Chapter 26: The HR Workshop Briefing
The week had been a blur of different floors, different fluorescent lights, the same exposed skin. Friday at Finance felt like a lifetime ago—the intense formality, the oil, the shocking release on Mr. Joe’s carpet. The following days at Liam’s, Sam’s, and Cole’s departments had been… different.Lighter.People had been playful. They’d poked his ribs, mussed his hair, challenged him to ridiculous contests of balance during breaks. Someone in Operations had produced a feather. Lunch outings became a daily event; a group of guys from Marketing took him to a ramen shop, laughing as they made him kneel by the table, his knees wide on the cool tile, calling them all ‘Master’ while other patrons stared. The shame was a constant, low-grade buzz, but it was overshadowed by something unfamiliar: a sense of belonging. They included him.They talked to him. The nakedness became less of a solitary punishment and more of a weird, shared uniform for social entry.He’d made friends. He’d felt, absurdly, happier.Wednesday morning, that fragile equilibrium shattered. The summons from HR was a cold glass of water to the face.The HR meeting room was a different kind of sterile. Not the lived-in, data-charged bullpen of Finance, but a void. The lights hummed a flat, monotonous note. The large oak table was polished to a lifeless sheen, reflecting the blank screen on the far wall. The chairs were rigid, upholstered in a grey fabric that seemed to repel warmth. Ken stood just inside the door.Pon was already seated at the head of the table, looking over a tablet.
“Ken. Close the door and take your posture, please,” Pon said, without looking up.The routine was absolute. Ken closed the heavy door with a soft click, sealing himself in the silent room. He walked to the open space at the foot of the table, directly facing Pon. He dropped smoothly to his knees on the hard carpet, the impact a familiar jolt.He spread them wide, feeling the stretch in his groin. He laced his fingers behind his head, elbows out, chest forward. The cool air of the meeting room brushed over his torso.A deeper chill settled in his stomach.
“Master Pon,” he said, his voice clear but hollow in the dead space. “Ken is ready for your service.”
Pon finally looked up, his gaze appraising.He smiled. It wasn’t unkind, but it was professional, like a doctor reviewing a chart.“At ease.You can relax your arms. We need to talk about the intern workshop this afternoon.”
Ken lowered his arms, resting his hands on his thighs, but kept the kneeling posture. “Yes, Master Pon.”
“Your 56-day punishment is about more than just departmental rotations,” Pon began, leaning back. “It’s about embodying Fah Rung’s core principle: absolute transparency. We strip away the barriers—the clothes, the ego, the pretense—to find the pure, functional core. That’s what you’re becoming. That’s what we need to show the interns.”
Ken felt his face grow warm.He stared at a faint scratch on the table’s surface.
“For the workshop, you will serve as the primary demonstration model.You will be present for the entire three-hour session.” Pon’s tone was conversational, as if listing software requirements. “You will kneel at the front of the room, in your standard posture, for the duration. Your physical state must reflect optimal readiness.That is non-negotiable.”
Ken gave a tight nod. His mind was already racing ahead, trying to map the logistics, the exposure.Three hours. A room full of strangers, interns, people who didn’t know him, who hadn’t gone through the playful hazing of the other departments.
“Furthermore,” Pon continued, “you will demonstrate, on command, the trigger point technique Master Leo documented. The interns need to understand the level of physical and systems control we cultivate here. It’s an engineering principle, made tangible.”
The memory of his own finger, the internal press, the mechanical response, flashed in Ken’s mind. Doing that… there.In front of everyone.A fresh wave of heat rolled up his neck.
“Finally,” Pon said, tapping his tablet screen, “there will be a Q&A segment. The interns will be encouraged to ask you questions about your experience.About the transition from prodigy to asset. About the psychological journey.You will answer every question with complete honesty. You will maintain your posture and your physical readiness throughout.” He set the tablet down and looked directly at Ken. “This is a critical function, Ken.You are not just a participant.You are the most vivid training aid they will have. Your clarity, your compliance, will shape their understanding of our culture. Do you accept this assignment?”
The question hung in the air.The hum of the lights seemed to grow louder. Ken’s knees ached against the hard floor. His mind, the part that used to solve complex strategic problems, presented him with the facts: total nudity, prolonged static exposure, a commanded public demonstration of a deeply private function, a psychological interrogation.It was a blueprint for utter dismantling.
And yet, beneath the dread, another current flowed.This was a purpose.A defined, essential role. He was no longer just being passed around for amusement; he was being utilized. His exposure had a strategic objective.He was the example.The backbone of the lesson.
He looked up, meeting Pon’s expectant gaze. The shame was there, burning in his cheeks, but his voice, when it came, was steady.“I accept, Master Pon. I will demonstrate transparency for the interns.”
“Good,” Pon said, his posture relaxing slightly.He glanced back at his tablet. “The schedule is set for this Thursday and Friday, two consecutive full days.” He looked up, watching for Ken’s reaction.“We’re hosting thirty university-level interns. All from Starlight.”
The name hit Ken’s nervous system like a live wire.His breath caught. The sterile room seemed to tilt.Starlight University.His university. The campus lawns, the library carrels, the graduate colloquiums where he’d once been the star. Now he’d be kneeling naked in front of its students.His throat tightened into a dry knot.
“Master Pon,” he heard himself say, the words strained. “If… if someone I know is in the group.Some of my juniors. Or my department.” He couldn’t finish the thought. The imagined faces flashed in his mind, juniors, professors’ assistants.
“Your official clothes for the workshop remain ‘naked’,” Pon stated, his tone matter-of-fact. He tapped the tablet screen.“The posture is non-negotiable. Knees spread, hands behind head, optimal physical readiness. You maintain it unless a Master-level instructs otherwise.” He paused, tilting his head.“But we are aware of potential… undesired friction. Recognition could distract from the educational objective.” He offered a thin, administrative smile. “You may wear a half-face mask. It will cover from your forehead down to the nose.”
Relief, thin and cold, trickled through Ken.It wasn’t cover.It was a veneer. But it was something to hide behind. A way to dissociate the body on the floor from the mind that once occupied a lecture hall.
“The mask will be prepared for you Thursday at eight-thirty,” Pon continued.“The workshop begins at nine. Be in the main conference room, posture established, by eight forty-five.” He stood, signaling the meeting’s end.
Ken bowed his head, his movements automatic.“Thank you, Master Pon. I appreciate the consideration.” He rose on aching knees, the muscles protesting the long stillness. He walked out of the HR chamber, the door sighing shut behind him.The corridor’s brighter lights felt harsh against his skin.
He made his way back to the Strategy & Foresight floor.The usual buzz of low conversation and clicking keys greeted him. He paused just inside the entrance, leaning against the doorframe.He watched his peers.
They looked sharp.Unified. The week’s designated attire was a black suit with a crisp white pinstripe, tailored and modern.It looked cool, powerful, like a team of sleek architects drafting the future. David was adjusting his cufflink by the window. Marcus and Todd were debating something over a shared monitor, their suited elbows resting on desks.Then there was him.Standing in the doorway, utterly bare. The punishment was the clothes, and his clothes were nothing. The contrast wasn’t just visual; it was a physical weight.He was the null set, the empty variable in their elegant equation.
He sighed, a brief exhale that did nothing to lift the hollow feeling in his chest. He walked to his assigned spot—not a desk, but a clear space of floor near Leo’s station.He lowered himself back onto his knees, arranging his limbs into the now-instinctive posture. The cool office air felt different now, charged with the impending future.Thirty-nine days left. He counted them in his head.The number felt both impossibly large and frighteningly small. After that, he’d get… clothes.The thought should have been a comfort. Instead, it felt abstract, a distant rumor from a country he no longer remembered how to get to.
Instead, it felt abstract, a distant rumor from a country he no longer remembered how to get to.Thursday morning arrived with the sterile clarity of a medical appointment. At eight-twenty-five, a junior HR staffer met him by the elevators with a plain white box. “Arms up,” the young man said, his tone bored. He fixed the stiff half-mask to Ken’s face, the material a dry paper against his forehead and cheekbones, the world narrowing to a slit for his eyes and the open hole for his mouth. It smelled of new cardboard and industrial adhesive.“Thanks,” Ken muttered, the word muffled.“Don’t mention it. Literally,” the HR guy said, already walking away.“Conference Main. You know the drill.”
The walk was a gauntlet of familiar corridors made alien. His bare feet knew every seam in the linoleum, every transition from cool tile to slightly warmer carpet. Today, each step vibrated with a new tension. The mask amplified his breathing, a soft rustle in his ears that isolated him from the building’s ambient hum.He pushed open the heavy door to the main conference hall.
The scale of the room always slightly stunned him. It was a vast, flat plain of beige carpet under a ceiling grid of relentless fluorescent panels. At the far end, a raised dais held a lectern and a massive projection screen, currently blank. A sea of empty chairs, perhaps two hundred, were arranged in perfect arcs. And in the center of the vast floor, a single blue mat had been placed.
A dozen HR personnel, including Pon, were already there, clustered near the dais setting up laptops and cordoning an area with subtle velvet ropes. They spoke in low, professional murmurs.One glanced over, gave a curt nod toward the mat.The instruction was clear.
Ken walked to the center.The carpet was dense and firm underfoot. He positioned himself on the mat, the blue a familiar island. He took a final, deeper breath behind the mask, the air tasting filtered and dry.He dropped to his knees.The impact was solid, final. He spread them wide, feeling the pull in his hips. He interlaced his fingers, locked his hands behind his head, elbows flaring out.He tilted his chin up, presenting his throat, his chest. He closed his eyes for a moment, finding the internal trigger point by memory, a subtle internal pressure. His body responded with a swift, clinical efficiency, the erection rising to full, obedient hardness. He was ready.He opened his eyes, staring at the closed double doors at the far end of the hall.
The HR team finished their preparations and formed a loose semi-circle behind him. He felt their presence like a wall. Pon checked his watch, smoothed his tie, and walked toward the entrance just as the large clock on the wall clicked to 8:58.Ken heard the murmur first. A gathering wave of young voices, shuffling feet, the clipped cadence of Pon’s welcoming speech muffled by the door.Then the handles turned.The double doors swung inward.
A stream of them flooded in, all in neat business casual, clutching notebooks and branded folios. Their faces were a blur of curiosity and cautious professionalism.They were so young. Their hair was recently cut, their shoes unscuffed. He saw a guy who looked like a younger version of Todd, another who had Jesse’s eager posture.His heart hammered against his ribs. He felt a hot, twisting spike of arousal so intense it verged on nausea, mixed with a dizzying shot of adrenaline. The embarrassment was a physical fever under the mask.He couldn’t look.He shut his eyes.
The rustle and murmur of the group filled the hall as they found seats in the front sections. Pon’s voice, now clear and amplified by the room’s acoustics, guided them. “Everyone find a seat up front, please.Today’s workshop is a deep dive into our operational support philosophy. At Fah Rung, we believe true strategy is underpinned by absolute, tangible support.”
Ken kept his eyes squeezed shut.The darkness behind his lids was a sanctuary. He focused on Pon’s voice, using it as an anchor.
“This is embodied by our Strategy & Foresight department,” Pon continued, his footsteps pacing slowly on the dais. “They are the essential backbone, the functional core that enables all other departments to excel. Their role requires complete transparency, a stripping away of distraction to achieve pure operational focus.”
A few soft chuckles, quickly stifled, came from the intern group. Someone whispered, “No kidding.”
“To that end,” Pon said, his tone shifting to one of instructive demonstration, “the physical state of an S&F asset mirrors the philosophical one. What you see here—” his footsteps came down from the dais, approaching—“is a live model of that principle. This is an S&F employee fulfilling a core demonstration function.”
Ken felt the weight of every gaze laser into his skin. He heard a pencil drop, a notebook page turning.He was trembling, a fine vibration in his thighs and shoulders. The excitement and the shame were a feedback loop, each feeding the other, tightening the coil in his stomach. He was profoundly, devastatingly hard.“Note the posture,” Pon said, now very close. Ken could sense him standing just to the side.“It is open, vulnerable, and yet structurally solid. The physical readiness is non-negotiable, a sign of constant operational capacity. This is not a punishment.It is a role.It is the role.”
Pon didn’t say his name. The relief was so sharp it felt like a puncture. He was ‘an S&F employee.’ A ‘live model.’ A ‘demonstration function.’ The mask allowed it. He was just the body in the center, the embodied idea.
“Now,” Pon said, his voice moving back toward the group.“Before we proceed to the structured workshop, are there any initial, observational questions? Keep it professional, please.”
A moment of silence.Then a voice, a young male voice, hesitant. “Sir?Is he… comfortable like that? It looks like it would hurt after a while.”
Ken almost opened his eyes.The question was almost kind.Naive.Pon answered smoothly. “Comfort is a relative term.Efficiency, clarity, purpose—these provide a different kind of support. He is performing his function. The posture is maintained through training and, as you’ll see, through specific physiological control mechanisms.”
Another voice, this one closer, bolder. “So it’s like… a machine? You just turn it on and it works?”
“Precisely,” Pon said, and Ken could hear the smile in his voice.“A conscious, dedicated machine. That’s the paradigm. Shall we demonstrate the ‘on’ switch?”