The Client's Request Is Absolute Law (2)
Three days later. The day of the client presentation.
The swamp of overtime that had seemed as if it would never end had finally run dry. Tension over the presentation lay across my teammates' faces, and threaded through it was a thin, bright hope that we might actually get to go home. I felt the same. Not once since I'd joined had I managed to clock out.
Why does this damned company have absolutely everything?
It wasn't only that we'd been short on time. There were sleeping rooms and showers, even vending machines stocked with useless daily necessities. I hadn't had so much as an excuse to stop by home.
"I don't think the client'th here yet. Let'th set up the presentation!"
The three of us got the conference room ready.
"Hey, rookie. Hit this button on the clicker and it'll jump to the next slide."
Pascal tested it, then passed the pointer over. I took it in a palm already slick with sweat.
...Why hand the thing to some nobody newbie?
I wondered the same. Because I'd been the one who ended up presenting.
Team rule, they said. Whoever's draft gets picked does the talk.
A courtesy, probably, for people sensitive about credit. And so a hire on his fourth day was about to become the lead presenter. What an incredible experience. Truly a tearfully considerate rule.
I'll just keep my head down, come and go quietly, and quit...
The thought of a one-eyed tentacle monster's gaze pouring over me sent a small shiver through my body.
"Are you in? Ah—you're already here."
The moment we finished setting up, the client came in wearing a skeptical look. At the first meeting, the way we'd flinched at the deadline must not have inspired much confidence.
"Is the draft ready? Well... if today's version doesn't sit right with me, I imagine we could still shift the schedule a little."
Preparing to reject the work before even looking at it. The tension made me want to throw up.
Even so... if I think back to how the team reacted the moment the idea first appeared.
It had to be a decent draft. I smoothed the shake out of my voice so it wouldn't show, and drew a breath.
"Then I'll begin the presentation."
The conference room, on my first day. That desperate hour when a project had to be finished inside an absurd span of three days. A newbie who could have stayed perfectly still and been a sufficient yes-man went and offered an opinion anyway.
"The direction you described is good, but I thought it might feel more harmonious if we approached it through form. What about a draft like this?"
I wasn't especially confident in a live sketch... but it seemed as though it would be easier to communicate this way. I set a pen to the notebook and laid the lines down in quick strokes.
"Opticon is a pentagonal fortress city. Angular, and heavy. A form well suited to expressing sharpness turned toward outsiders."
The pentagon I'd drawn had its sharp corners emphasized.
"But to the people inside, it's a city that holds warmth."
Into that pentagon, I cut a circle.
"A circle symbolizes completeness at its purest—protection, and comfort. We could tie it to the slogan as well. And if we use this shape on its own, it can serve as a symbol, too..."
To the right of the pentagon, I went on and wrote the letters "pticon."
"Since the symbol resembles the letter O in Opticon, we could use it in a wordmark as well. Like this."
"The other letters would carry the same motif as the symbol. An angular exterior, a rounded interior."
As an example, I sketched the shape of the letter P.
"What if we developed the design in this direction? I think it could express the client's intent well."
I turned the notebook sideways and drew the logo draft large enough to fill the page.
Done this way, it could carry a feeling like iron—heavy, massive—while still emphasizing the round negative space inside.
When the sketch was finished, I lifted my head with a trembling heart and looked at my teammates. Had a hire on his first day overstepped?
"Thith is wonderful! It catcheth everything we were struggling with, all at once!"
Fortunately, Henna met it with a bright face and clear approval. I stole a glance, next, at the team leader.
...His expression. It seems to have softened, just a little.
Pascal, who until then had shown us nothing but a cold face, looked as if he were wearing the faintest smile.
Back again. The short recollection ended, and I returned to the presentation. I'd been so lost in the slides I hadn't noticed the time passing, and suddenly it was time to turn the last page.
"...And that concludes the Opticon city branding presentation. Thank you."
E.O.D
End of Document.
All that remained on the screen was the line announcing that the document was over.
A quiet silence. Stillness pooled through the conference room, and in the margin that had opened so suddenly, tension locked my body a little tighter.
...Even so.
This stillness wasn't the uncomfortable quiet of someone preparing a refusal. The tentacle monster slowly blinked that enormous eye, once, twice, and then broke the silence.
...!
At that single sentence, I felt the sweat gathered on the nape of my neck go cold all at once. My heart began to pound hard—this time for an entirely different reason.
We did it...!
Iron, and a teddy bear. That impossible direction, that whole mass of contradiction, in only three days...!
"Let's go into physical production of the nameplates with this draft. And print the posters as they are, please."
After a brief discussion of production, the meeting ended. In the conference room the client had left, only an atmosphere charged with success remained.
"Leehyun, you're a total lucky charm! Approved on the very firtht try!"
"Not at all. It's something all of us worked hard to make."
The idea for the draft had been mine, but that wasn't the whole of it. My teammates were skilled enough to turn the rough proposal I'd offered into something beautiful.
Everyone did well.
Once Henna and I locked a direction, Pascal reviewed it, refined it, and a polished result came out the other side. Pass it through the team leader's hands in particular, and a hair's difference changed everything.
Experience really can't be ignored.
Maybe it would have been more proper for Pascal, as team leader, to give the presentation. It also seemed like a kindness, letting the newbie build a little experience. The problem was that it had been a kindness I hadn't wanted.
Still... I feel pretty good.
Surrounded by teammates busy lifting me up, the sense of achievement I hadn't felt in a long time was genuinely nice.
"Good work. Let's head back."
We gathered the equipment we'd brought and returned to the office.
Oh.
I sat down, pressing the excitement flat, and opened my inbox. The client's evaluation had already arrived. They hadn't even installed the new branding yet, and still they'd answered this fast.
Whew.
An A-range score, either way. That had to count as a high mark. One hurdle, safely behind me.
"Now we jutht hand the data off to Production! Time's tight, tho I'll take care of it. Leehyun, you can learn it at your leisure next time!"
Thanks to Henna's consideration, I breathed outdoor air and clocked out for the first time in three days. Home, in welcome daylight, after so long—the moment I arrived, I slept as if I'd passed out.
The project was safely wrapped, and the weekend was right around the corner. I came in that Friday with a light heart.
"You two get some rest? Nameplate fabrication and poster printing are done. Let's go watch Production install them."
A design wasn't truly finished, he said, until you'd supervised it through installation, so we were heading to World #008291 for a site check. Unlike Henna and me, who had finally slept like the dead, the team leader's face was as haggard as ever. According to the jellyfish, Pascal had been out supervising late into the evening yesterday, too.
"Thomeone has to check that the colors and details come out jutht like the design."
She added that it wasn't work a team leader would normally do. He seemed to have taken it on so the rest of us could rest.
Hah. I felt a little guilty.
Deep dark circles or not, the team leader did what needed doing.
"Let's move."
He entered the world number into the keypad at the end of the corridor on our floor and opened the door. The moment to cross space again had come.
This time, it'll all wrap up clean.
...Thinking that, I stepped over the threshold.
Having crossed into another world, we headed for the outskirts of the city.
I swapped the smartwatch band so it'd match the strap I have at home... and now it's bothering me.
I tugged the slipping watch back up my wrist and walked the quiet street.
"We're going toward the gate on the city outskirts."
Before, even when we'd visited the client's world, we'd never left the conference room, so I hadn't really felt it. Walking the streets myself, the strange and wrong things pressed in against my skin.
It really hits. This is another world.
The streets bent at impossible angles, and across the walls crawled patterns whose boundary between living thing and dead matter you couldn't name. Ugh. A city that suited a tentacle-monster client perfectly.
But the me of right now could endure it well enough.
Three days ago I would've blacked out. Today is different.
Haha—because it was Friday, and the project was over! Maybe because my heart was light, even hell looked ready to seem beautiful.
"Pleathe put the posters over here!"
We reached the area near the gate, and Henna directed the workers. How did anything stick that well to a wall this disgusting? They smoothed it with a roller, and strangely enough the paper went down clean, without a single wrinkle.
"It's tilted a little to the right. Let's bring it up slightly."
Pascal gave the direction to someone who looked like Production, a figure hanging the nameplate with several arms set along the body like a spider's.
"Hello. You're from Vanta Design, aren't you? You must have worked hard, designing to such a tight deadline."
Oh. The cephalopod I'd seen last time appeared in front of me. Still disgusting, but after a few meetings I was almost used to it. A Friday buff?
"Not at all. We were able to wrap it up well, thanks to you—our client."
I answered with the stock line you owe a customer. In truth, I didn't mean a word of it.
...Well. A client who approved on the first pass might actually qualify as a good one.
"...? The client isn't me."
"Were you looking for me?"
Abruptly, another creature stepped out from beside us and cut in.
...A different one? They were all identical squid monsters. How was anyone supposed to tell them apart?
"The residents have gathered for today's unveiling ceremony. Another species would be bound to get us confused."
At those words I looked around. A platform, and chairs set out in rows. Under the tents, food being prepared—the shape of a village festival.
...Am I supposed to think of this like a luxury apartment groundbreaking back home?
Watching the squid residents chatter away in a noisy crowd, I felt oddly pleased.
"Hello. We'll see the finishing work through properly."
Noticing the client was here, Pascal came over and handled it with practiced ease. Mm. Slipping past the obligations of office life made things considerably more comfortable.
While I've got a moment, maybe I should refasten this watch strap.
Thanks to the lull, I loosened the smartwatch band that had been bothering me since earlier. For just a moment, to tie it again, I took the watch off my wrist.
Beep—
"...??"
With a hard snap, Pascal closed his hand around the watch and pressed it flush against my wrist.
Only then did I realize blood was pouring from my nose.