Chapter 21: Avoid him and it would be fine

From her last experience, Raven could tell that this world, even though it behaved based on its own unwritten rules – pun intended in case this was a written book – she still had some freedoms and could take some liberties with her environment.

She planned to make improvements to Liehen's life and of course ensure that her own lifestyle would be as close to what she used to have, to enable her to research and gather as much information about this world as possible.

She was worried that if she didn't follow the rules, which so far seem to somewhat coincide with that silly romance book she read, she would be kicked out of this world. Since that was the case, based on her previous experience and learnings, she would have to maintain Liehen's lifestyle and public choices, while making it work in the background to achieve her own goals.

Suddenly she felt very familiar with this strategy. Her whole life she has been running things from the shadows, whilst maintaining a completely different image of herself in public. It shouldn't be hard.

Raven had hoped that maybe in this world she could be out in the open, and just occasionally visit as herself, but it would seem that was not the case.

Not wanting to delay things further, she needed to get out of this bathroom and try to piece together what Liehen's tasks would be, to not attract unwanted attention and get kicked out of this world.

First step, think about what Dominic does for her and replicate, that should make for a competent, even more than competent assistant.

She took out the woman's phone from the bag and tried to find the calendar they were meant to follow. It would seem Liehen was very organised with her tasks, and everything was written down in to do lists or other organisational apps. Easy! As long as she didn't have to catch up too much, she should be fine.

Raven stepped out of the bathroom and started walking towards the left side of the corridor where an exit sign was displayed. She managed to take 3 steps when a stern, deep voice, stopped her in her tracks. She recognised the voice, it had that story-teller quality Victor so valued in males when talking about their attractiveness scale. Yes, there was such a scale and Victor had drilled it into her, just in case some day, at some point, she might decide she wanted to explore the idea of love.

She couldn't lie to herself; this type of voice was very alluring and somewhat soothing.

"Miss Jisuanji, this way." Hearing the woman's last name from this man's voice bugged her a little, but she dismissed it and decided to follow the man.

He was the president after all.

Raven was lost in thought, trying to piece together whatever information she had about this world and the people she was about to meet.

Deep in thought, she didn't hear Li Naihe's question to her until it was too late.

"Miss Jisuanji, do I need to repeat myself?" His tone was very commanding, beautiful voice or not, Raven nearly snapped at him. She had to remind herself this was not her life, and she would have to pretend to be interested and somewhat subservient to this man. 'If this was her world, he would be punished for speaking to her like that' Raven thought with a silent snort. 'How ridiculous that she was now stuck having to listen to this man's instructions.' She was displeased with the way his company did things, at least when it came to the class division between employees and executives, but she clamped down on her rising annoyance and nodded politely showing she understood she made a mistake.

She wanted to reply but she could not figure out for the life of her, how Liehen addressed this man. 'Was it President Li, Mr. Li… did he have a royal title like Lord…?'

Raven spaced out again trying to wreck her brains for information from her previous visit, to make it less obvious that she knew nothing about Jisuanji Liehen's life.

She was concentrating hard, and her cheeks flushed a little from the intense effort she was trying to put in not to be discovered.

She didn't realise what was happening until Li Naihe stopped abruptly and grabbed her arm. It wasn't a painful grab in any way, but it was quite an aggressive, domineering gesture and she nearly lost it.

'Breathe Raven, breathe. You're not you, you're Liehen, behave!' She hated unwanted physical contact. She was weary of wanted physical contact as well. She had barely gotten used to Victor's sudden outbursts of affection and hugs, and they knew each other for almost their entire life.

The skin crawling feeling she was expecting from the man's touch didn't manifest, however. 'Oh, maybe Liehen likes to be touched by this man?' she wondered whilst trying to figure out what an appropriate reaction should be. 'Were they together? If so, then why would he be so aggressive with her? Maybe they were having an affair…' with this thought Raven was starting to dislike the man even further. She didn't want to jump to conclusions without any evidence of course, but if this was true, she was very disappointed in Liehen. Yes, he was very handsome, and tall and rich and presumably smart being able to run a business empire at a relatively young age, but she had no tolerance for rude and aggressive behaviour. If Liehen was in a relationship with this man, she'd teach him how to treat her right. It was unacceptable.

Lost in thought again, she didn't realise President Li was now looking at her with a curious expression on his face.

He hadn't said anything after grabbing her arm, so Raven snaped out of her thoughts to try to gather some semblance of a reaction.

She slowly looked up at the man and she noticed the fleeting interest in his eyes, before his expression turned stone cold again. That she could deal with. They were like two peas in a pod. She was so non expressive that anyone trying to figure out what was going on in her head would rather run for the hills than try to understand her. This type of stone-cold killer face she was happy to deal with. It meant nothing was going on, and she most certainly wasn't intimidated by this person.

Raven took a big breath and plastered a smile on Liehen's face, trying to seem normal as usual. She took a gamble and said "President Li, what can I help you with?" She tried very hard to control her temper, but her annoyance betrayed her and came across in her voice. It was only for a split second, but she could see the man's face changed. It looked like recognition maybe. That couldn't be possible, not from a couple of words she had spoken, but she needed to keep her cool in this situation and pretend like nothing happened.

They had a lunch to go to and she needed to be an efficient secretary/assistant and make sure he got there on time, she took notes and didn't say a word. Easy!

He didn't say anything anymore, still looking into her eyes like he was searching for something. He did not let go of her arm either.

Seeing the situation she was in right now, she was worried he might become violent towards her, however to her surprise, the man immediately let her go, turned around and started walking in the direction of what she now assumed to be the parking lot.

'Phewww… dodged a bullet there' Raven slowly exhaled the breath she was holding in.

"Miss Jisuanji, the papers?" he sounded annoyed, like her lack of action in a split second since he demanded it was wasting his time. Dammit! She hated to admit, but she was the same and couldn't fault the man for demanding efficiency from his staff.

He wanted documents, right, they should be in the laptop bag.

She opened the bag as they were walking and immediately noticed a stack of folders with information.

The meeting they were having would be on a small property development project they had taken on. The calendar notes had the names of the people they needed to meet, their faces and a short brief on what the meeting was about.

She didn't hate to admit that Liehen was very good at her job. Not as good as Dominic of course, who had the entire internet at his fingertips but still pretty good.

Without delay she dug into the bag and pulled out the brief for the meeting, handing it to Li Naihe.

He didn't stop to wait for her while she was looking in her bag, so now she had to run to catch up to him. She wasn't very tall in real life, and she was even shorter in this universe, so she had difficulty following him without running. 'Ah this I so embarrassing!' she shouted in her mind 'Why is this man so tall. How annoying!'

Whatever it was it didn't matter. She would put up with him and then as soon as the meeting was over she would just avoid him until it was absolutely necessary that they interacted. She really would need to hold a tight leash on that temper of hers.

Even though she was not a very emotional person, she had very strong principles she would follow and would not tolerate any deviance from that base line.

This was proving to be a harder mission than she thought.