Hong Kong Dollar
By: The Butterfly-winged Rat
Chapter Two:
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Ding-dong.
It had been so painful -Bryan concluded- to have to bring yourself up out of bed after a long sleepless night. The events of past had left him shaken, to say the least. As he crawled out from underneath the blanket to answer the incessant ringing of that blasted phone, he fixed his hair a bit, seeing as the door had decided to begin bothering him as well.
"Hello?" He snarled bitterly into the phone.
"Ah, Bryan, What time is it there? I hope I am not disrupting you!" God, he knew that voice. It was just like his bloody boss to find just the right moment to pester him.
Sighing, he walked out to the door. "No sir. Just give me a moment, there's something I have to attend to." He placed the phone down on top of the mini bar so he could go check if it was just room service.
Instead of annoying hotel staff, it had been a tall –but not as tall as he was, he thankfully noted- brunette dressed in orange who he found waiting impatiently outside his room. What the- "Who are you, and what do you want?" the Russian barked loudly, not on his best mood.
The brunette just ignored his callous greeting and smiled, or rather, smirked at him with his arms crossed. "Mr. Kuznetsov, I presume?"
Bryan was just about to ask him how he knew who he was when his CEO started calling out to him from the other end of the phone. He was just about to pick it up and yell at his boss for being such an impatient slave-driver when the stranger walked in and beat him to it.
"Hello, Mr. Ivanov?" He greeted sweetly, something that didn't look right for someone who was as tall and masculine as he was. "Yes, this is Kei. I believe we have spoken before. Yes, yes. I've just met Mr. Kuznetsov… Yes. I see. Alright then. I'll inform him about it. Alright. Goodbye." As the phone made a click, Bryan was still trying g to process what had been said.
THAT was KEI! Kei: Kon's manager who had been too formal for words. This was him?
As Bryan stood quietly mentally debating the possibilities of the scenario, Kei gave him an amused look and extended his hand out to shake, snapping the lilac-haired Russian out of his daze. "Hello there, Mr. Kuznetsov. I'm Kei, as you might've heard. Have you considered my invitation yet?"
---
"So is there a family name after that, or is it just Kei?" Bryan asked conversationally, taking a sip of his Latte, which was named the same thing as the quaint little café they were sitting at now.
Kei looked up from his spot across the table. "Excuse me?" he asked slowly, trying to keep all the tiramisu he had eaten in his mouth.
The Russian gave a low chuckle. "I said: do you have a last name?" he repeated, finding himself amused with the other man. "Come on. It's pretty obvious Kei isn't even your real name, let alone your full one."
Smiling back at Bryan, the brunette stirred the cake in its bowl as if thinking something over. "Well, I can't lie. You did manage to nail it right on the head. But don't expect me to go telling you what my real name is!" He said in a threatening manner, waving hisfork at Bryan. "As for my last name… I'll give you a clue. I'm sure as hell not Chinese! But I'm something pretty close to it. You might even say 'in more ways than one'."
Bryan really did laugh out that time. "You are something, Mr. Kei, I'll give you that!"
Kei laughed along with him for a few moments longer but as their laughter died down, Kei looked at him with a dead serious expression that seemed to just kill the mood. Strangely, Bryan still wanted to laugh. "I think we should be talking about business now. That IS why you're here, isn't it?" He reminded him.
"Do we have to?" Bryan mock-whined. "Such an inconvenience… And I haven't even finished my latte yet."
Pushing the lilac-haired man's sarcasm aside, Kei took a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it on the table for Bryan to see. "These are, ahem, Mr. Kon's demands-"
"-Demands?-"
"Well, they're more like what he wants for his pre-press conference meeting and on the actual event." He tried to explain as logically as he could. That was a hard task on its own because ofthe absurdly un-intellectual chicken scratches that dared pass themselves off as English sentences.
Giving up on actually understanding it, he opted to go for the easier option. "These demands would be?" he asked Kei while still eyeing the paper as if it could've come to life and attacked him at any minute.
Amused at the Russian's behavior, the star in question's manager began to elaborate what he understood of their client's requests. "Well for starters, he wants a room with a forty by sixty mirror, a bottle of distilled mountain water in every room he enters and that all the staff address him as sir." He explained, not failing to snerk at the last one.
"That all?" Bryan asked. He had actually been in the presence of quite a number of celebrities, mostly endorsers of their products, but a lot of them had asked for way more things than that. "What, no caviar? No red carpet rolled out in front of his dressing room?" he teased. Well, it was a good thing, in a way. They now knew he at least had the ATTITUDE of a real star.
"He said he thinks Salmon has a better taste." The brunette replied, not at all joking.
The mood was made heavy once more.
"You can really kill fun can't you?"
"I try."
---
With all the hustle and bustle of the conference areas of the Island Shangri-La, it wasn't that unbelievable that he would manager to lose- or rather, be separated from Kei. All the workers were busy making the place look presentable for their press release and announcement, so he didn't have a chance to speak to any of them about which place was where.
Thinking it would be best for him not to get in anyone's way; Bryan soon found the buffet table and made himself comfortable. He obliged himself with a bit of the spread, though it made him feel somewhat bad that he didn't really do anything around there and didn't deserve to eat the cool mini-doughnuts set out for the poor underprivileged workers.
Karma had ways of making him pay, by the way, because he happened to choke on one of those cool mini doughnuts and almost drowned trying to wash it down. But even amidst his little disasters, something in the background caught his eye.
He immediately gave chase. It seemed to be moving away faster than he was running to it.
He bumped into two people and sent a few more colliding into the people around them. He didn't really pay attention to that at the moment because he felt that THIS was a bigger deal then those minor accidents could ever be.
The figure he chased was almost in sight. It was almost out the door and into the next room when he managed to grab hold of the figure's shoulder. "Wait one minute-!"
"Mr. Kuznetsov!" Kei chose that very moment to reemerge from what ever cave he had been hiding in for the duration of the time, and quite frankly, Bryan couldn't be more pissed, "Mr. Kuznetsov, I'm glad to see you've met our star!"
What?
"Hey! You have water!" the Russian's attention was called back to the bottle of water in his hand from the doughnut scenario, but even that was rapidly removed from his grasp. "Thanks! I needed that. You will not believe how hard it is to get a bottle of fresh Mountain water in here!"
Kei smiled as he looked at both of them. "I do believe you've met, but just for formalities, Mr. Kuznetsov, this is our client and the next biggest star the world has ever seen, Rei Kon."
No way in hell… This couldn't be happening.
How obvious is it that this was done with half a brain? But Horah for me, it's been proofread.