01. Normal Tranquility.
At 5:12 a.m., before the first Aurelis Voyages flight had lifted from the city, Draven sat alone in his office and swallowed two pills with yesterday’s mineral water.
The glass had left a pale ring on his desk. Beside it, three phones lit and darkened in succession: a delayed charter in Lisbon, an angry investor in Montréal, and a message from Lio.
Are you awake?
Draven looked at the name until the screen went black. Lio was twenty-six, beautiful in the careless way of people who still expected their bodies to forgive them. Draven had hidden it before the housekeeper arrived, then told Lio not to come to the office, not to call during meetings, not to touch him in public.
Not because he was ashamed of Lio. Because the world was greedy for a reason to ruin a man.
Outside the glass wall, employees moved through the blue morning with their coffees and badges, carrying the company Draven had built across oceans. He watched them and felt nothing reach him. Not pride. Not fear. Only the familiar weight behind his ribs, settling deeper each day.
The prescription bottle waited near his keyboard, its label printed with his name in small, indifferent letters. Draven picked up the phone. I’m awake, he typed. Then managed to open the first email and began another day pretending the sickness was temporary.
Every work seemed so heavy; every meeting, connection, and event — all seemed to weigh him down for no reason. By eight o’clock, the pills had begun to settle into him.
Two clobazam, as usual. Sometimes three. Sometimes four, when the morning seemed too wide to cross, and his own body felt like a locked room. He kept the bottle in the drawer beneath his keyboard, behind a stack of contracts and an old boarding pass from Aurelis Voyages’ first international route. The label carried his name. The tablets did not care what the name had built.
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He went through the day because the day had been arranged to receive him. At nine, he joined a meeting with the operations team. A flight from Rome had arrived twelve minutes late, but the passengers had been transferred without complaint. The director apologized twice. Draven told her it was fine and asked for the revised report. His voice sounded steady enough.
At ten-thirty, he approved a new partnership in Singapore. At noon, he sat through a presentation about fuel costs and smiled when someone made a joke he did not understand. His hand trembled beneath the table. He pressed it flat against his thigh until the shaking eased, then lifted it to sign the final page.
Nothing went wrong. No one challenged his decisions. No investor called with a threat. No employee came into his office with tears or resignation papers. The three phones on his desk lit up with ordinary messages and died again. Lio remained somewhere outside the building, kept at a careful distance, protected by the same rules Draven had made to keep the rest of the world from finding something it could use against him.
He had been a CEO since 2012. Fourteen years of meetings, interviews, negotiations, handshakes, dinners, and photographs. Fourteen years of speaking to people while feeling as if he were standing several feet behind himself, watching his mouth form the necessary words.
Still, every conversation made his breath hitch. Still, his fingers shook. Still, he felt useless.
No matter how long he continued, no matter how many flights Aurelis Voyages carried safely across the world, no matter how many people praised his discipline or called him brilliant, some part of him remained convinced that he would always be this way. Sick. Tired. Unreachable. He would take the pills, perform the work, and wait for the next day to demand the same performance.
At six-fifteen, he left the office.
The city had turned gold along the windows of the towers. Draven got into his car, placed his phone face down in the cup holder, and drove without calling anyone. He did not go home. Home was too quiet, and quiet allowed thoughts to become articulate.
He stopped at a karaoke place on the edge of downtown, one of the anonymous buildings with dark windows and a red sign buzzing above the entrance. He rented a private room for an hour. When the door closed behind him, music filled the walls at once, loud enough to loosen something in his chest.
He did not choose a song. He sat on the leather bench and lit a cigarette. Then another when the first burned down. The pack rested open beside him. He smoked through it slowly, watching the colored lights flicker over the empty microphones.
No one needed anything from him there. No one asked him to explain his silence. The music blasted on, and Draven let it drown him until there was nothing left to answer.
