Lili stood up from a chair to stretch a bit. Her body was aching from constantly sitting by the table and being bent over the jewelry she was making.
She sighed as her phone chimed. If this guy is going to change his order again, she will lose it. It would be for the fourth time, no, the fifth. She had only a week till vacation and needed to finish these earrings so she could pack. But no, this guy had different plans.
Disgusted, she opened her phone and was stunned for a bit. It wasn't that customer, but her friend.
“Have you posted about going on vacation?” Lili read it was followed by emojis of all kinds. She chuckled.
“Not yet…” she answered and put a crying emoji after it. It was fitting for her situation right now.
“What if someone will put a new order in?”
‘What was this stupid question?’ Lili laughed at Lucy. She had to be like this. Her customers were her source of bread.
“Politely say no...?” she answered and shook her head.
”Pff. U r not able to say no. Just post it and it will be okay.” Lucy sent and Lili wasn’t that stunned that Lucy knew her a lot, sometimes.
Yeah, like she was so good with social media. But she listened to her and made a little photo saying that she won't be available because she is going to Hong Kong for two weeks, but she will post some updates.
For the past ten minutes, she was engraving the initials of newlyweds into the bride's earrings. An amazing gift from the husband, but a pain in the ass for her. One small mistake and she could do the whole process again.
Lili checked her messages again just to be sure that the customer hasn't changed his mind. Then silenced her phone and got back to work.
Little by little, she finished the earrings, took some pictures to post, packed them, and quickly went to the post office to ship them. It was already evening, so she needed to hurry up before it closed.
When she got home, she started to pack but soon gave up. She was looking forward to her vacation in Hong Kong. New inspiration won't be a problem anymore. That's why she decided to travel.
She glanced at her noticeboard, which was unusually empty. She hoped that her break would inspire her. Because doing jewelry without ideas was hard and bothersome.
She started to pack her luggage, and when she finished, she lay on her back, thinking. She and her friend planned this vacation for a long time. They watched a lot of Chinese dramas and were wondering how it looks.
‘So exciting to go there personally. Try new food, sightseeing, and have a change of tempo and just chill out. And have dreams come true,’ she thought to herself.
Now without any order and already packed luggage, she had six free days to have fun before going. And fun, for a shut-in like her, meant games and movies time. Her phone rang again.
‘Noooo, not now,’ she sighed as she opened her phone. There were times she wanted to be back to ages when telegraph messages took long to deliver. The profile picture of the sender was somehow familiar. She googled the name and found out about its gaming company in China. But not many details in English for her.
“Hello, we would like to order bracelets with special designs from you. We would love them to be handmade by you. Your previous designs were appreciated by our CEO.” Lili had to read that message many times over and over again to believe it.
“Hello, your offer is amazing. A small artist like me is able to design for such a big company. It would have a big impact on my reputation. But I'm on a two-week-long vacation and I won't be able to produce anything good in the little time I have until departure,” she finally managed to squeeze out a decent and polite answer.
“Yes, we saw your notice. It is perfectly fine. Our CEO is based in Hong Kong right now. We would appreciate it if you found some time to meet him there and discuss details with him,” Lili gawked at the message, stunned.
“Oh, can you give me a few minutes to think it over,” she wrote and silently freaked out.
“Sure.” It didn’t take long and Lili had to write to Lucy. This was too surreal.
“Ef it... I just got an offer which is impossible to decline…” she wrote and sent a freaking-out gif to her. But got back only one word: “Decline!!!!” And a bunch of pissed emojis.
“Impossible!!! It would promote my jewelry in China and it's a gaming company… You know how I love games,” Lili wrote, thinking that it would be better if they called or spoke.
“But I would need to meet them in Hong Kong…” she continued.
”I hate you... You work on your vacation and because you're not speaking Cantonese, you make me work too... I hate you…” Lucy whined.
“I love you…” she answered, just to aggravate Lucy more.
“Deal then. I need details of the meeting. And I'm bringing my translator so you don't have to worry.” She was thinking of Lucy when she wrote a translator.
“That's good. I'll provide you with further details soon. And our CEO can speak English, so you don't have to worry about not understanding him.” They wrote back promptly, and Lili was suddenly very nervous about the visit.
“Thank you. Hear from you soon,” she sent back, being polite, so they won’t change their mind. The social mask was tiring her out.
Lili locked her phone and opened a laptop. She wanted to have free time. But screw it. She was a small artist and a big company will surely promote her so she could be pickier with orders later.
She logged into the game she loved to play, called The Secret of Legends. It was awesome. The game didn't require her to play often, but when you did play every day, it provided amazing rewards.
Her occupation was a healer. She was basically useless alone, but in a team, she was needed a lot. From the beginning, she knew she had to join the team for quick leveling up and she got really good.
But once she wasn't careful when picking a team and ended up in a really low-powered team with 40K combined damage going on 800K HP self-healing boss. They lost and blamed her, telling her she was useless. Since then she leveled up alone, gathering materials for her job. Which was a weaponsmith.
Somehow, she made herself a staff that was ranked god-level and ended up high in rankings. Since then she raised her job skills and made legendary-level weapons. And lots of players are willing to pay enormous sums for good weapons.
So, thanks to her staff and the time she spent practicing her healing abilities she was ranked in the top twenty healers in server and second as a female healer.
She ran around the map looking for some Wolf diamonds and then took up the quest for healing NPC that got sick with boss poison. Nothing hard. She was prepared to log out for lunch when she got a message from someone named Thunder.
“Hey, our healer had to go offline, for the Netherworld leader and you are the only one online from T20. Are you willing to help us?” She was dumbfounded. Staring at the screen.
Thunder was a very known name in SoL. He was a leader in the new second-best guild in the whole game. And she couldn't believe he was messaging her.
And the Netherworld leader was a rare hard boss. It had an annoying ability to bleed the whole team and deal a big DPS. But the healer could use debuff on the boss and heal the bleeding of teammates.
“Heyo. I might not be the best choice... I haven't played in a team for long, might drag you down…” she answered politely, meaning it.
“No worries. We have a good team. Fast APM. They will cover for you. Just debuff the boss and heal when needed. They will guard.” He had put it very nicely so that she wouldn’t feel bad even when they lost, others would think it was not her fault.
“Key then... Where are you…?” she reluctantly agreed.
Thunder sent her location and when she got there. They added her to the team.
She sent some 'Hello, hope I won't be too much bother' message and got funny answers like 'I don't expect much of you anyway...' which eased up the nervousness.
They asked her if she speaks Chinese and if she wanted to voice chat. She quickly searched for earphones and enabled team talk.
Their English was not bad at all and they could communicate without a hitch. Especially with the player named Doom, he had a slight Asian accent but not as heavy as others.
After that, they entered the instance.
