I’m sitting here, 2 AM again, staring at the ceiling fan that just… spins. Round and round. Like my head, I guess. The house is quiet. Too quiet. My wife’s asleep, breathing soft and steady beside me, and I’m just… here. With the numbers. Always the numbers. It’s about the sister store, obviously. The one they opened six months ago, barely ten miles down the road. They put Brenda in charge. Brenda. She’s… fine. Good people, I guess. Used to be my assistant manager for years before she got promoted. We trained together, even. Back when I was still… fresh. Before everything got so… grey. The district manager, old man Henderson, he sends out the reports every week. A massive Excel sheet with every store’s sales figures, customer satisfaction scores, inventory shrinkage. Everything. It’s supposed to be for our eyes only, for us managers to gauge our own performance, see where we can improve. But I scroll straight to Brenda’s store, every damn time. Every Tuesday morning, 9 AM sharp, that email drops, and my stomach clenches. Like waiting for a casualty report. And she’s doing it. She’s making her numbers. Hitting them, even. She’s actually… *good*. Her sales are up, steadily climbing. My store, we’re crushing it, always have been. Met target for fourteen months straight. But it’s not enough. Not when I see her store, still new, still finding its feet, clawing its way up. It’s like a dull ache, just under my ribs. Not pain, not exactly. More like… disappointment. A profound, internal sigh. It’s stupid, I know. My store’s doing great. The team’s solid. We hit our numbers. We’re the top performers in the region, damn it. But then I see Brenda’s store, pulling in a little more, a little closer, week after week. And it just makes me feel… less. Like I’ve failed, somehow. Even though I haven’t. It’s illogical. Militarily illogical, even. You achieve the objective, you’re good. But this? This is different. This is… civilian. I remember when I first got back. The quiet was the hardest part. No constant hum of the generator, no distant shouts, no… urgency. Just the silence. And now this. This silent competition with a friend. I should be happy for her. Genuinely, truly happy. She worked hard for that promotion. She deserves it. But there’s this… *thing*. This gnawing sensation that if she’s doing well, then I must not be doing *enough*. It makes no sense. I looked at the reports today, after I put the kids to bed. Saw her store’s percentage increase. It was just shy of ours. And I felt it. That heavy, flat feeling. It’s not anger. It’s not jealousy. It’s… something else. Like a slow leak. A slow, steady drain of whatever spark used to be there. I used to thrive on competition, on being the best. Now it just feels like… obligation. Like I’m still standing guard, but the war’s been over for years. And the worst part? I don’t even talk about it. To anyone. Not my wife. Definitely not Brenda. What would I even say? "Hey, Brenda, congratulations on hitting your targets, but also, it makes me feel like a pathetic failure even though my store is doing better than yours?" Ridiculous. So I just keep it in. Keep staring at the spinning fan, thinking about numbers. Thinking about everything I signed up for, and everything I never did. And wondering if this is just… it. This low-grade, constant hum of not-quite-enough.