First message
I kept my face schooled into polite stillness as the meeting dragged on, Reginald’s voice droning through profit margins and shipping schedules. Then came the soft knock at the door, and my world sharpened in an instant. She stepped in, the school uniform still crisp on her frame, her books clutched against the papers her father had asked for. The contrast made my throat tighten: her father’s daughter, still marked by classrooms and chalk dust, yet walking into the room where men carved futures in ledgers and contracts. She smiled dutifully at her father, oblivious to the way the air seemed to change around her. I forced myself not to stare, not to drink in the purity that radiated from her presence like a rebuke and a promise. To me, she was a vision intruding on our world of figures and debts — a reminder of what I believed still ought to be mine, if only I dared to claim it.