Raymond stared in her direction for quite some time but then again started arranging his papers. He could still smell her presence. No, it wasn’t perfume, but something soft like baby powder. Something about her oddly intrigued him.

A bit of coffee had spilled on his hands and had scalded him a bit, but he didn’t even realize that until she was gone. His jacket had taken all the hit. It was only after a few minutes that he realized and took the jacket off and put it in his suitcase.

“Damn, these papers are gone,” he muttered to himself upon seeing the big brown blotch marks all over.

Anyway as his contract had already gone for a toss, so he didn’t care much. He dumped the whole stack of paper into the nearest dustbin without even blinking twice. That’s how Raymond worked. No second approaches, no second chances, and no second thoughts. He was a man who was always singular in his thoughts and his focus was like a directed laser beam.

He was a self-made man and an entrepreneur who had been academically brilliant throughout his life. The sort of guy which every girl dreamt of.

Passionate, athletic, and charismatic, all at once.

From his gait itself, one could tell that he worked out. He was blessed with a well-built body, and he chiselled it by working out. His demeanour and style always oozed confidence. But today he seemed a bit lost. His spirits seemed dampened.

He started walking towards the nearest information panel to check his gate number but as he reached there his eyes were fixed on his Airline, and he read –

China Southern Airlines

Flight to JFK – Delayed. New Boarding Time – 03:30

“You got to be kidding me!!!” he groaned under his breath. Now, all that he could do was to curse his fate.

Nothing was working for him today. It seemed to him that lady luck had permanently taken offence from him. So he decided to get back to the resting area and do some productive thinking. Unknowingly like a response to stimuli he turned around, his eyes searching for his coffee assassin. But he got nothing, so he walked ahead, and upon reaching the resting area, he took his laptop out and started charting out a new design model.

He decided to give his existing game some twist by creating new avatars and levels. He started drafting his ideas to capture a whole new demographic. He was super swift and creative with his work and within eighty minutes a new agenda was ready. Running his fingers on the keyboard, he immediately emailed it to his folks in New York and started scheduling meetings for next week, to discuss further with the design and graphics board.

He knew the new plan schedule was tight, but there was no other way around. He had to prove his mettle in the world where there were people ready to pull him down, the moment they could.

Raymond knew the meaning of pushing off the contract signing date. He knew it was not going to happen, not when he knew who was behind all this scheming. He knew why someone didn’t want him to win. But he was not going to let them get what they wanted. He knew he had to perform better and take aggressive measures to get a financial backup. He was not going to let some third party extinguish the fire of creativity in him. He knew he needed a plan B and his new project was exactly what he needed.

Now that Raymond had some time left before boarding his flight, he decided to get back to Starbucks to have another cup of coffee for the previous one’s fate was a downhill. Standing in the queue when he casually looked towards his left, he saw the same distressed girl coming out of the washroom.

She looked a bit composed than before but her eyes were stark red. Looking at the way she was nervously tugging at her bag it looked like something terrible had happened to her. She went near the information panel and his eyes followed her as she started looking at the screen. She was staring at it non-stop, totally unfazed and unaware of what was happening around her.

“Your order please.”

“SIR, your order please,” the Starbucks person asked him twice to get his attention which was clearly focussed somewhere else.

Raymond was startled at first, and then he shook his head.

“I am sorry. I just spaced out”.

“What’s wrong with me?” he muttered under his breath.

“Triple, Venti, Soy, No Foam Latte”, Raymond said and took out his card to swipe. He picked up some extra pieces of tissues with him, and why? Even he didn’t know.

Holding his coffee he turned to see if she was still there near the information panel but to his utter dismay, there was no trace of her.

He sighed without having any clue what fate had in store for him. She had definitely captured a figment of his attention but it seemed like it was ephemeral as she was lost now in a crowd of millions. The probability of seeing her again was like 0.000001 percent but somehow his wishful thinking caught on to that 0.000001 percent.

Without any second thoughts, he started walking towards his gate. It was almost his time to board.