motive. [shadilver]

03.

SHADOW.

I was pissed that I had to hear my alarm once again to get up for work. I really could've just slept in, but no, that asshole has to pick on me. It sucks that I couldn't really say no unless I wanted to be out of a job. It's whatever, I can deal with it. I got up to shower and take care of myself before putting on my work clothes and heading out to my car. I definitely wasn't in the mood to walk today.

I had to take a different route because of the construction, which lead to me getting to work a few minutes late, but I wasn't even supposed to be here, to begin with. They can cut me some slack by being late a tad. When I got to my office, I was only able to set a few things down before my boss came barging in. He handed me a USB that had everything that I needed to take care of. Apparently, there were some documents and articles that he needed to edit but had too much on his plate right now, so he was asking me to do it.

No wonder he was asking me to stay only until six, this wasn't going to be that much work. Even though I was relieved, I was still upset that I was even here. Once I got situated, I plugged the USB into my computer and opened up the folder. Oh... that's a lot of shit. It's fine, I'll just go one by one. Looking through the first document, he had conveniently already placed brackets where I needed to fill in something, or give a better description of the sentence above.

He... already edited this... but was making me—It'll just make my job easier, but I didn't know that he wanted me to revise and basically rewrite all that has already been written. I really didn't want to be here, so I was typing fast. It was keeping my hands busy, yes, but they were starting to grow tired from all of the typing after an hour. I better as fuck be paid for this.

I'll give him this, he knows my speed because I got done with everything right before six. I placed everything back into the folder that I had edited and revised and took the USB out, heading to his office to drop it off. Luckily he was still there and gave his useless thank you before averting his gaze from me quickly. I just sighed deeply as I turned on my heels and left, not even bothering to close the door softly to not let it slam.

I went back to my office to see if any of the stuff that I usually work on was there, and I did a pretty good job yesterday cleaning all that up, but there were a few things submitted to me for me to take a look over before publishing it. While I'm here—and so I suffer a little less tomorrow, I'll just complete these few requests before I leave. It only took about thirty minutes to do so, and then after that, I left without saying anything.

My brain and eyes were exhausted from looking so closely and carefully at those words, and I was so glad to be in my car again. I went into the convenience store again, just because I was sort of craving what I had last night. I hadn't had it in a while, so maybe that's why. I did my normal routine of retrieving the items I wanted in the ramen, picking one with black bean sauce instead, going to add the boiling water to it before the microwave.

However, when I went to sit down at the table, I noticed that it wasn't empty like it was usually. Well, it was six, so I shouldn't be surprised. However, the closer I looked at the figure sitting at the table, their head resting on the surface, it was almost like I recognized them... After a few moments of recollection of my day, it sparked a memory—one from this morning. It was the kid at the coffee shop. What a small world to be seeing them again.

I wanted to mind my business; just eat and leave, but for some reason, I couldn't look away from him. I don't know, the way he was slouched over did not look... natural? He had a small container of oatmeal in front of him, but it looked like it hadn't been touched.

With a soft sigh, I moved my ramen bowl to my left hand, walking around the table to his side. I bent down slightly, giving his upper arm a small poke.

"Hey, are you alright?"