By now, he was running on coffee and pure, unhinged spite. Sitting in Conference Room B, his mind had checked out hours ago, leaving his empty shell behind to watch the circus unfold. Windowless with a faint stink of damp carpet. The AC unit gave off a low, grating buzz that vibrated right through your teeth if you aren’t making six figures.

Up front, Tareq paced the whiteboard like a man who woke up at 4:30 AM on purpose, posted a hustle quote on LinkedIn. He spoke entirely in corporate jargon he clearly didn’t understand.

“So team!” Tareq slammed his hands together. The crack made Hasan’s left eye twitch. “If we pull Q3 forward to clear up bandwidth, where does that leave core deliverables? Anyone?”

Silence hit the glass table. Everyone had their own survival tactics. Riaz kept his head down, furiously scribbling loops on a legal pad so nobody would call on him. Maya stared into her laptop, holding her breath to look like she was defusing a bomb. Tareq’s eyes swept the room and locked on the corner. “Hasan! Give us the boots-on-the-ground view! What’s your take on the Q3 push?”

Hasan was staring at a coffee stain shaped roughly like a horse. He hadn’t written a word in 45 minutes. His uncapped pen had been resting on his notebook long enough to bleed a black circle through four pages. He blinked. It was a slow, agonising process, which took a full five seconds for his eyelids to rise back up. He didn’t sit up, didn’t want to fix his posture either. He just stared across the table, eyes entirely dead, a faint, wrong smile pulling at his mouth.

“Q3 happens,” Hasan said, his tone flat as the board Tareq was writing on.

“And when it hits, we’ll still be sitting in this exact room, a little closer to the grave.”

The room went cold. Riaz’s pen stopped mid-loop. Maya lowered her screen half an inch.

Tareq let out a high, fake laugh that died instantly. “Always keeping us grounded, man! Love the dry humour. Look, let’s touch base after six on your action items, yeah?”

Hasan didn’t bother nodding. He let his chin drop back to his chest, finding a grim little peace in picturing the building’s main circuit box catching fire. Five o’clock bled into six.

Then seven, then eight.

By the time he dragged himself out into the muggy night air, his back was shot. To make matters even worse, it was Saturday: code for non-negotiable family dinner at his aunt’s.

An hour later, Hasan was basically trapped in the corner of an old velvet couch while total madness broke out around him. The air was a thick cloud of biryani and rosewater, competing with about twelve relatives all trying to scream over the TV about groceries, matchmakers, and that famous cousin who made it to Canada.

Hasan just sat there, zoning out and holding onto a cup of tea he’d completely forgotten to drink twenty minutes ago. A gross little film had already formed on top. He felt like an underpaid movie extra who wasn’t given a single line, just told to sit there, try not to move, and look traumatised.

Then his uncle crushed the cushion next to him, sending a full shockwave through the springs, and practically knocked the wind out of Hasan’s knee with a heavy slap.

“Hasan! We heard the news, son! Joining that big firm last month! Top floor, big name! How are you liking it?” Hasan’s whole expression collapsed. He locked eyes with his uncle, looking at the man as if he’d just been asked to swallow glass.

“The workload makes no sense,” Hasan rasped, eyes glued to the wall clock. “The pay is borderline illegal.”

His uncle’s smile turned wooden. “Well… early days are always….”

“I hate everyone on my floor,” Hasan cut in softly, tone completely level.

“I hate the carpet. I hate the fake plants. If one more person asks me to ‘circle back’ on a Saturday, I’m walking into the river until the water goes over my head.”

The noise nearby died instantly. Two aunts froze with their plates halfway to their mouths.

“They have free tea bags in the breakroom,” Hasan said softly, turning his bloodshot eyes to look his uncle dead in the face.

“They taste like warm cardboard and broken dreams.” He took a slow, miserable sip of his cold tea, stared back into the void, and waited for Monday morning to finish him off for good.