Chapter 185

185 The Real Treasure

Even more surprising than the fact that everything was clean and proper was the fact that there were actually security guards in front of the door. I had no idea what was stored in there, but it must be important enough for the company to hire guards to guard it. Since this company’s main selling point was the creativity of its staff, I guess it might not be too far of a stretch for it to protect its archive of confidential information.

“You’re here again?” the guard greeted Jeremy.

“Yeah, sorry for this...again...” Jeremy replied with a giddy smile.

The guard’s eyes landed on me before his face transformed into a look of curiosity. I guess he didn’t expect Jeremy to bring someone down here with him.

“You brought a friend along...” the guard said.

“Oh yea, she’s working with me on a project at the moment,” Jeremy explained smoothly.

“I’ll need your employee ID before I can let you in,” the guard told me sternly.

“Right. Here you go...” I said as I handed the guard my company ID card.

With all of that settled, the guard entered a password to unlock the door for us. Security seemed tight enough for a room that was supposed to hold old documents. Someone really should start an initiative to scan all of these documents so that the company could store them in its digital archive.

.....

The door closed behind us, and I stood glued to the spot as my eyes took in the endless rows upon rows of cabinets filled with folders and documents. The whole place was much bigger than I ever imagined. It was like a small warehouse filled with neatly arranged documents. The place reminded me of a library with books arranged neatly on rows of bookshelves. In this case, instead of books, there were documents from what were supposed to be the old works and projects that the company had worked on.

“Wow...it’s so big...” I said in awe.

“I thought the same thing when I first came here too. One of my seniors brought me along with him on one of our projects. Sadly, he no longer works here, but thanks to him, I’ve been coming down here to get inspiration when I get stuck with my work ever since,” Jeremy told me.

We walked along the rows of endless folders together while I wondered where we were supposed to start. There was just too much stored here that it made me feel even more lost than before.

“What should we be searching for?” I asked.

“Something that would tell us how to make our commercial more emotionally appealing,” Jeremy replied.

'

“I know that already. I meant, how are we supposed to do that? What kind of documents are we supposed to look for?” I asked with slight annoyance.

“Just follow me for a bit and I’ll show you something good,” Jeremy said before he turned to wink at me.

The place felt slightly cold, and I wondered if the room temperature had been intentionally set that way in order to preserve the paper documents. Grey-colored cabinets filled with black folders. While some cabinets had labels such as the year of the name of the project on them, most of the cabinets didn’t have any labels on them at all. The cabinet that we were standing in front of also didn’t have a label.

“All these cabinets look the same. Are we really going to find what we’re looking for down here?” I asked skeptically.

“Oh, there’s a trove of real treasure down here for sure in case you haven’t heard,” Jeremy replied teasingly.

“Real treasure? Like gold and diamonds?” I asked jokingly.

I honestly didn’t know what he meant, although I knew that he was speaking metaphorically.

“I’ll show you...the good stuff...” Jeremy said

That truly perked my curiosity.

After falling Jeremy to almost the back of the document warehouse, he came to a stop. The row where we made our stop looked like nothing special and that was because every single row just looked the same.

“What’s in here?” I asked as I pointed a finger at the cabinet in question.

“Open it and see for yourself. It’s not locked or anything,” Jeremy said casually.

I stared at his face dubiously before shifting my attention to the cabinet in front of me. Hopefully, nothing was going to jump out at me if I suddenly opened it.

“All right, I’ll open it and see for myself,” I said.

I reached out for the handle of the cabinet doors before pulling them both open at the same time. The content inside did not surprise me at all at first glance. All rows in the cabinet were fully lined with black folders.

“At least this one is arranged by year...” I mumbled to myself as my eyes traveled along the labels on each folder.

“Have a look at this,” Jeremy said as he pulled out a folder and handed it to me.

I took it from him with a confused look on my face as I wondered what was so special about the files in this cabinet that we had to come all the way down here and how it was going to help us overcome the current roadblock that we were facing in our current project. The paper documents inside were not neatly arranged in chronological order of any kind, unlike the folders. There was practically everything in there from random handwritten notes, scribble and doodles of very rough scenes and storyboards, associated research, and many handwritten and typed-up reports.

At first, nothing caught my eye; however, after sifting through a couple of pages something clicked at the back of my mind. Something about this handwriting looks extremely familiar. I flipped through the pages even faster as my eyes zoomed in on the handwriting and lines used to draw the basic rough sketches.

It just feels so familiar like I’ve seen this countless times before...

After a while of flipping through the pages at a fast pace, I paused before taking in a deep breath. I turned towards Jeremy with one question in mind.

“Are these...Ace’s work?” I asked with narrowed eyes.

It had to be, but it couldn’t really be...could it?

–To be continued...