Charms of the Gifted

Morning cleared for Yumi quickly. Short on sleep and crammed with as much knowledge as she could, she went into the presentation. It wasn’t the worst situation she could have been dumped in. Repeating what had already been figured out made it much easier to do. Thankfully, confidence wasn’t something that she lacked and she could sell convincingly as well.

Enough of the pieces were in front of her to not make it a completely blind experience. Outside variables still remained, but she felt like she had prepared for it well enough to clear the objective. Yumi could maintain a calm mostly through the presentation as a result.

There was the odd outlier that she had to deal with, but she learned how to turn those disadvantages around. One benefit was having Kasuse with her in the meeting. It did make her wonder why she was the one presenting, if he had troubles with it. Even Miki suggested having him replace her.

But she took it head on. In her mind, she needed to do this because it was going to be her life while in the world. There was no escaping what they laid out for her. So it just made sense to get used to doing it now rather than putting it off until later. Learning the read of the room for presenting in a prepared setting was valuable.

She could watch everyone at the table and see what they did like and how they reacted. They didn’t seem as inspired as she could get from people in Aya’s world, but she had developed a reputation at that point. She had to remember that this was a reset.

Chapter 557 - Charms of the Gifted

Fortunately, the meeting ended with no real troubles. Yumi cleaned up what she brought to the meeting as everyone started to move towards the door. She glanced up seeing Miki talking to the client and another individual that she didn’t recognize. They didn’t get introduced in the meeting, so she should have already known who he was or it wasn’t important to know his name.

Yumi narrowed her eyes a little, bothered by the display a little. Miki laughed in response to something and the client was clearly making unwarranted glances at her. ‘She knows what he’s doing. I can see it in her eyes, but she’s not doing anything...is this the reality...staying silent when that happens?’ Had it been Aya’s world she could have had them ejected or punished. Often she didn’t even need to take action as others would move.

‘Does it not bother her? She’s just pretending nothing’s happening…’ Miki escorted the client out and disappeared out of Yumi’s sight. The rest of the room followed other than Maso who remained behind. “Glad I didn’t faint again,” she opened.

“A normal day. We can close out another client.”

Pulling the rest of the papers together in a stack, Yumi finished her cleaning. “That’s not the read I got from them. They looked happy, but not convinced.”

“It was a rush job, they knew what they were asking. But things will get smoothed over and they’ll sign.”

There was a sudden confidence in what he said. ‘He strongly believes what he said. Why? What does he know?’ Yumi walked around the table towards him preparing to return to their desks. “How can you be so sure? They could go somewhere else.”

“They can’t and they knew it. They waited too long, so they have to accept if they want any sort of visibility for their new tea flavor. But more than that, they’re dealing with the best closer we have.”

Yumi looked back at the doors to where Miki had left. She thought back to the records of what she read about Miki. ‘He might be meaning that man I didn’t recognize, but I’m guessing it’s Miki instead. But she’s a closer? I thought she was just management…’ There was admittedly a lot that she still didn’t understand about the company or what everyone did. “I guess you’re right. Though I can’t help but feel like I could have done more.”

“Don’t sweat it, Mizuno. If we’re being honest, I’ve never seen you talk so well before. I never would have guessed that you were sick yesterday. I think they’re just trying to play hardball with us to get a better deal.”

‘So I wasn’t very good at public speaking?’ She knew that she had no hopes of mimicking her stand in before she came. And if she was being truthful, she had no intentions of matching whatever she had done. This was her story and she had to make this her own rather than live in someone’s shadow, even if that might have been her own.

Kasuse picked up some of the materials from her to help out as they walked to the door. “But even playing hardball they’ll be putty in her hands. No one says no to her. She’ll get them to sign the papers.”

“That’s a little frightening.” Yumi had a few thoughts on what he might be implying from what he already witnessed. However, they were only thoughts for now. She had to see more of Miki to be certain.

He chuckled a little. “If you’ve got it to use, might as well.”

Watching him, he didn’t seem bothered by what he was implying. Having worked under Miki and at the company, it was probably just natural for him. Which meant that she should just accept it as well. However, she had trouble doing so. ‘This is more than a little troubling...I need to know if Miki is the one or not. I’m starting to think that she’s not.’

They made it back to their desk and Kasuse gave a positive thumbs up gesture to the rest of the team as Yumi put her things away. Shigeki barely gave much of a reaction physically, but she could see that he acknowledged it and seemed relieved. Ogura gave a small polite clap.

“That’s one more job down,” he replied. They were still working on their own job that would be wrapping up by the end of the week, only two days away. Yumi wondered if it would be Ogura that presented given Shigeki’s personality.

Pushing the drawer closed, she looked around at the team. “We’ve got the Soseki job now. The two of you still going to be free for brainstorming after lunch? I’ve already started going over the details, this is going to be a problematic one.”

“When are they not, eh?”

“You’re not wrong, but it’s going to be a tight deadline, tighter than normal. So we’re all going to need to work on this one.”

“Look at Mizuno taking charge.”

She could see that Ogura was just teasing, though he also hid behind some of his unease about her taking command. As she had to reminded herself, they were without a leader mostly left with Miki providing any sort of direction. “It’s a special circumstance. It doesn’t have to be me, I’m not trying to control things, just wanted to get things moving quickly.”

When she tried to offer it up to him, he backed away and she knew that he would. Between his current work and usually being put into a corner on the spot, the standard response would be to deny rather than accept. “I don’t want that trouble.”

Yumi smiled warmly over to Kasuse silently asking him for his opinion. “I saw you in that meeting. You want to take point of this, that's fine.”

And naturally Shigeki gave no response with his silence rejecting the idea as well. “Alright, Kasuse, we’ve still got a little bit of time before lunch so I want to go over the book with you so we can start prepping for the meeting. You saw the email from Miss Tomori?”

“Yeah, they’re really not giving us a lot to work with right now…”

“We’ll make it work. Let’s get some tea and start.”

Most of the day passed in such a manner for Yumi and the team. She needed the brainstorming meeting so that she could start seeing how they thought and understand the mind of someone trying to sell a product. Watching commercials wasn’t the same thing and putting it together. She never imagined that it would be easy, but it certainly showed her how much her mind needed to shift.

Playing the field carefully, she learned a lot in the day to help start getting her head around it. The only stress for her was that they had almost no time to come up with a plan and materials. She still needed to learn more about how this worked, but they were already putting her in a trial by fire.

Near the end of the day after long discussions they had at least a vague outline. She had tried to use plans that they had done before that she found in emails and personal files. It was a little cheating, but they produced results. So she couldn’t turn it down and they agreed.

“Kasuse, you free tomorrow for an on-the-job trip?”

He leaned around his partition to Yumi a little confused. “What you got cooking now? And on the company’s time?”

“I was doing some research into our author and found a few things that might be of value. He’s from Hino out on the west side of Tokyo and there’s a popular little bookstore that he always went to for his inspiration. A meet and greet signing and cross promotional with the store should be a good way to get some local support.”

The young man crossed his arms thinking about her suggestion. “He’s a debuting author, that’s a little unusual, but something local rather than big would still be in budget. It’d help out the store, so I can’t see why they would turn down the advertisement. Yeah I like it. You got approval?”

“I will before you leave for dinner.”

“Woah,” he laughed, hearing how certain she was. “When did you become a shark?”

“Got to be bold if you want to succeed.”

“Is that right?”

“I read that somewhere.”

“I’ll remember that. With that attitude I believe it. 9am?”

“I’ll drive.”

“Looks like I’m working late, I’ll get you whatever you need for tomorrow.”

“Great!” Yumi stood up and walked over to the hallway. ‘I’ve got Kasuse motivated and onboard. And now I have a good excuse to talk to Miki…’ It wasn’t as though she put this together to see her. Still it worked out in her favor that she could use it as a chance. Though she wasn’t sure if she would learn much from this interaction.

The office for Miki wasn’t hard to find. She already had most of the floorplan for her floor memorized, but walking it for the first time was still different than seeing it on a monitor. She just hoped that there was nothing to get in her way. Yumi hadn’t actually bothered to check if Miki was available.

She knocked on the half open door to Miki’s office. The beautiful and charming woman that she faced sat behind her desk staring at her computer when she arrived, but looked up quickly. “Miss Mizuno, what can I do for you?”

‘Are you really the one I’m looking for? Who are you really, Miki?’