CHAPTER TWELVE

Lisa could already see her job flashing before her eyes. The time she was going to use to get to the ground floor was enough to set up one or two things in the meeting room.

She looked down at her heels and groaned in frustration at the thought of the pain she was going to feel later on after running for so long.

Without wasting time, she ran back to the elevator at the third floor which was already occupied, leaving her with no choice but to make use of the stairs.

As she was about to take the first step on the stairway, she heard someone call out to her, but since she was in a hurry she decided to ignore the call.

"Secretary Lisa! Wait up!" The female voice called again, pursuing her this time.

It was their receptionist, she could make out the owner of the voice this time around and she could also sense the urgency in her voice.

Gripping the staircase with her right hand, she paused briefly and swiftly turned to face her. "I'm in a hurry right now, can it wait till I get...." She could not finish her statement before the receptionist dangled a set of keys in front of her.

"I'm the one with the keys remember?" She smiled and nodded for her to come up.

Lisa could not explain the overwhelming rush of relief she felt at that moment.

"Can you imagine! And I was running downstairs to meet you, while you were directly behind me," Lisa sighed as they both ran back to the meeting room. "How did you get up here? The elevator was occupied?"

"I was the one in it," she replied and inserted the key into the lock.

After it clicked open, they barged into the room with about ten minutes left to set up the entire room for the meeting.

"How did you know I needed the keys?" Lisa asked, as they distributed the meeting materials to the assigned tables.

"I overheard Mr. Kim's PA talking to someone, probably an executive about the meeting, not long after you left. So I figured immediately that you forgot to take the keys from me."

"Oh, ok," Lisa nodded and rushed over to the projector to confirm its functionality. Afterwards, they rushed to the break room to get a number of bottled water for use in the meeting.

By the time they had finished arranging the room, a number of executives had begun to troll in, discussing quietly among themselves.

They quietly exited the room leaving the directors to themselves, but as they approached the doorway, Mr. Kim casually strolled in, a cold and fiery demeanour firmly plastered on his face.

His eyes lazily swept across the room and landed briefly on the receptionist before finally resting on Lisa. "In this company, secretaries are responsible for taking minutes, may I ask where you're going to?" he asked and walked off without waiting for Lisa's reply.

"Go, he's with the laptop you're to use," the receptionist quickly nudged her forward after taking note of the look of confusion on her face. "I didn't know you weren't aware of that."

"I thought they assign a note-taker for that," Lisa replied nervously.

"No, it's the work of the secretary here. Quick, go, now," she prompted her with her hands and hastily made her way out of the room.

By that time, Mr. Kim had already settled down on his chair as well as the other members of the board. The only empty seat was the one beside him, which belonged to Lisa.

Quickly, she made her way to the seat as all eyes were solely focused on her since she was the obvious reason Mr. Kim had not kick-start the meeting.

When Lisa had finally taken her seat, Mr. Kim carefully dropped the laptop in front of her and began addressing the committee, leaving Lisa with zero experience on taking minutes to fend for herself.

While Mr. Kim jumped from one topic to the other, Lisa surprisingly kept up to his speed, typing at a furious pace and nodding in satisfaction as she made progress.

"Also, I would be meeting with the associate company today to finalise everything." Mr. Kim announced to the board some minutes into the meeting.

"That would be necessary. By what time would the meeting take place and who would you want to accompany you to the meeting place?" An executive questioned.

"I don't think it's necessary for any of you to attend. I'm aware that we have a heavy workload at the moment, so I'll be attending the meeting my secretary."

"The outcome of the meeting would definitely be forwarded to each and every one of you present. As for the time, what time is the meeting scheduled for, Secretary?" Mr. Kim turned to Lisa.

Lisa's eyes widened as soon as the question was directed to her. She slowly turned to her boss in confusion as she searched his face for any clue of what he was talking about.

"I sent you an e-mail to get the CEO's schedule of our associate company and arrange a meeting. Can you please tell me the meeting time?" Mr. Kim asked again.

Lisa's eyes narrowed. An e-mail? She was about to deny it when her mind quickly flashed back to the previous day. Among the notifications that came into her phone was an e-mail from her boss.

She had read the e-mail and was about to work on it when her attention was hijacked by the other troubling messages about her attempted abduction.

Preoccupied by the whole ruckus and chaos that followed, she had completely forgotten about the e-mail and it wasn't until Mr. Kim brought it up in front of the entire room, with all eyes fixed intensely on her that she went through a very quick reality check.

"You look surprised Secretary," another executive said, noticing Lisa's silence. "Does it mean you did not do as you were told?"

"Ah!" A low chuckle came from another member of the board. "Of course, she carried out the task. She must be greatly aware of the importance of this project. She definitely would not do anything to jeopardise it," he smiled.

A very gentle but persistent smile.

A smile which meant that he truly hoped that Lisa had relayed their boss' message as she would without doubt attract a lot of consequences if she had done otherwise.

Mr. Kim who was already angry at that point, caught up quickly and cleared the air immediately.

"Oh, the e-mail you sent to me this morning, was that it? I think it was 10:30 you said," he glanced at his wristwatch and continued; "in that case, we should wrap up the meeting now, given the time is almost 10:00am. As we all know, punctuality is key."

"Ok!"

"That's alright!"

"True! True!"

The executives agreed distinctively, while Lisa smiled uneasily, mentally preparing herself for what was to befall on her.

"Does anyone have anything else to say?" Mr. Kim asked and began gathering the files on his table.

When he was satisfied that there was nothing else to discuss, he dismmised the executives and signalled for Lisa to follow him.

Hastily, she stood up and trailed behind him, struggling to keep up with his outrageous walking pace.

"You do know how important this project is right?" Mr. Kim fumed as soon as they stepped into his office.

His appearance had been foreboding on their way to his office, his stern expression and defiant demeanour, sending a clear message to everyone as far as twelve feet from him to stay put.

It was even out of respect that his staffs managed to mumble low words of greeting despite his intimidating aura and of course none of them got a reply from him, not even as little as a nod.

He sank into his chair and locked gaze with Lisa, his piercing eyes sending chills all over her body. "You also know that we're scheduled to launch this project before the end of this week, am I correct?"

"Yes sir," Lisa mustered up courage to respond firmly. At that moment, she was terribly fighting the urge to look away, so as not to add to his depth of anger.

Mr. Kim's eyes seemed void of emotion. But that was a deceptive tactic to double down on the wave of boiling anger and fury rising in him.

If eyes had physical powers capable of destruction, Mr. Kim would have succeeded in setting the whole city on fire in an instant, with the look in his eyes.

In fact, his eyes were already relaying a stern message, one that spoke louder than his words. Lisa began to dread the next sentence that was to come from his mouth, so she cleared her throat slightly, raised her chin up to give her a more confident look and began to bail herself before it was too late.

"Sir, if you would let me, I can fully explain why things turned out this way." Lisa proposed, her voice laced with a hint of anxiety.

Mr. Kim's expression turned sour. "Why things turned out this way?" he repeated. "Secretary, I have noticed that you do have a lot of problems when it comes to grammatical construction," Mr. Kim paused, letting the weight of his words settle while Lisa braced herself for the sudden linguistics lecture.

"The reason all this is happening is simply because you failed your duty as a secretary and now you're trying to downplay your responsibility?" he accused.

"No sir," Lisa bowed slightly.

"Correct yourself now!" Mr. Kim slammed his hand on the table, making Lisa jump.

She smiled inwardly, a hint of defiance flickering within her. He wanted grammatical precision? She would give it to him. "I apologise sincerely for my negligence in my duty," she began, her tone measured. "I have no words to express how remorseful I am for my..." But before she could finish, Mr. Kim cut her off.

"Enough of that nonsense!" he exclaimed. "This is not an English class," his expression turned stern once more. "Even if you had foreseen that this business project would be detrimental to the company, shouldn't you have relayed your concerns to me earlier on?"

"No, that's not the reason." Lisa replied with a cautious voice.

"Actually, I didn't see anything about it, but..."

"What!" Mr. Kim exploded, leaping out of his chair. "So you didn't even see anything about it and you just concluded that it's not going to be beneficial to us? Do you always work with only what you foresee? This is an office setting your personal ability shouldn't be brought here for Christ sake!"

"What? No, no, that's not what I mean!" Lisa recoiled, as her boss' temper flared.

"What do you mean?" Mr. Kim demanded, his voice rising.

"I mean, I didn't work on a conviction for this project, I wasn't even planning to," she explained, her words tumbling out in a rush. "I simply... forgot about it and I know how unacceptable that is, but it..."

"Secretary Lisa, the only reason I have been lenient with you so far is simply because I genuinely believed you had foreseen something wrong with this project. But from your little explanation, it is now quite obvious that you really do not value your job. You have no idea how important your position is in this company, so go back to your office for now, and I'll get back to you shortly."

This was the bombshell Lisa had been desperately trying to avoid. "Sir..." she began but Mr. Kim immediately cut her off.

"Now!" he barked, pointing towards the door.

Lisa knew it was futile to plead her case further. It would only escalate the situation. 'What's worse than getting sacked?' she thought, her mind racing. Losing her severance pay, perhaps? The thought of that alone added to her despair.

Sighing deeply, she approached her boss' desk, deposited the laptop and bowed slightly, before exiting the office in silence.