Our Month:Cupid's Promise

Welcome to the Office (II)

The alarm continued to blare as everyone in the office stood frozen in place. The faint scraping of the office chairs could be heard as more and more people started to smell the acrid scent of smoke. Ileana and Dash sniffed around, trying to find the spot where it was coming from. After a couple of seconds, they were led to the basement entry, where the smoke was especially pungent and thick.

Everyone who was following behind Ileana and Dash looked at each other, their faces pale. Soon after, most of the employees surrounded the door. A long silence occurred before someone spoke up.

"No way am I going down there," said Dash, shaking his head. "Nuh-uh. That place gives me the creeps."

Althea glanced around at her coworkers, seeing the same hesitation reflected in their eyes. "We can't just ignore it," she insisted. "What if there's a fire?"

"But what if it's... her?" Kari muttered, his voice barely above a whisper.

A collective shiver ran through the group at the mention of 'that' woman, their arms wrapping around themselves. Nobody ever liked going down to the basement and encountering 'her'.

The office's basement was known to be avoided by all the workers, some even did a coin flip to decide who would go down so that they wouldn't run into the crazy basement lady. The last worker that went down, came up and immediately tinkled their pants from the sheer terror that her crazed state gave them.

Alone in the dim, cluttered basement, Sarina spent her days obsessively researching rival companies, uncovering their flaws, and feeding this information to media outlets to undermine the competition and elevate Cupids Creations to be the best apparel company in the country.

"Still... I'm so scawed," Dash said with his hands clasped tightly to his chest and his lower lip pouting.

Enes glanced at Dash and murmured over the loud alarm, "I can hold you if you want."

"What did you say?" Ileana asked, her face puzzled.

"I said, let's all go together. Safety in numbers," Enes quickly clarified louder this time.

Everyone exchanged hesitant glances for a moment before unanimously agreeing. They decided that sticking together was better than encountering her alone. As they slowly descended the stairs, Tora and Toya, the twins from Human Resources, suddenly appeared at the back of the line playing Roblox on their phones.

This was typical behavior for them as they often did nothing. Nobody knows how they're still employed in the company. Tora giggled as he played Type;Soul, which spooked Dash, and before he could muster out a scream he accidentally missed a step, causing a domino effect with all the people on the stairs.

Clack, clack, clack the sounds of everyone toppling down each stair, curses and screams were heard as they all tumbled down onto the basement floor.

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU GUYS? WATCH WHERE YOU STEP!" Rim yelled out annoyed, while blaming Tora and Toya for being careless.

Unfortunately for him, it was like speaking to a brick wall as the twins simply giggled.

Suddenly the cough of a familiar woman was heard. They all looked up, the dense smoke covering most of their view, but her shadow was still very visible despite it.

Sarina looked down at the pile of people on her floor, seemingly unfazed by the burning smell of her basement. "Oh, hey everyone!" she said cheerfully, as if nothing was amiss. "Just making some ramen. Might have left it in the oven a bit too long though.."

"The oven...?" said Althea.

"Why are you putting ramen in the oven?" added Toya, still playing Roblox on his phone, even though he was lying on top of everyone in the pile of people.