Personal Assistant (MXM - EDITING )

Chapter 20: Why assistant?

After a day of running errands and completing tasks away from his boss, Serene had finally reached the point of exhaustion. It was an hour before midnight and Serene had guessed that his stuff was set outside of the office, but to his surprise, it was nowhere to be found. The building was empty, and only janitors were the only people walking around at such a late hour. Though, seeing that his stuff wasn't outside the office and the fact that he heard taps from inside the office, Serene could only conclude that Nicolas hasn't left the building yet.

The assistant walked in, seeing Nicolas throwing pen taps to the wall with a marker in his mouth.

"Sir," Serene called out, closing the door, "Why are you still in the office at this hour?"

Nicolas had stopped throwing the pen taps, his attention now on Ochoa, "I have some more work that my father handed me."

Seven walked towards the CEO's desk, seeing two separate piles of papers and files that were set, but a bit unorganized.

"What type of work?" Seven asked his eyes on the files. Nicolas sighed, leaning onto the desk, also staring at the files, "I have to finish looking through the credit forms of the corporations that agreed to donate and work with us."

Seven sat down on one of the chairs in front of Nicolas' desk, grabbed a file from the right pile, opening it up, "Isn't that the chairman's job? I would suspect a job dealing with credit accounts would be something he'd do since it's an important task dealing with financial-"

"Ochoa, why do you talk so formally?" he grabbed a pen tap near his hand and threw it at Serene's hand, smiling at him, "It's after work hours. You don't have to talk so properly."

Seven frowned, keeping his gaze on the file he held in his hands, though he wasn't reading it.

"Apologies. It's a habit."

Nicolas shook his head, leaning back in his chair again, "You are right though. Usually, the chairman would handle financial work concerning other businesses, but because I was absent at the party... he handed it to me as punishment."

"Oh," Serene mumbled, setting the file on the desk again slowly. A weight of guilt fell on his shoulders as he fell back on the chair.

"Don't look so guilty, Ochoa," the CEO scoffed, "Remember It's my fault and my fault alone. Go and get some rest. I'll see you tomorrow morning."

Seven gazed up at Nicolas, who closed his eyes and ran his hands through his hair. With no sunlight, the bags under Nicolas' eyes were more defined thanks to the office lighting shining on them. The assistant frowned. It was obvious to him that the CEO was exhausted in the morning, and now he has to suffer the consequences and stay up longer

"I can stay with you," Serene spoke without hesitation. 

Nicolas opened his eyes, his eyebrows raised as he waited for Serene to finish, "Okay?" he examined. For a moment, he didn't know why Nicolas looked so unsure until it caught up to him in the way he worded the statement.

Serene's eyes widened, shaking his head, "To finish! I can stay with you to help finish your work!"

"That sounds better." Nicolas teased, "Sounds good to me." He tossed three files in front of Seven, "Did you finish the errands?"

"Yes, sir," he mumbled, opening a file and browsing it, "It took all day, but I got them all done."

"That's good, Mr. Ochoa."

It went silent. The only thing heard in the room were the papers being flipped. The two workers read through a couple of files before one of them finally yawned. Both were drained after a while, not being able to read sentences. Nicolas' lazy trait forced him to skip paragraphs that seemed 'unimportant' while Serene's perfectionist trait forced him to restart a paragraph if he dozed off reading it.