Two Steps From Restitution

by Innocent-Diamond

He took anything he could find from others to get by most days, so it was a surprise when she forgave him easily and offered him a simple job for generous pay. Despite agreeing immediately, he questions why she chose him out of all people, and also why she was always so discontented.

10. A More Permanent Solution

"ATTENTION ALL EMPLOYEES—PLEASE PROCEED TO THE GRAND CONFERENCE ROOM FOR AN EMERGENCY MEETING!"

That message suddenly echoed through all the intercoms in the company building. The hallways and elevators were packed full of employees as they rushed to the first floor. "What's so urgent that requires calling everyone over for a last-minute meeting?" Chris complained.

"I don't know what's happening and didn't authorize this," Alice clarified. "I don't even remember the last time anyone made a loud announcement on the intercom systems."

Most people ended up standing because there weren't enough chairs. Mylene spoke into the microphone at the podium as the other shareholders took a seat at the front table. "On behalf of the Board of Directors, I hereby announce that they've voted to appoint Hydron Gehabich as the new CEO of Testarossa Electronics."

Several employees screamed in disbelief. "You can't be serious!"

"Hydron who?"

"How come we weren't made aware of this secret ballot?"

The bluenette shareholder tapped the microphone several times to gather everyone's attention again. "Due to this leadership change, many of you have been assigned a new job position." The female shareholder took out a stack of stapled papers and began reading everything aloud. "Chris Barlow is at Warehouse 6... Daniel Kuso is at Warehouse 8... Baron Leltoy is at Warehouse 4... Runo Misaki is also at Warehouse 8..."

After the meeting ended, Alice ran to the podium and asked, "How can the Board of Directors suddenly vote to replace me with Hydron? None of them have directly contributed to workflow in the past two years. And what am I doing?"

"I'm just a shareholder and have no influence on what the Board of Directors decides." Mylene flipped to the last page and said, "You're on paid administrative leave, but it'll be a matter of time before you're locked out of the computer system due to company policy."

I didn't hear Mylene mention Shun, Soon, or Katie at all. After everyone left the grand conference room, the redhead saw her teammates discussing in the hallway. "That wasn't what I expected at all. I didn't take much time off after Masquerade died because I was afraid that Hydron would do something unbelievable behind my back."

Dan opened his phone to check his email inbox. "Looks like there's a PDF file sent to everyone confirming where our new job assignment will be. What kind of warehouse are we going to work at?"

"Warehouses 6 and 8 are for distributing finished products to different vendors," Runo explained. "Whereas Warehouse 4 is for distributing individual parts to the manufacturing sites."

"How much money did Hydron and Zenoheld spend to buy this outcome from the Board of Directors?" Chris complained. "Alice, what are you going to do on administrative leave? Most people on leave can't use company resources due to liability concerns."

The redhead checked the email and PDF on her phone as well. I don't see Shun, Soon, or Katie on this list either. Does that mean they're keeping their current positions? "Everyone, you need to back up literally everything that you've been working on since your first day here because you've all been reassigned to warehouse duty. The IT department might revoke access to certain resources because you technically won't need them at your new positions."

"I was downloading a huge file before I came downstairs!" Baron exclaimed. "Catch you guys later!"

"Excuse me for a moment." Alice saw Hydron return to his office and ran over to stop him from closing the door. "What are you and Uncle Zenoheld planning? Do you actually think climbing up from an intern on probation to company CEO will do you any good?"

"So you received the memo already... I guess the shareholders made the announcement while I was at lunch."

"You won't own the company this way. I doubt you even know how to run a business. Was this Uncle Zenoheld's idea? Just because he's your father doesn't mean everything he says or does is the right thing."

"I told you to take as much time off as you need after Masquerade's death, Alice. Oh wait—you're on administrative leave. Same difference..."

"Masquerade wanted to venture on his own because he wanted to specialize in semiconductors, which is why he founded MGL Semiconductors with his college classmate instead of staying at Testarossa Electronics. Were you so threatened by my collaboration with his company that you bribed off the Board of Directors to put you in charge? My grandfather let you and Uncle Zenoheld stay out of sympathy. You two abused it."

"Fine, I won't sugarcoat this anymore either. Consider this my declaration of war against you and everything that you stand for."

"Why do you feel compelled to compete with everyone you meet in this company?"

The blond intern froze and asked, "Excuse me?"

"Just imagine if Joe were still here to—"

"Don't you ever mention that traitor's name again!"

"Traitor or not, he and Masquerade conveniently die just before or during a serious event. That can't be a coincidence. Am I next? Or will it be Chris?" All Hydron could do was step back in fear. "You wouldn't dare set me up or eliminate me because you'll also get dragged under too. Good luck learning everything from scratch after you reassigned all the seasoned employees out of their niche. Employee engagement and retention will definitely plummet."

All Hydron could do now was watch Alice leave and shut himself inside his office.

-x-x-x-x-x-

After taking a few days off to readjust his grandfather's physical therapy schedule, Shun arrived on time to work on his next day back. He stood on the sidewalk and looked at the windows on the upper floors before entering the building. Most of the windows still have their blinds down. That's unusual. He orientated himself at his desk and logged into his computer. Most of his instant message contacts haven't been online since last week. That's really unusual. Where is everyone?

For coworkers that he had personal phone numbers, the raven-haired receptionist texted each of them individually and continued with his regular work. The workday passed rather quickly since he had to clean up his inbox full of unread emails. Suddenly, Dan appeared in the lobby and rested his head on the counter. "Where did you come from?! You look exhausted. Anyway, I texted you this morning."

"I swear... There's no phone reception in the warehouse at all, yet the internal company Wi-Fi works perfectly. What if we have an emergency?!" The brunet drank water from a nearby water fountain afterward. "Didn't you hear about what happened recently?"

"I was away for family matters. Would you like a seat? What happened?"

Dan sat at the empty computer station and explained. "Hydron is now CEO of Testarossa Electronics! Most of us fell victim to a job shuffle that sent us to the most wanted places ever."

"How does that even happen? What about Alice?"

"We don't need proof to know that Hydron and Zenoheld bribed the shareholders and Board of Directors. Runo, Chris, Baron, and I all got relocated to different warehouse locations and don't report to this flagship building anymore. There's literally no time to stop when working in the warehouses. Alice is on paid administrative leave. Looks like you weren't on the list of shuffled employees."

"I don't know what's worse—being on leave or being demoted. But that doesn't tell me where Alice might be. She hasn't logged into her instant messenger either."

"I don't think she can access internal services while on leave."

"And Dan, what are you doing here? Are you on lunch break? Can you leave the warehouse that easily?"

"I'm off already. Alice approved me for a half-day today a long time ago, and time off requests still carry over to different departments. Thank goodness I stopped by since you weren't here when the emergency meeting took place. See you around."

"Don't overwork yourself. Tell the others I'll stop by."

"You bet."

By the end of the business day, Shun cleared all outstanding emails and was about to clock out when he saw Hydron exit the elevator. "Congratulations on your promotion," he greeted sarcastically.

The former intern turned around and twirled his hair. "Come again? I didn't hear what you said earlier."

"I'd rather just say it once to prevent any good luck from dissipating."

"Well then." Hydron walked over to the front desk and sent a death glare. "I'll fire you first thing tomorrow morning."

"You wouldn't dare and can't afford to. Since several employees here are no longer in this building, people end up calling or emailing the help desk, which becomes my responsibility. Then I need to redirect their inquiries to the appropriate department. If you terminate me tomorrow, then I'll set the help desk inbox's out-of-office message to tell people to contact you directly instead, all before my access gets wiped out."

"I'm the new CEO here. I have better things to do than entertaining those inquiries."

"Then you should know that CEOs also need to be actively engaged in company workflow. How much did your father spend to pay off all the executives? I bet you were surprised that he said such a huge sum at home to spend easily because you probably think that you should've acquired some of that money."

"Who do you think—"

"You know exactly what you did in both the past and present. Once the whole world knows, then it's game over for you." After grabbing all his personal belongings, Shun added, "Don't even think about impulsively sweeping my stationery off my desk because I just organized everything."

"Why you—"

Hydron held his forehead in pain as he watched the receptionist leave, and Katie conveniently exited the elevator to see everything. "Are you okay?! You look extremely pale!"

"I'm fine." The former intern reoriented himself and leaned against the front desk. "Is my father still in the building somewhere?"

"He visited the PR offices a couple of hours ago and then borrowed one of the empty meeting rooms to do his work. The door was open the whole time."

"Thank you." He went upstairs to the spare meeting rooms and eventually found his father using a laptop. "Father, I really need your help."

"What happened now?"

"Shun might've discovered something that happened at Testarossa Electronics in the past, but he's not saying everything that he knows. I don't know what his intention is, but he's definitely with Alice and against me being the new CEO."

Zenoheld closed his laptop and exited the meeting room with his son. "As long as you listen to me, then no one will dare express any objections."

-x-x-x-x-x-

Shun visited Testarossa's Warehouse 8 with several bags of take-out and looked around until Dan saw the visitor first. "Dude, what are you doing here?!"

"Looking for you, obviously. Do you have a free table that I can use?"

"Over here."

The brunet cleared a wooden table as the raven-haired receptionist placed the food on the tabletop. "Lunch is on me today."

"Don't you have work at this hour?" Runo asked.

"Soon was very understanding and covered the front desk for me. Where did the others get reassigned to?"

"Dan and I are both here at Warehouse 8. Chris is at warehouse 6, which is two warehouses away from us. But each warehouse is so large that it takes her five minutes to come here on a kick scooter. Baron's at Warehouse 4, which is in a different Bayview district. We haven't seen each other since the job shuffle."

"I see... I'll text Chris later. Dan visited me last time when he worked half-day and said that there's barely any time to stay in one place for long. Is there any way you can escalate this to human resources?"

"Nothing's changed since the last time I complained to you. Since you're here, Runo and I will go to lunch early then. The most we can do is work at a 'normal' speed until it's the end of the day."

"I hope no one else nearby heard you say that."

"But it's true! Our brains are wired for digital processing instead of manual labor! I also forgot to tell you that our pay rate decreased since we got demoted."

"Okay stop. Forget about HR. You'd better report that to the Division of Labor Standards Enforcement by the end of this week. The next thing you need is to be wrongfully terminated afterward."

"At least you still have the front desk to yourself and know almost everything that's happening in the company."

"I wouldn't put it that way. I've been overloaded with receiving and redirecting both phone calls and emails because practically nobody is working in their original job anymore. Someone already threatened to terminate me, which is why I have a backup plan in the first place."

"Dude... I'm sorry to hear that. Out of all people, I thought you'd be the least affected because literally no one else wants to be the receptionist."

"Have you seen Alice recently?" Runo suddenly asked. "I know she's on administrative leave, but she hasn't messaged us since the emergency meeting."

Shun scrolled through all his recent text messages. "I texted her asking how to log in to some company intranet websites. She responded each time, but her tone implied that she wanted to end the conversation there. Anyway, I'll let you enjoy your lunch break."

"Thanks for the food!" the two colleagues greeted.

After leaving the premises, the raven-haired receptionist called Alice immediately. The first two attempts went to voicemail, but the latter finally answered on the third try, "Shun, why are you calling me? Aren't you at work?"

"That's not important. Where are you?"

"I'm on administrative leave. I'm not supposed to show up."

"I doubt any kind of suspension can effectively stop you from checking on how things are running at work."

After a brief pause, the redhead replied, "I'll send you my location if you have time to stop by after work."

"You'd better not go somewhere else instead or send me to the middle of nowhere."

Once the workday ended, the raven-haired receptionist immediately drove to the location pin and found himself in the beach boardwalk neighborhoods on Bayview's western coast. He arrived in front of an off-white one-story house and rang the doorbell. Alice opened the door and greeted her visitor. "I didn't think you'd actually come."

"Do you own a third house that you never told me about?" Shun receptionist switched into a pair of slippers and looked around the living room. "The route from the company building to this house was surprisingly straight with minimal traffic, but it still took thirty minutes."

"To answer your question... yes and no. I lent some money to my aunt and Chris's father to buy this house. They rent this place to tourists and visitors, kind of like a temporary bed and breakfast. I'm staying here indefinitely until I have a plan to fix the problems at work."

"Does Chris know you're here?"

"She does, but she won't drive out here to see me... unlike you."

"No wonder your houselights have been off these past few nights. Why aren't you at home?"

"I need someplace more peaceful to clear my mind."

"Since you're at this 'vacation house' because you want to come up with a plan, then that means I was about you not giving up."

"I'm not so sure. My credentials are locked as expected, but I still have a spare account that's not associated with any specific employee. I copied all my files from my cloud drive into a physical hard drive so that I have a local copy. I never thought I'd resort to this contingency plan."

"The fact that you put in so much effort to save and protect your hard work means that you're more than ready to take back what's yours. I saw Dan and Runo recently. Because they got demoted to warehouse employees, their pay rate also decreased. I'm not sure if working conditions were bad to begin with, or directly due to the job shuffle."

"If you think about it, most people who traditionally work at company headquarters basically got demoted, so everyone's upset. I saw that you, Soon, and Katie weren't affected. How's your workload now?"

"My responsibilities haven't changed, but the workload increased because nobody knows who works where anymore after the job shuffle." Shun then recalled his most recent conversation with Hydron. "I guess it was my fault for provoking him, but I'm not afraid to report him to DLSE if anything goes wrong."

"Technically, anyone who got demoted and saw a pay decrease should file a report, although it might interfere with any plan that I have to take the company back. But Shun, why does this matter to you? Hydron knows he can't get rid of you because the receptionist position has been traditionally difficult to backfill."

"Just because I work on the first floor and have no involvement in what your team does upstairs doesn't mean I'm not part of the company. I want things to return to normal too, but you're the only person who can do that, and I want to help."

"Are you sure about this?"

"Don't you have more useful questions to ask?"

"Be right back." Alice brought her personal laptop downstairs to the dining table. "I processed a few spreadsheets recently and need a second person to double-check my formulas."

"What are you calculating?"

"A long time ago, the accounting staff found discrepancies in the company's bank account, but everything was written off with the same explanation. Since I have free time, I started looking into this again. I still can't figure out how Uncle Zenoheld had so much money available to bribe the entire Board of Directors."

"As a shareholder, he knows how to manage finances very well. Maybe he has other high-yield bonds, investments, or savings accounts that you don't know about. Speaking of discrepancies, I found some redacted bank statements among the old documents in Joe's office a while back. If you insist that Joe is innocent, then the bank statements must be referring to something else."

"Do you still have the documents with you?"

"I can bring them over tomorrow. Kind of too late today..."

"That would be great. Anyway, would you like to stay for dinner?"

"What do you mean by 'dinner'?"

"Just because I'm staying here temporarily doesn't mean I didn't buy any fresh produce. Give me twenty minutes to cook. You can watch television in the meantime."

After Alice finished cooking, she and her guest ate Russian cuisine with the news playing in the background. "What's the real reason why you hired me as the main receptionist?" Shun suddenly asked.

"Well... I needed to send Soon back to HR as soon as possible, and you seemed like the type of person who wouldn't ask any questions. You wouldn't have agreed to my offer if you were fully satisfied with your current living situation."

"That's offensive and stereotypical..."

"Not only are you mentally acute and self-sufficient, but you also know how to determine whether the time and place is appropriate or not for certain comments or actions. Before I say more, may I have your honest thoughts about Katie?"

"Her? I'm glad you asked because I have a lot of complaints. Working in public relations is a tough job. Every employee knows that they need to sell their products to the customers, but PR is even more complicated. When I first started here, Katie's presence and unending questions made me extremely uncomfortable. After telling you that, I learned that she's on Hydron's side and was probably fishing for sensitive information from me about you to tell him. She's trying too hard to be an overachiever."

"I'm not surprised you said. Her actions will get her in trouble eventually. I know you were upset about Katie and Hydron disrespecting you because I hired you, but you kept your temper to yourself and didn't give in to them."

"Did you ever once think that I'd switch sides to help Hydron instead?"

"Never. And I say that with confidence because I know he personally doesn't have the resources. Uncle Zenoheld might, but as you've already seen, those resources were better spent on buying the CEO position for Hydron rather than on a new employee like you."

"I don't understand why Zenoheld didn't make himself the CEO."

"Because he wants to remain in control of the other shareholders while also indirectly controlling the rest of the company via Hydron. It's all about business. Anyway, would you like dessert? I have gelato."

"I'll pass." After Alice returned from the refrigerator with a jar of salted caramel gelato, he commented, "Is it ironic that you look much happier and relaxed now than you were before?"

"Are you saying that just because I'm eating frozen sweets?"

"Maybe that's the whole point of being on leave. Given that so many people close to you have passed away one after another, when was the last time that you were actually happy about life?"

The redhead suddenly dropped her spoon on the table. "The happiest that I've ever been was when my parents were still alive."

"Wait... you were still young when they passed away, right?"

"I obviously can't return to my childhood anymore. Everything else between then and now is a blur to me because it feels like these disasters just repeat one after another."

"So, you're stuck in the past with no way to move forward..."

"And I don't know how. There are times when I'm completely by myself, but I can still hear their voices in the background, whether talking to me or each other. I just tell myself that I'm overworked and need to rest more."

"But that's not a permanent solution."

"Then what is?"

"Taking back what's yours, of course." Shun extended his hand and squeezed the redhead's free hand tightly. "Zenoheld and Hydron's existence is why your anxiety is sky-high. Back then, you couldn't help but worry about what their next moves were every day. You're not surprised but still refuse to believe that they basically bought the CEO position and kicked you out. I'm clearly biased toward you and against them at this point, but you need to tell them that you're the last person they ever want to mess with. Generosity has its limits when it's abused."

Alice squeezed her receptionist's hand in return before wiping her face. "You're right. This family feud started before my generation even existed. Since Grandfather handed everything to me after his death, it's up to me to clean the mess and get rid of freeloaders. Are you sure you want to help me with this?"

"That's the second time you've asked me that question today."

"Really? Anyway... If you're suggesting that Uncle Zenoheld is the real culprit behind insider trading and the accounting discrepancies, then I might have a way to test him and see if it's true..."