Untitled, 2018

Chapter 1: Goatee Man

Riti
__________________

I almost ran out of the dorm room with a towel on my head until it fell with a flurry as I slammed the door shut. Frustrated, I picked it up and tossed it into the room haphazardly. I was going to be late to a tech panel and networking event, and I couldn't bother to be considerate of what my clean freak of a roommate would think about it. Rushing from the dorm building to the event halls next door, I kept glancing at my watch - already 5 minutes late. As soon as I entered the building, I heard a woman's voice through a mic and followed it into the first meeting hall, which was surprisingly sparsely filled.

"Before you get seated, fill out one of these tickets for the sweepstakes! Please fill in the seats in the front first. We will get started in 10 minutes; sorry for the delay!" The lady beamed at the thirty or so people present.

I hurriedly texted the friend I had made in her introductory programming class, who promised to attend with me, while walking up to the front of the event hall. A large ball filled with a few pieces of paper laid on a long table in front of the well-lit stage, and I spotted a pen on the table by strips of paper. Putting my phone into my jacket pocket, I quickly filled out my name and phone number, scrunched up the paper and tossed it into the bowl. I quickly took a seat in the front row, and waited for notifications on my phone patiently.

A few minutes after everyone was settled, the lights dimmed and a tall, lean figure walked onto the stage in a very flamboyant yellow and white patterned skirt that dropped just below the knees, and a striped brown well-fitted suit jacket. The man also had a... white goatie and white manbun that contrasted deeply with his dark skin, and wore a ridiculous pair of small, circular lens sunglasses. He flashed a grin wearing a very visible silver grill and tossed out a "Hi", to which the rest of the audience cheered, entranced. I just kind of sat there in awe and shock, taking in the discord -- or should I say, discoordination that was this man.

"Welcome to my lecture on Modern Distorted Reality. I'll be talking to you guys about the good, the bad, the ugly; hopefully, you guys have already bought and read my book Futile Deep Desires." This elicited a few giggles. "Let's start talking about how technology fueled-" I think that's the point at which I came to my sense and realized I was in the wrong hall. I abruptly stood up and started shuffling to the exit on my left, trying not to trample any feet.

"Wait, where are you going?" Oh crap, they noticed.

Continuing to shuffle, I responded softly, "Sorry, so sorry. I'm in the wrong room." He laughed onstage. All eyes were turned to me now. "Says who? You never know what you could learn sitting here."

"I'm really sorry but there's a networking event in the next hall and I-"

"Networking? What's the use?" He scoffed, "You need to know yourself first if you want to know others. I think you're a little lost on that front, don't you?" Laughter bubbled around the room, and I stopped because of the ridiculously cheesy and slightly offensive nature of his comments.

"Excuse me?"

"Conflicted and lost, still a child - you just can't pick, can you?"

At this point I just started walking away again, knowing that this crack lecturer was probably just offended.

"Don't lie to yourself - what do you want?" At the moment he said that, my phone buzzed and I looked at it to see a text from my friend: "It's packed in here! You're in the wrong place, Riti." I walked towards to exit and heard the man's voice booming behind me. "Wrong, Riti. It's pathetic to see you so starved for connection. Look deeper than that." How did he know my name? I stopped. I glanced at my phone again, and the background of the text notification, lock screen, was a familiar figure in the middle of a dance. That's ridiculous, I scoffed, and continued out the door into the hallway, barely listening to the rambling coming from the event room behind me.

It took a few minutes to find the right event hall, a few minutes more to sneak in unnoticed, and a few minutes more still to get over how flustered I felt.The guy knew my name; it sunk in. After the event ended, I didn't wait around for the Q&A, and made my way out the hallway to find the first room I had stumbled into. I peeked inside, and the crowd was about the same, but the speaker was an old woman who had a presentation up about psychology or something. I just left without waiting to see where that first speaker - Goatee Man - was hanging around.

_____________

Later

The next morning, and I mean early morning, at literally 3 am, I was woken up by a phone call.

"-Bose? Ms. Bose? Hello? Is this Ms. Bose?"

Clearing my throat, I groggily responded, "Yes, this is she. Who's speaking?"

"Ms. Bose! My name is Shonda Blake and I'm the secretary to the University's Technical Department head. You've been chosen for a prestigious program abroad for the next quarter in conjunction with the Psychology Department. Once you were chosen, your resume was thoroughly examined and you were a good fit for the research program. We will send more details to you over email tomorrow."

My mind was still muddy. "Chosen...? What?"

"The sweepstakes, Ms. Bose - the sweepstakes. At the event yesterday."

Suddenly, the events of the previous day filtered into my head, and I remembered putting my name into the large bowl. I was more angry than anything else.

"Excuse me - do you even know what time it is? It's 3:12 am and extremely inconvenient... and besides, I reject your-"

"Oh! I'm so sorry. I didn't even realize. It's just that I came to Seoul a little earlier to set up for the project. Your contribution will be really appreciated as the head developer of Dr. Wang and Dr. Kang's independent research project. There will be international recognition by several banks in the United States, South Korea, and Singapore. We're very excited."

I blinked a few more times to get the cobwebs out of my head. Wait, wait, wait. "The Dr. Kang and Wang? Wait... Seoul?" I looked down at my phone in disbelief, and there was the familiar frozen gif, a familiar face. Seoul? Oh. My. God.