MY LOVELY AUTHOR'S

STARS OF FORTUNE PART 3

Ten days later.

            Ting tong's. My apartment doorbell rang and I can guess who came in today and at this hour.

            “Good morning, Miss Asha.  I'm Sena, come pick up Miss to go to the Miss.” book signature event

            After feeling my clothes were tidy, I looked at myself again before finally walking quickly towards the door of my apartment. Clik. I opened the door of my apartment and saw Nawasena, who was called Sena, standing at the door of my apartment. Sena is a replacement editor who will replace Warda during the next three months of leave. Three days ago. . . Warda came to bring Sena here according to his promise and introduced her to me. And as Warda said to me, Sena looks so young because of her adorable baby-like face. When I met Sena for the first time, I questioned the purpose of Warda choosing himself as his successor editor. Possibly. . . Warda chose Sena on the grounds of her handsome face.

            “Nona ready?”

            I raised my hand and gave a warning to Sena. “Stop calling me by calling Miss. That call made me feel sad. You can just call my name and I'll do the same. How, Sena?”

            Sena looked at me and clearly saw a hint of doubt in her eyes. However, Sena quickly threw away the doubt and turned it into a smile on her lips. “I will do if it's that by Miss Asha.”

            “Tsk, Asha only,” I said repeating.

            “Sorry, Asha. Is it ready? We have to leave now?” Sena looked at her watch and took into account the time we had before the event started.

            “I'm ready.”

            “Alright, let's go, Asha. Kak Warda is waiting on location to make sure everything is ready including with guest star today.”

            The autograph event took place at one of the largest bookstores in the city of X. The bookstore took the concept of bookcafe where the bookstore also moves as a cafe that provides food and drinks. The store had one large room that was commonly used for events like the author's signature just like I do today. In addition. . . This bookstore has an aesthetic concept in it that brings comfort to cafe visitors and book readers there.

            During that ten-minute journey, I kept moving my legs and it seemed to catch the attention of Sena who was sitting behind the wheel.

            “Nona, ah wrong Asha, are you okay?” Sena glanced at her rearview mirror to see how I was doing.

            “I want to say I'm fine. But. . My feet keep moving and I can't lie.”

            With her left hand, Sena took something inside her bag that was beside her chair and gave it to me. “I don't know if this will help, but please try.”

            I accepted Sena's gift and realized that it was some kind of candy. From chocolate candy, fruit flavored candy and chewing gum.

            “It's candy right? Why did you give me candy?”

            I stared at some candy in the palm of my hand and my choice ended up falling on a gum with a mint flavor. I opened the wrapper and chewed on the gum. Like Sena said to me, my legs that were shaking from now on started to stop and my feeling that was feeling very nervous, slowly turned into a little calm.

            “Thank you. I think this gum managed to make me feel a little calm,” I said as I stared at the window beside me.

            “Happy can help.”

            There's a special reason why I always refuse to leave my apartment and hate being the center of attention. During school, I was a victim of bullying. Some of the female friends in my class were envious because I became the center of attention of some male friends for often winning writing competitions and carrying the fragrant name of our school. Because of the bullying that was severe enough that I refused to come to school, my parents finally made me change schools in the hope that I could go back to school again.

            Years passed. I thought I was okay. Right after graduating from college, I was accepted to work in a construction office and many employers liked my quick and practical, but cautious way of working. The excessive attention I received, then provoked the jealousy of some other employees until finally they deliberately set me up and made my good name damaged just because of the irresponsible words from their mouths.

            Unable to resist the feeling of unfairness, I finally quit the company and chose to lock myself up. For half a year, I kept myself locked up in my room and made my parents angry with me and considered me a useless child. Armed with the savings I had, I initially rented a small boarding room away from the crowd. During my confinement, I did everything online to earn money to survive: one of them became a script translator, did typos for students and became a novelist.  Of those three jobs, the first one that made a lot of money was my job as a translator. But on the way, I had so many competitors that the job didn't make as much money as it did at first.

            As a novel writer, I originally published my novel on novel platforms and that was the beginning of my meeting with Warda. It just so happened that Warda was a reader in the platform that I chose and then became interested in my novel that was not too widely read by people.  According to Warda, my novel is really good and touching. Warda then gave me an exclusive contract and made my novel to be published to the publishing company where he worked. My first book was published and the results were very bad. The first print of my first novel was pulled by a publisher because for three months, it did not provide good sales. Everything changed thanks to Arata.

            “We're here.”

Sena stopped the car in the parking lot in front of our destination bookstore. From inside the car, I saw how many visitors today came to the first event to sign my books. From behind the window too, I saw the enthusiastic faces of the visitors who were mostly young girls.

“Arata!”

“Arata!”

“Arata!!”

“Arata, I love you!”

“Arata, marry me!”

            Without even needing to get out of the car, I could clearly hear the screams of the girls who were calling out the name of Arata - the guest star in this event. From inside the car I could see clearly that there were a lot of visitors coming today, not because they liked my books. Their enthusiasm was not for me, but for Arata - the famous actor who now ranks fifth in the country in popularity.

            Seeing this state of affairs, should I agree with Warda's remark that Arata is my lucky star?