turned his back and disappeared down the hall with those same calm footsteps.
Talia stared at the empty doorway. Her heart was beating a little faster than it should have, and she didn't know whether it was because of the surprise or something else she didn't want to name.
Twenty minutes later, he returned. He carried a pizza box in one hand, balanced on his open palm as if he did it every day. He set it on the desk beside her papers.
“Sorry. I couldn't find a restaurant that delivered this late.”
Talia looked at the pizza, then at him, and laughed. A short, genuine laugh that escaped before she could stop it.
“Thank you. Seriously.”
He pulled out a chair and sat on the other side of the desk. He opened the box. The smell of melted cheese filled the empty finance department as if it were the most natural thing in the world—the owner of a billion-dollar company eating boxed pizza with a new employee at nine-thirty at night, surrounded by spreadsheets.
They ate in silence. But it wasn't the silence of the elevator, the kind that suffocated. It was a different silence—lighter, almost comfortable, as if the two of them had silently agreed they didn't need to fill the space with conversation.
Every now and then, Talia looked up and found his eyes. He looked away first. Every time. As if looking at her for more than two seconds was dangerous.
When the pizza was gone, Jash closed the box, stood, and said:
“Don’t stay too late.”
And he left. No goodbye. No good night. Just that one sentence, tossed into the air like someone leaving a door ajar instead of closing it.
Talia stayed seated, staring at the empty box, tasting cheese on her tongue and feeling a warm confusion in her chest. In the cab, she leaned her head against the window and thought that maybe he wasn't so bad after all. Maybe his silence wasn't coldness. Maybe it was simply the way he'd found to exist in the world without hurting anyone.
Or maybe she was being naive. Bullies don't change. Do they?
Friday arrived with the weight of a verdict. Talia reviewed the budget three times before the meeting, checked every number, every projection, every comma. Sofia appeared at her desk at eight with a coffee and a “You’re going to crush it” that sounded more like an order than encouragement.
The conference room was full. The director, the managers, the coordinators—all seated around the long table, their faces serious. Talia took a deep breath and opened the presentation.
She was on the third slide when the door opened.
Jash entered without making a sound, but the effect was the same as thunder. Everyone straightened in their chairs. The director half-rose.
“Sir, I didn't know you were coming to the meeting.”
“Continue,” Jash said, sitting in the chair at the back, his legs crossed, his eyes on Talia.
She felt his gaze like a hand against her back—not pushing, simply there. She swallowed and continued. She talked about the numbers, the projections, the risks, and the margins. She kept her voice steady. She didn't stammer. When she finished, she looked around the room, waiting for questions.
Jash stood. Everyone looked at him. He walked to the door, opened it, and left. Without saying a word. Without approving or rejecting it, without nodding. He simply walked out, as if the entire meeting had been a painting he'd come to observe and had now seen enough of.
The room fell silent for three seconds that felt like thirty.
“Do you think I did something wrong?” Talia whispered to Sofia, who had squeezed herself into the chair in the corner.
“No,” Sofia whispered back. “He just doesn't talk much. If he'd hated it, you'd know.”
Talia wasn't sure that was supposed to be comforting.
“Should we celebrate?” Sofia said loudly when the meeting ended. “Friday, budget delivered, nobody died. Good enough reason.”
The entire department agreed. Talia tried to refuse, but Sofia gave her that smile that didn't accept no, and she gave in.
The bar was two blocks from the company, in a basement with yellow lighting and music that didn't get in the way of conversation. Talia ordered a beer and let herself be carried along by the group's energy—the inside jokes she still didn't understand, the impressions of the director that made everyone laugh, Sofia telling for the third time the story about the intern who sent an email to the wrong client.
After the second round, someone suggested the nightclub on the next street. Talia looked at Sofia.
“It’ll be fun,” Sofia said, already getting up.
The nightclub was dark, loud, and crowded. Talia hadn't been to a nightclub since college, and it took her body a few minutes to remember how to move in that kind of place. But Sofia pulled her onto the dance floor, and after one song, two, three, Talia was laughing and dancing as if the budget, the numbers, and Jash's gaze didn't exist.
It was in the middle of the fourth song that two men approached.
They came up from behind, smiling, with the kind of confidence belonging to people who thought the world owed them something. One of them touched Sofia's shoulder. The other stopped in front of Talia and held out his hand.
“Dance with me?”
Talia looked up. And the floor vanished.
The face. She knew that face. Not from the company, not from the park, not from anywhere recent. She knew it from a long hallway, from laughter echoing off the walls, from a voice shouting “Beanpole” while the others laughed. His jaw was broader now, his body heavier, but his eyes were the same. The same eyes that had laughed while she cried.
She looked at the other one. The second man. She knew him too. The one who stood behind him, who never shouted the nicknames but laughed at all of them, who held her backpack up high while she jumped, trying to reach it.
Both of them. Here. In the same nightclub. Smiling at her as if they were harmless strangers in some random bar.
They didn't recognize her. Of course they didn't. The girl with braces, thick glasses, and uncut hair no longer existed. Talia had made sure of that. But she recognized them. Every feature, every gesture, every crooked smile.
“Hey, you okay?” the first one insisted, his hand still extended.
Talia opened her mouth. No sound came out. The nightclub's noise seemed to have been sucked far away, and all she could hear was her own blood pounding in her ears and, deep in the distance, the echo of a laugh from fifteen years ago.
“We’re good, thanks,” Sofia said, pulling Talia by the arm with a polite smile that meant get lost.
The two men shrugged and moved away. Talia followed them with her eyes, her entire body rigid, and then she saw.
They walked to the back of the nightclub, to a corner table where someone was sitting alone, a glass in his hand, his face half-hidden in the shadows. One of the men slapped him on the shoulder. The other sat beside him and laughed at something. And the man at the table lifted his face for one second, just one second, and the rotating light passed over him.
Jash.
The school bullies were Jash's friends.
Talia felt her legs go weak. The air grew thick, hard to swallow. The nightclub spun around her—the lights, the music, the people—and at the center of it all, that table in the back, those three men together, and fifteen years of scars waking all at once, every single one, as if someone had ripped off the bandage without warning.
“Talia?” Sofia grabbed her arm. “You’re white. What happened?”
Talia swallowed. Forced a smile. The same smile as always, the one she'd learned to give when she needed the world to stop asking questions.
“Nothing. I’m just tired. I think I’m going home.”
“Want me to go with you?”
“No, stay. Have fun. I’m fine.”
She wasn't. But she walked away anyway, crossed the dance floor, climbed the stairs, pushed open the door, and felt the cold night air strike her face like a gentle slap. She stopped on the sidewalk. Breathed. Once. Twice. Three times.
The cab stopped in less than a minute. Talia got in, gave the driver her address, and rested her head against the window. The city passed outside, blurred by the lights and by something she refused to call a tear.
Pizza. Comfortable silence. “Don’t stay too late.” All of it coming from a man who spent time with the same people who had destroyed her childhood.
Spike was waiting for her at the door. Talia crouched down, hugged the dog, and stayed there on the hallway floor with her face buried in his fur, feeling his tail thump against her back like a clumsy metronome of affection.
“I thought I'd left it all behind, Spike,” she whispered. “I thought I'd managed to.”
Spike licked her face. Talia closed her eyes.
The scars hadn't gone anywhere. They were only waiting for winter to return.