There was one person in the office I had a policy about.
Not a conscious one. More the kind that develops organically, the way you stop walking down a certain hallway after one bad experience, or stop offering opinions in certain meetings after realizing no one was listening. You just quietly reroute.
Her name was Irene Falk. She was the senior analyst on the floor, sat near the window, and had a way of occupying a room that had nothing to do with volume. She didn't raise her voice. She didn't have to. People read the temperature around her and adjusted.
I had spent eight months at this company successfully not being on her radar.
Today, I was apparently going to ruin that.
[ NEW QUEST ]
Initiate a conversation with a high-difficulty target.
Reward: +2 Charisma
I read it twice, then looked across the office.
Irene was at her usual desk by the window, one leg crossed, posture the kind of straight that looks effortless but isn't, completely absorbed in her screen. The light from outside sat in her hair. Around her, people moved with the faint self-consciousness of orbiting bodies — a half-step wider past her desk, a slightly quieter voice when on the phone nearby.
She didn't notice any of it. Or she did and didn't care, which amounted to the same thing.
"High-difficulty," I muttered, reading the quest descriptor again. "Yeah."
I turned back to my own screen. There was a reasonable argument that I could approach this with preparation — think of a context, a pretext, something professional enough to not register as an approach. The system hadn't specified a timeline. I had room to be strategic.
This was what I was telling myself when I looked over again without deciding to, and found her already looking back.
Not an accident. Not a glance. She had turned her head with the deliberateness of someone who noticed things before acknowledging them, and now she was watching me with an expression that gave nothing away except that it was giving nothing away on purpose.
I looked at my screen. Immediately. Reflexively.
"Idiot," I said, very quietly.
The morning passed with the specific texture of time when you're waiting for something you're not sure you want. I fixed the dataset I'd been assigned, sent two emails, got up for water I didn't need, and returned to my desk. Normal. Productive. Completely unaware of anyone's location.
"Adrian."
My name, in a voice that wasn't asking anything.
I turned.
Irene was standing beside my desk. I hadn't heard her cross the room. She was holding a printed copy of the report I'd submitted the previous night, and her expression had the quality of someone who had already concluded something and was now giving me the formality of confirmation.
"You submitted this last night," she said.
"Yes."
She set the report on my desk, opened to a specific page. A formatting inconsistency in the third table — column headers misaligned, numerical formatting inconsistent across rows. Small. The kind of thing you catch on the second read, not the first.
The kind of thing I should have caught.
"Come with me."
Not a question. I was on my feet before I'd decided to be.
Her desk was on the other side of the floor, near the window, which meant walking across the entire office behind her while people didn't look but were aware. She moved without hurry. I matched her pace and kept my eyes forward.
At her desk, she didn't sit. She turned to face me, picked up the report, and held it where I could see the relevant section.
"Explain what happened here."
"I missed it," I said. "Formatting error. I'll correct it and resubmit."
"I know you'll correct it." Her voice was even, which was somehow worse than if it hadn't been. "I'm asking what happened."
"I was working late. I should have reviewed it more carefully before sending."
She considered this. Her eyes stayed on me while she processed the answer, which was unsettling in the way that being fully seen by someone impartial is always unsettling.
"You've been here long enough," she said finally.
"Yes."
She lowered the report.
Then: "You're not looking away."
I held her gaze. "Should I be?"
"People usually do." It wasn't a complaint. More an observation she was filing. "When I'm correcting them. They find somewhere else to look."
"I'm listening to what you're saying."
"That's not why."
She was right. I didn't have a clean answer for why — only that the resistance I used to feel, that low-grade pull toward the nearest exit, wasn't there in the same way it had been yesterday. The system had moved something, or I had, and standing in front of Irene now felt less like exposure and more like a fact.
"I don't know," I said. Honest, because I couldn't manufacture anything better.
She looked at me for a moment longer than the conversation required. Something in her expression made a small adjustment — not warmth, nothing so readable. More like a category shift. The way you reconsider something that didn't fit where you'd filed it.
Then she held out the report.
"Fix the formatting. Resubmit by three."
"Understood."
She turned back to her desk, sat down, and was already reading something else before I'd moved. The conversation, by all appearances, was over.
I was two steps away when she spoke without looking up. "Adrian."
I stopped.
"Don't make the same mistake twice." A pause. "The first time is an oversight. The second is a pattern."
I didn't respond, because she wasn't waiting for one. I walked back to my desk, the report in my hand, and sat down.
[ QUEST COMPLETE ]
Charisma +2 → Current: 6
Note: High-difficulty target registered. Interaction logged.
I read the notification. Looked back at Irene's desk. She was working, still, in exactly the same posture as before — composed, sealed, giving nothing.
Except I had the distinct feeling that something had been added to a list somewhere.
I wasn't sure whether I was glad about that.