"Boss! Wake up! We need to check on the supplies and make sure they are right! Oi! Stop lazing around!"

Layla felt something hit her hard, and her eyes snapped open.

Looking around, she found that something had not hit her hard. Rather, she had hit something hard.

She lay on the ground, looking up at the designer ceiling, which emitted lights of all colors over her head.

"How weird! I do not think historical times had such detailed ceilings filled with lights. No, there is no concept of light to begin with. Did I fall asleep and wake up after a thousand years?"

Layla wondered as she kept looking up at the lights.

She would have kept looking at it all day, but a shadow blocked her view and made Layla blink as she registered that she had other people around her.

"Tsk, did you get hurt too much, Boss? Did that fight yesterday cause your head injury to worsen? Do you even remember who you are and where we are?"

The shadow asked, and he sounded familiar…not so much in how he spoke, but his voice sounded familiar to Layla.

She was sure she had heard it before, but she could not find the place where she had heard it before.

"Let it go, man! The boss is just testing us all right now. You know her! She does this once or twice a few months. You are falling into her trap by paying attention to her."

Now, this voice was one that Layal knew very well.

It belonged to her secretary in her past life.

Layla might have been a mafia boss and part of the underground, but some of her business was legally done. To maintain that business, she needed people to operate it on her behalf.

One such person was her secretary in front of her.

"Boss! Get up now. What is wrong with you today? You are not usually this lazy, even when you get hurt. Are you sure you are not coming down with something worse? Should we go to the hospital-"

"No hospital! We cannot have the rumors spreading about me."

Layla's mouth moved, and her voice came out as well. But she did not feel like she was in control of herself.

Moreover, her voice sounded older than any other time she had heard it.

Layla reached out to check her throat and to make sure she was not missing anything. Her hands felt larger than she was used to, and even her height felt wrong.

Her whole body felt wrong, even more evident when she pulled herself up and blinked a few times to clear her vision.

She was far too tall compared to what she remembered.

"Was I always this tall? I feel a little awkward standing like this."

Layla complained, only realizing what she had done when silence engulfed the room.

For a whole minute, no one knew what to say to her, and they all looked at her awkwardly.

And then, her secretary laughed awkwardly to clear out the air.

"Come on, boss! You can be quite funny at times when you want to be. You wanted to make us laugh, right? Get back to your working mood, and we can head out."

The secretary covered for Layla, and she felt a little thankful for her help. Standing before her previous group with her new mentality felt much more awkward.

But the more time Layla spent there, the faster she could adjust to what she already knew.

Despite this familiar setting, Layla knew she was wrong to be there. She needed to return home and reassure her people that she was fine.

'I have too much responsibility back home to be playing around like this…. saying that, how do I get out of here? What even is this place, and how did I get here?'

Layla wondered as she tried to put pressure on her mind.

She did not remember anything that happened. All she knew was that she had hurt herself in a way that was not easy to endure, and she had gotten help at the last second.

Anything more than that had been a mystery to Layla, and her brain refused to tell her what had happened.

'It's fine. I can pretty much guess what happened based on the context clues. I am sure Mary came to save me and must have taken me to a doctor. But I should not rely too much on the outside help. I should try and look for an exit as soon as possible.'

Layla's brain felt scattered all over the place, but she could still make it focus and head out.

She had not even taken two steps outside when her secretary grabbed her arm and pulled her back inside.

"Boss, where are you going unsupervised? Do you not remember what happened and how you ended up getting injured? It is because you went into the enemy territory alone.

This time, we will not allow you to head in alone. If you are going to head in, then take some people with you. That way, we will feel much more relieved."

The secretary laid down her rules with a straight face. She would not budge on her wishes, and Layla sighed tiredly.

She saw no point in denying the people in her dream and making them suspicious of her, so she agreed to remove one of the most incompetent people.

Layla might not have remembered all the people from her past, but her memory was beginning to return as she spent time here. That also made her remember the most incompetent person she had ever met.

"Boss, not him! Anyone other than him would do. But we cannot leave your safety to someone like him."

The secretary was instantly against this, just as Layla expected. But Layla was not going to back down so easily. She needed that incompetent man to be her guard so that she could give him the slip and look around on her own.