ACT III

23 August 2017

The rumors were flying at work. The office buzzed with them as the worried men and women hunched closely together at their desks, whispering about the state of the company...or more so, the current state of the acting CEO of the company and how the recent upheaval might affect their jobs. You were a temp, so the threat of impending unemployment was more of a steady countdown with an end date, rather than the swift and surprising chop of the guillotine. Your contract would be up in six months, so while you secretly hoped the supervisors who fed you busy work would see the enormous potential in you and some day make you a permanent employee, you weren't exactly holding your breath for it to happen. This was a big company with an enormous work force and one somewhat competent temp amongst the dozens of other contract workers scattered throughout the building didn't exactly stand out.

“I hear his wife is leaving him.” Jangmi from accounting’s thoroughly scandalized voice broke through the steady din of your floor.

“I heard that the reason he has been gone so much is because he checked himself into a mental hospital.” Alba, the woman who sat directly behind you peeked her head over the partition to share the rumors she heard. “He’s suffering from delusions and has been spending thousands of dollars on private detectives.”

“No no, the real reason he was gone was because he’s a model and was doing a photoshoot in Bali, and he was so handsome in all of the pictures that the director begged him to stay on as a permanent fashion model but he declined.” Jangmi countered and you sighed into your computer screen as quietly as you could, not wanting to let on that you were eavesdropping on their conversation and found their gossip just bothersome enough to distract you from sorting your morning emails.

Your inbox was mostly full of memos from the subject of their discussion. The acting CEO of XiuUnlimited, Director Kim Minseok, who it seemed, had spent the last 12 hours filling the inboxes of his subordinates with reminders on policies that, given the numerous times you had read through these policy reminder emails over and over again, not a single person in this building was likely to forget any time soon.

“Is he really that handsome?” Alba dropped her voice some, as if the rumors of his good looks were supposedly a secret. Hell, even you had heard the tales of his good looks.

Reminder to all staff: The microwaves in the break rooms are to be wiped down with the antibacterial cleaning wipes provided free of charge by the company. Wipe what sticks, don't get sick!

Jangmi shrugged into her morning latte, “I've never seen him. Lana from my department saw him once and she went on for days about how handsome he is.”

Reminder to all staff: Used paper towels in the bathrooms belong in the trash can, not on the floor. Excess mess leads to excess stress!

You scrolled through to the bottom of each email, searching for the delete icon at the bottom of the page. It was quite easy to see that the man had some issues if he spent his entire evening thinking of lame rhymes to use to micromanage his employees instead of figuring out how to fix the problems he had in his relationship with his wife.

“I heard,” Alba dropped her voice even further this time and your ears caught the sudden change as you tried not to make it obvious that you tilted your head ever so slightly to catch what she was about to drop. “That when the divorce is final, the temps are getting --” you heard the clicking sound she made with her tongue and you turned to see her making an axe motion across her neck.

This one sent your heart racing just a touch faster and you quickly turned away to look at your computer screen when she looked back at you, not wanting her to know you had heard what she said, although you knew, you just knew it had to be baseless. There was no way your contract would be terminated early just because of a little turmoil in a marriage up at the top.

The man couldn't be that insensitive to his employees could he? There had to be a hundred temps in this place. Surely the company couldn't survive losing such a huge amount of support staff suddenly and not suffer at least their bottom line, right? It just didn't make sense.

Your mind flashed back to when you were hired and the sickening false smile of the woman who sat behind the large mahogany desk as you were shuffled through. It was the only time you had been upstairs and it felt more like a parade of products on a conveyer belt as she chose the ones that caught her eye. You knew she was important by the way she looked down her nose at you, and when you learned later that she was the wife of the CEO you couldn’t find yourself to be the least bit surprised.

“It was an arranged marriage wasn't it? Rich people really are strange sometimes. What did they think would happen if they marry without even knowing the person.” Jangmi rattled on over your busy mind as you briefly daydreamed about just what it would be like to be into a life like that. Married to a stranger simply because your parents had struck some sort of fortuitous business deal. A life of excess and privilege but with none of the freedom to do what you wanted with it all.

Reminder to all staff: Driving faster than 10MPH in the parking garage leaves unsightly black marks on the floor. Drive slow so it won't show!

You supposed a life like that would make anyone a little bit crazy.

Your day was suspiciously quiet. You’d caught up with every deadline you had received from the week prior and found yourself searching for menial tasks to fill your day. Yet when you asked your supervisor for some new material to work on she shrugged and passed you a stack of papers that needed copying, or short lists of documents for data entry. Tasks that were easily completed in less than one hour and required almost no brainpower to do.

You tried not to be paranoid.
You tried not to let the rumors from this morning get to you, yet as you completed yet another stack of mindless copies, you couldn't help but notice how the other employees, the ones who weren't temps seemed genuinely swamped with work. Things that would last them weeks, while you were handed the short term tasks that had no strings attached. Nothing that would hold you to it, or keep you busy for long enough to be considered a valued asset to the company.

It was within the last ten minutes of the day, when you were sorting through your paperclips, choosing the bent ones to throw into the trash can between your legs (Reminder to all staff: Discard broken or warped paper clips, as they can damage reports and require documents to be reprinted. Untidy supplies are not okay guys!) when you heard a loud gasp from across the office. Followed shortly by the sound of someone cursing at mid volume from a desk behind you. You looked up in alarm at the sudden ruckus that seemed to be breaking out inside the building and when you turned behind you, Alba sat facing you and Jangmi stood with her head over the partition watching, with their mouths open and wide eyes.

It only took a moment for your eyes to zero in on her open computer screen, on the latest email from CEO Kim Minseok, that was opened there for you to see.

Attention all staff, Effective immediately all Temporary Workers will no longer be employees of XiuUnlimited. Contracts that have not yet expired will be terminated and former employees will receive severance pay in their accounts within 3-5 business days. Please remember to take all of your personal belongings with you when you leave. A security officer will you out of the building. Things left behind, are no longer mine!

You stared at the email on your screen in disbelief. Well, mild disbelief that was turning into something else. Something like anger that something like this could really be happening to you. Somewhere in the office, a woman was crying and you scrolled down to the bottom of the email and hit delete, watching the animation on your screen as it flew away and vanished for the last time.

There was something dehumanizing about being singled out, watched, and escorted out of the building by a man wearing a uniform that only had a plastic badge and a flashlight. He stood a few feet behind you as you gathered the last bit of Polaroid pictures you had on the corkboard behind your cubicle and tossed them into the paper box Alba had handed you from below her desk.

“We’re really sorry,” Jangmi said softly at your back. “Yeah, sorry,” Alba chimed in agreement and you forced a tense smile that only lasted for a few seconds before you just couldn't do it any more.

You had just lost your job for seemingly no reason at all and they would just have to forgive you if couldn't fake being nice.

You had to turn in your ID badge on the sidewalk outside of the building. The one that worked the lock on front door and officially named you as an adult employee who received a paycheck and medical benefits in exchange for you spending 8 hours a day sitting behind a desk doing any and every task they presented you to the best of your ability. And for what? So you could be fired because some rich kid threw a tantrum and didn’t like the wife his parents bought for him?

You wanted to scream. You wanted to cry.

You wanted a drink.

That was something you could probably manage, despite the nagging voice in the back of your mind telling you that an unemployed person should not be wasting money at a bar when she would certainly have to eat again sometime soon.

Your mood moved your feet and you found your eyes searching the signs around you for something that would wet your throat and numb your mind for a few hours while you wallowed in a little good old fashioned self pity.

Perhaps on any other day you would have avoided the somewhat shady looking alley way lined with smelly dumpsters and probably a whole assortment of varmen, but today you merely wandered. You found yourself pleasantly surprised to find yourself walking upon what looked to be a hole in the wall bar with a sign above the door that simply read “The Commander.”

The name brought a warmth to your chest and you found yourself smiling for the first time today when you tried the door and found it open. Inside was peaceful, with smooth contemporary music filtering through overhead speakers and a warm decor that smelled clean and inviting.

A bell rang above the door when it closed and a man in a dress shirt, vest and bow tie looked up from his spot at the bar. The glass he was drying shined in the lights overhead and he nodded his head in your direction with a friendly smile.

“Anywhere you like, miss,” the bartender said with a slight accent and you looked around at the empty place. You really could sit anywhere you liked. As you rounded the corner you were surprised to see one other patron sitting on the far end of the bar, not visible from where you entered but you definitely weren't alone with your very own bartender on the day you were fired.

The man at the bar didn't look up when you entered, nor did he move at all it seemed, as he hunched over himself with his head angled down and his eyes closed. A drink sat in front of him, mostly gone, a small sliver of brown liquid, probably whiskey from the bottle you could see still left on the bar counter close to him and after a long moment in which you were nearly positive that he was sleeping, the man inhaled a gasping breath and reached for the glass, downed the rest of his drink quickly and tapped on the counter twice as soon as the glass was set down.

The bartender took slow strides toward the man, grabbed the glass and set it into the sink. In seconds a fresh glass with at least two fingers of whiskey sat in front of the man who was simply too enchanting to ignore at this point.

You chose your seat, a booth near the other end of the bar where you could watch him with plenty of cover should your spying be discovered.

This was just the kind of distraction you needed and when the bartender left his post to walk up to your table and retrieve your order, you hoped and prayed that the man at the bar would not notice, not follow the bartender, and not find you watching his every move this way.

The man didn't move and you had your drink and your distraction still very much intact.

After what felt like much too long for a person to be sitting with his eyes closed at a bar, although who were you to judge what a person should be allowed to do alone at a bar, the man lifted his head, pulled a brown envelope out of a briefcase that rested against his leg and set it down carefully onto the bar in front of him.

His head was lifted now, his eyes were open and focused on the envelope in front of him and you felt a jarring surge of something hit you as you watched him.

He was handsome, this you could tell instantly, but there was something more than just handsome happening on his face. His profile was sharp, his hair was dark and his skin light enough to create a positively luxurious contrast that sent a warmth spreading through your chest as you looked at him.

The longer you looked at him, the more at ease you felt with the voyeur inside of you, although that might just be the second dirty martini in your belly, and you found yourself craning your neck to see more clearly just what he was doing with that mysterious brown envelope in front of of him.

After another long moment, he flipped the parcel over, spun his fine fingertips around, gripping a string that held the flap closed, and opened it. Inside was a stack of papers that you were much too far away to read and you frowned at the idea that you couldn't sit next to him while he did this.

He lifted a hand to his chest and inhaled a deep breath before angling his head in your direction as he opened his coat and fished through for something and you caught a glimpse of his whole face.

You gasped out loud, and quickly covered your mouth with your hand to hide it while you prayed that he didn't hear.

Gorgeous. Radiating with beauty really, but more than that something about his face felt downright familiar.

Was he a celebrity? Was he someone you had seen before, maybe on television, or maybe a musician? Had you listened to his songs in your headphones as you fell asleep at night?

The sensation was stronger than anything you'd ever felt in your whole life and you searched your recent memory for an image of someone with a face that would floor you this easily. You swore your mind was playing tricks on you when the images of his shirtless muscular torso floated through your head. And how in the world could you be able to imagine what that face might look like pulled into a crooked smile as he lovingly your face. As if someone like him would ever look at you that way. You found no reasons for the images despite how thoroughly you searched your memory.

You came up empty.

You didn't have a name to this face, you definitely didn't have a voice, or direct interaction to him and you shook your head in confusion as you watched him take a deep breath, turn to the back of the document with a pen in his hand and sign with a flourish and two dots.

The force of those two dots seemed strong enough to poke two holes in the paper and the pen thudded on the counter as he tossed the pen down in a huff, stuffed the stack of documents back inside the envelope and returned the whole mess to the crisp clean briefcase by his feet.

He then, grabbed the drink and downed it in a single go, coughing and sputtering (adorably) as it went down too hard. Why did he have to be so enticing? He wiped hastily at his lips with the back of his hand and pulled off a ring from his finger, holding it a good six inches from the countertop for ten second before opening his hand and letting the ring fall.

It fell with a clatter that rang out over the sound of the music and your mind showed you the image of the ring falling to the floor and rolling under a bed. These drinks were pretty strong. You liked this place. You liked that bartenders heavy hand and you really liked the name of this bar.

And to say you liked the handsome man sitting at the bar was an understatement. You were enchanted by him. Enthralled and enraptured and bewitched by his every movement as he stood up from the seat and turned swiftly awa