Allea

sixty-one

"I have a flight to catch."

As her hands halted from applauding for Miss Gorata's speech, Allea turned her head toward Aris Slavadge and gave him her response —not accepting his request, and also not directing rejecting it but giving a reason. At her words, he didn't say anything, just stared unwaveringly, as if he expected such defiance. But the man beside him, Nial Delton, couldn't seem to control the laughter that escaped his lips and was trying to cover it with unnecessarily loud coughs. Still, Allea's gaze not once moved toward Nial Delton, and she once again faced ahead to praise the woman who now once again took her seat beside Allea.

"It's not like you can't talk to her here," Nial Delton leaned toward his friend, and playfully suggested as whispering near him, "Is this why we are here?"

Moving his eyes away from Allea, he glanced at his friend, no words left his mouth but with Aris Salvadge's blank stare, it was enough to convey the soundless words. Seeing this, Nial Delton attempted to fade his smirk and straightened his back, gesturing toward the stage and started praising the auctioned things --while claiming how good the words are of spokespersons, and also pressing that events like such automatically demands your presence.

Aris Salvadge's eyes again moved toward the girl seated beside him, whose only side-profile he can look toward.

Before meeting Allea, he heard a lot about her —from his father, from the news, and sometimes from his business partners. In his life, staying in this field from a young age he has met, heard, and came to know all kinds of people in the world of business, therefore, he was used to listening to the praises of people and considered them trivial and only talks. Rarely he has heard his father praise someone, but his view didn't raise from; either she's truly worth of the words or just another arrogant and only-talk-no-work person. The type of person he's, the one who never believes or regards anything he hears, so when he met the subject of all the praises, at first glance, for Allea his views were more inclined toward the latter part.

What made him halt, and give his views a second thought was when his indifferent gaze was paralleled by her, just like his eyes, there was also nothing, absolutely nothing in her gaze. He's used to people looking at him with a diversity of emotion; recognition, intrusiveness, respect, desire, envy, and such but neither her unwavering gaze nor her words held any traces of them —just empty regard. So, it didn't take long for piquing of his curiosity, and the subtle desire to satisfy it also sprout inside him.

Only then did he really regarded her presence, and focused on knowing about her. Learning her success and the way she achieved it, standing just a few steps behind them, for the first time, he felt a tinge of admiration for someone.

Aris Slavadge's life has always been perfect to the brim, there's nothing that he could desire and not have, still, he has worked hard to make his own name, made his own path, and achieved to stand on his own achievements. Everywhere success has come to him, maybe that's why he deserves his self-adulation and vanity. He's just another human, every man in this world thinks of their own good before thinking about others, and he's no different, the only difference is probably that he only cares about himself and it has long ago become normal for him. Also, for him, the worth of money has long been left behind, sill, the man who's born in unlimited advantages, never is his life becomes willing to part from them, in fact, it has now become normal for him to achieve for the things that bring him usefulness.

So, when it comes to him, Aris Salvadge, he has developed one subconscious habit, and that is to characterize people who approach him. He has boxes for every one of them, a box where he put them according to the category they suit —the one that's always full is the discards box. Probably that's where the insignificant existence of Allea was placed before he met her and came to think about her. After knowing about her, meeting her, she eventually climbed up and his opinion changed as he placed in the box at the top for him —the box of lucrative.