With the First Drop of Rain | Aslaz

Rebel

A girl was observing her surroundings with caution, her innate fear mingling with a strange newfound anticipation that she felt more and more often recently. The deathly silence was never a good omen for her. Each passing second was fueling her anxiety and multiplying the 'what ifs' in her mind.

Then, in an instant, all her fears and worries evaporated. Two strong arms enveloped her from behind pulling her thin back to a warm chest.

In that moment, somehow the sun seemed to shine brighter, and the sinister silence ceased to trouble her.

***

Everyone was leaving the meeting room, whispering in groups. The last person to leave was Asi, her head bowed. She couldn't believe what had just happened. Asi had been appointed to work on the department's biggest project, alongside none other than Alaz Bey, the department director. How this happened, she had no idea. One moment she was sitting in the meeting room, almost invisible; the next, she had become the assistant of the strange and arrogant man who scared the whole office.

Asi didn't even want to imagine how stupid she must have looked with her eyes widened and her mouth opening and closing several times, unable to pronounce a word. What could she even say? "I'm sorry, Alaz Bey, I wasn't listening because my mind was occupied with memories of my own death, and I didn't hear a word you said in the last few minutes."

He would kill her. He would kick her right out of the room, no, from the whole building. Asi swallowed hard, imagining that. Her thoughts stopped when her mind replayed the moment her scared eyes met Alaz Bey's; she found him looking at her with a grin.

Lost in her thoughts, Asi went to the break room to get a coffee, hoping it would help the rusty gears in her head. Her solitude at the coffee machine was interrupted by the voices of three women.

"Asicim, what a surprising bit of news, right?" Demet, the senior specialist on their team, approached her. It could have been a happy remark if not for the obvious venom in her tone.

"Yes, it was," replied Asi sincerely, since it was a surprise not only for the team but also for her.

"I wonder how you managed to get that job?" Demet didn't even try to hide her intentions. She was openly implying...

"I heard about this at the same time as you, so there's no need..."

"I've been working here for four years and haven't seen a case where Alaz Bey offered such a thing to any employee," said Demet, strictly, with envy in her voice. What caught Asi's attention was what she said. How could such a thing never have happened before? And why now, out of all people, did that man decide to trust such an important project to her, someone who had only been with the company for one year?

"You must have really found some strong promoter," Nihan, Demet's friend from a different team, chimed in for the first time since the trio arrived. She thought she had the right to say such things to Asi, who had always achieved everything by herself. This infuriated her. She had faced too many injustices in her previous life and kept silent too many times. She didn't want to be like that anymore.

"Look..." Asi stepped closer to them, but her sentence remained unfinished because of the person entering the room, the one accountable for this whole mess.

"Demet hanım," Demet's face turned white as paper, and her eyes started darting from corner to corner like a caged animal when she heard the voice of none other than Alaz Soysalan behind her. She turned around and put a 32-tooth smile on her face.