The Man Who Broke Raphael

A meaningless little victory

"I found evidence that he's been making fake transactions with the vendor," Ethan said simply. He placed a silver flash drive on his desk, which was cluttered with leftover coffee from the night before.

Across from him, Tristan choked on his coffee. "Are you out of your mind? That's the nuclear option, Ethan! If you give this to HR or the CEO, Noah could be blacklisted from the professional world for life. He wouldn't just be fired, he could be looking at embezzlement charges."

Raphael appeared casually on top of a filing cabinet. He was wearing an absurd pair of aviator sunglasses, his fingers plucking an imaginary guitar. "Ah, finally! Something that smells like sulfur from your boring sense of compliance. Want me to throw a little bolt of lightning when you hit 'submit' on that report email later? A little heavenly drama to give them a scare?"

Ethan didn't respond to Raphael. He just stared at his computer screen, where a draft email addressed to the top brass was already open.

"Have you thought about the consequences?" Tristan asked, his voice now trembling with anxiety. "Noah has family connections with the higher-ups. If you expose this and you don't have solid protection, you're the one who'll be seen as trashing the company’s reputation by causing internal drama."

"That's a risk," Ethan replied casually.

Ethan clicked the send button. There were no fireworks, no emotional explosions. Only the faint hum of the computer's CPU fan trying to cool down the processor. It was done.

Twenty minutes later, Eric Hayes summoned Ethan to his office. Inside, Noah was already there, his face beet-red. Ethan stepped in calmly, feeling like a judge about to deliver a verdict, even though he felt exhausted himself.

"Ethan, explain the meaning of this garbage!" Eric barked, throwing papers printed from Ethan’s flash drive onto the floor.

"That is the real transaction data between Noah and Global Light Inc, sir. They marked up the margins by 30% and split the difference," Ethan explained calmly, hands in his pockets.

Noah let out a discordant laugh, trying to adjust his collar, which seemed to be choking him. "Garbage data? Sir, this is clearly an attempt at sabotage by Ethan because he’s jealous I got the promotion yesterday. He hacked the system, he manipulated the numbers, all just to bring me down. Look, there's a late-night access log here from Ethan’s own account!"

Ethan looked at Noah. The master manipulator had clearly prepared a backdoor. "You changed the timestamps, Noah."

"Don't defend yourself with baseless accusations," Eric cut him off sharply. "Ethan, you're too competitive in all the wrong ways. You're smart, but this fanatical honesty of yours makes you impossible to work with collaboratively. Why even expose this? If the company is profitable, why should we care about a 30% difference?"

Raphael, who had been standing behind Eric, held his breath as if he were about to explode. "Unbelievable. This old man is actually brainless. Let me turn his office chair into cactus thorns, Ethan! Just once!"

Ethan didn't blink. "I don't care about the company's profits, sir. I'm just following my work standards."

"Work standards? You don't have a career!" Eric stood up, his face flushed. "You're suspended. Don't bother coming in for three days, perform an ethics review. Noah, continue with the client. We don't need people who are busy calculating morality when we have numbers to chase."

Noah stared at Ethan with the smirk of a predator that had successfully caught its prey. "I feel sorry for you, Ethan. Maybe next time, find evidence that can't be flipped on you if you want to play chess."

Ethan didn't fight back. He just nodded, took his flash drive, and walked out of the room with his dignity intact, even though his career had just taken a massive hit.

When he reached the office lobby, Ethan didn't look like a loser. Instead, he stopped by the cafeteria, ordering a hot sweet tea and a cheap chocolate donut.

Raphael sat across from him, taking off his sunglasses in frustration. "You caught the thief, you served the facts on a silver platter, and you still got punished! Why? Why can you still swallow that donut so calmly?"

"Because I already told you, Raphael," Ethan said, chewing his donut. "I spoke the truth. How the world twists it into a mistake is not my concern."

"You just threw away the only weapon that could have gotten you promoted! That was a completely pointless 'victory'!" Raphael shouted so loudly that the cafeteria server looked over, feeling a sudden chill in the air.

Ethan gave a faint smile. "Maybe it's useless to you. But at least Noah knows that someone is watching his schemes. He won't sleep soundly tonight because he realizes Ethan Gray won't just let everything go smoothly."

"And what's the point if you're the one off for three days?"

"Three peaceful days," Ethan replied while sipping his tea.

Suddenly, an office boy who was usually overlooked walked by and tapped Ethan on the shoulder. "Sir, I saw something on the hallway CCTV earlier. Don't worry, I recorded who used a fake ID card to access your office last night."

Ethan looked up, his eyes widening slightly.

"Just in case you need proof for the board of directors," the office boy continued in a whisper, then left before Ethan could respond.

Raphael was stunned, his mouth hanging open until his shadow on the table became blurred. "Wait... was that a miracle? Did the universe finally decide to side with patience?"

Ethan looked at the flash drive in his hand, then stared at the office full of people stabbing each other in the back.

"Not a miracle, Raphael. Just a little bit of luck," Ethan said with a slightly more relieved tone. "This world always has a gap for people who are willing to endure, even if that victory won't make people like Eric feel guilty."

"Still! That's a victory that means nothing!" Raphael still couldn't accept it. "You can destroy Noah with that tomorrow!"

"Tomorrow?" Ethan shook his head. "Tomorrow, I just want to enjoy my three days off with a nap."

Raphael let out a long sigh, floating upward until his head almost touched the cafeteria chandelier. "You are truly the least ambitious human I have ever known. You should be a legend, but instead, you're satisfied being a man who just needs a nap after doing his 'right work'."

"Success isn't always loud, Raphael," Ethan concluded, finishing the rest of his donut.

In the distance, Noah Ryker walked out of the building with hurried steps, busy on his phone, trying to cover the traces of fear behind his fake smile. Meanwhile, Ethan Gray sat relaxed, without pressure, without fiery resentment. He had just won a small victory that, to the world, meant absolutely nothing.

But inside Ethan, that victory felt like liberation. And to Raphael, this man looked more nonsensical by the second, harder to define, and more terrifyingly, he found himself not wanting Ethan to stop what he was doing.

The sun began to tilt toward the west, its rays streaming through the lobby glass, illuminating Ethan with a glow that, to the eyes of an angel like Raphael, looked far brighter than any heavenly light he had ever witnessed.

The world might have won for today, but Ethan, he held the reins to his own days. And that, in the end, was something even ancient angels could never achieve amidst the loud drama of humanity.