Auric
There were a lot of things I hated.
Being stuck in traffic ranked fairly high. So did sitting in a stuffy classroom while a professor droned on about business concepts I’d mastered at first glance, watching him draw diagrams on a whiteboard like he was explaining gravity to a two-year-old. Someone messing up my coffee order. A certain girl by the name of Edeline Mayflower defying me.
But coming to the office in the morning had to be at the top of that list. Not because of the work. The work, I could tolerate.
It was the people.
The second I stepped through the glass doors, the energy in the room shifted the way it always did—that particular brand of performative alertness that spread through an office like a contagion the moment someone important walked in. Heads lifted. Spines
