Never Thought

1. The Call

"No. The Operations Team does not agree to this. We have to make sure that we standardize everything to properly mobilize the project before it goes live.", I sighed after putting my headphones on mute.

I have been meeting with the other managers of different departments via Skype for the new LOB (Line of Business) coming in. The clients have high expectations and the contract given was temporary, only 5 years. But if everything goes out well, the client is willing to extend it to a 10-year contract.

I listen to the other managers bicker on the line. My head started throbbing with some of the nonsense some of them are saying.

"How were these people promoted to their positions? Geez," I thought.

I might be the youngest among the line of managers in this project, but I am proud to say that my accomplishments in the last 3 years in this company would match the others in the same position. I may be a 91-liner, but I have been working since I turned 18 as I was the eldest and bread winner of my family. My experiences were the reason I got accepted in this company and got promoted only after a year.

Nothing came out of the online meeting and I dropped from the call exasperated of the senselessness of these meetings.

I think I need a break from all of these, I thought.

I unplugged my headset from my laptop, kept it in my bin, got my earphones and plugged it to my phone. Time to de-stress, I thought while pushing the play button on my music player. GOT7's You Are started and I started relaxing while listening to JB's voice. I really love that boy's voice for some reason and he's my bias in the group.

My name is Jinji and yes, I admit it. I am a KPop fan. I used to listen to a lot of JRock before (I was a huge anime lover from elementary to college) and got into the music due to the OSTs. There was this band whose songs I really liked, and after researching, I found out they are actually Koreans, not Japanese. They just promote in Japan a lot. So I started listening to their Korean songs and really got into it. I started stanning the group. Eventually, I got to listen to other KPop groups and before I knew it, I'm already a die hard KPop fan. It helped a lot that I know how to speak Japanese and Korean.

You might say, what? You speak both Japanese and Korean?

Not to brag, but I actually speak 6 languages. I am half Filipino, half Spanish. So I know how to speak in Tagalog and Spanish fluently since I grew up hearing and speaking both languages.

In school, English is one of the required subjects, so it became my third language. When I started liking animes, I begged my parents to let me study Nihongo. Though I didn't finish N2, I am able to converse in Japanese moderately.

In college, we were required to take Mandarin, and I continued till I passed HSK 3. Lastly, being hooked to Korean dramas since 2009 (Who wouldn't? Come on -- Boys Over Flowers, You're Beautiful, IRIS?), I got interested in the language since there are some similarities in Mandarin, so I took classes a year after graduating college. Since I didn't finish Japanese and Mandarin all the way, I thought, what the heck, I'll make sure to finish this one all the way. I am now getting ready to take Korean Language Proficiency Test Level 5.

Anyway, enough of the boring stuff about me. I got up from my desk and went to the pantry to get some coffee while BTS' No More Dream started blasting in my earphones. I started to rock my head to the beat while waiting for my latte from the vending machine, when the music was interrupted and Beast's Guess Who replaced it, signalling a call from someone.

"WTH, what a way to interrupt my jam," I exclaimed while pressing the answer call on my earphone stick.

"Jin!!!!! Yaaaaah! It's been soooo long since I heard your voice!!!" said the guy in Korean on the other line.