Today, I commute to hell once again.

Im Seha's Unsubmitted Report

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

This has been my evening routine for two years now.

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

And then, that workplace. The high salary and generous overtime pay that hit my account regularly in this harsh reality were the most certain comforts held in my hands every morning—and the shackles that made me forget the option of quitting.

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 facade, there was always a precarious instability. And the outlet for those emotions was always directed at me. Sharp verbal abuse flying at the slightest mistake, and those suffocating ways of speaking that trapped me cleverly without giving me a place to hide.

Inside the company, I had to be a robot who accepted his whims without any resistance. Even when the sorrow shoved down to the bottom of my heart welled up, I simply nodded submissively and took in all the emotional dregs.

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, I find the tiny bit of strength needed to endure the next day. This is my foolish and only way of survival.

Sometimes, I indulge in 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 he might treat me as a woman who, unlike her appearance, is a bit soft-hearted.

But I soon shake my head. I've learned the hard way over the past two years that premature expectations only return as 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 'Im Seha' as if nothing happened. Just like I always have. For him to break.