Learned Confidence

Questions filled Yumi’s mind while she stared at Miki. With just the two of them in the room, she wasn’t sure how many she would get answered, especially since she wasn’t planning on staying long. It would probably end up being a bad time to try to get more out of her. ‘I’ll probably have to just observe her from a distance. I can’t rush this…’

Yumi stepped into the room two steps with the acknowledgement and greeting from Miki. It gave her a clearer view of the office. She had sort of expected it to be fairly basic, being a standard office. This was where the woman worked, not lived afterall. However, she found it surprisingly well furnished.

There was a couch with an end chair and coffee table on her immediate left as she entered. A soft fragrance of flowers caught her as she entered from the fresh picked that decorated the table. Surrounding the wide vase were three books and some coasters. The books were an architecture book of modern Japanese designer homes, an exotic plants guide and oceanic coral life. They were all very odd collections that didn’t really seem to fit to something that Miki would be interested in, but Yumi made a note of it regardless.

To her right was a set of shelves and racks with a few jackets and dresses hanging, probably prepared for emergencies. The cabinets beneath probably had shoes and other items for her to be ready to adapt to a special event.

Along both walls, she found paintings that were more abstract, though no pictures of people or any sort of signs of her achievements. Perhaps such things weren’t something that she felt she needed to show off. The woman did a lot in her short time with the company, she had nothing to prove.

Further back in the long office was the wood desk of Miki’s with two chairs. A computer covered the right side of the desk while the left remained open for visitors and the few nicknacks she had to decorate the surface.

The room was strange, in that it was definitely meant to feel inviting and comfortable, but didn’t seem like it would be something comfortable to her. Yumi found it a curious contradiction and maybe another idea to what the true woman was behind whatever masks that she presented.

Yumi brought her attention back to Miki after the few moments she spared to the room. “Yes, I need company approval for travel to Hino tomorrow.”

“That’s short notice.”

“You know how it is. It’s for the Soseki job. We’ve got a plan started to bring as a proposal to the meeting on Friday. We need to move fast on this, so I want to get the groundwork started so we can get papers signed.” Yumi stepped in further, pulling out a paper that she had written out the outlined proposal. “Here’s a rough outline. I want to get tentative approval tomorrow to line things up with how tight the deadline is.”

Miki took the paper from Yumi and looked it over quickly. A few moments of silence before she returned it and looked back up at her. “Booking signings requires a lot of advance notice.”

“We’ve got less than a month before the book is released and it’s going to print in three days.”

“If I’m being honest the whole it’s a complete disaster top to bottom.” She leaned back into the chair. “We’re only taking this on because he won the contest last year and he’s debuting. He’s talented, but bad with time frames. My counterpart in publishing needs this to succeed.”

“I’ll make it the best seller next month.”

Miki looked up at Yumi when she said that. “Strong claims. I wouldn’t go making promises you can’t keep.”

“I don’t make it a habit either.” She could see the curious look that she got from Miki after her declaration. ‘My Aya’s is wearing off...she’s part of me at this point so I can’t help it…’ The well practiced and delivered confidence stared back at Miki. Yumi held back on trying to bear any of the presence that she developed from Aya as that would be counterproductive for her. All she wanted was to show the woman that she had it under control.

The situation that was handed to them was bad. There wasn’t a lot of time to get everything in order and all the logistics required still needed to be stored out. Based on what she had seen, they had maybe two weeks at the longest to have a completely finished strategy with assets to be ready for printing and distribution.

“You sure you didn’t hit your head when you fainted?”

“Everyone’s asking me that.”

“Request approved, I’ll have finance stamp it by the time you return.”

“Thank you, good evening!” Yumi turned around and walked out of the office. ‘That was a fairly normal conversation. I’m getting a lot of mixed signals from her… I don’t know what to think.’

Chapter 558 - Learned Confidence

Back at her desk, she found Kasuse deep into his computer doing research for tomorrow. Once he felt the shadow of her approaching he pulled back to see the result. Her smile told him everything and left him more than a little shocked. “I can’t believe you did it. That’s got to be the fastest approval I’ve seen. Who are you?”

“I just explained the situation. Probably helped that this is an emergency.”

“Guess I can’t let you down then!” He pulled his chair out along with a notepad that he already seemed to be filling up. Kasuse rolled over to Yumi’s desk as she sat down and started showing her the notes he already had.

Glancing over it, he worked fast. “I was only gone for five minutes?”

“I might have been working along a similar path as you, just not as bold. Taking what you got as a starting point I’ve got a lot of ideas and I want to take some time to look around the area while we’re there.” He pulled out his phone and displayed a map of the surrounding area in Hino.

Pointing to a few points on the map, she tried to memorize them for tomorrow. “I think if we can find some key locations for ads and work with locals in the area we can do this pretty cheaply. But we’re going to need to chat up a lot of people and scout out the location.”

“I can talk to owners,” she said confidently. That was thankfully something that she had experience doing. Yumi never imagined how much value she would be getting already from what she learned from Aya. It had such broad application the more that she thought about it. Her mind had been so focused on military tactics and political deals, that she didn’t think what it could do in more mundane situations.

He grinned and turned back to his notepad. “That’s what I hoped to hear. Now the important thing we’re going to need to do with this is create a natural grassroots campaign. You’ve got the right location, we’re just going to need a really solid strategy to make this work.” Slowly he began to go through everything that he had been putting together since the end of their brainstorming session.

Watching the man work, she could see why he was on the team and so valued. He had a sharp mind and quick wit. She couldn’t have asked for a better person to be working with on this. It did make her wonder how the other two would work with them once they were free to assist.

‘So far things are going smoothly. I couldn’t imagine yesterday I’d be this deep in this already...how’s the others doing with all of this?’

After about an hour of discussion, they were ready to break to work on their own things again. But she stopped to pull up the bookstore from the internet. “I haven’t had a chance to look into their history yet. Do you know if they’ve done this sort of thing before and will know how to handle it?”

“It’s a privately owned business with only a handful of employees. It’s known in the area, so they’ve probably had a few events like this before. But I’ll look into it more.”

“I’ll put together a list of other businesses in the area to chat to while we’re there. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.”

“You certainly aren’t making this week boring.”

“Sorry about that.”

“No, you’ve got me fired up. Haven’t felt this excited in months.”

“We’ll make this a success.”

“Damn right!”

Kasuse backed away from her and returned to his desk as she returned to the monitor staring at it a little longer. ‘Aoi Kame Bookstore...I wonder what sort of place it’s like?’