The Rejected Alpha's Counselor

Chapter 2 A Red Ball Mission

Ara's POV

"Good luck." Lisa hands Ara a huge lottery box.

"Thanks." Ara takes a deep breath and grabs a ball from the box.

"It is a red one, " someone murmurs behind Ara, sounding a bit panicky.

The nervousness in the voice is contagious, making Ara alarmed. She subconsciously plays her fingers and asks for an explanation, "Does this color have certain connotation?"

"Bad omen." a guy wearing glasses from IT department shrugs, sipping the coffee in his cup.

"You're joking." the smile on Ara's face froze when she notices the sternness on her manager's face.

"I……I am extremely sorry, Ara." Lisa stutters and sends her subordinate an apologetic look, "I didn't see such a thing will happen to you."

Now Ara is really anxious. Everyone around her acts so weirdly, as if they had been possessed by some might force and lost the ability to speak. Her heart sinks and flinches a little, trying to alienate herself from that stupid red ball as if it were a bomb that could explode at any second.

"What is this supposed to mean? Anyone would like help me understand what is going on here?" Ara whispers, with her eyes glancing at people around her and examining every face. They, in turn, are avoiding her eyes like suspects in front of the judge.

Suddenly a thought strikes Ara, causing a knit in her eyebrows. Her face becomes paler than even as she blurts out, "Does this mean I am not going to be accepted by the company? It is a red card, isn't it? I am kicked out?"

"No, Ara, we want you to stay with us……"

"But?" Ara interrupts Lisa before the latter can finish the sentence.

"But a red ball refers to a task that is not simple." Lisa smiles bitterly and clears her throat, eventually confessing the truth, "In fact, it is deadly difficult."

"You shouldn't have clarified that." Leslie from the HR department warns Lisa, "You may scare her to death."

"Thank you Leslie, but I am not some fragile flowers." Ara shrugs and picks up her conversation with Lisa, "I appreciate your honesty, manager. Anything you say won't be a blow to me. I demand valid information rather than sugar-coated words. Just let me know what is happening."

Lisa relaxes a little and states, "The truth is that there are 7-level tasks. For recognizable purposes, the company uses rainbow's colors to represent different difficulties of the task. For example, violet is the easiest one, indigo is the second-easiest one, blue is the third……"

Ara silently ranks the 7-color in her mind and mumbles to herself, "So red would be the least easiest."

"Or you can simply call it the toughest." The IT guy stands next to Leslie smirks amusingly while raising his cup to make a toast.

"Hush, Nick." Lisa turns around and sends the IT guy a warning glare, "Don't you have any conscience?"

"She herself said that she wanted truth and that's what I offered." Nick retorts back, with a cruel smile playing on his lips. He adds nonchalantly, "She can quit if she finds this task is unbearably challenging for her."

His words irritates Lisa and Ara. The manager gets infuriated but Ara saves the former from a pointless argument with a forced smile, "That's fine! I picked the ball myself and I probably deserve it. Besides, the tougher the task is, the more powerful I would be. What doesn't kill you make you stronger, right? I love challenges and I may feel bored if I keep staying in the safe zone."

Ara's words soothes the atmosphere of the room. The smile returns to Lisa's face while Nick snorts and rolls his eyes, totally untouched by her optimistic declaration. Ara also sees his reaction but she ignores him and turns to those nicer colleagues.

"I need your help. Please tell me more. Do you guys have any suggestions about how to address this sort of task? Is there anything that I should keep in mind in the following trial?"

Silence.

Ara feels quite uneasy. Did she fail to make herself understood? Having thought that, Ara quickly adds, "I mean, some of you must have experienced the similar thing, right? Any advice would be helpful to my survival."

Ara even tells a joke to break the ice, but it doesn't make a difference. Still, no one responds to her and the expressions on people's faces become even more worried when they hear the word "survival".

"It was a joke." Ara swallows the sudden dryness in her throat, "I was……"

She tries to come up with some reasonable explanations to help her audience to understand the joke, specifically, why she mentions survival. But all of the sudden her mind is blank and she cannot come up with any ideas. She feels vulnerable, speechless, and worst of all, embarrassed.

The familiar feeling rings a bell to Ara, forcing her to recall the college life that she intends to forget.

It was full of embarrassing moments. Ara had thought those memories will stop haunting her after she graduates. But now Ara realizes that some memories are as loyal as wolves. Once they appear, they will never be gone. They would follow their master till death do them apart.

This association makes Ara even more uncomfortable, because she suffers the constant haunting of her memories yet she doesn't have a wolf like most girls in the pack. It doesn't sound quite fair.

But c'est la vie.