At Work

Finley Cai Aies Hall March 29th, 20XX

Will looked at me with an annoying expression as I flung the door open and threw my heavy bag on the ground. I felt the seams in my shirt snap as I ripped it off my body and made to take off my pants when I paused and stared Will down.

“Are you going to leave or do I have to call child protective services?”

He rolled his eyes at my empty threat but walked toward the door, anyway.

“I’ll leave, but you shouldn’t joke around with things like that. Even if you don’t legally qualify as a child anymore, I don’t want to get involved in anything like that.”

The door clicked shut behind him and I finished with my changing. I exchanged my casual clothing for a pair of slacks and a formal white shirt, then I pulled the jacket over it.

Before my first day of coming to the company, Will had gone out and bought me an entirely new wardrobe of suits, shoes and ties. I left them at his house and would usually change in his office after I entered the building.

Getting into the building wasn’t through difficult since I’d made myself an employee tag for the cleaning staff, but it was difficult to get into Will’s office without looking suspicious.

I struggled with the tie and tried to maneuver it into a decent shape, however it was still a skill I’d failed to master. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I needed help. After taking a bracing breath, I opened the door and ignored the teasing expression on Will’s face as he looked at the crumpled mess of fabric that used to be a tie.

“Need some help with that?”

It hurt my pride to agree, but I couldn’t exactly deny it either. Instead, I chose not to reply and shoved the tie in his direction. He had a suspicious expression on his face as he took it from my hands and tossed it back onto the desk.

“Wait-”

As I’d suspected he would, Will brought out a fresh tie that looked of higher quality than the previous and popped the collar on his shirt. He removed the tie he’d worn to work and got to work on wrapping it around itself.

“You didn’t think I could do it, did you? And you have the nerve to call yourself my elder brother... something I still don’t agree with, by the way.”

He lifted the completed tie over his head and put it over mine, then tightened the tie just short of my Adam’s apple in response.

“Of course I had complete faith in you, my dearest youngest brother. However, it’s better safe than sorry, wouldn’t you agree?”

I ignored the weird flowery speech he picked up and took a seat in the chair he’d pulled out earlier. My glasses balanced precariously on the table, so I reached over and put them into their case before Will got to work on my hair. I’d taken a shower when I stopped at home, so it was little more than a wet mop on my head right now.

He went to the back of his desk and pulled out a hairstyling kit with a nasty expression on his face.

“You know that you owe me for this? You don’t know how awkward it was to get my sister to teach me how to do this.”

A yelp escaped my throat as he yanked my hair into place with more force than I suspected was necessary. I tried to turn around and glare at him, but he held my head still and growled through the bobby pins in his mouth when I tried.

“You’re the one who insisted.”

The pins he held in his mouth muffled his reply, but the frustrated tone was clear.

“What else am I supposed to do? Can’t let my little bro run around the company looking like a hobo…. Can’t believe they even let you into the building looking like that.”

His hands froze when he walked around to fix the front and saw my face for the first time today.

“Finn?”

I looked up to see a conflicted and defensive expression on his face and gathered that he had noticed the difference in my features. While I’d tried my best to get as close as I could to the original, but it looked like my best hadn’t been enough. I sat up straighter in my chair and prepared to lie to someone I wished I didn’t have to.

“What?”

He brought his face closer to mine and laid a hand on my face. Deep in thought, he pulled down the skin under my eye and then moved his fingers down to my chin.

“Are you wearing makeup or something? You look different.”

“What? Has one day of not seeing me changed your perception of me? Did you miss me that much?”

My voice was shamefully normal as I lied to Will, and I tried to joke his suspicions away. He only shook his head in response to my joke and looked at me with an intense gaze. I worried for a second that he would find something out, but I quickly calmed down and just tried to get through the investigation. After all, even if he concluded something was different, what could he say? It wasn’t like it was normal for one to transport to another world and return with an almost completely different face.

“If I missed you, I’d go to your school with a parade of expensive cars and ruin whatever impoverished image you’ve painted for yourself. Was it plastic surgery? Your eyes look bigger and your nose looks different too.”

Conflicting emotions ran through me as he finally backed away from my face and finished combing my hair down into my forehead. The first was respect that he had noticed the differences in my face so quickly, but the second was worry that he would pry further.

“Think rationally, Will. You saw me two days ago. Even if I‘d had surgery, it wouldn’t have healed up by now.”

That seemed to be enough of an explanation for him to back off, but he still looked at me strangely. I stood up and grabbed the mask off the table, then put it on as quickly as possible. I usually waited until I was about to leave his office before I put it on, but the need to hide my face overpowered my actions.

“This is new.”

I usually just wore a plain black face mask around the building, but this was different. The material looked thick, and shifted colours from blue to black depending on the angle one looked at it, but it somehow kept its breathability.

“My sister suggested the colour.”

Even though I’d stayed at Will’s place for a month, I had barely interacted with his sister. She was in the same grade as I was and went to the same school so I knew who she was, but aside from treating me kindly and occasionally sending me food through Will, we didn’t talk. That was why her possibly knowing about me and my mother’s company disturbed me.

It wasn’t like I didn’t trust her, but I wanted as few people to know as possible.

“How does she know how I look?”

He lightly tapped me over the head with his notebook and looked at me like I had said something silly.

“How many times have you been over that she wouldn’t know how you looked? She suggested it for my little bro, not for the chairperson and acting CEO of the company. I told her you didn’t want it, but I knew someone else who would.”

Well, it looked like I said something silly. I secured the face mask over my nose and shook the fussy hairstyle loose from the pinned and hair sprayed abomination Will had turned it into.

Or, well, no, it actually looked pretty good. But I felt like I’d lose something if I admitted to it.

Will accompanied me to the office and harassed me with all the rumours he’d heard about me for the day. He would still look at me with an odd expression, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. I just needed to stick to my guns and wait for him to get used to it.

By the time I reached my office, it relieved me to see a man older than both Will and I waiting anxiously. I fixed my structure and coughed to deepen my voice before walking in.

“Barry Xeno?”

He stood and hastily bowed at me. Barry wasn’t an old man, being around his late twenties, but his knees trembled as he inclined his back to me, and he stumbled in his attempt to get back up. He was probably nervous about meeting the mysterious head of his workplace for the first time, but there wasn’t much I could do about that.

I took my time in getting to my desk and even stopped to make myself a cup of coffee. I wasn’t a huge fan of drinking it, but the smell calmed me down.

“I have about an hour to give you so I hope you came prepared.”

Barry looked surprised by the time limit I gave him and quickly rearranged his papers. He pushed a few of the ones in the middle of the stack until the end and finally looked up at me with a nervous expression. From the amount of paper he’d prepared, I trusted he was confident enough in his proposal, but there had to be a reason he’d wanted to meet with me instead of just sending it up to me through his supervisors.

“Y-Yes, Sir! I’ll wrap it up in an hour!”

The presentation was mediocre and was just a pitch to bring in two rookies into the company and to devote a significant amount of the budget devoted to the music initiative to them. From the pictures and profile that he showed me, they looked impressive enough, but I couldn’t bet the new music department on two unknowns.

I sent him off with approval to sign them to the company, but he left with a much lower budget than he bargained for. It wasn’t like I was too worried about money, since my mother had left me a lot, but it would look bad to bring in my personal resources to make up for my failing business skills.

Will sauntered back into my office with an amused expression as he saw Barry respectfully bow to me and shuffle out of the door like his back was on fire.

“You know it’s only awkward because you look like you’re being punished every time someone bows to you? Everyone else is used to it”

I loosened my tie and sat down in my seat, wishing I could rip off the stupid mask. Although it was breathable and nice-looking, it got hot after a while and created a hot air that occasionally filtered up and irritated my eyes.

Thankfully, I rarely had anyone request a meeting with me and only had to attend an overall meeting once a month.

I didn’t spend much time at the office since I mainly completed my work at home and at school. I was only here at the office for about 4 hours in the afternoon and on the weekends, but I wondered how I would have to balance it with visiting the other world.

“I know it’s normal for you all, but that doesn’t make it any less uncomfortable, Dont you have a job to do? Why are you always hanging around me?”

He waved a hand dismissively and casually put a folder onto my already full desk. I’d given him full control of the legal department so he rarely brought anything to my attention, and the few times he had he’d approached it head-on. It was rare for him to act so delicately about anything.

I opened the folder and saw a resume and a picture of a serious-looking guy. He looked to be around the same age as Will but looked a lot scarier, for lack of a better word. The picture didn’t look like they had taken it for an official job application, so I wondered why Will had brought it to my attention?

“And this is?”

He brought a hand to his mouth and coughed into his fist before speaking.

“Well. I figured you might need someone to help you out with this place and ran across someone perfect for the job. He doesn’t have a lot of professional experience, so I wanted to use some cronyism to get him in.”

Will had enough power in the company to get someone a regular job, so him bringing him to my attention meant he didn’t just wasn’t a regular job.

“What job were you thinking he would be perfect for?”

I tried to keep my tone calm as I asked. I would probably end up giving it to him anyway, but I wondered why Will was being so weird about it.

“Well, I was thinking something like a co-CEO.”

Will launched into an explanation on why I should think it over before I turned him down, but I cut him off before he could. He didn’t know, but he’d just brought the perfect answer to my time dilemma. It was so perfect that I wondered why I hadn’t come up with it myself.

“That sounds great, but why does it have to be this guy in particular?”

I was fine with having someone else help in running the company, but I didn’t know enough about the guy to entrust the company to him.

“Well, his name is Nikolas Lux, and he’s an old classmate of mine. He just finished getting his master’s in business administration and worked for a decently large company for a while, but the company went under and left him with a ton of debt. He’s a good worker and-”

It seemed like Will could keep talking about the guy for much longer, so I cut him off. If Will trusted the guy, then I would extend the same favour. Worst case, I’d just fire him and find someone else.

“If you think he’s good enough, then hire him. But I don’t want him to know the truth about me, and I’m blaming you if he messes anything up.”

Will laughed off my half-hearted threat and affectionately ruffled my hair, despite me being his boss.

“Hey!”

“Ah, my bad, Sir.”

He gave an exaggerated bow and ran out of the room to tell his friend about the job, leaving me speechless and slightly annoyed.

I turned back to my work and flipped through the emails from other companies before I remembered the happenings of earlier today. I pushed the largest button on the intercom and waited for Aleka to pick up.

“Yes, Mr. Hall?”

Aleka was another employee that Will had recommended and she knew what I looked like. She’d needed to know to do her job properly, and I’d still been undecided about hiding my appearance when we’d met each other. I knew little about her, except the fact that she was from a small island town out east and that she had a pair of twin younger brothers around the same age that I was, but she rarely talked about them.

“Aleka, can you see if we have an employee named Marvin? He should be an executive.”

The harsh sound of rapid clicking on the keyboard filtered through the speakers of the intercom before she responded to my request.

“We have about four individuals named Marvin, but only one executive. Shall I book him a meeting for May?”

“May? why so far away?”

More clicking sounds filtered through the speaker before a notification popped up on my screen. It was my agenda and showed how busy I would be until May.

“Well, May is fine. Have him brought all of his project portfolios with him… and his resume.”

“Understood, is that all Mr. Hall?”

She hung up the call and the single empty spot in the may calendar filled up with a green meeting tab.

I got to work for another two hours when I noticed the golden flecks in the room become agitated. The golden flecks that had regularly increased in number bounced around the room and congealed into a hurricane of activity.

While I wondered what was going on, my phone buzzed and an alarm popped up on my computer.

It was time.

I leaped out of my chair and calmly tried to walk out of the office, but I ended up breaking into a run as I remembered I would be forcibly transported to the other world. I’d found a small device that resembled an old pager in the box, and the book had explained its nature as a transporter.

When the time came, the time being in exactly four minutes, it would activate and pull me to the other world. I didn’t know how it worked, nor had I cared to ask, but now I wished I had.

I dived into the back of my car and barely wrapped my hands around the book and wand before I felt myself being pulled away.