Until it was my turn. Iheld up the lowest possible score.
The girl’s face fell. “You! What’s your problem? Why are you targeting us?”
you
1 slowly lowered the sign. “I’m not targeting you. Your project is just full of flaws. Let me ask you a few questions. If you can answer them, I’ll reco-
nsider my score.”
She readily agreed. But as I questioned her, one by one, a cold sweat began to form on her brow.
Because her “hit project” was the same one my professor and I had worked on three years ago. We had encountered numerous, difficult–to–solve
problems during its development. It was because of these issues that my professor had so strongly urged me to go abroad, hoping I could find
better solutions.
No one knew that project better than I did.
What I hadn’t expected was that in the past three years, Benjamin had been so focused on making money that he hadn’t addressed any of the
core issues.
The girl’s face grew paler and paler. Finally, she stormed off the stage in a huff
After the conference, Benjamin approached me, his eyes shining with admiration. “Cynthia, it’s been a few years, and you’ve become so incredib-
le..I just found out, you have no connection to that child, and you’re not with my brother.”
“Are you free tomorrow? Let’s have dinner, at your favorite restaurant.”
I walked past him without a word.
He wasn’t angry at being snubbed. Instead, he started following me everywhere.
When I visited my old professor, he was waiting at the school gate with a bouquet of flowers.
When I had dinner with Maya, he was lurking outside the restaurant.
Maya looked him over with a curious expression, clicking her tongue. “Success really is the ultimate aphrodisiac. I never knew Benjamin was cap- able of this kind of devotion for love.”
The girl we were with laughed. “He’s not doing it for love. His company’s project is in trouble, and he’s here to consult a master. You weren’t there, but Cynthia was amazing. She tore his company’s project to shreds, and she hit all the core problems, the ones they’ve been stuck on for years.”
A few months passed. I had been back in the country for too long and was preparing to leave.
My exchange with the girl in red at the conference had been edited and spread online by Benjamin’s competitors. It quickly went viral. The public had been dissatisfied with Benjamin for years, and this was the spark that ignited the powder keg.
Benjamin’s company launched a PR campaign, but his users had been burned by him for too long, and it had little effect. He lost a massive numb er of users, his stock price plummeted, and he had trouble securing funding. Maya told me many investors were preparing to pull out
