Thrown Out, Claimed By The CEO. のすべてのチャプター: チャプター 61 - チャプター 70

3:10 PM Floor 50 Elma sat at her desk with nothing urgent to do. The screen was on. Her email was open. Her Slack was open. The tracker dashboard was open in another tab. All green. She stared at it for a full minute. Nothing was flashing. Nothing was red. No one was @-ing her. That felt strange after months of firefighting. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard like they were waiting for instructions. Like they didn’t know what to do without a ticket number. She closed her eyes. Breathed in. Breathed out. The office was quiet. Not dead quiet. Just… normal office quiet. The AC hummed. Someone’s phone buzzed three desks over. A printer whirred and stopped. No sirens in her head. 3:17 PM Linda returned from Port Harcourt at noon. She dropped her bag by her desk with a heavy thud. Not the tired thud from before. The _it’s over_ thud. She didn’t sit. She stood there, hands on her hips, looking around like she wasn’t sure the place was still standing without her

*7:00 PM*The restaurant was quiet for a Friday. Friday nights were usually loud. Plates crashing. Music fighting. People talking over each other. Tonight it was soft. Like the city exhaled.Destiny was already seated with two glasses of water. No menu open. No phone on table. Just water. Cold. Condensation on the glass. She traced the wet ring with her finger. Slow circles.She looked up when Elma came in. Eyes went soft, then sharp. Destiny said, “You look like a different person.” Beat. Destiny said, “When was the last time you came out before 8 PM?”Elma sat down. Chair scraped. Wood on wood. Sound felt loud in the quiet room. Elma said, “Tuesday.”Destiny laughed. Not a big laugh. A tired one. Relief laugh. Destiny said, “Progress.” She pushed one glass of water toward Elma. Destiny said, “So tell me everything.”Elma held the glass. Cold in her palm. She thought about starting with the report. With Friday. With the red bank line. Old Elma would have. Old Elma led

*10:15 AM*Elma woke up to sunlight. No alarm. No vibration on the nightstand. No 6:30 AM panic buzz from the work phone.She lay there for a while. Just listening to the quiet. The kind of quiet that doesn’t ask for anything. No emails waiting. No dashboard flashing red. No “urgent” in the subject line. Just her breathing. Slow. Even.The room was warm. Sun cut through the curtain slit and painted a line across the bed. Dust floated in it. She watched the dust. Months ago she would’ve checked the air quality app. Today she just watched.Her phone was on the table. Face down. Silent. No missed calls. No messages from work. No “We need to talk about Friday”.Old Elma would’ve grabbed it first thing. Old Elma slept with one eye open for notifications. New Elma let the phone sit. Let the silence sit longer.She got up slow. Feet hit the floor. No rush. Kitchen was still. Kettle clicked. Water boiled. Coffee grounds fell into the French press. She waited four minutes

*6:00 PM*Elma left the office at 6 PM.The door clicked behind her and the sound felt different. Not like the usual 9 PM escape, not like the 2 AM surrender when the cleaning crew would find her still typing. 6 PM felt early. It felt like a mistake she was allowed to make.The sun was still out. That was the first thing she noticed. For months the sun had been something she saw through office glass, a pale shape behind her laptop screen. Now it was real. Warm on her face. Orange light sliding across the concrete and bouncing off the windshields of cars leaving the parking lot. Lagos light at that hour had a color to it. Gold, but tired. Like the day had worked hard and was ready to clock out too.The city felt normal again. No emergency alerts on her phone. No red banners. No “URGENT: Client needs deck by 8 AM”. No Slack notifications vibrating her pocket every 90 seconds. Just the sound of traffic on Herbert Macaulay Way, the smell of suya from a cart near the gate, the way people

*6:45 AM* Elma woke up before the sun. Day 5. Her body trusted rest now, but her mind still did check-ins at odd hours. Today the check-in was: _Who are you if no one is watching?_ She lay still and let the question sit. No answer came. That was okay. Her phone buzzed. Destiny at 6:30 AM: _Bench. 10 AM. Bring whatever truth you’re ready to say out loud._ Nathan at 6:42 AM: _Bringing nothing but my name again. Hayes Corp stays home today._ Elma stared at “bring whatever truth”. She’d been avoiding one truth for years. She typed back: _I’ll bring mine. No titles. Just truth._ Then set the phone down. She made tea. The flat was quiet. She thought about her parents. She didn’t remember their faces well. Photos, yes. Stories from her aunt, yes. But the memory of being held? Faded. She’d been 9 when they passed. Since then it was aunties, hostels, scholarships, “you’re so independent” as a compliment that also meant “no one is coming to save you”. She wrote in the notebook before b