Chapter 1
Lily
I’m convinced that sending out a résumé is just a socially acceptable form of screaming into a void and hoping the void screams back with a dental plan.
You spend weeks obsessing over white space, debating if a serif font makes you look “intellectual” or just “pretentious,” and trying to summarize your entire existence into three bullet points that don’t make you sound like a total flight risk. Then you hit Submit, close your laptop, and pray the hiring manager didn’t notice you used the word “passionate” four times in one paragraph.
Three weeks ago, I was sitting on my floor, surrounded by lukewarm ramen and old sketchbooks, whispering to my cat that we might have to start eating the furniture.
Then, the void screamed back.
Congratulations! We’d love to have you join Brightside Creative- A & Co as our newest Junior Graphic Designer.
I didn’t just scream. I did a full-body convulsion that resulted in my succulent falling off the windowsill. Brightside wasn’t just an agency; it was the temple of aesthetic. They were the people who turned boring tech startups into lifestyle brands. Their Instagram feed was a masterclass in minimalism, and their Creative Director was rumored to be able to identify a font’s weight just by the “vibe” of the kerning.
And me? Lily Evans-whose freelance career mostly consisted of designing logos for my cousin’s failed candle business-was about to walk through those holy glass doors.
The Baptism
Six a.m. arrived with the subtlety of a freight train.
I spent twenty minutes staring at my ceiling, mentally rehearsing how to say “Hello” without sounding like I was undergoing a stroke. By six-thirty, my bedroom was a disaster zone of discarded “personae.”
Outfit One: The Power Suit. I looked like I was going to sue someone. Outfit Two: The Artsy Minimalist. I looked like I lived in a commune that only ate beige food.
I settled on a compromise: tailored charcoal trousers, a cream silk blouse that cost more than my first car, and a pair of loafers that promised zero blisters. I looked like someone who understood color theory and paid her taxes on time.
“You are a professional,” I told my reflection while dabbing on a lipstick shade called Empowered Rose. “You are not going to moo. You are going to iterate. You are going to synergize.”
The universe, however, hates a boastful heart.
Ten minutes before I reached the building, I stopped at The Daily Grind. I was holding my vanilla latte-extra shot, extra hope- when the heavy brass door swung open, caught my tote bag, and sent a hot, tan splash directly onto the center of my cream silk chest.
I froze. The latte stain bloomed across my blouse like a Rorschach test of my own failure.
“Terrific,” I hissed, dabbing at it with a napkin that only succeeded in leaving behind little white flakes of paper pulp. Now I didn’t just look like a mess; I looked like a mess that had been snowed on.
The Seventh Floor
Brightside Creative smelled like expensive white tea and filtered oxygen.
The lobby was all polished concrete and industrial steel—the kind of place where you feel like you’re being judged by the furniture. At the reception desk, a woman with hair so shiny it had to be a CGI effect checked my ID.
“First day?” she asked, her eyes flicking briefly to the tan blotch on my shirt.
“Is the coffee stain my official welcome badge?” I asked, trying for ‘witty’ and landing somewhere near ‘desperate.’
She gave me a pitying smile. “Floor seven. Good luck, Lily. You’ll need it.”
When the elevator doors slid open, I was hit with a wall of high-velocity productivity. It was an open-plan dream: exposed brick, hanging monstera plants that actually looked healthy, and rows of sleek iMacs. But there was something else—a strange, low-frequency hum of anxiety. People weren’t just working; they were vibrating.
“Lily Evans?”
A woman with a riot of curls and neon-green glasses appeared. She held a mug that said Don’t Postpone Joy in a font that felt suspiciously like a threat.
“I’m Mila. I’m your designated ‘work-wife’ for the week. I’m here to make sure you don’t accidentally delete the server or trip over the CEO’s dog.”
“I can’t promise anything on the tripping,” I said, following her through the maze of desks.
Mila led me to a workspace that was so clean it felt sinful to put my bag on it. On the monitor was a sticky note: Welcome to the Jungle.
“So,” Mila said, leaning against the partition as I tried to subtly hide my chest with a stray folder. “Since I like you already, I’ll give you the survival guide. We have three rules here. One: the espresso machine is temperamental—don’t anger it. Two: never use Comic Sans, even as a joke. And three: beware the Minotaur.”
I paused, a stylus in my hand. “The Minotaur?”
Mila leaned in, her voice dropping to a theatrical whisper. “Julian Thorne. Our Creative Director. He’s the reason this place is famous, and he’s the reason the turnover rate for Juniors is… well, high. He’s brilliant, but he has the emotional range of a cactus. He doesn’t give feedback; he performs autopsies on your soul.”
My stomach did a slow, nauseous roll. “Does he actually yell?”
“Worse,” Mila said, popping a piece of gum. “He whispers. He’ll look at a project you spent forty hours on, raise one perfectly groomed eyebrow, and say, ‘This is… loud.’ And then you’ll want to go live in a cave.”
I looked at the stain on my shirt. I looked at my shaking hands.
“He’s a genius, though,” Mila added, moving off toward her own desk. “Just stay out of his line of sight until you’ve at least finished your onboarding. Oh, and Lily? The coffee stain actually works. It looks like an ‘abstract earth-tone’ element. Very on-brand.”
I sat down, staring at the blank screen of my new life. Don’t moo. Don’t moo. Don’t moo.
I straightened my shoulders, adjusted my ‘abstract earth-tone’ blouse, and whispered to the monitor, “He’s just a man. How scary can one designer be?”
In the corner of the office, a heavy mahogany door slammed shut, and every single person in the room jumped.
The universe, it seemed, was already laughing at me.
