His Naughty Lessons-Chapter 233: Scammer

** Harper **

Harper had a full red carpet experience on her way to the elevator, and she made a handful of new friends out of the chatty gossip girls. As soon as they arrived at their floor, the small group was all too eager to swarm the Golden Couple Board to add their latest scorecards, though Lindsey chased them off quickly with a stack of folders in hand.

"Oh great, Harper you’re here! Our first candidate should be ready for us any time now, and I’m getting so nervous. This is my first interview on the other side of the table!"

Her cubicle mate’s exclamation snapped Harper out of the golden couple bubble and immediately back into work mode. "Ah, I see you’re well prepared," she nodded with a smile at the folders and notepad Lindsey was clutching. "Don’t worry, it’ll be fun. And aren’t you excited to find out the answer to our biggest mystery? The first candidate today is the elusive Emory Starling, isn’t it?"

The elusive Emory Starling, who had been the whole reason why this Golden Couple Board came into existence in the first place.

She could see the reminder click into place in Lindsey’s head. "True! You’re right, I’m so curious to finally meet that mythical being in person. It’s the moment of truth — we’ll find out soon if this is really the golden candidate of our dreams, or if it’s just a scammer with amazingly good advertising skills, in which case we should probably forward the resume to marketing instead."

Harper chuckled in agreement, picked up the resume along with a list of questions she had prepared ahead of time, and made her way to the interview room.

She had her expectations of what might be waiting for her in that room though. As someone running her own side gig that was completely irrelevant to her main occupation, she understood firsthand the necessity of hidden identities. This Emory Starling could be another one of those people who liked to hide behind a pseudonym while attending gaming tournaments, just to avoid getting judged by people in real life for trying to build an unconventional career.

Although ... that didn’t explain why the name hadn’t come up when Lindsey searched in her college’s current students list.

Harper brushed away the questions as she stopped at the conference room door. She knocked lightly, and the muffled conversation on the other side paused at once. "That must be your hiring manager," the HR staff’s voice came through. "I’ll leave you two to the real discussions then, good luck!"

And then Harper did a double take when the door opened.

There was a certain stereotype in every industry, and unfortunately Harper was susceptible to it as much as everyone else around her. She and Lindsey had both assumed — based on the hardcore experiences listed on the resume — that Emory Starling would be one of those nerdy, quirky guys, provided that the background was all real. Yet the person who currently sat on the other side of the interview table ... was a petite blonde with a high ponytail, crystal blue doe eyes, and cute dimples.

Blame those resumes that didn’t include gender pronouns ... This one looked more like a barbie doll than an intern candidate! Lindsey was going to drop her glasses when she got her chance to see the "handsome scammer" she had been expecting this whole time in her own imagination.

"Hi, I’m Harper McKenzie. Thanks for coming." Harper kept those thoughts behind a professional smile and shook the candidate’s hand, just as HR gave her a nod and a quick "She’s all yours". Well, at least this time the pronoun was confirmed.

"Hi, I’m Emory. And before we start officially, can I just say real quick that I absolutely love Siberian Express?" The girl’s big eyes looked like they were capable of smiling on their own. "I came across it at a ’cult game’ show last year, and it’s now one of my all time favorites. I’ve wanted to intern at your company ever since then! I couldn’t believe it when I saw on the job posting that you are the hiring manager, it’s like a dream come true."

Well, that was a surprise.

Siberian Express was Harper’s summer project last year, back when she was an intern herself at Miracles. It was a small scale adventure game, a stocking-stuffer type of product to fill up the company’s portfolio, and most of her coworkers had completely forgotten about it after a year’s time. The fact that an intern candidate even knew about its existence was impressive enough, let alone her being an alleged fan.

"Oh thank you." Harper returned an intrigued smile. "I’m glad you liked it, though that was a very different game from the current project you’re interviewing for. The style was more—"

She paused, trying to find a good word to describe it.

"It’s hard to put it to words, isn’t it?" Emory grinned. "But I get it. It’s all in the name — the plot was inspired by Murder on the Oriental Express, but the feel and dialogues were more of a tribute to Trans-Siberian Orchestra, right?"

Harper blinked.

Everyone knew the first part of that, of course, since the plot of the game easily gave it away. But the second part of the inspiration and the "feel" ... no one had ever figured that out before!

It was kind of thrilling, to find someone who shared such similar taste in entertainment as she did and could even pinpoint the hidden meanings behind her ideas.

"Anyways." Emory grinned again. "I swear I’m not trying to court personal favor by saying so much about how I like your project, but I really really do, and I’m so happy to be here. Now I’m ready for the interview questions — sorry about the distraction!"

Harper smiled. Personal favor or not, she was already starting to like this candidate a lot.

~ ~

The hour flew by quickly. Harper went through the standard technical questions first, then the more tailored ones she had listed to determine if the resume was made up as suspected. But halfway through the list, she decided that there was no need to continue any further.

If Emory had indeed faked her experience ... then she might as well take some bonus points for putting such a tremendous amount of serious effort into it. From game design and user experience to market trends and technical challenges, she had a good grasp of all of them and even offered relevant insights on a few mainstream games. It was hard to imagine anyone without real experience knowing their stuff nearly as well, and Harper thought that she had reached a good conclusion on that "scammer" topic already.

If there was any word to sum up this interview session, it could only be "amazing".

"I think that’s all the questions I have." Wrapping up her part of the day completely satisfied, Harper got up from her seat. "My colleague Lindsey will be here soon to talk to you next. Any last minute comments for me before I go?"

Emory, on the other hand, seemed like she barely wanted to stop talking about all the exciting projects and critiques she had in the field. Taking a deep breath, she shook her head. "No ... Well, there’s still so much more that I want to tell you about my beta testing last summer though! I never thought I’d wish the interview were longer. I’ll see you again at the end of the day, right? Just to wrap up?"

Harper liked the girl’s enthusiasm. In a way, it reminded her a lot of herself, and she wouldn’t mind chatting for a few more hours about their favorite work. But ... "Unfortunately, there are a couple more candidates on our agenda today, so you might only see each of your interviewers once." She smiled a bit apologetically. "But don’t worry, HR will walk you through everything before you leave, and you’ll hear back from us within a week or two."

That seemed to have given the girl a pause.

"Oh ..." She considered it for a moment. "Then, in that case ... Well, I was hoping to tell you this at the end, but ..."

The chatty and confident girl suddenly looked a bit sheepish. "Um ... I should probably let you know that I ... may have made a typo on my resume."

Typo?

Hmm. So the jury was still out on that "scammer" suspect, wasn’t it?