Theater: NovelMaster | Language: English
Synopsis
On his very first day as our new department head, my boss rejected my proposal three times.
The fourth time I was called into his office, I finally lost my cool.
"Mr. Vance, is there something wrong with my proposal, or is there something wrong with me?"
Garrett Vance stayed silent for two seconds. Then, he slowly turned his monitor toward me.
It wasn't feedback on my work. It was a screenshot of a speech-to-text transcription.
The last voice note I had ever sent to my online boyfriend five years ago.
Back then, the voice recognition glitch had butchered my words.
What I meant to say was: "The wind is crazy tonight. Drive safe on your way home."
What actually got transcribed and sent was: "Let's break up tonight. Never contact me again."
And right below the text was my old gaming username.
Garrett looked up at me, his eyes cold and unreadable.
"Chloe."
"Five years, and your hearing hasn't improved one bit."
My fists clenched tight at my sides.
The online ex I had supposedly ghosted out of nowhere was now my direct boss.
And worse, he looked ready to settle every single score from the past five years.
I slunk out of his office, clutching the rejected proposal to my chest.
The moment the heavy door shut behind me, I let out a long, ragged exhale.
One look at my face and Zoe knew everything had gone to hell.
She rolled her chair over and whispered, "Rejected again?"
I threw the binder onto my desk. "Fourth time."
Zoe gasped. "Is this guy insane?"
"I read your proposal! It's solid! What the hell does he even want?"
I scoffed bitterly. "He's just an evil corporate overlord."
Still pissed off, I made a slicing motion across my throat. Zoe cracked up, clutching her stomach.
Just then, Garrett walked past our cubicles, flanked by a cluster of senior managers on their way to the conference room.
As he walked by, he cleared his throat out of nowhere.
His cold gaze swept over my face, completely devoid of emotion.
Zoe winced. "I think he heard you."
I swallowed hard. "God help me. Please don't let him fire me."
Before the words fully left my mouth, a company-wide Slack pinged on my screen.
All hands meeting in Conference Room 1. Immediately.
In massive meetings like this, low-level grunts like us were just background noise.
Sitting in the back, I stared at the man commanding the room from the stage.
My chest ached with a strange, bittersweet nostalgia.
Five years had passed in the blink of an eye.
The Garrett Vance standing up there looked like a completely different person from the grainy photos I remembered.
Back then, he had messy black hair, wore oversized graphic tees, and had a silver stud in his ear. He always had this lazy, reckless smirk.
He wasn't a bad guy, but he was definitely a rebel who broke every rule in the book.
Now? His hair was sharply styled, the earring was gone, and his tailored charcoal suit made him look ruthlessly commanding and sophisticated.
Five years ago, Garrett and I met in an online co-op game.
I was a complete rookie, and my gameplay was an absolute dumpster fire.
After a brutal match, the rest of the team rage-quit. Only one player stayed behind. Username: "G."
He typed in chat: "First time playing?"
I acted tough: "Is it that obvious?"
He replied: "Not really. You only shot your own teammates three times."
After that, he carried me through matches for days.
Gaming banter turned into personal chats. Strangers turned into friends who texted every single day.
Until one late night, he texted: "Chloe, do you want to be my girlfriend?"
I stared at the screen for a long time before typing a single word back.
Yes.
And just like that, I fell into a two-year online relationship with a man I had never met in person.
Everyone told me long-distance e-dating was a joke, destined to crash and burn.
Especially with an absurd beginning like ours. It felt like playing house.
Yet six months in, Garrett still texted me good morning every single day without fail. He wanted to tell me every little detail of his life, down to what he ate for lunch.
His passion never cooled off.
I couldn't help teasing him once: "Don't you ever get tired of this?"
His reply was faster than a rocket:"What's that supposed to mean? Are you getting sick of me?"
Me: "Never."
Garrett: "Then shut up and wait for my call tonight."
Garrett had a quirk: he hated typing and preferred calling whenever he could.
Which was pure torture for me.
Every time I picked up his calls, I had to concentrate with every fiber of my being.
My brain worked overtime trying to piece together the muffled syllables I couldn't hear clearly, all while frantically trying to come up with normal replies.
Inevitably, things like this happened all the time:
Garrett would ramble on excitedly for five minutes.
My brain would freeze, completely unable to squeeze out a single word.
Whenever I truly couldn't make out what he said, I could only bite the bullet and shout: "Say that again!"
"Wait, give me one second."
On the screen, Garrett ducked down to mess with something, and the video feed dimmed.
A second later, soft, warm fairy lights flickered on one by one.
He sat under the golden glow with a small cupcake in front of him.
"I wanted to wait until midnight to show you."
He smiled softly into the camera.
"But I couldn't wait."
"Chloe, happy birthday."
I stared blankly at the screen, my heart aching with an overwhelming warmth.
In a panic, I let my hair down, desperately covering the side of my face.
Terrified that he would catch a glimpse of the clunky, ugly hearing aid stuck in my ear.I never told Garrett about my hearing loss.
Between guarding my fragile pride in front of the guy I loved and sweating under thick layers of hair in the dead of summer, I chose the hair.
Who would genuinely fall in love with someone broken?
Besides, Garrett and I didn't belong in the same world.
He rarely talked about his family background.
But even without him saying it, the wealth gap was impossible to ignore.
For instance, I accidentally saw on Instagram that the tiny silver stud in his left ear was a limited-edition luxury designer piece.
Or when he casually mentioned going skiing for the weekend, I had to spend half an hour Googling the luxury resort he casually dropped.
Another time on the phone, I heard someone in the background urging him to hurry down to a gala dinner.
He just replied flatly: "Got it. Tell them to start without me."
His tone was so casual, as if a black-tie charity gala was no different from grabbing a hot dog off a street cart.
Through that screen, I slowly caught glimpses of his lavish world.
Meanwhile, back then, I had to count pennies just to see if I had enough money left to pay for my routine audiology therapy at the end of the month.
One afternoon, right as I walked out of the clinic, a nurse chased after me.
"Miss Johnson, you dropped your appointment slip!"
The doctor next to her caught it and handed it to me.
I took it with an embarrassed smile. "Thank you so much."
Unfortunately, Garrett heard that over the phone.
The line went silent for two beats.
"That guy again?"
My chest tightened. "Yeah."
His tone turned flat. "You two seem pretty close."
I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. "He literally just picked up a piece of paper for me."
Silence lingered on the line.
"We've been dating for so long, yet I've never heard you compliment me like that."
"You talk to him about the weather and hobbies."
"You never tell me anything about your life."
Whenever conversations steered toward that territory, I played dead.
What was I supposed to say?
Confess that I was practically deaf, struggling to afford basic groceries while counting pennies for medical bills?
Those words stayed lodged in my throat. I couldn't utter a single syllable.
At that moment, soft piano music played in Garrett's background.
He was attending a friend's wedding. The officiant had just told the bride and groom to share their vows.
The bride wept through a heartfelt poem she had written.
When it was the groom's turn, he stood silent for a long time.
In the end, all he managed to choke out was: "I promise I'll take care of you."
The crowd erupted into applause.
A soft chuckle escaped my lips.
Their wedding was lavish, straight out of a fairy tale movie, yet the words they exchanged were simpler than anything else.
"Chloe."
Garrett suddenly called my name.
Through the phone, his voice was thick with emotion.
"Have you ever thought about marrying me?"After Garrett asked that question, I froze.
Had I thought about it?
Of course I had. Every single day.
But the moment I remembered my failing ears, my throat closed up.
In the end, I pretended I hadn't heard him and turned my gaze out the window.
The wind rustled violently through the autumn trees.
I held down the voice note button and whispered: "The wind is crazy tonight. Drive safe on your way home."
The moment the message sent, I placed my phone face down on the desk.
I thought the awkward moment had passed.
But the next day, Garrett changed completely.
He used to have an endless stream of things to tell me, constantly keeping me updated on his day.
After that night, his texts trickled down to almost nothing.
He stopped reaching out first.
Unable to take it anymore, I finally texted him: "You asleep?"
Garrett: Yes.
Me: Can we talk on the phone?
Garrett: Busy.
Tired of typing, I hit FaceTime directly.
To my surprise, he picked up instantly.
The background looked like a crowded, dimly lit VIP lounge at a club. Strobe lights flashed against dozens of people drinking and partying.
Garrett's face was a mask of cold irritation.
I yelled over the noise, "Is it loud over there?"
He expressionlessly typed into the chat: "Not really."
"Why aren't you speaking?"
He typed back: "Don't feel like hearing your voice."
Suddenly, a pretty girl leaned into the camera frame, eyeing the screen curiously.
"Garrett, who is that?"
Garrett glanced at the screen, annoyance written all over his features.
"Just someone I play games with."
My fingers went numb on the phone.
"Someone you play games with?"
I repeated the words, my voice barely a whisper.
He seemed to realize what he'd said and frowned, parting his lips as if to explain.
I forced a tight smile before he could speak.
"Have fun then."
"I won't bother you."
I hung up immediately.
That night, I didn't wait for his text.
And in the days that followed, no explanation ever came.
We cut all contact, vanishing from each other's lives.
And now, five years later, we met again.
Only this time, he was my boss.
Halfway through the all-hands meeting, my hearing aid died completely. I had to slip out to the restroom to swap the tiny battery.
By the time I rushed back to Conference Room 1, the room was empty.
"Wait, didn't they say there was a massive announcement?" I grabbed Zoe by the arm.
Zoe looked just as baffled.
She told me that the second I walked out, Garrett's face turned darker than a thundercloud. He abruptly wrapped up the meeting and dismissed everyone.
"Word is, Mr. Vance just summoned the Head of HR into his office," Zoe whispered, tugging at her hair in panic.
"They're definitely planning layoffs."
"Oh God, after paying rent this month, I won't even have money for groceries!"
I wanted to scream too.
I was still tens of thousands of dollars short of the cochlear implant surgery I desperately needed.
The dreaded axe hung over the office all afternoon.
Colleagues were called into HR one by one.
Every single person walked out looking like a walking corpse.
The composed ones managed a stiff, tearful smile; the rest broke down sobbing right in the hallway.
As names were crossed off the list, mine was never called.
I let out a cautious sigh of relief.
Still, an uneasy pit formed in my stomach.
I wandered over to the HR department just as Brenda, the HR director, was packing up her files.
I quickly stopped her. "Brenda, why wasn't my name on the list?"
She paused, looking up at me with an odd expression.
"Your case... Mr. Vance wants to handle it personally."
My stomach dropped.
One second I was relieved I wasn't fired.
The next, I was summoned for a private execution with the big boss himself.
Why did I have a terrible feeling about this?
Chapters (3)
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Watch & Promotions
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