Relight My Fire

Now Hiring: Personal Assistant to the CEO

With a beating heart, Tin opened the link to the job listing Pete had just sent him. These days, it wasn't often that he had any hopes at a fair chance on the job market – but if Pete forwarded it to him, there must be something to it.

Tin quickly glanced over the listing. It was a fairly standard position – managing the CEO's schedule and correspondence, prepare files and reports. The normal bread and butter of any personal assistant. He would be lucky if it was more than a glorified coffee delivery, in this day and age, many CEOs preferred to manage their own agendas on their mobile devices.

Still, it would beat his current gigs as delivery boy and private taxi driver. At least, there was a chance that he could actually make use of his brains and the expensive education the Medthanans had pushed him through, before un-ceremonially throwing him out of the family and disowning him, anyway.

A second, more thorough look at the job listing finally gave Tin a clue why Pete had forwarded it to him.

Cantaloupe Island is an international brand of sportswear. It will open a new Asian headquarters in Bangkok soon.

An international brand, opening up new offices. There was a chance that whoever was doing the recruiting didn't know about the dirty scandals that had made Tin a dead weight on the job market. Then, if he was lucky enough to score the job, he would have to make sure Tul didn't find out about it and make him get fired again.

"Not like I have much to lose," Tin murmured to himself, before pushing the apply button.

*

A few days later, Tin found himself in front of a glitzy new high-rise at the centre of Bangkok – there were still construction workers going in and out of the building, apparently the interior wasn't finished, yet.

He was wearing a fancy Hugo Boss suit – the last remnant of the suitcase full of clothes he had managed to take with him when his father had thrown him out of the Medthanan mansion. Everything else had fallen apart over time to an extent that he couldn't repair them anymore, despite his increasingly proficient sewing skills.

Before entering the building, Tin caught a glimpse of himself in the mirrored window front. He automatically ran his hand through his hair and smiled.

He could still rock a suit like that, he noticed with satisfaction. Passers-by could easily mistake him for the CEO of the company he would soon be interviewing with, looking like that.

Just as he finally walked through the revolving door at the foot of the building, his phone vibrated in his pocket.

Fingers crossed.

Tin smiled at Pete's message. He had his own fingers crossed as well.

Pete was a blessing. The only real friend Tin had ever had, and the only one who had stuck to him after he had become a pariah in Bangkok's polite society. Tin didn't know how many times Pete had offered him support, emotional and financial, over the years. While Tin had been grateful for the first, he had always stubbornly refused the latter.

Sure, Tin knew what living from pay check to pay check meant now. He knew how to be economical with resources – and he knew what it felt like to dread having to replace an expensive household appliance, or when the battery life of his outdated smartphone got so short that he had no choice but to replace it. But he also had his pride, he wouldn't accept handouts, as long as he was able to support himself.

In the foyer of the building, Tin could immediately see how much work was still necessary to finish construction. The floor was laid out with chipboards and the electric wiring wasn't hidden away in the walls, yet, for the most part.