floor 24

LEILA wakes up, sweating bullets. This was the first night she had dreamt of this ever since the incident.

She dreamt of it. The elevator. The darkness. The room where he and June stayed in. The otherworld...

It has been almost 5 weeks, 33 days to be exact since Tanner passed away. But this was the first time she had dreamt of it after all of that. You could say it's normal because of trauma, but for her part, she's actually weirded out. The fact that it just suddenly came back to her and haunts her in her dreams doesn't seem to feel right.

She sits up and reaches for her phone. The screen was already in the messages and is ready to type in a message.

But then she backs out and deleted the typed-in message right away. He's probably asleep and she didn't want to disturb him. She'll probably tell it in the morning or soon.

She sighed as she went up to make hot milk.

+ + +

IT WAS A NORMAL workday for Stacey. She's now walking the streets, making her way towards the bus stop to her work. She was waiting for a bus, but the bus is always too full. Stacey looks at the time written on her watch. It reads "7:57 am" and she's almost late. And she'll most likely get a scolding from her boss.

She then hears a car honk two times by her front that made her lookup. The car was very familiar at first and that suspicion was confirmed when the window from the passenger seat rolled down.

"Hey come on, ride in with me. You're probably late for work." It was Jasper, her boyfriend.

Yeah, the boyfriend whom I saw flirting with a co-worker.

She was upset about what she saw yesterday that's why she didn't even bother calling him to help her go to work.

"Hey! Come on and hop in! I have some chicken for you!" At the sound of chicken, it's as if Stacey totally forgot about her being upset and quickly got in the car. She then looks from the passenger seat to the back seat and indeed a bucket of chicken was there.

"Wow, you were ignoring me yesterday up until a while ago, then when I mentioned chicken you come in here?!" Jasper rants.

"Just drive," Stacey says as she rolls her eyes.

"Be thankful I love you," he mumbles but was loud enough for Stacey to hear, and then he drives off.

Stacey just secretly smiles, her smile is very wide in fact. But the two were just silent, and as Stacey's office comes near, Jasper just passed it by.

"Hey, babe you do know that we just passed the office right?"

"Yeah. I told your boss that I'll be dropping you at 10 am so don't worry about it." He says and turns to Stacey and winks.

This just made Stacey look away and say, "Alright. Just don't look at me and drive."

+ + +

THE COUPLE arrived in a nearby park in the city. And there, Jasper prepares the blanket and lays it on the ground as Stacey only watches him from behind. Once Jasper has finally set it up, he sits down and pats a vacant space beside him and so Stacey sits beside him, while taking a good distance, and sets the food besides.

"Why are you still like that now?" Jasper asks while looking at Stacey, but Stacey is looking everywhere but him.

"What do you mean 'still like this'? I'm always like this."

"No, you are not." Stacey only sighs.

She actually doesn't like this, ignoring Jasper. She wants to solve this problem, not that you can really call it a problem nor a quarrel, in a mature way. But her pride is just getting the best of her. But she knows that she is indeed stupid since clearly the guy beside him is still clueless...

and sad.

"I was about to come to your office so that we can eat together at lunch. I was alone in the office since pretty much everyone is very busy to have lunch. But yeah I saw you with a female co-worker, you two were eating lunch and she was too close so I didn't bother coming in and le--"

"Wait, what?!"

"What?"

"You were there, baby?!" Jasper says and shock is written all over his face. Meanwhile, Stacey felt like her bones all over her body start to melt after hearing her boyfriend call her that. "You know you could go in there anytime you want babe. Why didn't you inform my assistant? Why didn't you just come in?"

"I thought it's important or should I say the girl was enjoying your presence--"

"Wait, woah. You are not actually jealous, right?" Stacey looks at Jasper and just by seeing his smirk, she looks away again.

"You're jealous!!"

"I'm not!--"

"Wow, my girlfriend is jealous! And towards my cousin?!"

"Wait, she's your cousin?!" This time Stacey is now looking at Jasper.

Jasper laughs at this and laughs even louder as he sees Stacey's face turn red and takes a big bite of the chicken.

"So that's why you were acting like tha--OUCH!"

+ + +

AS STACEY finally saw Jasper's car leave, she happily skips towards the elevator and pushes her floor button. The elevator then arrives at her designated floor and she was still happily skipping towards her office, her co-workers greeting her in which she greeted back happily. Too happy, actually.

She arrives at her workplace, and she immediately sees Yhael and Jane bantering. The other workers don't even mind since they are getting used to their boss and her secretary's bantering.

Yes, Yhael is the boss of their department and Jane is the secretary, the rest are under them. But even with the higher positions, Yhael is close to his co-workers. And also given that Jane and Yhael are also a couple, everyone is really used to them.

"There you go two again," Stacey says with a chuckle and sits on her office chair, still with a wide smile on her face. Yhael and Jane immediately noticed this.

"Stacey, weren't you looking so gloomy after just yesterday? And now you're like the sun." Yhael teases.

"Oh, you have such a wide smile today. What happened?" Jane asks but Stacey didn't reply and just kept smiling to nowhere, which made Jane smirks teasingly.

"Ahh, I wonder what Jasper did to make you smile like that."

"Well I kinda think about it, Jasper DID ask a favor to me. And I guess something happened."

The couple looks at Stacey with a teasing look that made her snap out of her daydream.

"Just shut up, you two. Just continue your banter, and exclude me from it." Stacey says that made Yhael and Jane just laugh.