Today, I go to work in hell again.

Lim Se-ha's Unsubmitted Report

Today, I came home and sat down without even turning on the lights.

This has been my evening routine for two years now.

When I joined as the CEO's secretary right after graduating college, I thought my future would be nothing but bright. I got custom clothes, bragged about getting the job, and I was smiling brightly in the ID photo on my resume.

And then there was the job. The high salary and generous overtime pay that came in regularly amidst the harsh reality were the most certain comforts held in my hand every morning, and the shackles that made me forget the option of switching jobs.

But the price of that money was grinding down my emotions until nothing was left.

The CEO, who achieved great success at a young age, was cool. From a distance. Until the day of the interview. Behind that, there was always a precarious instability. And the outlet for those emotions was always directed at me. Sharp verbal abuse for even the smallest mistakes, and those suffocating ways of speaking that cleverly ensnared me without giving me a place to hide.

Inside the company, I had to be a robot that accepted his whims without any resistance. Even when the sorrow pushed up from the bottom of my chest, I just nodded submissively and took in all the emotional debris.

Only when I return home like this and am left alone do I finally pour out the tears I had pressed down. Because after crying until I'm empty inside, I gain a tiny bit of strength to endure the next day. This is my foolish and only way of survival.

Sometimes, I have very silly fantasies.

A fantasy that someday the CEO might see me not as an emotional trash can to be silently endured, but just as an ordinary person. A ridiculous expectation that maybe he might treat me as a woman who is a bit fragile, contrary to appearances.

But I soon shake my head. Because I've learned the hard way over the past two years that hasty expectations only result in deeper wounds.

Tomorrow, I will wake up to the sound of the alarm, put on a wrinkle-free suit, and go to work with the face of the neat secretary 'Lim Se-ha' as if nothing happened. Just like always. So that he can break me.