Slip : Part 3 : The Voice on the Stairs

 Sunny kept working with fierce focus until evening. Her summary sheet was almost done.

“Just a little more,” she thought, hopeful.

Finally, the end of the workday came. Her coworkers started packing up and leaving the office one by one.

“Sunny, you almost done?” Belle asked, turning around.
“Not yet. Still have to finish the summary and double-check everything — don’t want any more mistakes,” Sunny replied, eyes glued to her computer screen, one hand holding a pen as she traced the numbers on the monitor.

“Belle, come on!” someone called from the doorway — her friends from other departments. Right, they had plans to go for drinks at the bar near the office.
“Sunny! Wanna come?” one of them shouted.
“Nah, you guys go ahead,” Sunny said.
“Okay then! If you finish early, come join us! We’ll be there all night,” Belle said while packing her bag and leaving with the rest of the gang.

A few moments later, the office was completely empty.
Sunny was the only one left — working alone in the silence.

“Wow… I didn’t realize it could get this quiet when everyone’s gone,” she muttered to herself.

Although faint noises drifted up from other floors now and then, this room felt utterly still. She carefully checked every number, every letter, determined to make the report perfect — or at least as close as possible.

Time dragged on. The only sound left was the rhythmic clacking of Sunny’s keyboard echoing through the room.

“Ha! Finally done!” she exclaimed with relief. “Alright, just gotta drop this off on the boss’s desk — then I’m outta here!”

When she lifted her head and glanced at the window, it was already dark. She pulled out her phone.

“8:25 p.m.? Whoa, it’s already almost eight-thirty. If I head out now, I can still catch up with Belle and the others — grab a drink before heading home. God, my eyes are fried from staring at the screen all day.”

Sunny printed the finished report, slipped it into a file, packed her belongings, and hurried upstairs to the sixth floor — the boss’s office.

“Oh, Sunny! Weird to see you still here this late,” said a group of coworkers from another department who happened to be coming down the stairs.
“Had to fix something before I could leave. What about you guys?” Sunny asked.
“Same here — end-of-month rush! Anyway, we’re heading out. See ya!” they replied, waving as they chattered loudly down the stairs.

Sunny climbed quickly to the sixth floor, placed the file neatly on her boss’s desk, and turned to leave.

“Ugh, I’ll take the elevator. I’m exhausted — no way I’m walking all the way down,” she thought.

She walked through the hallway toward the elevator ahead. But just as she got close —

The lights went out.

Sunny froze. For a moment, everything was pitch black — until the ceiling lights flickered erratically, flashing on and off a few times before stabilizing. The building went quiet again.

“Right… this building is ancient. And it’s the weekend, so there’s practically no one else here. If the elevator gets stuck and I end up trapped… no one’s coming until Monday. And I’m supposed to go to the beach tomorrow — yeah, no. Not taking that risk.”

She decided to back away from the elevator and head toward the stairwell instead. The sounds of her coworkers were gone — they must have left the building already.

Sunny pulled out her phone to check the time.

“Still only 8:32 p.m.,” she thought, then sent a message to Belle:
‘Heading out now. You guys still at the bar?’

But a notification popped up:

“Message not sent. Tap to retry.”

She frowned, tried resending — one hand holding the phone, the other gripping the stair rail as she descended.

Again —

“Message not sent. Tap to retry.”

Sunny opened her phone settings to check the signal.

“What? No signal? Maybe because of that power flicker earlier,” she reasoned.

Stuffing the phone back into her bag, she continued walking down the stairs at a steady pace. Her mind wandered back to thoughts of her trip tomorrow — the sea breeze, the sunlight — until something made her stop.

“Wait… what floor am I on now? Why haven’t I reached the ground yet?”

Sunny frowned. Maybe she was just exhausted from all the work — maybe her sense of distance was off. She looked back up, seeing the flights of stairs she had just descended and the hallway of the floor above.

She sighed and turned forward again, continuing to walk down — step after step —
down, and down,
and down…

……………Sunny stood frozen on the stairway. She looked around, an uncanny, unfamiliar feeling creeping deep inside her chest.

“It’s taking too long…”

Her thoughts of the beach vanished. She turned her focus to her surroundings — the stairwell lights were still on, steady and bright. The silence, however, was so profound it made her ears ring, as if she were the only person left in the entire building.

When she reached the final step of the flight, she walked out into the corridor to check which floor she was on. And then—her face turned pale.

In front of her stretched a familiar layout of office departments, all lined up as usual. But to her right—something wasn’t right. That department… she knew it. It was her own office. The one she had been working in all day.

Yes—
It was her own office.

— To be continued... —

Slip #1,  Slip #2 , Slip #4,  Slip #5,  Slip #6,  Slip #7, Slip #8,  Slip #9,  Slip #10