219 Alternate reality...

Wei and Jia Li had watched plays, explored different eateries and ended the days with their customary walks.

As much as she had tried to keep him at a distance, he had not let her walk too far away from him. But he had been careful enough to never cross the line of friendship. Jia Li had tried raising the topic of the complicated emotions which lay between them, but every time, he had shied away from discussing them. She didn't want to hide behind the garb of friendship anymore while making him wait for her to return his love for her. But he wouldn't let her talk about it.

He had flown back to Shanghai, three evenings ago with his father and she already missed him. Before leaving, he had solemnly looked into her eyes and told her to expect him back soon enough. She had protested and told him to not plan anything silly. She had told him in all seriousness that they needed to have a talk. But he had simply engulfed her in a bone crushing hug and bid her farewell.

Her visit to the hospital to meet Mr. Wang had also been pretty smooth. Whether it was coincidental or deliberate, Mrs. Wang had not been around the entire time that Jia Li stayed and chatted with Wei's father. He had, of course, been as charming as he was during their first meet.

It seemed that everything was running smoothly in her life at the moment, both personally and at work front. But there was a part of her which was living in an alternate reality, one, who wasn't bothered about anything or anyone else, one, who woke up to the daily mails from Shanghai, looked forward to them. Every morning, it was like a daily dose of fix for her. She read the words greedily, despite berating herself for doing so.

Every time, she told herself that she would block him, henceforth. She reminded herself that she didn't care whether Tang's room had a blown up picture of him and her. He had sent her an image of it in the previous mail. She didn't want to know that he had acquired a pet, a cat whose green eyes reminded him of someone. She told herself that she was least interested in the various articles which he gathered and sent her, which held information about all companies working on Rare Earth elements. But all mails, links and images had been saved on her personal folder already.

She hadn't mentioned any of this to Wei, worse she hadn't even acknowledged this to herself. Was she being an escapist again? She didn't know and didn't care in the moment.

The whole routine had become addictive, and she hadn't realised the extent of it, till it stopped without an explanation, two days ago!

"Good morning, Mr. Ying. The latest updates from all clients are at your desk," she abruptly shut her 'thought box' as the boss walked in to the small office located next to the lab.

"Ah, good that I caught you here. Please go back to the office today and handle things there. Eric has had to go back to America due to some unexpected development there. I am not sure about when would he return. You need to give assistance to the team there," Hui instructed briskly.

"Oh, but what about the new client who comes in tomorrow?" she asked worriedly.

"Let's take one day at a time, Ms. Lin, shall we?" he replied with a raised eyebrow.

She nodded and hurried to the main office at Hyde Park corner.

"I hope all is well at Eric's end," she thought to herself.

Reaching the office, she went directly to one of the managers who was involved in the handling the new client's project along with her. She wanted to go through the entire thing once before the client came in the next day. Since it was her first project, she was damn nervous. With Eric being absent, she realised that the workload for everyone would substantially increase, especially hers after that bold announcement of her being the company spokesperson during the last press conference. She knew very well that Mr. Ying was great at implementation but conversation wasn't his strong suit.

"You can do it, Jia Li… fighting!" she pumped herself up.

Before leaving office that evening, she checked her inbox one last time. No mail from a particular person prompted her to cursing the entire male population for being unreliable and cheats. Unmindful of her surroundings, she nearly got run over by a conspicuous looking car. How dare they stop the car directly in front of the office, no matter how expensive looking it was? Did the driver have a death wish?

"I see that your road sense has not improved by even an iota, despite you heading towards your middle years," said a shockingly familiar voice.