WITHIN SIGHT
1178 Words
ETHAN POV
By the second day, I learned something unfortunate.
Ariana Parker was impossible to ignore.
Her cabin sat directly outside my office.
Within sight.
Close enough that every time I looked through the glass, she was there.
Typing.
Reading.
Organizing.
Pretending I did not exist unless work required it.
It should have annoyed me.
It did.
But not for the reason I wanted.
She was efficient.
Too efficient.
She learned my schedule faster than my previous assistant had learned where the printer was.
She corrected meeting times before I asked.
She answered calls with terrifying calm.
She rearranged my entire morning after one investor cancelled, and somehow made it look like that had been the plan all along.
Professional.
Cold.
Untouchable.
And every time she called me Mr. Blake, something in me tightened.
At 9:10, I stepped out of my office.
She did not look up.
“Ms. Parker.”
“Yes, Mr. Blake?”
“I need coffee.”
“Black. No sugar. Already on your desk.”
I looked back into my office.
The coffee was there.
Of course it was.
I looked at her.
She was still typing.
“Schedule?”
“Printed and emailed.”
“Singapore file?”
“On your left desk drawer.”
“Investor summary?”
“Marked with blue tabs.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You’re enjoying this.”
Now she looked up.
“Enjoying what?”
“Being five steps ahead.”
“No.”
A pause.
“Maybe two steps.”
For one second, I almost smiled.
Almost.
Then her eyes returned to the screen.
Wall rebuilt.
I should have gone back inside.
Instead, I placed a file on her desk.
She looked at it.
“What is this?”
“Research review.”
Her expression did not change.
But something in her stillness did.
Not fear.
Not exactly.
Recognition.
“It’s not part of my work,” she said.
“I’m aware.”
“Then why give it to me?”
“Because I want another pair of eyes.”
“There are researchers for that.”
“They keep missing things.”
She looked at me.
“So you want your assistant to correct them?”
“I want my assistant to read.”
Her jaw tightened slightly.
“You assume I’ll understand it.”
“I assume you’ll tell me if you don’t.”
For a moment, I thought she would refuse.
Then she picked up the file.
“I’ll review the formatting.”
“Review the content.”
Her eyes lifted.
There it was.
A challenge.
A warning.
A line drawn quietly between us.
“I’ll review what is required for my position.”
Then she opened the file.
I went back to my office and told myself I had only given it to her because she was competent.
That was the lie.
The truth was, I wanted to know who Ariana Parker had become.
An hour later, she knocked on my door.
“Come in.”
She entered with the file in her hand.
“You have a problem.”
I leaned back.
“With the report?”
“With the assumption.”
That made me sit straighter.
“Explain.”
She placed the file on my desk and opened it to page seventeen.
“The report assumes the disruption begins from external energy instability.”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t.”
I stared at her.
She pointed to the graph.
“The failure starts earlier. The synchronization interface is already unstable before the energy spike.”
I looked at the data.
Then back at her.
“How did you see that?”
“It’s in the sequence.”
“My team missed it.”
“Maybe they were looking at the wrong layer.”
She said it simply.
Not arrogantly.
That somehow made it worse.
I stood and moved closer to the file.
She stiffened slightly.
I noticed.
So I stopped on the other side of the desk.
Distance.
“Where did you learn to read neural system reports?”
Her face closed.
“I read.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It is the only one I’m giving.”
Silence.
A familiar silence.
The kind we had been using since she walked back into my life.
I looked at the file again.
She was right.
Of course she was.
The disruption did begin from the synchronization interface.
Not the energy source.
That changed everything.
Or at least, enough to make me question everything.
“You’re sure?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t have said it if I wasn’t.”
I looked at her.
“Still confident.”
“Still annoying?”
The words left her before she could stop them.
We both froze.
Eight years ago flashed between us.
School corridors.
Her books in my hands.
Her annoyed expression when I asked stupid questions on purpose.
Me laughing because she always caught me.
For one second, she was the Ariana I remembered.
Then she stepped back.
“I should return to my desk.”
“Ariana.”
Her name stopped her.
Only because I said it softly.
Not Mr. Blake.
Not Ms. Parker.
Just her name.
She did not turn around fully.
“What happened to you?”
Her shoulders went still.
“What happened to me?”
“You disappeared.”
She turned then.
Slowly.
Her eyes were calm, but something underneath them was not.
“No, Ethan.” Her voice was quiet. “I left.”
The difference cut through the room.
“I tried to find you.”
“I know.”
“You blocked me.”
“I know.”
“Your father wouldn’t tell me where you went.”
“Good.”
The word landed hard.
Good.
Like my absence had been protection.
Like my pain had been irrelevant.
Maybe it had.
“What did I do?” I asked.
Her expression changed.
For a second, something almost broke through.
Anger.
Pain.
Memory.
Then she closed it away.
“If you don’t know,” she said, “then I’m not the one who should explain it to you.”
She turned and walked out.
I let her go.
Through the glass, I watched her return to her desk.
Calm.
Professional.
Untouched.
But her hands trembled once before she placed them on the keyboard.
Only once.
Still, I saw it.
I looked down at the file again.
Synchronization interface.
Failure before energy spike.
Ariana Parker had seen in minutes what my team had missed for weeks.
She had walked into Novaris asking for an ordinary job.
But ordinary people did not read neural system failures like they were familiar memories.
Ordinary people did not look at me like I was both a question and a wound.
I sat down slowly.
The file remained open in front of me.
For the first time since the XI project began, I felt like the answer was not hidden inside the chair.
It was sitting outside my office.
Within sight.
And farther away than ever.
- Writer
