The Girl Next Door - Jenlisa

Chapter 16

Lisa hated it because she never was one to get so hung up on a person, much less a near kiss. Now she's so practically hung up on everything, she couldn't even begin to explain anything.

Lisa's jaws ground hard in exasperation.

If only Jennie's assistant didn't manage to cut them and break them apart, jumping away from each other and standing around defensively like a bunch of kids caught with hands inside the cookie jar. God knows if her what-ifs were at all anything like she kept imagining them to be.

Probably so much better, as her eyes caught a hint of glaze on the Korean's shimmery lipstick. Lisa unconsciously licked the bottom of her lips as if to relieve them of their longing to taste.

It's futile, she knew, as an imaginary taste of Jennie attempted to cling to her tongue.

Lisa squeezed her eyes again. She's in the middle of a meeting. This whole...pining, or whatever the hell this was, was so inconvenient right now.

This wasn't the first time recently that she has wished she was back to her old self, being able to immediately shrug off her libido. But the problem was this wasn't just libido – it's a whole clusterfuck of discombobulating sentiments that were absolutely alien to her. And now that she really needed to focus on this deal, everything just felt like she kept getting thrown off of her comfort zone and it fucked with her head really bad.

Jennie's cat-like eyes looked up and sharply met hers from the papers when Lisa didn't immediately respond. Her eyebrow raised, questioning.

Lisa pulled a deep breath to diffuse the butterflies in her stomach. Whether it's because she's presenting or she's imagining Jennie in confusing situations, she's still unsure.

"It's not that we don't have all the answers," Lisa started. She slightly tugged her blazer to fix it in place nervously as she shifted in her chair. "What I meant to say is that our solutions aren't meant to address just one problem–it doesn't stop at being a solution to your digitisation. We are offering that and more."

"And how does that make yours competitive if you're pricing it higher than the others when we only need those digitisation solutions?"

"Because our platform offers flexibility outside of virtual storage. With us, you will not only be cloud-ready, but you will also be omnichannel ready–that means being able to tap on both your online and offline customers and having a better capability to support enterprise needs. The agile approach will give you a lot more leverage later on."

Lisa was trying her best to modulate her voice – not give anything to show how tense she was. But Jennie's small gestures weren't helping – the way her eyes were slightly narrowing to the tinge of condescension in her tone.

"I'm not sure you understand, Lisa. What was discussed was to simply migrate us to cloud and make sure there wouldn't be any interruption to the business."

Lisa tilted back a little, feeling a little more confident. Jennie fell into the trap of clients wanting to be transactional: deliver what I want, I pay what you ask. And this never was Lisa's nor her company's vision was. Theirs was primarily to be a trusted partner to their clients, and this means making them see the bigger picture.

"Because it's never really about JUST digital transformation, Ms Kim," Lisa stood up again, unable to contain herself. She paced and her hands started having a life of their own. "It's about your vision of being the best in the market—and this means preparing yourself beyond this digitisation. KT's ambition to grow will mean growing beyond these offerings. Being the first in the market to have seamless architecture means being the first and even the best in a lot of things."