Erick
The office felt foreign to me, though it had only been a few weeks since I last sat at this desk.
My chair, once molded to the shape of my back, now seemed too stiff, too rigid.
The towering stacks of files that had accumulated in my absence loomed like silent judges, waiting to condemn me for every day I had neglected them.
I sank into the chair anyway, the weight of it pressing down on me as heavily as the silence.
The scent of polished wood and paper, usually a comfort, was suffocating tonight.
I leaned back and let my gaze sweep across the room, the thick curtains drawn against the evening light, the rows of neatly arranged books that no one had touched since my father’s time, the massive oak desk scattered with reports.
Everything was exactly as I had left it. And yet
