Page 7 of Chasing Mr. Prefect

Cholo laughed and pulled out his phone again. I assumed he was adding my details to the file.

“Never mind, forget that I asked. You’re probably Choleric, though. Extroverted, too.”

“Is it that obvious?” he asked, putting his phone away. “You’re right. ENFJ, Choleric. Anyway, the others are on their way here.”

“You could have texted me to go straight here, too, you know,” I muttered.

He sat on the table I was leaning on. “How? I don’t even have your number.”

“You never asked,” I said.

He handed his phone to me and I entered my digits. “Don’t bother me with non-Ephemere things, though,” I reminded him as I gave it back to him.

“You got it, Lavinia,” he said.

Then my phone chimed.

+639*********

As discussed. - Cholo

Swiping his text notification away, I opened my laptop and stared at the board.

“So, which one are you assigning me to?” I asked, wanting to get a headstart.

“Depends on which you like,” he said, taking the cap off the whiteboard marker.

“Yuck, that stinks,” I complained. “And I don’t know. What does Finance do?”

“Sell stuff. Raise funds. Set up stalls in bazaars to sell the stuff we get from sponsors’ X-Deals.”

“Absolutely not,” I said, terrified at the idea. “Also, how is Promotions different from Publicity?”

“The Promotions team involves, well, promoting on various media channels and doing campus tours. They do the spiels on radio stations, give talks about the event to nearby universities, make people from our partner orgs pose with our giant 3D logo,” he said, extending his hands to demonstrate how huge the logo was. “They also make deals with media channels to promote our event brand free of charge.”

“We have a few influencers in the club,” I suggested, folding my arms. “Have we reached out to them? Might give us a better reach.”

Cholo’s eyebrows knitted together and then his eyes went wide.“That’s brilliant, Lavinia. Would you like to lead that? We can put you in Promos.”

“You want to sendmeto negotiate with people? With my brawling history?”

“Fair point,” he said, letting out a laugh. “But do you want to at least pitch it in the meeting later? It’s your idea.”

“Remind me to bring it up,” I said, grateful that he wanted me to take the credit. “What about Publicity?”

“Publicity-slash-Creatives is our in-house design team. They check the visuals, posters, everything else. As we’re on a limited budget and cramped timeline, we don’t usually have the resources to hire artists so we do it ourselves.”

“Cool. Do you do video teasers, too?”

“The team last year did. Why?”

“Hmm. Maybe we should do that. I’d be happy to join this team. Video editing is kind of my thing,” I said, having so much experience from editing videos of my favorite Korean girl group, Era of Maidens. I started it on social media as a joke and then it became my outlet when things at school got way too stressful.

“Right, of course,” he said so knowingly that made me raise my eyebrow.

“Of course what?”

“The one you had on the case presentation last Friday. Wasn’t that your work?” he said a little too quickly, scratching his nose, which made me feel a teeny bit suspicious. “The one you played before, um, you got interrupted.”

---