Twisted immortality

III - The team

Songkarn skimmed the papers Neen brought making sure to look through his own team's background with extra care. Though still young, he had a decent judgment of different people's characters especially, who did or didn't fit for teamwork. Usually, he is able to easily identify the ones who work with him efficiently.

While Songkarn was sitting behind his desk, reading about his team member's personal details and credentials, his mind wandered thinking of totally different things. Like penthouses, higher up bosses, and Henry. Nobody had mentioned Henry today. He knew that he had promised not to mention him nor was he planning to but that made him very curious.

"Who exactly is Henry?" He wondered.

Songkarn felt his heart stir. It was a strange feeling. A feeling he had never felt before. Not knowing what it was, he decided to continue reading. He dove right into his work as soon as his secretary brought the requested documents. He forgot everything and everyone else until Neen knocked on the door and ushered in his team for the meeting. Songkarn was slightly startled that it was 10 am already.

After an hour of discussion, everyone in the room was amazed. Workwise, Songkarn had been on the same level as everyone else in the team but the plans and decisions made by him were definitely of a person who knew what he was doing.

When they took a short break, he went to pour himself some tea. New, the youngest of the team approached him. Songkarn knew him, thanks to the background survey. It seemed like he wanted to ask something.

"If there is anything, you can turn to me. Don't worry. I'm looking forward to working with you, New," Songkarn said.

New was looking at him a bit less cautiously but it still took him a couple of seconds to open his mouth and say, "Well, if I can speak of it. I think the calculations for the fourth phase of our project are wrong." New looked so shy and worried about somebody reprimanding him that Songkarn instantly felt a sense of a need to protect him.

"I told you, you can tell me anything. You are the first one to notice it. That's good. Now you have earned your place as the no. 1 of this team. Let's be quiet and wait until someone else notices the mistake too," Songkarn said smiling.

When they started discussing the project again after the short break, New was a lot more comfortable. He was encouraged enough to speak with a smile. New's observations were on point. As the others nodded and agreed with him, Songkarn saw how his courage and positive attitude increased.

There were four of them in the team. Songkarn decided to rank them so that they could address each other according to their real skills rather than their age or former position in work.

The meeting hadn't been going on for that long when he already saw that his assumptions had been right. In his head he had already put the members in chronological order with respect to their skills, New being the first. After New proved his worth, it was interesting to see if his assumptions about others were also right. Finally, the order was — New, Jumbol, whom everyone called Jumbo, Jay, and Nichkhun.

Jay was an American who had achieved all the desired degrees at a young age. He was a bit too self-confident but Songkarn considered him as the natural genius of the group. A bit too much ego got him the place after Jumbo.

Jumbo was the awesome kid. He had the talent to make any solution sound so easy, it seemed weird that they didn't know it already. But at the same time had an innate ability to not make others feel stupid about not getting it right away.

Nichkhun was just beautiful. Of course, he was awesome and smart as hell but he was the beauty of the group. And the way the jokes were developing in between the discussion, Songkarn was sure, by the end of the day that is exactly what he would be called.

When they finally put down the initial plans about how to move forward with the research and all, Songkarn was tired but satisfied. Though it felt like one of the most tiresome days he had ever experienced, it also felt extremely satisfying to be in charge of a project so profoundly connected to his own vision of the future.

Songkarn was inclined to accept the offer of a team's dinner but after careful consideration, he decided to push it to the weekend. Knowing fairly well, what kind of a hangover he generally experiences, he had no desire to show that side of him to his team yet. After all, they had just met. A little dignity would not go amiss. Considering how most people he knew drank so much, they ended up regretting it the next day.

When Songkarn left work, he was really surprised that Neen hadn't gone home yet. As soon as he stepped out of his office, Neen called out to him. "Mr. Songkarn! Somebody called you a few minutes ago, just before the meeting ended. I offered that you will call them back but they promised to call you some other time," she informed.

His gut feeling told him that it couldn't be anyone other than Henry, even though he had no idea as to why he didn't call on his personal phone. Songkarn shrugged, maybe he had his own reasons. It seemed he had reasons for almost everything he did. Songkarn still had a hard time figuring him out. He asked Neen if his boss had come back to work. Neen was surprised and asked him whether he didn't know that the big man upstairs was off to Korea for the finalization of a huge deal. A deal which was going to benefit the company to a great extent. Songkarn didn't have to feign his surprise as he really hadn't heard of it. To be honest, he had been quite in a buildup of several small surprises of his own.