My manager sent the fall-festival contract before our noodles cooled enough to eat. Twelve thousand credits covered stages, safety, visual design, media, vendors, plus student labor across one campus weekend. Successful leadership delivery paid me a separate eighteen-hundred-credit professional fee after every approved invoice closed.
"Do not accept while adrenaline remembers yesterday's fundraiser as easy," Nina said, closing the contract preview upon my phone.
She was right because success had compressed eighteen working hours into one flattering outcome. The festival would consume four weeks, collide with her internship departure, plus place Thea's residency preparation beneath my professional schedule.
"I need until tomorrow afternoon to calculate capacity and staffing," I told my manager upon the balcony.
