“And that’s not the only scary part. The room has a super cold vibe. It makes you feel like there is nothing but death around you. So it forces you to think straight and make the best decisions”, Simon said and turned towards Akira.

Simon was explaining about the War Room in such an animated way, that for a moment Akira felt like laughing. He made the War room sound like a haunted warehouse or something. But as she didn’t want to offend a senior member of the technical team, she kept quiet and just nodded. Seeing that she was not giving out any reaction, Simon was a bit disheartened. He paused for a moment and then said,

“Hey, I was just trying to lift your mood. By cold vibe I mean, the temperature of the room is kept a bit low as instructed by our big boss. That’s because a calm mind is a sharp mind you see”.

“Oh I see”, said Akira and continued walking behind him and entered the War Room.

There was nothing spectacular about that room. It was just a normal round table arrangement based meeting room which had multiple whiteboards and two projector screens for better idea discussions. The only thing that was particular was the temperature of the room which was actually a bit low as Simon had mentioned, but apart from that Akira didn’t find anything unusual.

She sat next to Simon and saw that the seat at the center was still unoccupied. They were all waiting for the big boss to come. The meeting was to start at 10:30 am and it was 10:28 am. She was constantly looking at the entrance door and at her watch, eagerly waiting for Raymond to come.

Just one minute after he entered, dead silence panned across the room and most of the people looked all nervous. She was surprised to see the impact he had on people. Yes, he demanded all attention and Akira was giving him all that she had. Raymond was scanning the room and his eyes locked on her the moment he saw her. He got disturbed the moment he saw her because he knew that with her in the room he won’t be able to focus on work and the meeting today was really important as they were going to decide about multiple levels of the game.

“Who asked you to come here?”, Raymond asked and looked at her with eyes swirling with unknown emotions.

But before Akira could reply, Simon buzzed in and said,

“She is the new intern of the graphics team and I had asked her to accompany us so that she could get an idea of what our team does. Since it looks like she hasn’t been assigned a mentor yet, I thought I could take care of her.” Then he glanced at Akira fondly before looking back at Raymond.

The moment Raymond heard Simon and saw him fondly looking at her, he immediately understood the thoughts lurking in that guy’s head. His body got all tensed and anger was surging within. He closed his fists tightly to vent out his anger so that it didn’t show on his face. Then with a straight face, he asked,

“I know who she is. My question was why did you decide to introduce her to a design discussion straightaway when she doesn’t even know what we are going to discuss about. Did you check with her mentor before asking her to tag along with you?”

Raymond’s demeanor right now was so cold that Simon felt he was about to die.

Akira who was all pumped up to attend her first formal corporate meeting in the War Room wanted to just escape from there at that very instant. His rage, his burning eyes, it was too much for her to handle. She was feeling sorry for Simon.

After a moment when Simon slowly got his grip back, he stuttered,

“Actually no mentor has been assigned yet and she was just sitting idle. So I thought….” and Simon’s voice just attenuated and met silence.

Raymond didn’t want Simon to have any ugly thoughts about Akira, so he decided to mark his territory for once and for all.

“Ok Simon, listen very carefully. Her mentor who YOU think is unassigned is ME”, Raymond said and looked at Akira, whose eyes were wide open like she had been transfixed.

“So from next time before even thinking of dragging my intern anywhere, don’t forget to ask me first”.

His words echoed in the room like a death warrant and Akira felt so embarrassed that she wanted the earth to split into two for her. Simon was flustered to death. He felt mortified and his ears started burning. He knew his Boss had a temper but he never knew that this simple act of his would be taken wrongly by him. Akira looked at Simon apologetically. Even though she had nothing to do with it, she felt like a culprit.

She lifted her gaze and looked at Raymond. He was busy with his laptop and was sitting so nonchalantly as if nothing had happened. The more she tried to understand him, the more she failed. He was starting to become an enigma for her, a puzzle which she wanted to solve, but the more she tried, the more complicated it became.

She felt all deflated and all the excitement of having a great first day had vanished. She thought,

“How can I learn under him when I am scared to be with him in the same room. Oh God, you could have given me a sloppy mentor. I wouldn’t have minded getting coffees. But him? Why him? How will I handle him?”.

She bottled up all her thought processes and tried to fling it inside some corner of her brain and decided to calm down as the meeting had started. She wanted to channel all her energy to try to understand the technicality of the meeting and to forget what just happened a few seconds back. But her mind, unfortunately, was like a wild horse. All it wanted was to think about him, know about him and to be with him.

Her heart beamed with joy knowing that he was going to be her mentor but her mind knew well that it was not going to turn well. She was tired of the internal struggle between her mind and her heart.

Now all that she wanted was to have a peaceful day to herself.