His Nineteenth Secretary [✔]

Nine

On Friday of the third week that I started work at MAXCO, I could have sworn I was seeing a completely different person in the mirror.

The greater punishment was the ever present sympathy in everyone's eyes at work whenever they saw me.

There were visible dark circles round my eyes and I had lost a lot of weight. At work, I rarely have time to eat during the lunch break and by the time I got home late in the evening, I would be too tired to do anything than sleep. At night, I also hardly get enough time to sleep before it would be morning again when I would need to get up early to organise certain files on my laptop and to prepare for work.

For the past three days too, I had been the one driving my boss home after work. It wasn't initially a part of my job but not after he decided to fire his driver for running late two days in a row.

I got to work before him like every other day and was beginning to doze off when he stepped in. Prying my tired eyes open, I scrambled to my feet to welcome him.

Completely ignoring me, he continued walking instead. However, when he eventually decided to look my way, the walk to the door of his office was put to an abrupt halt.

"Good morning, Mr Walker," I had on my signature smile which must look a little weird in regards to the dark circles round my eyes today.

His brows gradually lowered into a frown which deepened each of the passing second of which his intense gaze remained fixed on me from across the room.

I watched in terror as he slowly swiveled on his heels just then and started striding over to where I was. He reached my desk in no time and when he did, he was silent while he had his ever scrutinising eyes study my face for a while.

This caused me to clear my throat a little nervously before quickly turning my head to look away, suddenly embarrassed by the way he was staring at me as if I was some kind of strange creature at a zoo.

Suddenly aware that he was making me uncomfortable, he let out a slight cough before finally deciding to speak.

"Just a minute, I thought I was seeing a ghost. What were you thinking coming to work looking that way?" He demanded. I looked down at my feet instead. Even maintaining eye contact with him requires the greatest courage. "You can get off work early today. Leave by three." He turned to leave but turned again to face me. "No, leave by one." He said before eventually sauntering off to his office.

My lips immediately curled up in a mischievous smirk, just what I wanted. I deliberately left my face bare, with a no concealer or makeup rule so he would see them for himself. Also, he had no idea that I came to work wearing eyeglasses, intending for the dark circles to be only for his eyes.

He didn't assign me much work to do before telling me to go home saying I was scaring the hell out of him with my panda face.

Whose fault anyway?

And I think it was really nice to watch him almost have an heart attack when I popped in his office later that morning to remind him of a meeting scheduled for 8am with a client.

I got home at 1pm and spent hours sleeping. When I woke up, I prepared myself something good to eat. The dark circles were still visible but I felt so much refreshed.

Feeling better than I had been in days, I drove to Alicia's place in the evening to spend the weekend.

"Good evening, Ms. How may I help you?" She asked upon opening the door but I scoffed instead.

"Hey," I gave a short wave with a wry smile.

She gasped.

"Is that you, Ruby?" She asked with disbelief.