Unexpected Creature

4: "You won, idiot."

“Investing to our business? No, that is not the reason why we approached you. I just told you that my girlfriend here is a fan of yours that’s why we approached you. We wanted a photo with you,” Heewon simply explained with a smile. Clementine’s mouth was left ajar in surprise and slight embarrassment as she cleared her throat before holding eye contact with them once again with much more confidence.

“Oh, my apologies. I was just thinking so much that I didn’t catch on what you said. Let me just put my food on the table for a sec,” Clementine responded and left to put her plate on their table as Heewon smiled widely to Yeseul, who was also smiling excitedly. “Let’s go.”

The three girls walked to the corner where the black wall decorated with LED yellow star lights. Heewon took her iPhone, which model was the latest one in the world, as Yeseul and Clementine stood by the wall with stars elegantly. Heewon flashed a smile as she saw how wide and happy Yeseul’s smile to the camera was while she stood awkwardly beside Clementine, who was standing normally while looking at the camera with a slightly tilted head and a fierce face. No matter how Clementine looked gorgeous in the photo taken, Heewon only stared at Yeseul and thought about how beautiful her girlfriend was. After admiring her girlfriend, Heewon brought her phone up and put it to selfie mode as she wore a pretty smile while Yeseul flashed a toothy grin and brought a peace sign. Clementine, who had never tried doing wacky poses, just tilted her head to the other side and put a small smile on her face to the camera.

“Thank you so much, Ms. Zalekun. Please continue to be our great role model,” Heewon thanked Clementine after taking one more shot.

“T-thank you, Ms. Zalekun,” Yeseul shyly said and blushed as she slightly bowed to Clementine in habit, making Clementine giggle because of her cuteness.

“Good luck on your business,” Clementine flashed a brief small smile before walking away from them and back to their table where she found Seville almost taking a piece of strawberry with his bare hand. “Asshole.”

“Ow!” Seville pouted as he rubbed his hand that Clementine slapped away from her plate.

“Clementine, language,” Tyson calmly warned, which made Clementine secretly roll her eyes as she took a seat next to Seville and gave him a glare when he stuck his tongue out to her.

Clementine stabbed her fork on a strawberry and popped it in her mouth as she chewed it slowly to savor its wonderful taste that made her almost forget about everything she hated in the world. While some businessmen who went to our table to have a chat about business to her parents, the three siblings did whatever they wanted to do by themselves. After finishing two plates filled with food that was mostly chicken, he finally got full and decided to play a Battle Royale game on his phone while Cara left their table after finishing her food to converse with other people mostly about business too like her parents. Not caring about anything or anyone, Clementine continued to eat her strawberries.

“Ms. Clementine Zalekun, I heard that you are currently dating the rapper, Lyo. How does it feel like to date the best rapper of the country?” One of the businessmen that Tyson and Charlie were talking to earlier spoke to Clementine, who was just quietly eating her strawberries.

“Pardon?” Clementine responded with her eyebrows furrowed when she heard news about her that were clearly new to her.

“I said, how does it feel like to date the best rapper of the country?” Clementine clearly heard every word the 40-year-old man said the first time and she was actually seeking for more context about what he said since she absolutely had no clue about what he said.

“I heard you the first time, sir. I was asking about what you meant by that,” Clementine said as politely as she could. She badly wanted to drop the honorifics and courteousness but she thought about what her parents, who were in front of her, would think about her and what might happen to her reputation if she did so.

“Oh. I’m talking about your dating news. Come on, Ms. Clementine. You don’t have to pretend like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” The man whose head was balding said and let out a heartily laugh while Tyson and Charli only flashed a smile.

‘Why the hell is this old man giving a damn about my non-existent love life instead of his balding head? His egg head with hair strands stuck on the side certainly needs more care and attention than my love life,’ Clementine thought as she could immediately sense that the old man was another piece of trash.

“I don’t have to pretend that I don’t know because I literally have no clue on what you’re talking about, sir. Last time I remember about Lyo is giving him his award since I was the one who announced his award in the 21st Music Awards,” Clementine simply said as she put a strawberry in her mouth, feeling unbothered even if the man dropped his smile.

“Ms. Clementine, It’s not like you would lose your company if you tell us what do you feel about dating Lyo,” He said as he leaned back to his chair arrogantly though his big tummy just stuck out even more when he did that.

“I could tell you about the crimes I have done and I still wouldn’t lose my company, sir,” Clementine said as she flashed a sweet smile, only to annoy him.

“Why, you!” He abruptly stood up from his seat and pointed his finger on her, making his men, Tyson and Charli stand up as well as Tyson held his arm with a serious gaze on him.

“Mr. Bren, you don’t want to cause a scene here. Your business is nearly bankrupt. You don’t want your business’ reputation to ruin it, don’t you?” Tyson calmly said, making the old man offended and intimidated as he pulled his arm from his grip and glared at him.

“You arrogant pricks,” The old man mumbled before storming away with his other men though Tyson was not able to hear it because of the background violin music. He might have ruined that man’s business by his own if he had heard it.

“Clementine, are you okay?” Charli asked as they sat back down.

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I be? I would’ve been crying right now if I was affected by him in any way,” Clementine simply said as she continued to eat her strawberries.

“By the way, Clementine. Is it true that you’re dating Lyo?” Tyson seriously asked as he leaned forward to the table to listen attentively to his daughter.

“I only open my social media apps when I have to upload something so I don’t know about that rumor of me and Lyo. Let me ask you, father, do you think that I would date Lyo?” Clementine placed her fork down as she looked straight to her father’s eyes.

“There’s a possibility that you would since you don’t lack in anything anyway,” Tyson said with a smile that expressed that he was hoping that he answered the right answer.

“Father, you mentioned that I don’t lack in anything but you said that I could date him? Father, are you saying that I got everything but high standards?” Tyson’s mouth went ajar as he went speechless on her response. On the other hand, Charli was smiling proudly while nodding and Seville rolled his eyes as he heard his sister’s answer and continued playing his game. He was close to victory.

“Welcome to the 21st National Entrepreneurship Awards! We will now start the awarding ceremony,”

“I’ll head to the toilet,” Clementine excused herself as the host announced that the main event was starting. After eating a lot of strawberries and drinking water, she finally had the urge to pee. They were actually served a glass of champagne each but she was not in the mood to drink alcohol tonight.

As Clementine headed to the toilet, she did not care about the host speaking from outside and just continued humming silently to her favorite ballad song. Not wanting to get possible germs on her body, she placed plenty of tissue papers all around the toilet seat until she could not see the toilet seat. She locked the door as she sat on the seat and sighed in relief while she relieved herself. Her ways of not getting possible germs from public toilets were not over. When she was done, she raised her left leg up to step on the flush handle for her pee in the toilet to flush down. She was not wearing gloves so she had to use her heels to pull the flush down.

After washing her hands properly, Clementine dried her hands until they were completely dry and left the comfort room. Humming the bridge of her favorite ballad song that she had been humming to earlier, she walked back to their table without listening to what the host was saying or what the stage was looking like when she suddenly noticed the people standing from their seats while clapping and looking at her with a smile of respect. She thought that it was normal for them to look at her while clapping since she thought that she looked perfect even after using the toilet that was why their reaction was like that but then she saw Seville mouth to her something.

“You won, i***t,” Seville mouthed to Clementine with a smile on his face while clapping. With much curiosity, Clementine finally looked at the stage and saw her name flashed on a big screen with the title of an award above it.

“Congratulations, Clementine Zalekun, for winning Businesswoman of The Year 20XX!”