Chapter 42: Coffee?

777 Bldg 1 District 4, Y City

It was a sunny Saturday morning in Y City and Miyeon was cooped up in her apartment looking through her inbox for emails from any companies requesting for job interviews. In the past couple of months since she relocated back to C Country, she has applied to openings in financial consulting as well as jobs completely outside her field of practice. In fact, she considered several secretarial and human resources jobs in companies she'd found interesting. Of course, aside from the financial consultant applications she had submitted, Miyeon had been automatically rejected for the rest. It was a standard rejection letter and any responses to the sender's mailbox aren't even monitored.

Thank you for your interest in XXX Company and for sharing your background with us.

The hiring team has reviewed your background as it relates to the XXX  role. As you can imagine, we receive a large amount of resumes daily, and the team feels that there are other applicants more aligned to what they are seeking for this specific role.

Miyeon scanned through the handful of recruitment emails from management consulting firms inviting her to discuss employment opportunities at their organization and she inexplicably felt discouraged. Truthfully, Miyeon has been quite reluctant to pursue these job opportunities for fear of falling back into the same cycle of depression and anxiety. From the beginning, she'd been aware she was not suited for that career path; she wasn't interested in the actual work nor was she particularly ambitious to climb up the corporate ladder. Miyeon had simply persisted since it was a well paying job and she had to be self-sufficient. Maybe it was naivety on her part but she didn't anticipate that changing careers at her age would be surprisingly difficult. As expected, companies prefer candidates who already have prior experience in the field so Miyeon began to search for entry-level positions 52Jobs.com. 

Just as she was about to call it a day, Miyeon chanced upon a secretarial job posting from a prominent gaming company called, SunFox. The company has been a power house in the mobile gaming industry in the past several years. Headquartered in A City, it has since expanded its offices to other main cities in C Country. Miyeon fondly recalled playing their first mobile game release, Ever Star. Just having finished construction last January, SunFox's new Y City office was still in the process of recruiting applicants to fill their headcount. 

Author's Note: SunFox is a company created by the villain in my other story Loved By the Villain and the Male Lead (LBVML). This author-nim is shamelessly cross promoting her stories. In terms of time setting, LBVML's events occurred earlier. 

☆*.★ﾟ*♪ヾ(☆ゝз・)ノ 

So with slightly renewed enthusiasm, Miyeon applied to the job posting before powering off her laptop. By the time she finished, it was already early afternoon and Miyeon was exhausted from all the mental exertion she had done for the day. ''I should treat myself to a cuppa coffee and maybe some caramel shortbread,'' she said out loud as she prepared to head out. As usual, Miyeon dressed simply in a white v neck t shirt and high waisted straight leg denim pants paired with white sneakers. She wore light makeup but decided to be a bit daring by putting on some red lipstick. 

Miyeon was still in a chirpy mood when she left her apartment only to stop in her tracks at the sight of a familiar and unnecessarily conspicuous white Land Rover up ahead.

'It can't be…' Miyeon thought with a sudden sense of foreboding.

'CEO Lu wouldn't randomly come here without warning. Even such a shameless fellow would surely have some common sense. Maybe it's just one of the building owners doing an inspection,' she decided with a soft chuckle. 

However, before she could walk much further out of the apartment complex, a pair of long legs could be seen exiting the vehicle. The driver was indeed the CEO of Lu Corp, Lu Minzhe. The strikingly handsome man was dressed casually in a white button down shirt, dark brown leather belt and navy blue chinos with brown suede oxford shoes. 

......…..

That morning, Lu Minzhe couldn't stop himself from driving over to Miyeon's place, it was as if something had come over him after he had those recent conversations with Li Jianan and Liu WanSu. 'I want to confirm it. I want to see if what they said were true,' he pensively mused. 

In fact, Lu Minzhe had been waiting outside of Miyeon's apartment for over half an hour thinking of ways to 'coincidentally meet' the girl. It would be rather odd if he just came up and knocked on her door unannounced or if he suddenly called her and told her that he was downstairs. Their encounter had to appear natural and he had to be suave. That should be easy for him. Lu Minzhe has been doing business negotiations and speeches since his university years. He has utmost confidence in any social situation. 

And so, after much thought, Lu Minzhe finally decided that the best course of action is to give Miyeon a call to let her know he just finished some business nearby and then make a smooth transition by casually asking her out for coffee. Wearing a self satisfied grin, Lu Minzhe began to search for Miyeon's contact on his phone before catching a glimpse of her walking out of her apartment.

'Wait a minute! This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Does she already have plans today?' he wondered, somewhat alarmed. Without much thought, he got out of the car and proceeded to walk towards the girl, noting Miyeon looked even more beautiful today than he had seen her last. 

As Lu Minzhe stood merely a few steps away from the girl, he willed his mind to say the words he had recited to himself nary a few minutes ago. However, it was as if Lu Minzhe had suddenly lost control of his mental faculties at the sight of Miyeon. At that moment, the words he'd been meaning to say, got stuck in his throat.

And all the great CEO Lu Minzhe could utter was, "Coffee?"