Chapter 3 The Design Team
Michiru arrived at her office around 9 in the morning and was greeted as always by her lovely assistant with an even lovelier cup of coffee.
"Good morning boss" The young girl greeted her handing over the happy caffeine.
"Good morning Lara, how are you?" She asked taking a sip of her coffee.
"Just stellar Boss, how are you?" Michiru took another sip of her coffee and thought about it.
"Hmmm…I'd have to go with wonderful myself Lara." She replied with a bright smile. Lara looked at her somewhat surprised. It wasn't often that she saw her boss in such high spirits and she had to admit, she liked it.
"That's great Boss" she replied with a smile.
"Isn't it" Michiru agreed and headed into her office. Sitting down at her desk she opened her diary and was reminded about why she was in such a good mood.
Today the design team were coming to discuss the layout of Haruka's school. It was the first big step toward realizing her dream -after that horrid presentation- and she couldn't be more excited.
She had an image in her mind about how she wanted the school to be set out. Of course she'd have to wait and see what the design team said, but she was hoping that the end result wouldn't vary too much from what she imagined.
Taking a seat at her desk she turned on her lap top. Once it was through its start up routine she opened the Email she'd received from the design team last week. It detailed everything they wanted to talk to her about as well as listing the names of all the people who would be visiting her office today.
She read and reread the names of the design team over and over again, making sure she remembered them all perfectly. The last thing she wanted was to embarrass herself by calling one of them the wrong name.
Of course she could only prepare herself so much. Until she actually met her design team she had no way of putting names to faces. She had discovered while she was growing up however, that if she memorised people's names before she met them it made remembering who was who that much easier.
Her parents had hosted hundreds of parties and she was expected to know the name of every person who walked through their door. Her father had told her it was to help her learn the value of a name and how important it would be when she had to go out into the world on her own. Really, it was so she could remind her parents of who they were talking to.
While she had no real love for her parents -particularly after they'd thrown her out for wanting to date girls rather than boys- she had found that particular skill rather useful in the business world.
Of course once she was out on her own she'd had to remind herself, that if for some reason she forgot someone's name, her father wasn't around to beat her for it later. Her father was such a bastard.
Turning her thoughts back to more pleasant matters she read through the names again. The company director would be along today as well as the design team consisting of 3 architects and their group leader
The director's name was Shuko, the rest of the design team were Emanuel, Shinji and Cassidy and the team leader's name was Ari. For some reason Ari's name always drew her attention. She wasn't exactly sure why. It was a lovely name of course but it was only a name she hadn't even met a person to put to it yet so why did it draw her so?
She shook her head and sighed. She'd probably never know so there was no point stressing about it. She looked down at her watch, almost 9:30 the team would be here soon. She called down to her assistant and requested that the tea be prepared in anticipation of her guest's arrival, then sat back to wait.
Not 5 minutes later Lara called up to inform her that the team had arrived and she was bringing them and the tea upstairs. Michiru stood up ready to greet them. They reached her door in groups of two.
Lara was at the front leading the way with Shuko beside her. Shuko was tall and slim with short, curly black hair that was silvering at the temples and large brown eyes with lines off to the side indicating that the other woman spent a lot of her time smiling. Michiru liked that. She introduced herself and shook Michiru's hand before introducing the rest of the group.
Shinji was a relatively short man with sensibly, short cut hair and brown eyes and he was walking beside Cassidy who was at least a head taller with blonde hair and blue eyes. They both smiled at Michiru and bowed politely before moving along and allowing the last pair entry into the small office.
Emmanuel was tall with short spiky brown hair and blue/grey eyes and walking beside him…. Michiru's breath caught as her eyes stopped on Ari. She wasn't what you'd call classically beautiful, more attractive then anything else.
She wasn't overly tall, about half a head taller than Michiru with long chocolate brown hair, big, bright hazel eyes and pale skin with a light splatter of freckles on her cheeks and across her nose.
Michiru was in a daze but somehow she managed to bow politely in greeting.
"It's lovely to meet you all" she was suddenly even more grateful for her horrid parents who'd taught her to be able to speak clearly and evenly even when you wouldn't think it possible.
"Why don't we all head down to the drawing room and you can show me what you have in mind for the school." Michiru suggested. Shuko agreed eagerly and Michiru lead the way down to the drawing room.
--
That afternoon Michiru made her way over to the temple to collect Hotaru. She was so angry with herself and it took every ounce of her effort not to yell and scream at her reflection every time she caught sight of it in the car's sun visor.
She'd managed to take her seat at the table in the drawing room and listen as Shuko went on about measurements and soil consistency.
She had no interest whatsoever in any of that stuff since most of it was the information that she herself had collected. So she was greatly pleased when Shuko stopped talking and directed Shinji to unroll the plans they'd drawn up.
Her excitement had ramped up several notches as she'd looked down at the what would be Haruka's legacy all drawn out on paper in front of her. Everything looked just wonderful from what she could see -of course she didn't really understand architectural plans all that well so she was really only guessing that everything was wonderful-.
She'd been excited to hear what the design team would tell her about their plans and she'd sat back eagerly waiting for one of them to talk. Then Ari had stood up to speak and Michiru's mind had gone blank.
She growled at herself as she remembered sitting there watching the brunette talk and was even more annoyed to discover, that despite her undivided attention being entirely focused on the woman she hadn't heard a word of what she'd said.
She indicated when she reached the street she needed to take to get to the temple and turned into it a lot quicker than she probably should have. She thought to herself in that moment how proud Haruka would be of her for not driving at what the blonde liked to call 'grandma speed' for once. And then the tears came.
When she finally pulled up at the temple she turned the car off and hugged the steering wheel. The car still smelled of the wind soldier how could Michiru even be thinking about anyone else? She fought to regain her composure but she was so angry with herself that the tears wouldn't stop.
Had it not been for her innate Sailor Neptune abilities Michiru wouldn't have had any idea that someone was approaching her car. As it was, by the time she looked up the person was already standing beside the car looking down at her in concern.
Her blue eyes met Rei's dark purple and she tried unsuccessfully for a smile.
"Oh hi Rei, I didn't notice you there I'm sorry." She quietly apologised looking down and wiping her eyes.
"Are you all right?" Rei asked. Michiru looked up into Rei's concerned eyes once more and found that she couldn't bring herself to lie to the fire soldier. Slowly she shook her head.
"No I'm not." She replied. "And I don't think I'm ever going to be."