"Being late to anything is frowned upon and being late if you're the host of the meeting means not being present and ready fifteen minutes before the actual start time. We all sleep in sometimes, we are all human after all, but make it a habit and the people around you will begin to make assumptions. Take me as an example: what exactly is my word worth if I can't even keep my word on a trivial matter such as being on time for a meeting? Should people trust me with important tasks and information? As CEO, what does it say about my leadership or lack thereof if I'm late to everything?
However, it's not all about what people will think if tardiness becomes a habit, it's what it means for your reputation. Now, I don't know how it works where everyone reading comes from, perhaps it's different. But for me? The more bad habits I concur and display, the less respected I am, and, to be frankly honest, I don't think I have any respect to lose in a world run by old rich men with more millions in the bank than years left on the clock, and a whole lot more to prove. And so, I must dash, after all. Tardiness is a sin."
Not many people are huge fans of the morning rush hour traffic of a city that is home to one of the world's largest financial hubs. Scratch that. No one is a fan of rush hour traffic at all. The end. Period.
Although Selena Yingyue Zhao hadn't been stuck in morning rush hour traffic, well, ever, she knew she didn't want to make a habit of this. For someone who had watched everyone around her mask every single shred of emotion they ever felt since she could understand the concept, she had been on the brink of losing it more times than she cared to admit that morning. Ever since Elise had woken her that morning with progress reports number god knows what stuck to her cheek and a heavy suit jacket over her shoulders, Selena could have sworn that her heart had not stopped pounding in her ears. Selena had rushed home, against all rush hour traffic back to her apartment where she dumped her clothes on her bed and showered in record time. She had then somehow managed to make herself presentable, wrestle her hair into a semi-professional looking bun and slam out of the door in a whirlwind of business attire and stress. Now she was stuck in traffic, in the back of her town car, her fingers drumming holes through the doors.
The fact that they hadn't moved so much as an inch since five minutes ago was only adding fuel to the fire and she could feel her stress levels threatening to go straight through the proverbial roof.
"How long?" She demanded, her voice coming out much rougher and the question a lot harsher than she had meant.
"I'm sorry miss, I don't understand?" The driver looked as shocked as she and perhaps a little scared.
"I'm sorry, that came out way too strong. How long until we get there?"
"Umm, well miss, at the rate we are going, anywhere between ten minutes to an hour."
"Do I look like I have an hour?" Selena snapped and she peered out of the tinted windows. "How long is it walking from here?"
"Probably about fifteen minutes and -"
Selena didn't wait for the driver to finish his sentence. She wrenched the door open, swung her legs out and then proceeded to power march her way down the road in her five-inch stilettos with the sound of car horns beeping angrily in her wake. She dodged her way through the maze of cars and hiked her long skirt above her knees to step over the barrier and onto the pavement.
Although she did walk around regularly in five-inch stilettos, grass and motorway had presented new challenges and by the time Selena got to the headquarters building, it felt like her toes and the back of her heels were on fire or had been dipped in lava, or both if you're feeling dramatic. After racing through the front lobby, having a very one-sided argument with the elevator doors and refraining from punching the buttons and fifteen flights of floors later, she stood outside of the PR conference room.
Selena could hear the chatter inside the room and took a few seconds to calm her breathing and pop in a breath mint. Her entire body seemed to be quivering as she pushed the door lightly.
The meeting went by in a blur. The only thing she had ever experienced quite like this was an odd mix between lectures at university and being given homework at the end of the class, like when she had still been enrolled in elementary school. There had been an hour-long presentation with entirely too many unnecessary graphs being projected on the screens at the far end of the room so that by the end of the first half-hour, her vision was going wobbly. By the end of the meeting, Selena had to use every ounce of energy she had left to not stumble on her way out of the conference. She had been handed a multitude of different files, folders and far too many poly pockets with slid and slithered in her arms as if they were alive. It made her think of a scene from a TV show she had long since forgotten the name of where the main character had been forced to hold live eels in her arms.
She had barely managed three steps off of the elevator when everything came cascading out of her arms and tumbling to the ground. Folders burst open and the documents inside pooled out of files to create a disorganised mess of white sheets. The crash alerted Elise who came rushing out of her office in a hurry, hair flying and still clutching her stapler like one of the most resourceful weapons anyone had ever come up with.
"What on earth is all of that?" Elise stared incredulously at the mess on the floor.
"All the files from the PR meeting, apparently, the world is not taking the news that I am heading up this company very well at all. Apparently, there's already been several petitions from various peoples to have all of my actions frozen immediately and for someone more 'competent'," this Selena used air quotes with her fingers, "to take over." She paused slightly, grunting in a very unladylike fashion with the effort of trying to bundle an armful of slippery files back into the pile of similar files which already somewhat resembled the structural integrity of the leaning tower of Pisa. "They've also organised a press conference for Saturday night at the opening of the Spring Equinox Ball, so I guess there really is not getting out of it, huh?" Selena sighed a little.
"You didn't answer my question from before, why do you have so many files from a PR meeting?" Elise had bent down with practised ease that Selena admired and started deftly scooping files back into their respective rind binders and folders.
"I'm not too sure, people just kept piling things one on top of the other and by the end of the meeting, I was so eager to get away that I didn't really matter anymore. I just grabbed the lot, willy nilly, and left. I also need a coffee, a strong one."
Elise didn't say anything but raised a perfectly drawn eyebrow. "There's a coffee machine in my office, help yourself. I'll handle all of this, you finish up your work from yesterday. We've got an appointment this evening at 10 pm sharp and the Uncle does not take kindly to tardiness.
"Who's 'the Uncle'?" Selena asked while straightening the last of the piles of folders into neat piles.
"A business acquaintance from the Underworld, I'd stop asking just now and I'll fill you in later." There was a finality in Elise's tone that Selena dropped the subject like a hot potato and straightened herself back up before heading into Elise's office in search of the mystical coffee machine with the promise of coffee being the only motivator.
Three coffees and a microwave pasta later, Selena emerged from her office with circles darker than the inky black sky under her eyes and more energy than a hyper three-year-old having just been let loose in the sweet shop, she was slowly feeling the effects of her rapid crashing back to earth from her sugar high. Although she had sailed through most of her day with more caffeine than she had ever consumed (aside from that one night during her final year finals week, for which she had downed about two litres of energy drinks and coffee), she knew that she needed sleep and food. Time passed quickly and after her third day of non-stop over time, she had finally worked her way around her father's completely nonsensical organisation system, and with Elise's help, made headway with the mountains of paperwork and documents that had amassed on his empty desk in between the three weeks of her father's death and her arriving in the office. Elise, who seemed to be beyond human at this point to Selena, had sat all day in her office without complaint and diligently been chipping away at a mountain at least twice the size of Selena's own without a word of complaint.
After leaving the offices and dimming the lights of the CEO offices; a fairly long but comfortably silent journey down to the ground floor and nodding their farewell to the pair of security guards who stood at the grand main entrance to the Zhao Hai Industries head offices, the two women stepped out into the cool evening air. A chilly gust of wind sent a million icy daggers into her cheeks and shot think frozen fingers down her spine. Selena made a note to herself to remember to carry a scarf with her the next day and made do without by turning the collar of her trench coat up against the wind.
There was a town car waiting by the kerb and the two women climbed in. While the windows were tinted heavily for the utmost privacy so that all anyone could see from the outside was the reflective black glass; from the inside, had the most wonderful view of the head office building complex which, all lit up at night looked arguably more magnificent than it did gleaming in the natural daylight. The inside of all the town cars, as far as Selena was aware, the passenger end, i.e. all the back seats, were soundproofed for the convenience of those who rode in them to talk without having to censor every second word and so she tried to strike up a conversation with Elise beginning once again by asking about the identity of the 'Uncle'.
"You'll know who the Uncle is when you see him," Elise replied shortly before turning her head to look out of the window at the blur of colour speeding past. This conversation was clearly over before it had truly begun and Selena could only sit quietly, drumming her fingers while her mind whirred.
The longer they drove, the less crowded the streets became until they reached a part of town that Selena had never been before. It still had the distinct signs of the city, the same number plates on the backs of the cars, however, the place looked entirely different. Where the city was full of elegant buildings constructed with both regency era splendour and modernistic visionary in mind; the buildings here could have been described by only one word: decrepit. With peeling paint and missing letters from the fronts of shops; mass blocks of squat flats whose front doors didn't close and through the doors of which emitted strange multicoloured smoke and towering high rise estates where the flats swayed violently in the gusts of wind - the very thought of which sent a feeling of unease deep into the pit of her stomach. Instead of the LED lights that she was accustomed to, the lampposts emitted a sickly orange glow and even then, they were few and far between which resulted in patches and pools of orange dotted sporadically along the pavements. While they drove a police siren blared somewhere in the distance and two ambulance vans raced past a breakneck speed. Selena didn't want to think about what had happened only a few streets away.
"Where are we?" Selena asked quietly.
"The East End, come on, we're almost there." Elise's tone was grave and it startled Selena, "when you meet the 'Uncle', remember even if you recognise him, we will be in the company of others, so under no circumstances do you refer to him as his given name. To you, in public, he is the 'Uncle'."