Finley Cai Aies Hall March 29th, 20XX

The lunch bell rang both loudly and obnoxiously and released us from the class I’d barely made it to. Despite my best efforts, I’d ended up missing my first class, and had only attended half of the second one. Since there were only a few months until we graduated and there was only a last event to get through, the only thing I’d missed was the attendance credit.

The teacher hastily reminded us of some extra credit work he had assigned before rushing out of the room. It was a unique experience of the school where the teachers were more eager to leave the room before the students, and it wasn’t one I would miss when I graduated.

I made my way into the cafeteria and brought out some work from the office as I ate. I’d tried my best to choose the most inconspicuous things that I could pass off as homework, but I doubted that any of the kids that sat with me would have cared either way.

I didn’t know why the loud and large group of other students had suddenly moved to sit with me during the last few months of school, but it wasn’t like I hated it. They were loud and distracting, but I could put up with that much as I worked, and occasionally talking to someone that wasn’t Will or my secretary Aleka was nice.

But as for the company related work, I needed to get an assistant.

I could keep up with most of it on my own since the company was only doing a few projects at the moment but now that I had to go to another world every evening and for half of my weekend, I doubted I would have the time or energy to keep it all up.

A now-familiar clattering of trays and scuffling or chairs surrounded me and pulled me out of my focus. I looked up to see the group of ‘popular’ kids that had pulled me into their ranks a few weeks ago. Again, I did not know what had motivated them to do so, but I had a few ideas.

There was Jake, who I’d been friendly with. But we had known each other since our junior years, and aside from working together on some school projects and a few halfhearted invitations to ‘hang out’ we had never become close. There was no reason for him to have suddenly brought his entire gaggle of followers to sit with me at lunch.

Another possibility was that someone had leaked my position at my company. But I doubted this was the case as I’d yet to see it on the news and none of them had confronted me about it or tried to ask me for any sort of favour.

That left the final and most likely option. They had smelled the scent of money on me, like the hyenas they were. I didn’t resent them for it since I got to make a few connections as well, but I tried to keep my guard up around them.

I didn’t mind being surrounded like this during school, but they had slowly increased the aggressiveness of their offers to spend time outside of school. It was time that I was both unable and unwilling to give.

They filled the air with meaningless chatter as usual, but thankfully they had stopped attempting to include me in it. I had tried to keep up with the hyper-speed conversation exactly once, but after the conversation had flipped to its eighth topic in its sixth minute, I gave up and devoted the time to my school and actual work.

Well, almost all of them had stopped trying to include me. One of them, Alice, I think her name was, was the worst at taking the hint. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think she was purposefully ignoring my attempts to stay out of the conversation.

I didn’t know why she was so invested in my joining her official friend group, but I couldn’t afford to do so. What with work and having to visit a different world almost every day, I couldn’t afford any other responsibilities.

I spent the next ten minutes in peace as they all finished their lunches and I got through two project proposals. There was the deal with Squire, a social media company that had employed a few of my celebrities for their new video streaming platform. I’d casually accepted it when the offer had come up two months ago, but it had skyrocketed their popularity.

Volui only had about ten active celebrities to its name, and they were all actors. But it looked like the middle management was proposing we dipped into sponsoring musicians and athletes. I didn’t know about athletes, but having a few in-house musicians hadn’t sounded like a bad idea. But then again, I also hadn’t known what a financial sinkhole that music could be without experience.

I needed to hire some more talents, and I needed to do it quickly. Not just celebrities, but also managers, producers and other capable people that could help keep my company afloat.

“Finn?”

A light and pleasant voice pulled me out of my thoughts and assaulted me with yet another effort to include me in the conversation. I pulled my nose out of my folder and saw Alice looking at me with a ‘kind’ smile and Jake who was in another conversation but constantly shot cautious looks at both Alice and me.

Ah, they were dating, weren’t they?

I racked through the section of my mind that had been paying attention to the conversation and tried to pull together an answer, but once I put together what the conversation was about, I regretted doing so.

Almost of their own accord, my lips curled into a frown and my eyebrows slightly furrowed. Not enough to make me look angry, but enough to show my discontent.

Why did I have to hear that name again?

“Future star? Didn’t they shut down that old program a few years ago?”

Besides me, there were a few other faces that looked uncomfortable, but the topic sufficiently piqued the interest of the rest of the table.

“What was it even about? and where did you hear they were starting it up again?”

In the search of information, they all looked toward a loud girl whose voice I was most familiar with from these lunch meetings. I think her name was Vanessa? but she shook her head and said that she knew nothing about it. I thought that the conversation would end there, but a nameless member of the mob that followed Jake and his group around suddenly volunteered the little information she had.

“I remember one of my classmates was in the program and would never stop bragging about it. I didn’t do any actual research, but wasn’t it a talent development program that the government used to run?”

Someone else nodded and put in their two cents on the topic.

“Yeah, I think one of my classmates was in it too. I wonder why they shut it down.”

“Probably because of that awful name! Who would join a program like that?”

Vanessa quipped and then made to change the topic. She looked uncomfortable at the group having a conversation that she knew nothing about and tried to move it back to her area of expertise.

I slowly relaxed and went back to my work, seeing that the uncomfortable topic was passing but Alice, who wrongly interpreted my attention to the topic as interest called for my opinion on it.

“Do you know anything about it, Finn? You finally looked up from your homework.”

Her voice started light and teasing, but she flinched as I glared at her. Maybe it was a bit too harsh of a reaction for her innocent attempt at integrating me into the group, but I was too irritated to care. It was annoying enough to have been reminded of ‘those’ years of my life, but doubly so that I had to talk about it to a bunch of strangers.

She temporarily looked away and avoided my aggressive glare, but then she gathered herself and looked back at me, determined to involve me in the conversation.

I took a deep breath and collected myself before responding. I just wanted this to move on and away as quickly as it could.

“I wasn’t paying attention, so I don’t have any thoughts or opinions on it. I can’t imagine anyone re-starting up a program that got shut down so harshly in the past though.”

She frowned on the surface, but her eyes glimmered as she tried to extend the first conversation we had ever held. Beside her Jake, who had been sending the two of us wary glances, came to my rescue and asked a question to divert her attention from me.

“Why do you care so much about an old program, anyway? What do you know about it?”

Without looking at him, Alice swiftly replied with an answer that made me break my silence without being prompted. I scoffed loudly and stopped trying to quell the growing annoyance in me.

It looked like I wouldn’t be able to keep up with this crowd after all.