When she finally looked up at me, her expression was unreadable. She wasn’t angry. Not guilty. Just… encouraging.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you,” she said softly.
A woman’s rear view in an office | Source: Midjourney
A woman’s rear view in an office | Source: Midjourney
“I needed to see you,” I replied. “To understand what’s going on.”
There was a long pause.
She didn’t deny it. Didn’t rush to reassure me. She simply rolled up her sleeves slowly. Both of them. Her wrists were marked, discolored, but still marked by irritation. As if someone had pressed rubber against her skin, too hard, too long.
A woman sitting at a desk | Source: Midjourney
A woman sitting at a desk | Source: Midjourney
“Do you want to know what it is?” she asks, her voice barely rising above a whisper.
I nodded. I still don’t trust my voice. I trusted Nara, of course, but something about it seemed so odd… so strange, so different.
“They come from a fitness brand prototype,” she says. “We developed them as part of a new wellness initiative for the company. It’s linked to performance metrics and health tracking. There’s pressure to make it work… quickly. We had few testers. I volunteered to be a tester.”
“Okay…” I said, trying to understand. “A tester of what?”
“A watch! Watches,” she said.
“It’s… really interesting.”
A watch on a table | Source: Midjourney
A watch on a table | Source: Midjourn
“And honestly, I just wanted a new challenge at work. The accounting department is great and all, but there’s nothing fun about it! This is perfect because it’s part of an innovation working group where we collaborate across departments.”
She paused, observing me, as if trying to gauge whether this was making things better or worse.
“They’re cheap,” she added. “They’re uncomfortable. But the data is important. And for the sensors to capture the right data, the band needs to be tight. Too tight, probably.”
Close-up on a serious woman | Source: Midjourney
Close-up on a serious woman | Source: Midjourney
I was always watching him. I studied every word, every pause, every movement of his mouth. I didn’t know what I expected to hear, but it wasn’t that.
She sighed and walked over to her desk, opened a drawer and took out a thick file.
“Here,” she said, handing it to me.
A file on a desk | Source: Midjourney
A file on a desk | Source: Midjourney
The cover read as follows: “Proposal for Integrated Automation of Wellbeing and Reporting: Draft for Director’s Review.”
I took it. The folder was heavier than I expected. Inside were charts, notes, approval forms, performance logs. His handwriting was scribbled in the margins, short bursts of thought, calculations, tasks to be completed. This was not just a rough concept sketch.
She had built it over weeks. Maybe months.
