The Red String Between Us Part II: Frayed Threads

第45章Inner Shift

       The office was quiet except for the rustle of paper and the muted echo of the air conditioning. Stacks of reports lay spread across the long table, highlighters and notes scattered between Mallory and Eden. For a while, the only sound was the deliberate scratch of pens against margins.

Mallory tapped her pen against the page, staring at the numbers without really seeing them. Her chest felt tight, her mind slipping far from the reports. Before she could stop herself, the words slipped out.

"I can't stop thinking about the event," she blurted, her voice a little too sharp for the calm of the room. "The idea of being in the same place as Kenji—under all those eyes—it makes me feel... anxious. Like I'm bracing for something I can't escape."

Her hand froze, pen hovering midair. She hadn't meant to say that out loud.

Eden didn't look up right away. She underlined a line in the report with perfect precision, then set the pen aside. When she finally lifted her gaze, her expression was composed, sympathetic even, though her eyes carried a sharper weight.

"I hear you," Eden said evenly. "These kinds of events can feel overwhelming. But they're also opportunities. How we show up matters. It shapes perception before anyone else has the chance to."

Mallory gave a small laugh that sounded closer to a sigh. "That's the problem, isn't it? Everyone's watching, waiting to decide what they think they know." She pressed her fingertips against her temple, then forced herself back to the stack of papers as if burying the confession in ink and data would undo it.

Eden nodded, her outward calm never faltering. But inside, Mallory's words struck a different chord. Anxiety, hesitation, fear of the spotlight—Mallory was wavering. And wavering left openings.

If Mallory doesn't want to stand firm beside him, then I will.

Her thoughts turned deliberate, each one a step in a plan she hadn't fully admitted to herself until now. The gala won't just be another event. It's the stage. The moment to make everything clear. To show him—show them all—that I belong there, beside him, without question.

She smoothed a corner of the report and forced her voice back into its professional rhythm. "Let's finish this section before lunch," she said, her tone neutral, betraying nothing of the decision settling in her chest.

Mallory nodded, grateful for the return to normalcy, though her eyes lingered on the page without focus.

The sun shifted across the office floor, cutting clean lines of shadow between them. Mallory buried herself in the reports, trying to quiet her pulse. Eden, behind her steady exterior, was already envisioning cameras, lights, and the unmistakable weight of Kenji's presence at her side.

The red string between them all was frayed and taut. And Eden had decided—when the world was watching, she would be the one to hold it.

TO BE CONTINUED IN BOOK III