Glance

On her first day at the office, Diya Joshi discovered that there were several different kinds of nervousness.

There was the ordinary kind, the sort that came from walking into a building full of strangers while carrying a folder containing every document you had been warned not to forget. There was the professional kind, which involved wondering whether you were supposed to say “Good morning” to everyone you passed or whether that would eventually make you look like a particularly enthusiastic security guard. Then there was the kind that made you suddenly forget how doors worked.

Diya experienced all three before ten in the morning.

The office building was larger than she had expected. It had too much glass, too many people moving with purpose, and an entrance that made her feel as though she had accidentally wandered into a place where everyone else knew exactly what they were doing.

She adjusted the strap of her bag and walked toward reception, trying to look as though she belonged there.

She did not feel as though she belonged there.

Her mother had given her a long list of instructions before she left that morning. Be polite. Don't talk too much. Listen carefully. Don't be late. Keep your documents safe. And, most importantly, don't get nervous.

The last instruction had been particularly unhelpful.

Diya had been nervous since the moment she woke up.

At reception, she was given a form to fill out and directed toward a small seating area where several other new employees were already waiting. She sat down, opened her folder, and began checking her documents for approximately the fifth time.

Everything was there.

Of course everything was there.

She had checked them before leaving home, while waiting for her cab, inside the cab, and again immediately after entering the building. If someone had asked her for her birth certificate at that moment, she probably would have produced it with the speed of a magician.

She bent over the form and began filling in her details.

Name.

Address.

Phone number.

Emergency contact.

The handwriting became progressively worse as she concentrated harder.

Then she looked up.

There was a man standing a short distance away from reception.

Diya stopped writing.

She did not know why.

There was nothing particularly dramatic about the moment. He wasn't doing anything extraordinary. He was simply standing there, talking to someone near the reception desk, dressed for work like everyone else in the building.

But Diya's attention had somehow decided that everything else in the room was now irrelevant.

He was tall, with an easy sort of presence that made him look comfortable in the unfamiliar bustle of the office. He wasn't rushing anywhere. He wasn't constantly checking his phone. He seemed completely at ease, as though he had been coming into this building for years.

Diya stared.

She knew she was staring.

She continued staring anyway.

Her pen remained suspended over the form.

A tiny voice in her head finally pointed out the obvious.

You are looking at a stranger.

Yes.

You have been looking at him for an uncomfortable amount of time.

Yes.

He might notice.

He probably won't.

He looked up.

Their eyes met.

Diya immediately looked down at her form.

Too late.

She could feel heat rising into her face.

She stared at the words she had just written without actually reading them. For several seconds, she became intensely interested in the emergency-contact section.

Maybe if she concentrated hard enough, the floor would open up and politely remove her from the building.

She risked another glance.

He was still looking at her.

And then he smiled.

Not a huge smile. Nothing dramatic. Just a small, easy smile that said he had noticed her looking and wasn't bothered by it.

Diya's brain stopped cooperating.

She looked away so quickly that she nearly knocked her pen onto the floor.

Wonderful.

Excellent.

First day. First hour. Already embarrassing herself.

She lowered her head and began writing again with exaggerated seriousness.

She had absolutely no idea what she was writing anymore.

The next line asked for her previous employer.

She wrote her own name.

She stared at it.

Then she scratched it out.

Someone beside her shifted in their chair, and Diya became convinced they had seen everything.

She kept her eyes on the paper.

Do not look again.

She looked again.

He was no longer watching her.

For some reason, that was disappointing.

Diya frowned at herself.

This was ridiculous.

She didn't know his name. She didn't know which department he worked in. She didn't know whether he was even part of the group she would be joining.

For all she knew, he could have been visiting the building for five minutes and would never appear again.

She returned to her paperwork.

A few minutes later, one of the HR coordinators came over and began calling names.

“Diya Joshi?”

Diya raised her hand.

“Yes.”

“Please bring your documents.”

She gathered her folder and stood.

As she walked toward the desk, she deliberately kept her eyes away from reception.

She made it approximately three steps.

Then curiosity won.

She glanced sideways.

He was still there.

And this time, she was almost certain he was smiling again.

Diya immediately faced forward.

She was beginning to suspect that her first day at work was going to require considerably more self-control than she had anticipated.

The induction lasted most of the morning.

There were introductions, forms, explanations about company policies, instructions about attendance, and enough information about internal systems to make Diya wonder whether she had accidentally signed up for a university degree instead of a job.

She sat among the other trainees and tried to pay attention.

She really did.

But every so often, when the room shifted or someone opened the door, she found herself looking toward the hallway.

She didn't see him again.

That should have made it easier.

Instead, it made her strangely aware of the fact that she hadn't seen him.

By lunchtime, she had managed to convince herself that she had imagined the whole thing.

Not the man himself.

Obviously he existed.

The smile, though.

Maybe it had been meant for someone behind her.

Maybe he smiled at everyone.

Maybe he had simply been being polite.

Maybe she had made the entire situation much more important than it actually was.

Diya was good at this.

She could take a perfectly ordinary event and conduct a full investigation into it until she had managed to confuse herself.

She was still thinking about it when she walked into the cafeteria.

A group of trainees had already gathered around one of the tables. Diya joined them, relieved to have something else to focus on.

Conversation quickly turned to the usual first-day subjects: where everyone lived, how they had heard about the job, how long their commutes were, and whether anyone had understood half of what the induction team had explained.

Diya laughed along and gradually relaxed.

By the end of lunch, she had learned three people's names, discovered that one trainee lived nearly two hours away, and accepted that nobody in the group seemed to know what they were doing either.

That was comforting.

Perhaps everyone was pretending.

The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of introductions and instructions.

When Diya finally left the building that evening, she felt exhausted.

She climbed into her cab, dropped into the seat, and leaned her head against the window.

Her first day was over.

She had survived.

No one had shouted at her.

She had not lost any documents.

She had not accidentally sent an email to the entire company.

By most reasonable standards, it had been a success.

She watched the office disappear behind her as the cab pulled away.