Three days later, Charles Kosonen actually called her back.
Not only that, but he had arranged a limousine to collect her, which already felt absurd enough to make Kaija suspicious on principle.
Still, when the black car arrived outside her building with its glossy finish and silent driver, she went anyway, because curiosity had always been one of her more dangerous habits.
The route to KE's headquarters passed in a blur of clean glass towers, immaculate roadways, and polished city wealth that seemed to gather in larger and larger quantities the closer they got to the company's campus.
And campus was the right word for it.
KE's headquarters was not a single building so much as an entire kingdom.
Towering structures of steel and reflective glass rose behind immaculate landscaping and sculpted fountains, all of it screaming money so loudly that Kaija almost wanted to laugh. The place looked less like a workplace and more like the private empire of some untouchable dynasty.
Inside, the lobby overflowed with people who looked as though they had stepped out of a fashion spread rather than a corporate office.
Men in tailored suits with razor-sharp cuts. Women in outrageous, fabulous outfits that looked impossible to wear unless one had been born knowing how to command a room. Jewelry flashed. Heels clicked. Perfume drifted through the marble foyer in delicate clouds.
Kaija, wearing her plain sweater and jeans, suddenly felt as though she had wandered into the wrong universe entirely.
Her clothes were comfortable, practical, and utterly unremarkable, the kind she had worn for years without thinking twice. Here, though, surrounded by immaculate power-dressers and living advertisements, she felt painfully ordinary, like a smudge of pencil graphite in a gallery full of oil paintings.
The receptionist looked up as Kaija approached the desk, her gaze immediately traveling over Kaija's outfit with the kind of slow, assessing judgment that made Kaija want to roll her eyes on instinct.
"Your name, please?"
"Kaija Sepala. I'm here to see Charles Kosonen."
The receptionist's brows lifted a fraction. Skepticism lingered in her expression a beat too long before she lowered her gaze to the screen and began checking the schedule. Kaija stood there patiently, though her eyelids already felt heavy from the morning and the ride over. A few seconds passed. Then the woman suddenly straightened so fast her chair nearly scraped backward.
"Ms. Sepala." She stood and bowed deeply. "I apologize for not recognizing you sooner. This way, please."
Kaija blinked.
That had been… dramatic.
She followed the receptionist toward the elevators, still half-suspecting some strange administrative prank, though no one else in the lobby seemed the least bit surprised.
The elevator ride rose in elegant silence all the way to the top floor, and when the doors opened, the receptionist led Kaija into a luxurious waiting room so spotless and expensive-looking it seemed more like a private lounge in a palace than a company reception area.
The room was not empty.
Someone was already there.
And the moment that someone noticed the receptionist entering, his face tightened in irritation.
"Why is that old cunning fox making me wait this long, huh?" he muttered.
Kaija paused.
The voice was deep, rough, and unmistakably familiar in a way that made her sleepy brain slowly sharpen with recognition. She lifted her gaze away from the room's lavish décor and toward the couch at its center.
"Oh… Karl Hanski," she murmured, blinking once, then twice, as if trying to verify that her eyes were working correctly.
Karl Hanski lounged on the long black leather couch like he had been born to be seen.
He was dressed head to toe in white, which only made the odd cutouts along his sleeves stand out even more, giving the whole ensemble a strange, almost provocative edge that Kaija found mildly questionable. His ash-blond hair was styled with immaculate precision, and his eyes—an impossible turquoise—seemed almost too vivid against his pale skin. He had the kind of angelic, sculpted face that looked as though it had been carved by a very indulgent god.
Twenty-eight years old and already the self-crowned King of Pop in S Country.
Every album he released shot to the top of the charts. Every tour sold out, even with ridiculous ticket prices. His name carried the kind of weight that made venues tremble and sponsors grovel.
Kaija remembered him well enough, though not with the same intensity she once had. Back when he first debuted, before the genre switch, she had been a fan. She had played his old hip-hop tracks over and over during high school, memorizing lyrics while doing homework, cleaning her room, or staring out the window and pretending life was something bigger than it was.
Then he had shifted into pop, and somehow the music had lost her.
Not because it was bad, exactly. It was just different.
Softer. Cleaner. Less of whatever raw spark had once grabbed hold of her.
Still, even now, she couldn't deny that he was one of the most successful artists of his generation.
Karl seemed to register her only as an inconvenience.
His voice cut back toward the receptionist, sharper now with impatience.
"Am I not this label's number one moneymaker? Why couldn't that stingy fox just give me that damn flat I've been asking for these past few months and stop wasting my precious time?"
He waved one elegant hand in irritation, his expression full of wounded celebrity entitlement.
"I still have a yoga session, a Pilates session, and three face masks left for today to maintain this marvelous face and body that make him millions of dollars a year."
Kaija's mouth twitched.
Karl continued, completely unbothered by the fact that he sounded like he expected the universe to revolve around him.
"Go tell him to drag his aging ass out of whatever meeting he's in right now, receptionist, or I'm going to storm in there myself."
The receptionist bowed so quickly it looked painful.
"Karl, I'm very sorry, but Mr. Kosonen is expecting a… special guest this morning. I'm afraid you'll have to wait another hour before seeing him."
"What nonsense are you talking about?" Karl snapped, not even bothering to look truly interested.
The receptionist's hands folded tightly in front of her. "Mr. Kosonen made it very clear that Ms. Sepala is to see him immediately upon arrival, I'm afraid."
Karl's brows drew together faintly. His turquoise eyes sharpened.
"Sepala who?" he asked coldly.
Then his gaze slid past the receptionist.
Past the door.
Past the glossy edge of the room.
And landed directly on Kaija.
The contemptuous smirk that tugged at the corner of his mouth was immediate and unmistakable.
"You?"
Kaija raised one hand awkwardly. "Uh… yeah. That'd be me."
Karl leaned back a little, visibly unimpressed. "Who are you?"
"I'm here for, uh…" Kaija scratched lightly at her cheek. "An interview."
"Name?"
"Eh… Kaija?"
His eyes narrowed.
Then, in a tone so blunt it almost sounded bored, he asked, "You've slept with Charles?"
Kaija's brows shot up.
"Excuse me?"
Karl lifted one pale shoulder in a lazy shrug, as if the conclusion were obvious.
"That old fox let you in before me. What other reason could there be?"
Kaija stared at him for a beat, stunned by how quickly someone could manage to sound both insulting and idiotic at once.
"Well, I don't think I've slept with anyone here. It's my first day, and I'm not an escort, you see."
"Of course you're not," Karl scoffed, letting his gaze flick over her sweater and jeans with open disdain. "You dress a little too cheaply to be an escort."
Kaija's face twitched.
Just a little.
The kind of tiny, dangerous twitch that meant someone had just stepped on a landmine and did not yet realize it.
Karl continued, voice dripping with smug amusement.
"It's honestly refreshing to see that old fox has changed his taste these days, I must say. How long did he last, though?"
Kaija slowly turned her head toward the receptionist.
A bright, sunny smile bloomed across her face, so sweet it could have been mistaken for innocence by someone foolish enough to believe in it.
"Sorry, miss," Kaija said pleasantly, "but is there a different waiting room? I don't enjoy breathing the same air as scum."
The room went dead quiet.
Karl's angelic face darkened instantly.
"What did you just say?"
He leaned forward, the lazy elegance of a superstar peeling away to reveal something much uglier underneath. His voice dropped into a low, guttural growl as he glared up at her.
"Listen, cutie. You're not the first woman to come here begging for that old fox's attention. Don't think so highly of yourself."
Kaija didn't even blink.
"And you," she shot back, her own tone going chilly enough to frost glass, "shouldn't think you're such a superstar that I'd let you rub your filthy slanders in my face. You think you're that great? Sorry, but your music is only good for putting me to sleep."
Karl shot to his feet so abruptly the leather couch creaked beneath him.
He stormed toward her with an expression that screamed murder, his whole body radiating offended fury. At over six feet tall, he did look genuinely intimidating now, but the effect was slightly ruined by his baby-faced features, which only made the threat feel more theatrical than terrifying.
Kaija blinked up at him once, then again, her expression almost clinical.
"What a shame, Karl Hanski," she muttered, her blue gaze sharpening into something cold and blade-like. "I used to listen to your music nonstop back in the day. You lost me the moment you switched to pop, but I always thought you must be an angel in person because of that baby face of yours. Turns out you're just a jerk."
For one stunned second, all the outrage in Karl's throat seemed to lock in place.
Then his face flushed with fury.
Before he could lunge at her and wrap those elegant hands around her throat, the receptionist practically threw herself between them.
"Please, please!" she cried. "There's another waiting room!"
She turned frantically toward Kaija, voice rising into a desperate plea. "Please, Ms. Sepala, come with me!"
Then she whirled toward Karl just as he looked ready to tear the place apart.
"Karl, please wait here, I beg you! Mr. Kosonen made it clear this meeting with Ms. Sepala is important!"
Karl's jaw flexed hard. "Important my ass!"
His hands shot out as though he meant to grab Kaija, and the receptionist nearly yelped as she stepped in again with all her strength to block him.
"Ms. Sepala, please get out of here immediately and go to the room next door!" she cried, sounding one breath away from panic.
Kaija cast one final pitying glance over her shoulder at the furious superstar, then walked away with infuriating calm, guiltlessly leaving behind the chaos she had just set in motion.
She did not hurry.
She did not apologize.
She simply headed for the next waiting room as though she had not just reduced a pop king to a seething mess in under five minutes.