[moonlightzz]

Job search wasn't easy when you're an overseas graduate from a lesser known university. I kinda felt biased against in a way.

After months of sending resumes and attending interviews, I got hired as a sales and marketing assistant in a technical industry. The team I worked with wasn't huge, 4 of us including the manager, unlike during my internship stint in the UK. The team comprised of the manager, 2 senior execs and me. I only found out later that one of the 2 senior execs was on her way and I was the replacement headount. In the meantime I had a dotted line reporting to the other senior exec who was tasked with mentoring me. And he's the next guy who managed to bed me. Let's name him Justin.

Being the more senior of the 2 senior execs, and the one who wasn't on the way out, my manager instructed me to shadow Justin and learn everything. It was a relief to me as my manager was a well-known slave driver, expecting tasks to be completed yesterday. She's basically Miranda Priestly of "The Devil Wears Prada" in the flesh. Yea, god knows why I even accepted the job offer in the first place.

Justin wasn't like CK, who was loud, flamboyant or anything. Just the regular male office worker, one no one would notice in a crowd. He was 1 astrology cycle my senior, in his late 30s. Soft spoken, neat and proper. You'd hardly ever find me with a stray hair out of place. Long story short, I knew Justin had a thing for me shortly after commencing work. He would make small talk with me sheepishly and I caught stealing glances at me at work - he sat adjacent to me in the office.

Shortly after I was promoted to junior exec, my manager sent Justin and I to a trade show on the purpose of networking and gathering market intelligence. The trade show was a 4-day event held in Thailand with a gala-dinner held on the final night as a wrap up. The days in Thailand was spent surveying the hundreds of companies on exhibition, speaking to representatives, making business connections. Nights were spent in long distance skype calls with our manager to debrief and report the day's progress while we receive new instructions.

I was extremely estatic that we were booked to attend the gala dinner on the final night of the event. It meant no 3-hour call to our manager back in Singapore. It was a moment of relaxtion for me.

All sorts of alcohol flowed freely there, I remember drinking lots of champagne, egged on by the numerous toasts from the many many business acquaintances made during the trade show. Naturally Justin and I got high from the huge amounts of drink. Our newly acquainted business contacts, mainly Caucasians can hold their liquor really well! We retreated to our rooms in a drunken stupor.

Now we were booked to stay in a service apartment with 2 bedrooms. When we got back to the apartment, we were joking and recalling events experience from the days before. Soon our conversation topics became more personal and the topic - office eye candy was brought up. I shared mine first, listing a few guys from the other departments. Then Justin shared his...

"So who's your eye candy in the office?" I asked gingerly.

There was a brief moment of silence. I asked again, really thinking that perhaps in my drunk mumblings he couldn't catch what I was saying.

"You" came the reply...