Unfamiliarity

April 2025

The red panda primarily eats bamboo, supplemented with occasional insects and small vertebrates. Active during dawn and dusk, they spend much of their time foraging for food, using their sharp claws and agility to climb trees. Solitary by nature, they seek refuge in trees or dense foliage during the day, curling up with their bushy tails for warmth and protection. They take short naps throughout—

The calming words of National Geographic: Almanac 12th Ver. abruptly exited Celine Myers's mind as she slammed the book shut, sighing loudly and feeling the headache that had been brewing in her mind since last Tuesday only accelerate in its visceral pounding against her skull.

Of course, Celine had nothing against red pandas. At the moment, however, she did have a bone to pick with the lab research department at Pym Technologies, and the stationary red mammals on the book pages were unfortunately just taking the brunt of her frustration.

"Nine days," Celine muttered to herself, shoving the National Geographic book back into a crevice on the bookshelf behind her before leaning back on her office chair and subconsciously twisting the leather strap of her wristwatch, her dark hair pooling across her shoulders. "Insane."

Nine days she'd been waiting for a follow-up from lab research regarding the department's monthly financial report. She'd emailed the head director about needing the data an entire month ago, only to get forwarded to his assistant, who'd then forwarded Celine to the lab operations supervisor, who'd then taken a good week to email her back just to ask which month's numbers she wanted him to send (her email subject line had been March 2025 Lab Finances).

By the time Celine had sent back a polite and notably-blunt response, she'd only had nine more days until her quarterly report presentation to her manager, for which she needed said numbers by.

That had been last Tuesday. It was 1:03pm on Thursday now, and Celine's inbox was still void of an email from the lab operations supervisor with some data that she very desperately needed, which meant that Celine had exactly 57 minutes before her presentation, which meant that she only had 57 minutes to somehow obtain the report she needed, crunch the numbers, analyze them, add her analysis to the slide deck she'd been preparing all quarter, do a quick run-through of the final slides, and then make her way up to Conference Room 1342 for the presentation that very well could determine whether she secured a full-time job offer from Pym Technologies or not.

As a part-time financial analyst intern at Pym Technologies, one of the largest corporations in the global world of science, half of Celine's week was spent in a small office on the 9th floor of Pym Technologies Headquarters, while the other half was spent commuting back downtown to attend classes at the University of San Francisco.

It really was a hustle-and-bustle lifestyle, and although Celine's LinkedIn profile described her as "an enthusiastic fourth-year student majoring in finance who is eager to utilize her passion for data analysis, mathematical reasoning, and quantitative modeling to explore the intersection between business and technology," it was really all just fancy word vomit that in actuality probably should say something like "monetarily-suffering 22-year-old with dead parents and barely any financial support of her own who is desperate to secure a well-paying job post-graduation so that she can pay off her debts, get rid of her student loans, and stop thrifting second-hand for basically everything she owns."

Celine's dad passed away from a surprise heart attack when Celine was three years old. The resulting loss of income meant that her mom worked at least two jobs everyday for twenty years—until she was struck dead by a tow truck two Decembers ago while working to deliver pizzas by foot in the middle of the night, leaving a grief-stricken Celine with a mountain of medical bills and a determination to never suffer to put food on the table like she witnessed her mom do.