Bad start to the day

It was Monday, Christmas eve, and unexpectedly the sky was filled with thick black clouds. The air was freezing cold and whistles of wind gushing through empty lanes could be heard everywhere. Because of the cold weather, many people had taken their day off from work and spend some quality time with their family, leaving unfortunate people like Ayana to pass through those eerily empty streets and roads.

"Is there an apocalypse of which I am not aware of?" She muttered to herself while glancing at a plastic bag dancing in the sky and soon turned towards the parking lot of her office building. She immediately unbuckled her seats while holding the keys along with her phone and took a deep breath before exposing herself to piercing cold winds running wild outside.

"Brr! It's damn cold! Couldn't our company announce a leave like others as well? Ugh! This sucks!" She shuddered as a whistling breeze raised shivers on her spine and she began to sprint towards the entrance.

Astonishingly, as she entered, she came to realise the electricity was gone in the whole building. The lobby was super chaotic around the stairs and some were even arguing with the receptionist because of their already bad start of the day.

The whole atmosphere was extraordinarily gloomy and tense.

"Oh dear..." A sigh escaped her mouth.

With her hands held tight, she marched towards the herd of employees puffed with jackets and coats at the centre but the crowd was so huge that she was instantly rejected by the outermost person of the herd, telling her to stay out of this matter.

"Excuse me? I am an employee too here." She shrugged back at the middle aged angry man, but it seems he had already moved on back to the crowd's yelling as he didn't even looked when Ayana almost shouted at him for ignoring her.

Frustrated from all of this, she rather decided to take a different approach and followed the crowd circumference to see where it ended. On her way, she kept on hearing her receptionist friend trying to explain everybody to calm down but apparently no one was willing to listen to her.

"Then do you expect us to wait here all day?! I've got kids lady! First you call us all here then you tell me there's a freaking problem with the electric generator?!"

"Sir, please calm down. I know it's hard and it'll take some time but-"

"Tsk! This lady has been telling us to calm down for around half an hour nonstop. What the hell?!-!"

Amidst the raising tension, as everyone was lashing out their anger at once, a sudden action made them all shut at once.

"Now, now. Aren't you crossing the limit here? She told you there's some problem with the generator and I believe the repairers have already been called. Right?" A feminine voice emerged in front of front of everyone.

"Ye..yes!" The receptionist stuttered with a rapid nod.

A strange woman in her stark white wrinkled shirt and a navy blue pencil skirt pointed at the middle aged who was about to say the cuss word earlier. It wouldn't have been enough to create such a pindrop silence but because of the body position in which she was in, it was very hard to resist for people to watch her in shock even for the ones waiting patiently at the corner.

Seeing that everybody was now ready to listen she cleared her throat silently and raised herself from the squat position on the table. She adjusted her heels a little and balanced herself on the table while addressing everyone present in her field of vision.

"As you can see, the repairers are already fixing the generator. I am sure by the time we reach our respective floor, the electricity will come back. Till then I request you all to use the stairs. And, instead of crawling up like a herd again, we'll patiently climb up in two lines since the staircase is wide enough.

The first one closer to the railing will be for senior elders, employees who have a medical condition and those who are usually physically inactive and are unable to climb long stairs. The peripheral lane will be for the rest of us. Any questions?"

She said it all in one go with such a bold and confident face that nobody dared to speak up in against in front of everyone. Being the idea best possible solution at the moment, the only thing that the mass could do was to divide into the groups of either supporting this idea and helping in formation of line or grumble in the corners as how rude and uncivilized her actions were.

Though most of the people didn't cared anyway since what mattered the most was to reach their office desk and submit the piles of work by today itself as soon as possible, the rest, especially the elders didn't stopped complaining about today's young generation.

"Damn! That must be intense. Are you okay?" Ayana said as she finally got the chance to take a look on her friend's state.

Funnily enough, she had completely frozen from shock upon seeing such a rare flashy performance but was soon sucked back to the reality upon hearing Ayana's voice. She put her act together and immediately reached out her hand to help.

"Yes, I am okay. Oh! Please be careful when you land your foot. It might accidentally slip." She advised Ayana to carefully step on the marble white floor and finally crashed into her chair as she finished helping her.

"Pfft! You already look so worn out, best of luck for the rest of your day." Ayana sarcastically scoffed to which her friend also helplessly chuckled.

"Yeah thanks but no thanks. By the way, that was awesome! Where did you learned that?!" Her tiredness soon vanished into curiosity and excitement but Ayana chose to remain aloof of it all as it was too embarassing to tell her about her gangster life back in the college days.

"What are you talking about? I was just angry that's all. I bet everyone's like that at some point in their life." She closed her eyes as she lied when suddenly a huge fist bump made them wide open. "What the-?!"

"Well, nobody's shows their panties when they are angry, do they?" A gleeful masculine voice rested on Ayana's shoulder as she failed to see the face of that person.

"The hell?!!"

She flinched hard at her spot and immediately looked down with her hands subconsciously covering the skirt, but much to her surprise, she was already wearing a black woolen leggings underneath. There's no way anyone could've seen a thing.

Her state of panick instantly turned into flustered rage as the two people surrounding her laughed boisterously right in front of her. It became clear, she was just now being pranked. And the only person who could pull this off was this one annoying employee in her department.

"LUKE!!! YOU IDIOT!" She yelled ignoring the people still present in the lobby and pulled his wrist off her shoulder to the front within seconds.

"Do even know how much worried I got?!" She yelled again but was shushed instantly by her friend as she pointed towards the people staring at them.

"Hehe! I finally got you!" But being someone who was totally loving this show, Luke didn't stepped back either.

"You! -" Ayana was about to pull his ears but an invisible force pull her away.

"But Jasmine! He really pisses me off!" She complained, but the mature friend she had tried to calm her down like a caring mother and explained her if she creates a show here, people will criticize her in future.

Fortunately, her words left an impact. To satisfy Ayana's heart, she even mildly scolded Luke for playing such a bad prank.

"A woman is always conscious about her behaviour and appearance in public. You must not joke about that Luke."

He seemed to realise that maybe he did went a bit too far and started to make a guilty face much to Ayana's heart content but it didn't last long as an another mischievous argument came to his mind.

"But she always messes around, be it in the cafeteria or at her office desk, plus who the hell wears a legging under pencil skirt in this cold weather. She's an exception! So it should be fine, shouldn't it?" He mocked at Ayana with a smirk.

Ayana patiently waited for Jasmine to make a comeback like a savage mom, but to her disappointment her mother betrayed her with a small chuckle in this battle of support and took her enemy's side.

"Well, that is true~" she said those heartbreaking words with her hands covering up for her innocent smile. But it was futile to resist now. Ayana felt betrayed from her so called mother and decided to instantly leave this place now that nobody was alongside with her.

"Hmph! I've got work to do unlike you two. So, if you'll excuse me."

She marched without even battling an eye with them, which made her rivals laugh even harder at her childish behaviour.

"Hahaha! (Ah, my stomach hurts!) I guess I should also go too Mrs. Kazem. See you later!" Luke said as he wiped off a small drop of tears from the corner of his eyes and started jogging to soon catch up to his senior. He couldn't afford to be on her bad sides afterall!...even though he already was.

"Yes. Have a nice day"

Jasmine too turned back to her desk and watched Luke waving hands while standing along with Ayana in the line.