The floor was a wall of red.
On the wall-mounted monitors hanging above the aisle, the real-time queue display blinked in urgent crimson. The queue count sat at forty-two, and the average speed of answer had already surpassed four minutes. Every single headset light across the cluster burned solid green, signaling active calls, while the incessant rhythmic chimes of incoming line notifications echoed through the room.
Yuuma adjusted his headset, his ears ringing from hours of back-to-back callers. His fingers moved mechanically across the dual monitors, trying to navigate the billing database while a customer screamed through the earpiece about an unauthorized surcharge.
Outside the high-rise office windows, the afternoon sun was already sinking below the horizon, but inside the floor, time seemed completely frozen under the harsh white fluorescent bulbs.
Suddenly, the portal froze. The blue loading circle spun endlessly in the middle of the browser.
"Come on... not right now," Yuuma muttered under his breath, refreshing the tab. The page threw an HTTP 504 Gateway Timeout error.
"Hey, is your CRM down?" someone two cubicles over shouted over the ambient noise.
"Mine crashed too!" another agent called out.
"System's lagging! Don't drop the calls, put them on hold!"
Before anyone could stabilize their workstations, the sharp sound of dress shoes clicking against the linoleum floor cut through the chaos. Marcus stepped into the bay, holding an iPad in one hand and a half-empty mug of coffee in the other. He didn't look concerned about the server outage; his eyes were glued to the wall dashboard.
"Team, listen up!" Marcus's voice boomed over the chatter. He didn't bother using a microphone or stepping into a huddle room. "Our AHT is currently at five hundred and twenty seconds. That is completely unacceptable for an afternoon average."
Yuuma pulled his headset down to his neck, rubbing his bloodshot eyes. He reached into his bag under the desk, pulling out a chilled bottle of Cobra Energy Drink—the yellow one he always kept handy to drag himself through intense shifts—and cracked the cap open. He took a long, desperate gulp, feeling the synthetic citrus sting his throat.
"Sir, the billing tool is unresponsive," Yuuma said quietly, his voice raspy from speaking all day. "We can't process payments or verify account details while the server is dropping."
Marcus turned his gaze toward Yuuma, his expression completely devoid of sympathy. He walked over to Yuuma's desk and tapped the edge of the partition with his pen.
"Then you improvise, Yuuma," Marcus said flatly. "You use the backup offline tool, or you stall professionally. What you do not do is let your call duration hit ten minutes. If I see anyone sitting on a call past six minutes while the queue is in the red, I will personally pull you into a side-by-side coaching session right here."
"Improvise?" a sharp voice interjected from the desk directly across from Yuuma.
Vanitas slowly pulled off his headset and set it on the desk with a heavy, deliberate clatter. He leaned back in his mesh chair, staring straight at Marcus with cold, unblinking eyes.
"Did you seriously just tell us to improvise on live financial accounts, Sir?" Vanitas asked, his tone laced with razor-sharp sarcasm.
Marcus stiffened, turning his body toward Vanitas. "Watch your tone, Vanitas. I am giving operational directions based on our client's service level agreement."
"Your SLA isn't going to fix a crashed server, Sir," Vanitas shot back, pushing his chair out and standing up. He was taller than Marcus, and the sudden shift in energy made several nearby agents turn their heads. "And your SLA definitely isn't going to stop customers from cursing at us because the system you're forcing us to use won't let us hit submit."
"The tools are secondary. Adherence to schedule and call control are primary," Marcus replied, taking a step forward to narrow the distance between them. His posture turned rigid. "You're an agent on this floor, Vanitas. Your job is to take calls, handle the queue, and hit your metrics. You don't manage the operations, so don't tell me how to run my shift."
"I'm telling you how impossible your expectations are, Sir," Vanitas said, his voice dropping an octave, heavy with mounting frustration that had clearly been building for weeks. "Look around you! People haven't had their second fifteen-minute break because you froze off-floor activities! Yuuma's been taking back-to-back billing escalations all afternoon without a breathing gap!"
"Yuuma isn't complaining," Marcus snapped, pointing a finger toward Yuuma's desk. "Yuuma is doing his job without throwing a fit every time the floor gets busy."
"Because he doesn't say anything even when you push him to his limit!" Vanitas barked, stepping around his desk, entirely ignoring the boundary of his cubicle. "You take advantage of the fact that people here are too exhausted to argue with you. You call it leadership, but it's just lazy, toxic micromanagement!"
The bay went dead silent. The background noise of typing and distant ringtones seemed to fade as the tension between the two men reached a boiling point. Marcus's jaw clenched, his face flushing red with anger.
"That is insubordination," Marcus said, his voice shaking slightly as he pointed toward the floor exit. "Log off your station right now. We are going straight to HR and the operations manager's office."
"Go ahead! File the memo, Sir!" Vanitas sneered, taking another step closer. "I'd love to explain to HR why the entire shift is failing metrics while you sit on your phone tracking handle times instead of raising a critical ticket with IT!"
"Enough!"
The outburst didn't come from Marcus or Vanitas. It came from Yuuma.
Yuuma stood up from his chair so fast his headset wire caught on the edge of the armrest, pulling the cord taut before snapping free. He slammed both palms flat onto his desk, the sound echoing through the quiet aisle. His heart was hammering against his ribs, his chest heaving as he stared at both of them.
"Just... stop. Both of you," Yuuma gasped, his voice trembling, not with anger, but with absolute, overwhelming exhaustion.
Marcus turned to look at him, surprised. Vanitas froze mid-step, his eyes softening slightly as he looked at Yuuma's pale face and trembling hands.
"The whole floor is watching," Yuuma said, looking around at the dozen pairs of eyes staring at their aisle. He looked at Marcus first. "Sir, the system really is down. Forcing us to stay on calls without access to accounts is only going to lead to repeat calls and bad customer feedback. Please just let us put the queue on hold for ten minutes so IT can push the patch."
Marcus opened his mouth to object, but Yuuma turned to Vanitas before Marcus could speak.
"And Vanitas... please," Yuuma whispered, his eyes pleading. "Don't do this here. You're going to get yourself written up or terminated over a ruined shift. It's not worth it. Please just sit down."
Vanitas stared at Yuuma for a long moment. The anger in Vanitas's posture slowly melted away, replaced by a dark, simmering worry as he noticed how unsteady Yuuma looked on his feet. Vanitas let out a heavy breath through his nose, running a hand through his hair.
"Fine," Vanitas muttered softly. He stepped back toward his workstation and pulled his chair in, though he didn't put his headset back on yet.
Marcus cleared his throat, adjusting his suit jacket to regain some semblance of authority, though the tension had noticeably deflated. He glanced around at the surrounding agents who were still watching.
"Get back to your work, everyone," Marcus commanded, his voice lacking its earlier booming confidence. He looked back at Yuuma, then at Vanitas. "I'll submit an emergency ticket to IT to verify the CRM status. But I expect everyone back on ready state the second the portal updates."
Without another word, Marcus turned on his heel and walked briskly down the hallway toward the management office.
As soon as Marcus was out of sight, a collective exhale washed over the aisle. Yuuma slowly sank back down into his seat, his energy completely spent. His hands were shaking so hard he could barely hold his bottle of Cobra.
Vanitas pulled his chair closer to the gap between their partitions, reaching over to gently set a bottle of cold water next to Yuuma's energy drink.
"You okay?" Vanitas asked softly, his tone completely different from the fire he had directed at Marcus moments ago.
Yuuma stared at the bottle of water, taking a slow, shaky breath. "I'm fine. Just... tired."
"You shouldn't have jumped in front of that," Vanitas said quietly. "He deserved every word."
"I know," Yuuma replied, looking up with a faint, tired smile. "But I couldn't just sit here and watch you destroy your job for my sake. Let's just finish the shift."
The CRM page remained blank, still stuck on the loading error. With Marcus out of the bay and the systems completely down, the suffocating tension on the floor slowly shifted into a quiet murmur.
A few agents from neighboring cubicles began taking off their headsets. Two senior reps from the back row stood up and walked over to Yuuma and Vanitas's cluster.
"Hey, thanks for speaking up back there," one of them said in a low voice, leaning against the partition wall. "Seriously. Marcus has been pushing everyone way too hard all week. Nobody had the guts to say anything."
"He was about to write people up for AHT when the servers are literally broken," the other agent added, shaking her head. "Glad you called him out, Vanitas. And Yuuma, good call on de-escalating. If Marcus went to HR, it would have been a mess for all of us."
Vanitas just leaned back in his chair, tapping a pen against his desk. "Someone had to say it. He can't run a floor on fear when the tools don't even work."
"Just be careful, man. You know how petty he gets with schedule changes and QA audits," the first agent warned before sliding back to his desk as a floor trainer walked past.
Yuuma offered a faint, grateful nod to his teammates, though he kept his head low. He reached for his bottle of Cobra again and took another gulp. Across the small gap between their desks, Vanitas caught the movement. His eyes flicked to the bright yellow bottle, then to the empty one already sitting inside Yuuma's trash bin under the desk. That was at least the second bottle today. Vanitas opened his mouth as if to say something, but paused, biting back his tongue. He didn't want to nag, but the slight crease between his eyebrows gave away his concern.
It took nearly half an hour before a broadcast email popped up from IT announcing that the CRM databases were restored.
By the time they logged back on, the shift was officially supposed to be over, but the backlog of unhandled calls and lingering ticket logs forced everyone into mandatory overtime. Yuuma stayed behind long past his scheduled clock-out time, clearing pending escalations with a fading voice, sustained only by the rush of caffeine and sugar. Vanitas stayed right beside him, refusing to log off early while Yuuma was still working.
By the time they finally shut down their monitors, night had fully settled over the city. The office lights outside were dimmed, and the building was noticeably quiet.
"Hey," Vanitas said, leaning over his partition as Yuuma slowly wrapped his headset wire around the plastic headpiece. "Are you heading straight home?"
Yuuma rubbed the back of his neck, checking the wall clock. It was already pushing past nine in the evening. "Yeah. Just going to catch the jeep home."
"Come grab dinner with me first," Vanitas said, slinging his backpack over one shoulder. "My treat. You look like you're about to collapse on the floor."
"You don't have to do that," Yuuma replied softly, standing up carefully to make sure his legs wouldn't give out.
"I'm buying, so you don't have a choice," Vanitas said, offering a small, rare smirk as he gestured toward the elevator bay. "Let's go before Marcus comes back out with another clipboard."
They walked out of the air-conditioned tower into the humid night air. Streetlights illuminated the busy avenues, and the night market stalls nearby were buzzing with late-night commuters. They settled into a small, late-night eatery tucked behind the office complex, far enough away from the usual crowd of call center supervisors.
Vanitas ordered two heavy rice plates along with hot soup and water.
As soon as the food arrived, Vanitas picked up his fork, but instead of eating immediately, he leaned back against the chair and let out a heavy breath.
"I swear, every single week with that guy gets worse," Vanitas began, his voice filled with built-up exasperation. "Did you see his face when I mentioned the SLA? He genuinely thinks we're just numbers on an Excel sheet. He doesn't care if the systems are down or if people are working straight through without proper breaks. All he cares about is looking good during management meetings."
Yuuma listened quietly, holding his cup of warm water with both hands, letting the warmth soak into his numb fingers.
"He's under pressure from the account manager too," Yuuma offered gently. "The client threatened to pull two queues if our metrics stay in the red this quarter."
"That's not an excuse to treat us like machines, Yuuma," Vanitas insisted, looking directly at him. "You defend him too much. You take the worst calls, you take extra escalations when the floor is swamped, and what does he do? He gives you six-minute call limits when the database takes five minutes just to load a customer profile."
Yuuma smiled faintly, looking down at his plate. "I'm not defending him. I just... don't have the energy to fight back. It's easier to just do the work and get through the shift."
"It's not easier if it's killing you," Vanitas said softly. His gaze dropped to Yuuma's hands, which were still slightly unsteady. "You drank two of those energy drinks today just to survive a regular day shift. That stuff is going to wreck your body."
Yuuma paused, setting his spoon down. "It's just to stay awake."
"I know," Vanitas replied, his tone softening considerably. "I get it. The workload is insane. But you need to rest properly, Yuuma. Not just survive on sugar and caffeine."
They ate in relative quiet after that, the comfortable silence filling the gap between them. Vanitas continued to vent occasionally about company policies and account changes, while Yuuma listened attentively, nodding along and offering short, quiet responses. It was a familiar pattern between them—Vanitas providing the fire and voice, and Yuuma providing the quiet, steady ground.
After finishing their meal, Vanitas paid the bill despite Yuuma's weak attempt to pitch in. They walked together toward the main avenue where the night transport routes split.
The streets were darker now, with fewer jeepneys passing under the overpass.
"This is where I catch my ride," Yuuma said, stopping by the pedestrian crossing.
Vanitas stopped beside him, hands shoved deep into his jacket pockets. "Take the UV express instead. It's late, and you look completely drained."
"It's fine. Jeepney is cheaper," Yuuma said with a small smile.
Vanitas sighed, pulling a few bills out of his pocket and pressing them into Yuuma's hand before Yuuma could pull away. "Just take the comfortable ride tonight. Get home, drink actual water, and sleep."
Yuuma looked at the folded money in his palm, then up at Vanitas. The fatigue was heavy in Yuuma's chest, but a warm, quiet gratitude smoothed out the edges of his exhaustion.
"Thank you, Vanitas," Yuuma said softly, his voice sincere. "For dinner... and for earlier on the floor."
Vanitas waved a hand dismissively, turning his head slightly as if embarrassed by the gratitude. "Whatever. Just don't let Marcus push you around next time. See you tomorrow."
"See you tomorrow," Yuuma replied.
Yuuma crossed the street toward the terminal as Vanitas walked toward his own ride home. As Yuuma boarded the vehicle and leaned his head against the glass window, watching the city streetlights blur past in the late-night air, he knew that by the time he reached his house, his mother would likely still be sitting outside waiting up for him in the dark. He closed his eyes, finally allowing himself to relax as the ride carried him home.
ns216.73.216.48da2
and then Add to home screen.