Chapter 90
When Cecilia handed me the three–to–four–page proposal, I was quite taken aback, to say the
least.
Gotta give it to her, the girl had got more hustle than I expected in some areas. The formatting and layout of the proposal did have their merits, after all.
But once I got through the whole thing, I started to lose my cool a bit. Her entire spiel was about the four hunky, romanceable lead guys in our game.
In the proposal, she wrote that the character design was key to users‘ top–up amount, and that the hunks‘ looks were of utmost importance.
And Cecilia, who’d never seen a project through to completion, thought our leading men weren’t up to snuff and suggested a total redraw.
That was her first point.
I wasn’t exactly shocked by that; beauty was in the eye of the beholder, and she’d pulled similar stunts before, so I could see where she was coming from. But her next suggestion blew my mind. She wanted to change one of the leads – our guy majoring in finance, the so–called “flatterer” – to a “genius” persona.
From flatterer to icy scholar, with the new image looking a dead ringer for Hogan.
“The backstory of a flatterer could easily cast a shadow on Hogan’s image.” She wrote in her proposal, “It might not reflect well on Rainbow Capital’s public image and needs changing.”
She sounded like the missus of Rainbow Capital’s chairman, pretty bossy.
I closed the proposal gave Cecilia a quick glance, and said, “You’ve certainly done your homework on this, but Director Irwin, if you had taken a closer look at our project file, you’d know that Mr. Zade green–lit our concept.”
I was hinting that Hogan didn’t see any issue with our lead’s persona.
Cecilia’s expression froze for a split second before she said, “Xaviera, originally Hogan was just trying to find a project for me to satisfy my school requirements. It was all so sudden, and since you were an old acquaintance, that’s how our collaboration came about. But,”
Her tone went up a notch as she continued, “he probably never really looked at the project file in detail.”
Her voice was sweet, her big eyes twinkling with a hint of amusement. It didn’t seem like she was picking a fight.
When she thought it over, what she said wasn’t out of the realm of possibility. And as the game’s planner, now that Cecilia had brought up these suggestions, we couldn’t just ignore them.
Chapter 90
Even if her ideas seemed like gilding the lily to us, she had Hogan backing her up, which put the intangible pressure on me.
So I told her, “Director Irwin, if there’s no rush, allow me to discuss this with President Lott
first.”
Wallis always said that when it came to work, if all else failed, they could always play for time. But Cecilia didn’t seem keen on giving me that chance and said with a grin, “Sure thing, Xaviera. I’d love to join in on the discussion, and if needed, I could even bring Hogan along.”
Hogan, Hogan, always Hogan. It seemed Cecilia was dead set on having us respond to her suggestions ASAP.
“No worries.” I replied smoothly, “Mr. Zade’s a busy man, and we can hash this out internally first to spare the bigwigs at Rainbow Capital’s board from sweating the small stuff.”
“Okay.” Mention of the board softened her stance a bit, and with droopy eyes, she murmured, “Then I’ll follow your lead, Xaviera.”
With that, the conversation wrapped up, and I watched the young lady trudge back to her office, feeling a wave of relief as I closed my eyes and exhaled.
