Tae's chair was gone.
The war room desks belonged to whoever needed them. Six weeks into the project, the remaining Seniors returned to the same seats every night.
Jun noticed it before he set down his bag.
Three days earlier it had been tucked beneath the desk beside Jun's, one wheel catching whenever someone pulled it out. Now the desk held two stacks of printed exhibits, a box of charging cables, and a visitor badge someone had forgotten to return.
The project had adjusted quickly.
A yellow note was still stuck to Tae's monitor.
Regional assumptions need cleanup.
Jun dropped his backpack beside his own chair and opened the rollout model Tae had left behind.
Across the war room, Sojin divided the remaining work into four columns on the whiteboard. Her laptop sat perfectly square with the table. A notebook rested beside it, already half-filled with neat handwriting. Even in a borrowed war room, Sojin kept her desk exactly the way she wanted it.
Jun looked at his own space. Printouts disappeared beneath his keyboard. Marked-up slides hid three missing pens. An empty coffee cup had occupied the same corner long enough that he had started working around it instead of moving it.
He finally picked it up.
Across the table, Han noticed. Without a word, he leaned back until his head hung over the chair, one arm dangling toward the floor.
Jun looked over.
Han cracked one eye open long enough to confirm he had been seen. Jun smiled.
Satisfied, Han sat back up and resumed typing. No one reacted. Not even Sojin.
She capped the marker.
IMPLEMENTATION TIMELINE
MARKET SIZING
APPENDIX
Jun's initials appeared beside the first and third columns.
I moved the regional pages to you.
I noticed.
Four names beneath work that had belonged to five people.
No one treated Jun like the new analyst anymore. The work came to him without anyone walking him through it.
Jun opened Tae's market-sizing file. The first tab was called `final_final_v2_REAL`.
Sojin glanced at the screen.
Jun opened the board deck.
Rows of comments waited along the right side of the screen. Some were assigned to Tae. Most had already been reassigned to Jun.
Not many.
Enough.
The war room carried the familiar rhythm of another late night. Fluorescent lights flattened every color into the same tired shade. Laptops hummed beneath the steady breath of the HVAC. Laughter drifted in from the elevators, then disappeared when the doors closed.
The door opened. Director Min stepped into the room with his laptop tucked beneath one arm. His eyes made a quick circuit around the table before settling on the whiteboard.
Min nodded. His attention moved to Jun's monitor.
Jun looked at the two columns beside his initials.
Min set a printed deck beside him. Blue ink covered the executive summary.
The model still assumes efficiency is what matters. That's what the client keeps saying, but it's not how they're acting.
Jun scanned the notes. The conclusion had not changed. Nearly everything supporting it had.
Min paused.
Jun's inbox refreshed.
He left as quietly as he had arrived.
For a moment, only the HVAC moved.
Then Sojin uncapped the marker and drew a line beneath the four columns.
Chairs rolled forward. Files opened.
