Shen

The conference room was buzzing. Three hundred people—investors, top managers, competitors—were waiting for Shen, the company's chief analyst, to speak.

Shen adjusted his glasses and plugged the cable into his laptop. The desktop appeared on the huge panel. The background image, everyone saw it.

Wallpaper. Shen and his wife. They're sitting on the living room couch, huddled close. Shen has his arm around her shoulders, clutching a pink hair tie to his chest with one hand. The one with the funny bow that she kept losing, and Shen kept carrying it in his pocket to try to retrieve it.

Silence fell over the room. Then someone snorted. Then the cameraman laughed. And a wave of laughter washed over the room. Shen froze. His face slowly flushed, from his neck to the tips of his ears.

“I… that…” Shen squeezed out. “It’s not part of the presentation.”

Shen wanted to disappear into thin air. He instinctively patted his jacket pocket and felt the elastic band. It was still there. The girl had forgotten it again that morning.

Finally, the laptop gave in, and the screen flickered—the first slide had loaded. But the audience was still giggling. Shen cleared his throat. His voice trembled, but he pulled himself together.

That evening, his wife found a new wallpaper on Shen's desktop: his company's official logo. He'd written underneath, "No romance, just business." She just laughed and kissed his red cheek.

"I got the recording from that conference. Want to see what it all looked like from the outside?" She continued to laugh at her husband, who was already at his wits' end.