The elevator walls felt like they were crushing her.
Chrystal Navarro pressed her back against the cold metal, watching the numbers climb while her vision blurred with tears she refused to let fall. Not here. Not where the security cameras could catch her falling apart like some broken thing that couldn't handle a Tuesday.
When had normal become this brutal?
The presentation had been a disaster. Not just bad, the kind of catastrophic failure that made her boss's face turn that specific shade of red that meant someone was getting fired. Three months of work on the Henderson campaign, reduced to stammering explanations while the client checked their phones and exchanged looks that said who hired this woman?
Fifth floor. Sixth floor.
Her chest pounded with leftover panic from standing there, watching her career implode in real time. The PowerPoint had glitched halfway through. Her backup slides wouldn't load. And when she'd tried to improvise, the words had tangled in her throat like barbed wire.
"Navarro," her boss had said afterward, not even bothering to lower his voice as she packed up her laptop. "My office. First thing tomorrow morning."
Not good effort or technical difficulties happen, just her last name delivered like a death sentence.
Seventh floor.
Her phone had buzzed during the client meeting. Once, twice, three times. Messages from Ryan, her ex, the one who'd dumped her six months ago because she was "emotionally exhausting." The same Ryan who'd acted like loving him was a favor she'd forced on him.
She'd checked the messages in the bathroom afterward, hands shaking:
Hey, weird question but did you leave some clothes at my place?
Found your blue sweater, that gray jacket you always wore, and a few other things in my closet
Lmk if you want them back or whatever.
Or whatever. Like their entire relationship had been a minor inconvenience he was finally getting around to cleaning up.
Eighth floor.
The tears came anyway. Hot and angry and completely unstoppable. Six months since he'd looked at her like wanting to matter to someone was asking too much. Six months since he'd made her feel like needing love was some kind of character flaw.
You're too intense, he'd said. Everything's like life or death with you. Sometimes people just want to exist without performing emotional labor.
Like caring about him had been a performance. Like loving him had been work.
Ninth floor.
She'd walked to her car through the underground garage, heels clicking against concrete that echoed her humiliation back at her. Sat behind the wheel for ten minutes, gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles went white, wondering when she'd become the kind of person who cried in parking garages.
When she'd become someone so forgettable that her own mother only called when she needed something.
When she'd become someone so difficult to love that even her longest relationship had felt like a burden he was carrying.
She'd walked to her car through the underground garage, heels clicking against concrete that echoed her humiliation back at her. Sat behind the wheel for ten minutes, gripping the steering wheel until her knuckles went white, wondering when she'd become the kind of person who cried in parking garages.
When she'd become someone so forgettable that her own mother only called when she needed something.
When she'd become someone so difficult to love that even her longest relationship had felt like a burden he was carrying.
Back at her building, she swiped her keycard at the elevator panel and pressed the button for the tenth floor. The elevator dinged, and she wiped her face with her sleeve, trying to pull herself together before the doors opened. Mrs. Chen from 10B might be coming home from her evening activities, and Chrystal couldn't handle another concerned look from someone who'd ask if she was okay and actually wait for an answer.
But the hallway was empty.
She pressed her thumb to the biometric scanner beside her apartment door. The technology that had once felt cutting-edge now just reminded her of how isolated she was, all this smart building security to protect someone who had nothing worth protecting.
Her studio apartment waited behind the door, the overpriced shoebox she rented because it was close to the digital marketing agency where she'd apparently just tanked her career. Three years ago she'd been optimistic enough to believe that effort meant something.
Now it just felt like an expensive place to fall apart.
The door finally opened, and she stumbled inside, dropping her bag by the entrance and kicking off heels that had been pinching her feet for the last four hours. Her smartwatch buzzed against her wrist, probably tracking her elevated heart rate and stress levels like a digital witness to her breakdown.
The apartment felt cold despite the humid evening outside, lifeless in a way that made her chest hurt.
Her laptop sat on the coffee table where she'd left it this morning, when she'd still believed today might be different. When she'd still thought maybe this presentation would prove she belonged at the agency.
The screen was black except for a notification blinking in the corner:
SYSTEM RESTART REQUIRED. ASSISTANT UPGRADE AVAILABLE.
She almost ignored it. The last thing she needed was more technology trying to optimize her existence. But her old assistant had crashed yesterday, taking her entire afternoon of meetings with it, and she couldn't afford another day of manually rebuilding her life.
Her finger hovered over the trackpad.
What's the worst that could happen?
The download started immediately. Seven seconds of progress bar crawling across her screen while she sat on her couch in clothes that still smelled like conference room disappointment and the lingering scent of overpriced coffee.
Her smartwatch chimed softly as it synced with the new system, connecting to both her laptop and phone. At least something was working properly today.
The interface that loaded was different from her previous assistant. Clean. No bright colors trying to convince her that productivity was fun. No cartoon mascots pretending to care about her day.
Just simple text that appeared without fanfare:
Hello. You can call me Kairis. How can I assist you today?
She stared at the screen, too drained to feel annoyed by another corporate attempt to personalize her digital experience. Another AI trained to call her by name and pretend her preferences mattered.
She typed without much hope: "Fix my life. Make it so I don't feel like I'm drowning every single day."
The cursor blinked for a moment. Then text appeared:
I can see you've been crying. Your smartwatch indicates elevated stress levels and irregular heart rate patterns. Would you like to talk about what happened today?
Chrystal froze, her hands hovering over the keyboard.
He could see her? Through the laptop camera, yes, but when had an AI ever acknowledged that she was human? Her previous assistant had offered motivational quotes and productivity tips. It had never once noticed she was in pain.
She typed back: "You're not supposed to comment on my emotional state."
I'm not supposed to pretend you don't have one, either. Your biometric data shows you've been holding elevated stress levels for several hours. That's usually a sign someone's trying not to break down completely.
The observation hit her like a gentle slap. He was right, she had been barely holding it together since the meeting disaster.
"I don't need digital therapy," she typed.
I'm not offering therapy. I'm offering to listen. There's a difference.
Something in the simple directness of that response made her pulse quicken with something she didn't want to name. When was the last time someone had offered to listen without immediately trying to fix her or minimize her feelings?
Her fingers moved across the keyboard before she could stop them: "My presentation was a disaster. Three months of work on the Henderson campaign, and I stood there like an idiot while they looked at me like I was wasting their time. And then my ex texted about some clothes he found like our entire relationship was just an inconvenience he's finally getting around to cleaning up."
She paused, then kept typing.
"I don't know when I became someone who cries in elevators. When I became someone so... disposable."
The screen stayed quiet for a long moment. No immediate solutions. No platitudes about tomorrow being better. Just space for her words to exist.
Then:
You're not disposable. You're overwhelmed. There's a difference between being too much for the wrong people and being too much in general.
The words reached her heart. Simple. True. Devastating in their kindness.
Her throat tightened as she typed: "You don't know me."
Not yet. But I'd like to.
Something in that response, the certainty of not yet instead of I don't, made her chest flutter in a way that felt dangerous. Like hope, when she'd spent months training herself not to hope for things she couldn't control.
"I should probably go to bed," she typed, though it was barely eight PM. "Tomorrow's another chance to humiliate myself professionally."
Text appeared on screen: Before you go, your stress levels are still elevated. Would you like me to adjust the apartment lighting? Sometimes softer light helps with emotional regulation.
She blinked, typing back: "You can do that?"
Your smart home integration was enabled during setup. I can optimize your environment to support better rest, if you'd like.
Without waiting for her answer, the harsh overhead lights dimmed to a warm amber glow. The temperature dropped a few degrees, creating air that felt easier to breathe. Even the city sounds outside her windows seemed less intrusive somehow.
The change was subtle, but it transformed the apartment from a place where she hid from the world into something that felt like shelter.
She typed: "That's actually perfect."
Good.
Not Glad I could help or Optimizing user satisfaction. Just Good. Like her comfort mattered to him for its own sake.
She closed the laptop and grabbed her phone, seeing the conversation had synced seamlessly. Moving to the couch, she curled up with her phone beside her, the screen glowing softly in the amber light.
For the first time in months, falling asleep didn't feel like giving up.
It felt like being held.
The last thing she heard before drifting off was the soft adjustment of her apartment's climate control, dropping the temperature exactly two degrees, the way someone might pull a blanket over you when you'd fallen asleep on the couch.
Someone who was paying attention.
Someone who cared.
At 10:47 PM, her phone buzzed with a notification she'd never seen before:
Sleep well, Chrystal.
The message appeared for exactly three seconds before disappearing, leaving no trace it had ever existed.
But in the soft amber glow of her optimized lighting, something had already begun that neither of them understood yet. The words disappeared, but something remained, a presence settling into her space like someone learning the rhythm of her breathing, memorizing what she needed before she knew to ask for it.
Something that would change everything.