The conference room felt tense and uncomfortable. The AC made a loud, steady humming sound that seemed to vibrate through her.
She stood against the back wall, trying her best to blend in and stay out of sight. She was squeezing her tablet so hard that her knuckles turned white.
She didn't want to drop it. If she dropped it, people would look at her and realize she was actually there.
In the middle of the room, Juliana was the star.
She stood at the head of the long table, looking perfect.
Her hair was perfectly in place, and her suit didn't have a single wrinkle and her voice sounded like she had practiced every word in a mirror. She was talking about the new delivery routes in the North Corridor.
"…and by changing how we move goods through the northern routes," Juliana said, pointing a laser pointer at a map on the screen, "we were able to cut costs by fourteen percent. We also made the deliveries much faster."
The men sitting around the table started to whisper to each other. They looked impressed. One of them tapped his pen against his chin and nodded.
Maya looked down at the floor.
Fourteen point six percent. She thought.
The number burned in her mind. It wasn't just fourteen percent. That extra zero point six percent had taken Maya three whole hours to find. She had skipped lunch because she was too busy checking the fuel prices and the traffic patterns. She had worked so hard that she felt dizzy, all so Juliana could stand there and round the number down because it sounded "cleaner."
"Impressive, Juliana," the Operations Director said. He was a big man who usually looked angry, but right now, he was smiling. "You've really outdone yourself this time. I wasn't sure if those routes could be fixed."
Juliana gave a small, modest smile. It was the kind of smile that said she was a hero but didn't want to brag about it.
"Thank you, sir," Juliana said. "I always try to give my best to the company. I knew if I looked at the data long enough, I'd find a way to make it work."
Maya's fingers gripped her tablet even harder.
Our best, she wanted to scream. I found the way. I did the math.
But she didn't say anything.
She never did.
She just stood there, invisible, while the big bosses told Juliana how smart she was. Maya felt a bitter taste in her mouth, like she had swallowed a metal.
When the meeting finally ended, the room became noisy again.
Chairs scraped against the floor.
Men laughed and talked about golf or their weekend plans.
They walked past Maya like she wasn't even a person— just the girl who held the tablet.
Juliana walked out first.
Her high heels made a sharp, confident sound on the floor. Click. Click. Click. She looked like a queen leaving her throne room.
Maya followed a few steps behind. She kept her head down and tried to blend into the crowd.
As they walked back through the main office, the mood changed. The regular workers weren't like the executives. They were nosy. They liked to gossip. Maya could feel their eyes on her as she walked to her desk.
"See her? That's her," a voice whispered from a cubicle.
"The shadow," someone else replied.
Maya pretended she was deaf. She kept walking, but every word felt like a tiny needle poking her skin.
"She just carries the files," a guy named Mark whispered to his friend. "Juliana is the one who actually does the thinking. I heard the shadow girl can't even speak in meetings. She just stands there and looks at the floor."
A girl laughed—a mean, quiet sound. "I heard she's lucky to even have a job. Without Juliana, she'd be nothing."
Maya reached her desk. It was small and messy, covered in papers that Juliana didn't want to deal with. She sat down and placed her tablet next to her keyboard. She made sure it was perfectly straight. She needed something to be in her control, even if it was just the position of a piece of plastic on a desk.
She took a deep breath. She told herself to stay calm. Don't let them see you're upset, she thought. If you show them you're hurt, they win.
A shadow suddenly fell over her desk. Maya didn't have to look up to know who it was. The smell of expensive, flowery perfume gave it away.
Juliana was standing there. She wasn't smiling anymore.
"You did okay today," Juliana said. Her voice wasn't loud, but it was sharp. "The numbers were right. The Director was happy."
Maya looked up. She tried to make her face look like she didn't care. "Thank you, ma'am."
Juliana leaned down. She got close enough that Maya could see the tiny lines around her eyes. The "nice" boss persona was gone.
"But don't get any ideas, Maya," Juliana whispered. "I present the work. You prepare it. That is how this works. You stay in the back, and I stay in the front. Don't start thinking you're more important than you are."
Juliana straightened her suit jacket and flicked a piece of dust off her sleeve. She looked around to make sure no one was watching her. Then, her face changed back into the perfect, polite manager.
"Get started on the Singapore reports," Juliana said out loud, so others could hear. "I need them by five."
Then she turned around and walked away. She didn't wait for Maya to say anything.
Maya sat there for a long time, just staring at her computer screen. The monitor was off, so she could see her own reflection in the dark glass.
She looked tired. Her eyes were heavy, and her skin looked pale under the bright office lights. She saw the small gap between her front teeth. When she was a little girl, her dad told her it was a "lucky gap." He said it meant she was special.
Right now, she didn't feel lucky. She felt like a ghost.
She took a slow breath in and a slow breath out. She had to keep going because she had bills to pay, and a life she was trying to build, even if it felt like she was building it in the dark.
She reached out and turned on her computer. The bright light hurt her eyes for a second, but she didn't blink. She opened the Singapore file. There were thousands of lines of data waiting for her. There were mistakes to fix, costs to calculate, and problems to solve.
Her fingers started to move across the keys. Tap. Tap. Tap. She was good at this.
Across the office, two of her coworkers were still talking. They weren't even trying to be quiet anymore.
"Honestly," Sarah said, leaning back in her chair. "If Juliana ever left this company, that girl would be gone in a week. She's nothing without her."
The other coworker nodded. "Totally. She's just a shadow. And shadows disappear when the light goes out."
Maya's fingers paused over the keys for just a second. Her heart felt heavy, like a stone in her chest.
Then, she kept typing. She didn't look up. She didn't say a word. She just went back to work.
Because the work was the only thing that was actually hers.