Inside a closed office, the air felt different from the outside noise. Phones kept buzzing, screens lighting up with clips, reposts, tags, mentions that were spreading faster than anyone in the room had anticipated.
The senior official stood near the table, one hand on the back of a chair, the other holding his phone as he scrolled through a video for the third time. The same clip. The same woman. The same boy.
He dropped the phone onto the table and looked at the two men sitting across from him.
"You met him yesterday," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes, sir," one of them replied.
"And you're telling me this is what came out of that meeting?"
Neither of them answered immediately. Not because they didn't have words, but because the situation didn't match what they had expected when they walked out of that room the previous day.
"It wasn't like this inside," the second one said carefully. "He presented the idea. We asked questions. There was no agreement."
