The question was a physical thing in the silent, cavernous room. It hung in the air between them, heavy and sharp, a guillotine blade poised over Yanna's neck. Do you have any idea what you've done? Camille Navarro's thumb was a point of searing pressure on her pulse, a hot little coal burning against the frantic, bird-wing flutter of her blood. Yanna's mind was a snowstorm, a white-out of pure, shrieking terror. Words were impossible things, forgotten tools from a different life. She could only stare into those dark amber eyes, bottomless pits of cold, calm fury, and feel herself being unmade.
A second stretched into an eternity. Camille's lips, a perfect, severe line, barely moved as she spoke again, her voice still that same terrifying, intimate growl.
"I asked you a question." A beat of silence, as if she were genuinely waiting, before a flicker of something like disappointment crossed her features. "But then again, I don't expect an answer. People like you don't think about what you do. You just… exist. Messily."
The words were a surgeon's cuts, precise and deep, severing something vital inside Yanna. Messily. The perfect, damning summary of her entire existence. The frantic jeepney rides, the desperate accounting of coins, the ugly, secret pain she inflicted on her own arm. It was all just a mess.
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pressure was gone. Camille released her wrist. The sudden absence of her grip was a shock, a void of cold air where a moment before there had been a brand of burning steel. Yanna's arm felt unnervingly light, alien. Camille didn't even grant her a final glance. She had already moved on, her attention shifting as if Yanna had simply evaporated. She turned her gaze to the supervisor, a stout woman named Mrs. Reyes who had rushed over, her face the color of old chalk.
"Manager," Camille said, and the way she used the title made it sound like an insult, a pronouncement of failure. Her eyes raked over the terrified woman. "This… thing." She gestured vaguely in Yanna's direction without looking at her. "I don't want to see it again. Remove it. And send me the bill for the suit."
"Yes, Ma'am Navarro. Of course, Ma'am. Right away. I am so, so sorry," the supervisor stammered, her voice thin and reedy. She was bowing slightly, a reflexive, servile gesture.
Camille gave a single, sharp nod and turned away, moving back toward the center of the room as if nothing had happened. The spell was broken. The murmuring started again, a low tide of whispers and scandalized looks. The execution was over.
A hand, clumsy and panicked, grabbed Yanna's upper arm. Mrs. Reyes's grip was nothing like Camille's. It was a panicked, sweaty clutch, her fingers digging into Yanna's bicep with bruising force. It was the grip of fear.
"Come with me," she hissed, her face contorted with a rage born of pure terror.
And then began the walk of shame. Mrs. Reyes hauled Yanna away from the scene of the crime, a public frog-march through the heart of the glittering assembly. The sea of beautiful, wealthy people parted for them. Yanna kept her eyes fixed on the white marble floor, but she could feel their stares. A hundred pairs of eyes, drilling into her, judging her, dismissing her. They weren't just looking at a clumsy waitress; they were looking at filth that had been swept out of a corner. The feeling was a thousand tiny needles piercing her skin. Her face burned with a humiliation so profound it felt like it was scorching her from the inside out. Through the roaring static in her head, one thought repeated itself, a mantra of her own destruction. She didn't even raise her voice. She erased me with a whisper. It was not anger or hatred that bloomed in that moment. It was a terrifying, nascent awe. This was power. Not the shouting of a jeepney conductor or the angry tirades of a professor. This was the real thing. The power to unmake a person with a single, quiet word.
The locker room felt even smaller and more suffocating than before. The scent of bleach was an assault. Mrs. Reyes shoved Yanna against a row of metal lockers, the clang echoing the final, shattering crash of the champagne glasses.
"Are you an idiot?" the supervisor shrieked, her voice finally finding its full, panicked volume now that they were out of earshot of the guests. "Or are you just stupid? Do you know who that was? Do you have any idea the kind of trouble you've caused?"
Yanna stared at a smudge on the locker door, her mind still back in the gallery, feeling the phantom pressure on her wrist. The supervisor's words were just noise, buzzing flies around her head.
"That suit probably costs more than you'll make in ten years! I have to report this. My agency—my agency—is going to be blacklisted because of you! You clumsy, worthless girl!"
She was just getting started. The tirade went on, a torrent of blame and panicked accusations. Yanna was fired, of course. That was a given. Her pay for the night was docked to cover the "damages to the agency's reputation." She was to get out of the uniform, get out of the building, and if she ever showed her face at one of their events again, she would have her reported for trespassing.
Yanna didn't say a word. She just nodded, her movements stiff and robotic. When the supervisor finally ran out of venom and stormed away, slamming the door behind her, Yanna was left in the ringing silence. She slowly began to unbutton the starchy black uniform, her fingers fumbling.
The door creaked open again. It was Ria, her shift evidently over. Her face was pale, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and sympathy.
"Yanna! Oh my god, are you okay?" she rushed over, her voice a frantic whisper. "What happened? I saw them drag you out. Mrs. Reyes looked like she was going to kill you."
"I'm fine," Yanna said. Her own voice sounded wooden, distant. She pulled off the uniform shirt and reached for her own worn t-shirt in her locker. "I was fired."
"Fired?" Ria's voice rose in disbelief. "Just like that? Over a spilled drink? That's insane! It was an accident! That drunk guy bumped into you, I saw it!"
Yanna let out a laugh. It wasn't a sound of amusement. It was a sharp, brittle, ugly thing that tore out of her throat. "It wasn't just a drink, Ria. It was her. Did you see her face?"
"I saw you were terrified!" Ria insisted, her sense of justice inflamed. "This isn't right! It's exploitation! We should complain, file a report with the agency or something!"
The laughter died, replaced by a profound, weary pity. Yanna turned to look at her friend, at her earnest, indignant face. Ria still lived in a world where rules were fair and accidents were forgiven. Yanna didn't live there anymore. She had been deported.
"Complain?" she said, the words tasting like poison. "To who? God? She is God in that room, Ria. And in this building. And probably in this whole damn city block. You don't complain to people like that. You just get crushed. I'm lucky all I did was get fired."
Ria stared at her, the fight draining from her face, replaced by a dawning horror. She finally understood. "What are you going to do?" she asked softly. "About the money… for your sister?"
"I don't know," Yanna whispered, the truth of it a heavy weight in her gut. "I'll figure it out."
Ria offered to wait, to walk with her to the bus stop, but Yanna refused. She needed to be alone. After her friend left, casting one last worried look over her shoulder, a profound silence fell over the little room. Yanna sank onto a hard wooden bench, the cheap fabric of her own clothes a familiar, miserable comfort. She felt hollowed out, scoured clean by the humiliation.
Her gaze fell to her right wrist.
There, on the pale skin over her pulse, were the faint, ghostly red marks left by Camille's fingers. Four faint crescents from the press of her fingertips, and a more pronounced oval where her thumb had dug in. A ghost of a grip.
Slowly, as if in a trance, she raised her hand. Her own left thumb came to rest on the marks, tracing their outline. She pressed down, trying to replicate the pressure. It was impossible. Her own touch was hesitant, weak. Camille's had been absolute. A grip of steel, of ownership, of a power so profound it didn't need to be violent. She closed her eyes, and she was back in the gallery. She could feel the heat of Camille's skin, the unbreakable strength, the deliberate, targeted pressure on her fluttering pulse. It was a touch that had assessed her, judged her, and dismissed her in a single, terrifying instant.
And it was the most real thing she had ever felt.
In that moment, she wasn't a ghost. She wasn't a nameless, faceless server. She wasn't an anonymous student in a lecture hall. She was the absolute, undivided center of attention for the most powerful person she had ever seen. Camille Navarro had seen her. She had looked at Yanna, and for three horrifying, electrifying seconds, Yanna had existed more intensely than she ever had in her life. The shame was still there, a thick, coiling snake in her gut. But now, it was entwined with something else. Something dark and thrilling and terrifyingly new. Awe. It was the awe of a field mouse staring up at the shadow of a hawk circling overhead.
She saw me, the thought whispered in the quiet of her mind. For a second, I wasn't invisible. I was… hers to break.
The next three days passed in a blurry haze of shame. Yanna didn't leave her small, stuffy room in the boarding house. She kept her phone on silent, ignoring the flood of worried texts from Ria. Sleep offered no escape; she dreamed of falling glasses and cold, amber eyes. The humiliation had curdled into a thick, suffocating dread, a constant, low-grade fever of self-loathing. How could she have been so stupid? So clumsy? She replayed the moment over and over, her own ineptitude a source of fresh agony each time. The money for her sister's medicine was a constant, screaming pressure at the back of her skull. She had failed. Completely.
On the fourth morning, a sharp, imperious knock echoed on her door.
It wasn't Ria's familiar, friendly rap. This was different. Authoritative. Yanna's heart leaped into her throat. She froze, hoping they would go away. The knock came again, louder this time, more insistent. With trembling hands, she unlocked the door and opened it a crack.
A man in a crisp, black courier's uniform stood there. He held a sleek, black envelope. He didn't smile.
"Yanna Rivera?" he asked, his voice flat and professional.
"Yes?" she whispered.
He held out the envelope. "This is for you."
She took it from him. It was made of thick, heavy material, cool to the touch. It had no stamp, no address. Just a small, severe, silver logo embossed in the bottom right corner. A stylized 'N' intertwined with a 'C'. Navarro Corp.
Yanna's blood ran cold. The courier nodded once and was gone, his footsteps receding down the hall. She closed the door, her back pressing against it, the black envelope held in her shaking hands as if it were a live scorpion. What was this? A formal letter of complaint? A threat?
Her fingers, clumsy with dread, fumbled with the seal. She tore it open.
Inside, there was no letter. No verbose legal threats. There was only a single sheet of incredibly thick, cream-colored cardstock. It was an invoice.
Her eyes scanned the elegant, typewritten text, her mind struggling to process the words.
INVOICE #CN-77B4
Bill to: Yanna Rivera
Item: One (1) Bespoke Tom Ford Silk Suit, Midnight Blue.
Damages: Irreparable liquid staining to jacket and trousers due to employee negligence.
Total Amount Due: ₱850,000.00
The number hit her like a physical blow. Eight hundred and fifty thousand pesos. It was a figure so vast, so astronomical, it was comical. It was a joke. It had to be. It was more money than her family had seen in their entire lives combined. It would take her decades, a whole lifetime of working in canteens and catering gigs, to pay it off. It was a death sentence printed on expensive paper.
A wave of nausea and lightheadedness washed over her. She swayed, her hand coming up to brace herself against the wall. She was going to be sick. Her eyes blurred. She was going to crumple the paper, tear it to shreds, pretend it never existed. But as her fingers tightened, her gaze caught a small, typewritten note at the very bottom of the page. It was printed in a smaller, finer font, almost an afterthought.
Her eyes focused on the words, and the air left her lungs.
Payment is expected in full within thirty (30) days. Legal action will be pursued upon non-compliance.
Alternatively, to discuss a personalized repayment plan, you may schedule an appointment by contacting this number directly.
- Office of C. Navarro