Glass Breakage (Short Story)

Fatma did not quite know what the company did; but she was certain that it had to be an important business—or at least had to appear so. Is there not a significant gap between the actual function of many institutions and the seriousness they claim to embody? A young employee, at first, submits to this seriousness. The weight of the desks, the spotless glass partitions, the sense of formality conveyed by the ID cards everyone wore around their necks, the elegant yet menacing names given to meeting rooms—all these spoke less to the nature of the work being done than to the aura of prestige that had been constructed around it.

Fatma had been working there for six months. Six months is long enough for a person to believe they belong somewhere; but it is also long enough to realize they belong nowhere at all. The company was large, warm, and expensive. Darkened metal beams ran along the ceilings; everything was arranged with industrial simplicity, but this simplicity had been achieved through the expenditure of serious money. Glass usage was striking. Meeting rooms, manager offices, quiet work corners, even the small rest areas separated by partitions—all were made of glass. It was as if the institution had decided that the greatest compliment one could make about it was the word “transparent,” and had resolved this not through words but through interior architecture.

Managers also loved glass—especially talking about it. During one morning meeting, one of the managers, coffee cup in hand, said with unexpected seriousness: “Glass is the most fragile form of perfection.” This had been written down. He continued: “Corporate structure is the same. Strength is not enough. It must appear flawless.” This too had been written down. Fatma had written it as well, though by lunchtime she could no longer recall what she had written. On her notepad she had only scrawled: “Glass = trust? loyalty.”

Fatma was a well-meaning girl. She was from Bilecik, and when appropriate, she would mention it, always smiling with a touch of provincial charm. She was slightly awkward, but she knew how to hide it. Her curiosity outweighed her fear; whatever happened to her usually came because of it. She had a habit of making poor jokes, and when she was tense, she would snap the tip of her left ring finger without anyone noticing. She thought this was a small, insignificant, personal gesture; yet here, the insignificance of certain behaviors was often exaggerated by the person performing them.

That day at lunch, she was going to eat with her colleagues. When lunchtime arrived, the company briefly acquired a semblance of genuine sincerity: shoulders relaxed slightly, laughter broke free from formal tones, and schedules on screens gave way to gossip about meals. Fatma walked beside Sinan, a senior employee. Sinan had been exposed to corporate life long enough to seem as if he believed everything at once while taking nothing seriously.

She walked a little from her office, descended the stairs—nineteen steps. As she passed in front of the red panel, she shivered for no reason. She checked her pocket and kept walking. As they passed the human resources desk, Fatma’s eyes caught a thick file lying there as if forgotten. Until that moment, the corridor had been utterly ordinary; with the next step, ordinariness gave way to an unsettling sense of something unforeseen. On the cover of the file, in large, neat letters, it read: DEATH RECORDS 2028

Fatma stopped.

The other three did not stop; but the sudden stillness of a junior employee created a slight disruption in the company’s rhythm, forcing them to turn back. Fatma pointed to the file. Her face had gone pale, but she tried to keep her voice reasonable.

“There…” she said, “what does it say there?”

Sinan looked. The others looked too. Now, on the cover of the file, it read: DEPARTMENT RECORDS 2028.

“Department records,” Sinan said easily. “What is it?”

Fatma did not answer. The shared misfortune of those who have misread something is this: even if they are truly mistaken, for the first few seconds they seem more than justified. But Fatma was certain. She remembered the shape of the letters, the coldness of the word, the unnecessary bluntness of “death.” She had not imagined it; she had only seen it.

“It said ‘death,’” she said.

Sinan smiled faintly. “Ms. Fatma,” he said, “we are still in 2026. The only thing the institution has planned for 2028 might be overtime hours.”

This remark, by company standards, was quite bold humor, and the group politely laughed. Fatma almost laughed too; but sometimes laughter is the first step toward denying what one has seen. Instead, she chose to defend herself with a bad joke.

“Maybe human resources is very visionary,” she said. “They may have moved performance evaluations a little ahead.”

No one laughed this time. Fatma, embarrassed by the suspended sentence, gently snapped her ring finger. The sound was very soft, but to her it seemed as if all the glass surfaces in the corridor would refuse to echo it.

In the afternoon, the company’s lighting changed. At this hour, all offices gained a slight moral weight: work slowed, people grew tired, and words became harder to pronounce as easily as they had in the morning. Fatma sat at her desk but was not working. Her eyes kept drifting to human resources every few minutes. The file was gone now. The desk was tidy—impossibly tidy. So tidy that claiming a file had been there moments before seemed like an act of crude imagination. Yet Fatma’s mind showed no sign of letting go of the matter. New employees usually mistake institutional flaws for personal sensitivities; veteran employees accept their personal sensitivities as the company’s natural climate. Fatma had not yet reached this second stage. She stood up and walked past human resources as if going for coffee. The spines of the files on the shelves caught her eye: Hiring Projections, Natural Flow Plan, Critical Position Continuity. Individually, these were perfectly innocent phrases; together, they were arranged with unsettling precision.

Just then, a soft voice came from behind her.

“Fatma?”

As everyone else did, she turned. Gülçin Hanım, head of human resources, stood beside her desk. Anyone seeing her for the first time might assume that only good-natured things were said here. Her hair was neatly arranged, her voice measured, her expression carried a quiet concern for employees’ mental well-being. Yet there is a shared trait among well-bred corporate individuals: even when they try to comfort you, they can make you feel as if you are being evaluated.

“Do you have a moment?” asked Gülçin Hanım. “Shall we talk in the glass room?”

The glass room was in the center of the office. It was both visible and enclosed—ideal for companies. What mattered in conversations held there was not their privacy but their form. Inside, Gülçin Hanım told her to sit. On the table were a glass of water, neatly aligned pens, and a decorative glass weight. The company’s aesthetic preferences were flawless enough to heighten one’s unease.

“How is it going?” asked Gülçin Hanım. “Are you settling in?”

Such questions are never answered honestly. Fatma gave the expected answer.

“It’s going well.”

“I’m glad,” said Gülçin Hanım, smiling. “Sometimes in the first months, the pace of work makes things seem different than they are.”

Fatma did not stay silent. “I saw a file,” she said. “At lunch.”

There was no change on Gülçin Hanım’s face. “A file?”

“On the HR desk. On the cover—it—” She paused. Saying the word felt as if it would alter the temperature of the room. Still, she said it. “It said ‘death records.’”

Gülçin Hanım tilted her head slightly. The gesture was masterfully placed between understanding and confusion.

“You thought so?”

This was the most delicate form of denial. She did not say the file did not exist; she merely planted a small, soft question mark over Fatma’s perception.

“No,” said Fatma, “I didn’t think so. I saw it.”

“Fatigue,” said Gülçin Hanım sweetly. “Sometimes words blend together, especially when the mind is scattered.”

“My mind is not scattered.”

“I have no doubt,” came the reply. It sounded like a compliment, but it was not. “Alone, the terminology here can seem harsh at first: process, flow, closure, departure… Corporate language sometimes forms unnecessary kinships with personal life.”

Fatma looked closely. Gülçin Hanım neither acknowledged nor outright denied the file’s existence. Instead, she wove a delicate uncertainty around the word, the cover, and the moment. Within this uncertainty, being right was as exhausting as being wrong.

“So there is no such file?” asked Fatma.

Gülçin Hanım gently turned her glass. The glass caught the light for a moment, then dimmed.

“Fatma,” she said, “sometimes trying to explain something only makes it seem larger than it is. It is healthier not to dwell on such small misreadings.”

Small misreadings. Fatma fixated on the phrase. For something to be called small, must it not first exist? But Gülçin Hanım looked so serene that one could only doubt oneself—or accept whatever it was…

“I did not misread it,” said Fatma, but this time her voice was weaker than before.

Gülçin Hanım smiled. “Of course,” she said. “Shall we go back now? The second half of the day always feels longer than the first.”

Thus the matter was closed—at least by institutional standards. Institutions close many things not by solving them, but by aesthetically ending the conversation. Fatma returned to her desk. Sinan, across the aisle, looked at her, then pretended not to. On his screen, a meaningless chart was open. Everyone appeared to have returned to work. Perhaps they truly had.

As evening approached, the color of daylight changed in the office windows. A golden-orange glow made the glass partitions appear more vivid than ever. In such hours, people believe they can see the inside of things. Fatma looked at her computer but was not reading anything. Her eyes, without awareness, drifted to the glass room across from her. No one was inside. Then they moved to the HR desk. Nothing unusual was visible there. Everything was in its place. Perhaps the whole issue was precisely this: everything being more than perfectly in place.

For a moment, she remembered the cover she had seen at lunch: black letters, the certainty of the number, the nakedness of the word. She wanted to snap her left ring finger to silence herself. Just then, a very faint sound came from the glass partition opposite.

At first she thought it came from her own joint. Then she realized it came from the glass.

A very fine, very measured cracking sound.

She raised her head. A hairline crack had appeared on the glass surface, starting at eye level. It did not even move downward slowly; it simply was there. As if it had always been there and the light had only now made it visible. There was no impact, no panic, no one turning to look. The office continued working. Keyboards clicked, a printer in the distance pulled paper, someone whispered about the next meeting. The world did not pause for even a second because of that tiny line.

Fatma did not move.

The crack in the glass was not proof of anything. It was not a warning, not an explanation, not even a threat. It simply was there—thin, precise, and profoundly quiet. Gülçin Hanım was speaking to someone at her desk, Sinan stretched back in his chair, and the office prepared for its ordinary evening.

Fatma looked at the line on the glass.

The line seemed to be looking back at her.

And sometimes, in the most unsettling moments of life, a person learns nothing at all—only that a piece of glass is no longer as flawless as it once was.

***

TO BE CONTINUED