"Alright, let's see…" Kaija mumbled as she went through the schedule, "Floor 20…"
She had made it to the Art Building after getting herself lost for fifteen minutes. Now, she was heading straight to the elevator and pressed for the 20th floor.
"Modeling Session, jeez," she muttered. "I don't even take that many selfies, let alone modeling? Are singers triathletes these days?"
The door to the last room at the end of the long corridor was pushed open, and the moment she stepped inside, all her movements came to a halt.
"Hi, Kaija," the young man in the room greeted her with a sweet, soft smile. "Have you been well?"
He sat on the brown couch right below an open window, looking calm and relaxed in a simple white shirt and black khaki jeans, a digital camera resting in his hand.
With his black hair falling softly along the sides of his face, and a few strands playing in the wind pouring in from the window, he looked nothing less than a male lead straight out of a romantic movie scene.
"Ju… Ju… Ju… Juho?" she stammered, blinking frantically, her breath still not fully returned.
"Yeah, it's me," Juho confirmed with a soft chuckle, sweet as ever. "You didn't see it wrong. Come, let me at least explain why you're seeing me here today."
"Oh… okay," Kaija nodded sharply, her feet moving on their own.
There were more than a thousand flight attendants in the airline that had fired her, but Juho here was from the same batch as Kaija.
He was twenty-five this year, only three years older than her. They had come to the same interview, trained in the same class, sat through the same final exam. Yet ever since training started, she had never talked to him. Never flown with him once.
"So… you're saying you're a part-time photographer here, and this is like… your side gig?" Kaija asked, settling onto the brown couch beneath the window where Juho sat.
"Not many people at the airline know," Juho confirmed, "so maybe you never heard."
"Does that mean…" she stammered, "you're my instructor?!"
Laughter broke out of Juho. "Oh, no," he said, waving a hand. "I'm just here to take photos of you and, you know, tell you how to act in front of the camera."
The heavy camera in his hand was lifted between them, his fingers working through the buttons, and very quickly, photos he had taken of other trainees and artists alike appeared on the small screen.
"These are the kinds of shoots we're going to do for this session," he explained, showing the photos one by one. "Album covers, photobooks, magazine covers… we'll work through them all, one by one. You got it?"
Kaija nodded obediently without objection, though inside, her head was already spinning.
All the girls in the photos looked almost supermodel-level with their poses and expressions, like the fashion campaign images Marja had always shown her. There was no way to tell they were just singers at all.
Juho's voice came again, softer this time. "Don't worry. I'll guide you through each concept, and we'll start with the simplest ones first, before we move on to these magazine-level things."
Then something in his voice shifted, a hint of amusement slipping in. "But, um… why are you sitting so far away from me?"
Kaija's shoulders jumped slightly. Her eyes finally shifted from the camera to him, the blue in them trembling along with her voice.
"I… I… I…" she stammered, fingers digging nervously into her jeans. "I, um, I…"
Juho's eyes narrowed for a brief second as he studied the girl before him, until at last, his lips twitched into a smirk.
In one swift motion, he set the camera aside and slid closer.
"Kaija," his voice came low, almost a murmur, fingers brushing against the softness of her cheek. "Your face is burning. Am I making you uncomfortable?"
The sudden closeness only made her fluster worsen. "No, no, no, not at all!" she exclaimed, jolting away immediately from the contact. "Let's start shooting!"
Her clumsy attempt to recover only made the faint smirk on his face deepen.
What an unexpectedly pleasant surprise, the young man thought, guiding her face back toward his.
Turned out this former colleague of his wasn't any different from all the girls who had stepped into this room, and perhaps the girls from their batch too.
Their faces would start burning, lips trembling as if about to explode in place whenever they were this close to him, and perhaps within just ten minutes, after he made the first move, they would turn into a moaning, mindless mess beneath his manhood.
"No, Kaija," he replied smoothly, green eyes glinting with amusement. "Let's do something even more fun than shooting."
With that, his lips closed over hers, swallowing away any words she might have uttered.
All trembling ceased from Kaija's body at once, along with her breath and her thoughts.
She sat completely still and frozen, blue eyes blown wide as if her mind were about to break.
"You have no idea, Kaija," Juho murmured softly against her unmoving lips, "I've had my eyes on you since the moment you walked into training on the first day."
Now, those unmoving lips couldn't stay still anymore. They started moving, unconsciously responding to the hungry lips sucking against them.
"You… you do?" she uttered weakly against his lips, "Like… um, like how?"
"You're beautiful, Kaija," he replied smoothly, sucking her lower lip teasingly, "You're quiet, but beautiful. Like a little flower drifting indifferently in her own current, so disconnected from the rest of the world."
"That made me hesitate to approach you," he added, lips slowly making their way down her neck, "but now that you're here, let me make up for all the time we could have… had so much fun with each other."
"Erm… fun?" her brow drew together despite her own state, "what do you mean by… fun?"
A chuckle slipped out of him, brushing warmly against her chest. "How about I show you instead of telling you?" he teased, fingers sliding from her waist up the curve of her full breasts, digging into it gently.
The sudden sensation made her jump. "Wait! Wait a freaking minute!" she gasped, shooting a hand straight at the naughty hand fondling her bosom. "But… but… but… I'm not your girlfriend! I mean, not yet! I mean, we haven't even started dating!"
The soft chuckle broke into laughter now, amusement written all over his face. "Do we have to?" he asked, placing a soft kiss over her lips once more. "Even if you had a boyfriend already, I wouldn't mind."
All struggle drained out of Kaija.
She blinked up a few times at the handsome face pressed closely against hers, blue eyes trembling with disbelief.
"What… what do you even mean?" she stammered. "Then… then why did you kiss me? I thought… I thought…"
"You thought what?" Juho asked, the movement of his lips slowly coming to an end.
"I thought you…" she mumbled, turning away from the confusion written all over those green eyes.
Rising from the couch, she adjusted her messed up sweater, voice small and confused as she whispered timidly, "I thought you have feelings for me."
Juho's face went stiff for a split second, and then, as if he couldn't hold it in anymore, a chuckle slipped out of him.
"Um, I'm sorry, but what?" he repeated, disbelief in every word. "Please don't tell me that… you think we have to be in a relationship or something like that to just have sex?"
Kaija stood stunned in total silence, lips trembling like she wanted to say something, but no words came out.
A long moment later, when the silence between them had grown uncomfortable, and Juho started sensing something very wrong was going on, those lips parted slightly.
"I'm sorry, Juho," she muttered, "but in the world I live in, people have sex when they're serious about each other."
Then her heel turned straight toward the door as she headed toward it without sparing a single glance back, the door slamming shut behind her.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck me," she muttered to herself, feet storming toward the elevator.
Once inside, the close button was harassed until the doors fully closed shut.
Her hands ran up and down her face in utter frustration, her whole body trembling so hard it leaned against the elevator wall just to stay up.
At last, the frustration dissolved into a long, quiet sigh, and all fluster from the earlier kiss faded away from her nerves.
"Unbelievable," she groaned, staring blankly at her own reflection in the mirror. "I almost told him I had a crush on him since the first training day…"