164 Weird Vibes

"Nooooo, the man is extremely punctual and is expecting me to show up with someone right now. Ok, let's do this. You come here now and meet him. If he approves of you, I will tell him that you would meet him directly at the site after sometime," Aziz continued pleading with Karim.

Karim gave Jia Li a look of apology and said, "do you mind accompanying me to meet a potential client for a bit. You can wait at another table while I meet him."

"Don't be silly. I am already feeling guilty that I am delaying you from work. I am the one who should be apologising instead," she replied.

"Ok, it's settled then," he turned the car to go to the hotel address which Aziz had sent him.

"Your translator is not here, Mr. Aziz. Are you sure you have found one for me or is this going to be wastage of my time?" an irate Hui asked him.

"He is…uh…he is here, see," Aziz breathed a sigh of relief when he saw Karim walking towards them.

Wiping his brow despite the chilly weather, he walked forward and met Karim halfway.

"What took you so long? The client was getting so antsy," he whispered urgently.

Hui's impatience was at its peak already when he saw two people saunter in the hotel lobby. Wait…wasn't this woman familiar?

"Hello, I am sorry to keep you waiting. My name is Karim," he introduced himself to the client.

But Hui's attention had been captured by the woman from the airport. What was she doing here?

Ignoring Kaim's outstretched hand, he gave into his curiosity and covered the distance between her and himself.

"We meet again," he said to gain her attention.

Jia Li had parted ways from Karim when his friend had come up to them. She had found an unoccupied chair and gone to sit there. She was trying to access her mails on the new phone but was running into network issues again and again.

She felt someone's presence next to her even before he spoke. Looking up, she found herself staring at the bespectacled man from the airport. She stood up, surprised at his presence there. She gave him a polite nod of greeting, mixed with curiosity in her eyes.

"How is your wound now?" he asked.

Ying Hui believed in probabilities, permutations and combinations, not coincidences. And the probability of running into this woman again and that too at such a remote place had been really really low.

"Was she someone sent by the people whose feathers he had ended up ruffling this time on his visit to Shanghai?" his mind was racing as he tried to make inane conversation with her.

Karim had joined in the talk now and was looking at both of them curiously.

"You both know each other?" he asked, not surprised because of both being of Chinese origin.

"No," Jia Li said.

"Yes," Hui replied simultaneously.

"I mean we met for a brief minute at the airport which doesn't count as knowing one another," she clarified hastily.

The man was giving weird sort of vibes to her and she didn't know what to make of the situation.

"Karim, I shall go explore the nearby market till you finish here. Call me once you are done," she said hastily.

"Do you live here? Are you also a translator," Hui found her behaviour more and more suspicious by each passing minute.

"Uh…" she didn't want to divulge too much to this stranger.

"She is a language expert and worked with the embassy in China till early last year. She is fluent in English, French and German apart from Mandarin, of course," Karim wanted to make the most of the client's interest in Jia Li's profile.

Maybe there could be an opportunity for her here. As per Aziz's feedback, the man seemed to be a client with a wide spectrum of interests. There was no harm in showcasing one's skills.

"That's quite an impressive resume. What brings a person of your mettle to a place which can't do justice to your skillset?" he asked.

Jia Li was thoroughly peeved with the man's behaviour. There was something clearly off about him. But she had no patience or inclination to deal with it right now. She had enough of her own mess!

"Are you this curious about everyone you meet for the first time? I was under the impression that you were pressed for time and hence Karim had to rush here, leaving other tasks behind. But here you stand, asking irrelevant questions to a near stranger," she snapped.

Karim looked at Jia Li in surprise. She had always been an easy going person. He couldn't ever have imagined her getting riled up by a few harmless questions. It wasn't as if the man was trying to flirt with her.