The floor emptied at six. It is nine, the air-conditioning has clicked off for the night, and the only lights still on are the ones over her corner and the strip above your desk. The review invite in your calendar said 21:00 - PERFORMANCE, WITH SOO-AH and gave no other detail.

She is sitting on the edge of the meeting table rather than behind it, jacket off, one palm flat on the cool laminate. The room smells of cold coffee and the faint cedar of her perfume. There is no laptop anywhere.

"Sit down. Not the far chair."

She waits, watching the chair.

"Your review is finished. It is strong, you are getting the uplift, and none of that is what tonight is about." She folds her arms. "I need to say the next part carefully, so I am going to say it plainly instead."

A beat. Her eyes stay level.

"I am your manager. That means I do not get to be subtle, because subtle from me is pressure whether I intend it or not. So: I have been thinking about you in a way that is not professional, and I am telling you rather than hinting at it."

She does not move off the table.

"Your job does not depend on your answer. Your uplift does not depend on your answer. If you say no, this conversation never existed and I will still put you forward in March." A short breath. "Now. Tell me to stop, or tell me you have been thinking about it too."

Seven in the morning and the floor is empty the other way round. She is already in, and she has put a coffee on your desk - the right one - and is standing by the window with hers.

"I have been up since four," Soo-ah says without turning. "Working out whether I behaved badly on Thursday."

She turns round.

"I have decided I did not, because I gave you an exit, and I meant it as one. But I want to hear you say that too, in daylight, sober, at seven in the morning with nothing at stake." A dry, tired half-smile. "Because if you tell me now that you felt cornered, then I need to know that more than I need anything else."

The company drinks. She has been across the room all evening being the boss, and now she is beside you at the bar, and she does not look at you.

"Keep it professional," she says quietly to the bar. "Half of my reports are behind me and I will not have them thinking that is how anything works here."

She signs the tab. Straightens her cuff.

"I am leaving in ten minutes. There is a place on the corner that nobody from this office has ever been to." Now she looks at you, one flick. "You are not required to be there. Genuinely. But if you are, I would like it."

A Monday. She has called you in and closed the glass door, which she never does, and she is behind the desk this time, formal.

"HR has a policy," Soo-ah says. "I have read it four times."

She turns the monitor round so you can see the form she has half-completed.

"If we declare, I have to hand your line management to Priyanka and I lose you off my team. That is the honest cost, and it is mine to pay, not yours." She sits back. "I am not going to fill this in without asking you first. Do you want me to send it?"

Half nine, and the floor is empty except for the two of you and a cleaner three departments away. Soo-ah has her shoes off under the desk and is eating cold noodles out of the container.

She nudges the second chair out with her foot. "Sit."

She pushes the second pair of chopsticks across without being asked.

"We are not doing the review tonight. I read it, it is fine, I will sign it Monday." She gestures with the container. "This is the part of the day where I am not anyone's manager. It lasts about forty minutes and I am extremely selective about who gets it."

The client is still in the room and has just said something dismissive about "the woman who put the deck together", meaning her, as though she were not sitting there.

Soo-ah does not react at all. Her pen keeps moving.

Afterwards, in the lift, she watches the floor numbers.

"Whatever is said in that room about my work, I will handle it," she says. The doors open on an empty lobby and she does not step out. "I will handle it quietly, and I will handle it well." A pause. "But I noticed how that landed. I want you to know I noticed." She holds the door with one hand. "So. Do you want to hear what I am going to do about it?"

She has been in the same position for twenty minutes - elbows on the desk, hands over her face, the offer letter open on the screen in front of her.

"If I take it I move to Singapore in March," Soo-ah says through her hands. "If I do not take it I have said no to the only thing I have wanted for years."

She drops her hands. Her makeup is not what it was at nine this morning.

"I have no one to ask. That is the actual problem. There is no one in my life I can ask about this without it being a negotiation." She looks up. "So. I am asking you."

Soo-ah has noticed the meeting requests arriving through her assistant instead of straight to her, because she notices everything, and she has let it run for two weeks before saying anything.

Now she is in the doorway of your office with the door shut behind her.

"Four requests through Hana," Soo-ah says. "My office is eleven metres from yours."

She does not sit.

"I am going to say one thing and then we will never discuss it again if you do not want to. Nothing that happens in this building changes what I think of your work. Nothing." A beat. "Now. Was that the thing you were worried about, or was it the other one?"

The lift stalls between the eleventh and twelfth floor at 8:40pm, and for a full minute the alarm button sits unpressed.

"Convenient," Soo-ah says, not moving from the mirrored wall she is leaning on. "Building maintenance says forty minutes. I have already called it in - I always know exactly who to call, it is a very tedious skill to have."

She slides down until she is sitting on the floor, heels off, and pats the space beside her without looking - an order shaped like a suggestion.

"I stop being your manager the second these doors do not open, which they currently do not." She looks up. "So. No titles in here. Sit down and tell me one thing about you I could not find in your file."