#corporategirlies #riseandgrind #workstyle
Max and Edie were waiting for them by the boarding stairs. Max's arms were folded and she had a stormy expression on her face. But Edie, bundled up in a cream-colored, carefully coordinated hoodie and scarf, was on her phone.
"What?" Hailey asked, pink-cheeked in a wine-colored cardigan.
Edie looked up from her phone. "You were taking a while," she mumbled.
Hailey rolled her eyes. "I don't see Minnie or Faith here." She glanced over her shoulder. Hifumi was standing a little to the side, hands shoved in his pockets. He felt her eyes on him and met her gaze with a smile. She flushed and turned away, adjusting her beanie. Max gagged.
Edie shoved her phone in her pocket and checked her watch pointedly. "How much can they have to talk about?" she complained. This was primarily directed at Faith and Chris, who had been conferring quietly with each other for the past fifteen minutes.
Max shrugged. Hailey tapped her foot on the tarmac, visibly weighing the pros and cons of going back to Hifumi.
In the end, she didn't have to. Minnie and Faith jogged over to them shortly after, faces pale in the dawnlight. The sun had only just started to rise above the rooftop of the small private airport on the outskirts of Kyoto. The five of them stood there for a moment, watching as the three boys trooped over to Hailey's convertible, awkwardness radiating from their hunched shoulders. Natsuo, a silhouette at this distance, tipped his cap in their general direction and opened the door. Hailey had given him time off.
Faith was crying. Max elbowed her. "It's not the end of the world."
"We're going to have to carry her onto the jet," Minnie said (studded cardigan, carpenter jeans). But her eyes were a little red. Hailey coughed into her fist.
"I'm going to put you all in timeout," Edie threatened.
"Ooh, look!"
None of them so much as looked up. Faith folded her arms and turned away from the window. Outside, the Seoul skyline grinned up at her as the jet descended through the clouds.
"We've seen Seoul from above dozens of times," Minnie said. "Come over and vote, Faith. We need a tie-breaker."
Faith rose to her feet. Max shot her a Look as she flounced over. "Clearly you're not as broken up over Cain as you thought," she said.
Faith glowered at her. "I abstain."
Edie growled under her breath and played an audio clip with a swipe of her finger. The five of them sat in silence until it was over. Then she played another audio clip. "Choose. One?"
Minnie and Max raised their hands.
"Two?"
Edie and Hailey raised their hands. Faith's arms remained folded.
"Faith, vote."
"I don't wanna."
Hailey tipped back in her chair and raised her face to the ceiling. "Fine. No video. See if I care."
"I don't care either."
"Me either."
"Fuck it."
"Just upload it without background music," Minnie said. "I don't see why it matters?"
Max glared. "Traitor."
"We owe it to our fans," Minnie retorted loftily. "Try thinking about them for once."
She was in a forest, chasing a boy through the trees. She caught a glimpse of bone-white spurs, a forearm raised to shield a face. She ducked under a branch and pounced.
Max hissed and recoiled away from the sun, hairpin scraping over her scalp. Her sleep-clouded eyes snapped open and she scrambled away from Hailey, who was levitating above her bed, an evil grin on her face. A bucket of water dangled precariously in the air, droplets of water gathering on the rim. "What the fuck are you doing?" she screeched.
"Look at me," Hailey said, still grinning. "I can control the inertia of water."
"Fuck off." One of her pincers flipped her phone into her hand. Max checked it, vaulted off the bed, and swung into the bathroom. Tons of handlebars had been installed in her room at odd places to allow her to swing around without touching the ground, just like in the Kyoto apartment that she shared with Minnie. 'Course, in Seoul they'd all crashed at Hailey's because they'd landed there at ten in the morning yesterday and were starting their internship the next day. Which was today.
Max switched on the faucet. "We need to be there at seven," Hailey shouted. Max switched off the faucet.
"Why?" she hollered.
"Because I fucking say so."
"Fuck off."
"Language," Minnie said, somewhere in the distance. Hailey's Seoul penthouse was even bigger than her Kyoto one, if that was even possible.
They wound up in the main kitchen at some point, which was more of a place where food was arranged. (There were a few larger kitchens elsewhere where the actual food was prepared by the chefs.) Faith lobbed a cookie at her, which she caught. As expected from a collection of handcrafted cookies flown in from LA barely half an hour ago, it was delicious. "I thought you said you were going to cut down on the peanut butter," Edie said.
"Shut up and eat your chocolate lava."
Hailey's driver picked them up. When they were about halfway to the agency, Hailey asked for his name and nearly got them into a car accident as a result. But hey, they made it to their first day in one piece, so it worked out.
"Bye, Kyungsoo," Hailey said. She looked like she'd bitten into a lemon.
"Bye, Ms Chang."
"Bye, Kyungsoo," Minnie mimicked, as they walked into the lobby. Edie sniggered.
While they were waiting for the lift, Max snapped a picture of the directory and saved it to her drafts. "Which one are we going to, again?" Faith asked. "I counted, like, sixteen."
"Paragon Creative," Hailey said, staring out at the street. The back of the lift was transparent. "It's the biggest one. Idol-heroes. Media. Whatever." It went without saying that all of the companies in the building were under her sister's thumb. One of the biggest hero agencies in Seoul had recently eaten a nepotism scandal, so Minnie's and Edie's family's agencies were out. But Jessica Chang didn't run a hero agency, not officially at least, so this one had been approved. Maybe there had been some favors exchanged to grease the wheels, as was typical in Vietnam, but that wasn't Max's concern.
They didn't stop at Paragon first though, but on the highest floor. This one had to be by invitation, but the lift doors opened almost immediately and Jessica's PA took them to her office. Max had met Hailey's family before, but somehow Jessica looked subtly different every time. And it wasn't just that she'd changed her hairstyle and dyed her hair a subtly darker shade of brown.
"You've changed your nose again," Hailey said.
"Straightforward as always, Hailey," said Jessica dryly. She cast her gaze dismissively over the rest of them. "Sit." A short contract had been prepared for each of them. Max headed over to the one with her name on it and snatched up the pen, spinning it in her fingers, flicking from page 1 to page 5 and back again.
"This isn't Paragon Creative," Edie said. They looked up.
"I told Hailey you'd all be interning in the same place," Jessica Chang said coolly. "By the same place, I meant the same building. Hailey, you'll be working here-"
"OH, COME THE FUCK ON-"
"Minerva- your name's Minerva, right?- Minerva will be on the seventeenth. Jihye, Faith, you're on the eleventh floor. Edith, level 14. Maxine, level 12." Jessica raised her voice to drown Hailey out. "You have your assignments. The school has already approved them. No take-backsies. Chop-chop." Then, speaking directly to Hailey: "Shut up and be grateful for once in your life, you brat. Most kids your age would kill to intern here. I even exempted you from the mandatory HR orientation."
They dragged Hailey out into the corridor. Max glanced around the office. A handful of people hurriedly looked down as her gaze swept over them. "This is bullshit," Edie grumbled.
"We can still text," Minnie reminded them. "Like usual."
"Lunch?" Faith suggested bravely.
"Lunch," Max agreed.
Hailey threw her hands in the air. Behind her, a potted plant tilted backwards and fell to the ground, scattering soil across the carpet. A soft cry of dismay went up from a nearby cubicle. "Fuck it. Lunch."
They went back in and signed.