The Charming Max

Chapter A: Meet Mr. Charming

The vending machine is acting up again.

Sybille kicked the machine several times out of frustration. Why is it that every time she needed something, it would never be delivered? Now even the Vending Machine God also joined the rest of the world in a conspiracy to make her unhappy. Well at least give me my 1 dollar back! She then shook the coin exchanges. Nothing was there! Evil machine! She shook and kicked the vending machine a few times more.

“Hey, hey, young lady, is there a problem?”

Sybille jumped. The machine talked!

Then she realized that the voice came from a man who suddenly appeared from the left side of the vending machine. He’s tall, athletic, quite good looking with soothing amber eyes directly beamed to her. They melted her heart immediately.

“What has this poor machine done you wrong?” he smiled the sweetest smile. Sybille suddenly forgot about her troubles.

“Um, eh …”

“It’s broken, isn’t it?”

That’s right! Suddenly memories came flooding back to her. “It won’t dispense my drink but it swallowed my money!”

The man sighed. “We poor citizens always have to suffer the anarchy of the institutions.”

Exactly! This man speaks out my mind! Sybille thought of him as her good friend already.

“Tell me about it. And all I want is just a simple cup of mocha latte.” She pouted.

And the man answered like every true gentleman would. “Why don’t we go to the café in the second floor and I treat you your cup of java?”

Thank heavens for gentlemen!

The gentleman was called Max, fourth year computer engineering student in the university. In addition to pulling chair out for her, he also brought her coffee to the table. Sybille had long forgotten being treated like a lady and she found it very nice.

“So, you are from economics major?” he started a conversation.

“Yes and second major in statistics.” She answered with eyes still ogling the steaming creamy and thick coffee in front of her.

“It’s very cool to do two majors. You are a smart girl.”

Nobody called her smart before. The nicknames her friends gave her usually lie somewhere between mediocre and downright dumb (or sometimes even animals). Sybille found herself floating the clouds. “Not really …” she beamed.

“I only do one major and I found white hair on my head already!” he cracked a joke.

“My hair was white for the first major but gone back to black for the second one!” responded Sybille.

They laughed.

The coffee break only lasted for 10 minutes. He didn’t even ask for her number, so unlike those sleazy guys who pretended to be nice just to hit on girls. After coffee, they said their friendly byes and then went their separate ways.

For the rest of the day, Sybille found herself humming cheerfully.

“I don’t think this is a good idea.” Sybille complained while fixing her makeup in front of the mirror. Her roommate and best friend, Cora, didn’t listen to her and instead concentrated on putting extra padding into her bra. “Listen chicken,” she said with authoritative tone. “I’m going to crash the senior party with or without you. This is probably our last chance to check out those cool senior guys before they graduate this summer. After they’re gone, what left to date will only be useless immature first, second and third years who never even wash their socks!”

“But this party is for seniors only, if we get caught …”

Cora turned around and put both of her hands on her hips arrogantly. “With this boob size, you think they will know that we’re only first years?”

Those were 50% padding! Sybille wanted to say, but she still had the common sense to hold back some of her harshest opinions in order to keep her head intact.

So our two adventurous girls went to the common hall where the exclusive party for the senior years was held. Cora was right. Those fourth years were nothing like the babies (Cora’s term) in the first or second years. They held their glass elegantly; they kept their hands in their pockets and laughed like adults. They wore Armani shirts, so unlike the torn Gap sweaters the first year boys usually sported. Cora and Sybille looked at the elegance around them with awe.

“Hey,”

They turned around and saw a group of cool, sexily dressed fourth year girls looking at them suspiciously. “Do we know you?”

Crap. The fourth year bitches! Cora and Sybille quickly said their prayers. “Um, I don’t think so.” Sybille came up with some ideas. “We’re from Medicine.” These shallow vixens couldn’t be majoring in anything deeper than art history or English literature!

“We are from Science and Dentistry. But we never saw you around the senior parties.” One of them replied, now even more suspiciously.

Shit! Now the girls were finished!
Some brilliant ideas you had
, Cora scolded Sybille with her killing gaze.

“Why aren’t you hanging with Deborah and the rest from Medicine?” they continued cornering the girls. “Are you actually seniors?”

Just when Sybille wanted to disappear into the ground, someone came into the picture and broke the tension. “Sybille! Great to see you here!” Max beamed, full of friendliness. The other girls seemed surprised to see him so friendly with their suspects. Sybille didn’t waste the chance. “Max! How you doing, man!” she high-fived him, to his bewilderment. “Good party, yeah?” she drove him away from the suspicious vixens, and Cora quickly tagged along them.

“Some nerves you have to crash senior parties!” Max laughed.

“It’s Cora’s idea.” Sybille was about to introduce the two, but Cora was faster than her. She already grabbed Max’s hand. “Hi, I’m Cora, Sybille’s roommate and most trusted confidante.”

“Have some champagne to celebrate your brevity.” Max handed out glasses of the bubbly to the girls. Then they toasted. “For the first years!”

Sybille and Cora chuckled. They had a lot of fun. Just when they thought things wouldn’t get better, Max spotted a group of his guy friends nearby. “Hey, those are my classmates from the comp-engine.” He motioned the two to follow him. “Let me introduce you to them.”

And Cora was having a ball with the senior guys she always dreamt about.

“This Max guy rocks!”

It was the next morning. Cora and Sybille were hanging out in their hall’s dining room, haggling cups of coffee to nurse their hangover. Sybille smiled triumphantly. “Isn’t he? You don’t expect I would have cool senior friends don’t you?”

“He’s really cool! And he introduced us to all those cool senior guys. One of them already texted me this morning! I think I’m gonna have a date soon!” Cora ignored Sybille’s gloat.

Sybille nodded and smiled. Max was indeed the coolest guy she ever met in school. Friendly and not sleazy. He’s a keeper. She’s so lucky to find a friend like him.

The next time she met him was in the library. She wanted to pick a book placed on the highest shelves and he helped her. Then they decided to have lunch together and he treated her tonkatsu bento set from the popular Japanese food stall. They never ran out of conversation topics. They talked over the current news, gossiped about people in the campus, even tips on internship search. “It’s never too early to think about what you want to do after graduation.” He advised. “That would help you choose the right internship over the summer break. I think the most successful people are the ones who stay on their career path and move up the ranks.”

“Have you bagged a job already?” she asked curiously.

“I got two possibilities, junior analyst at Cap Gemini or engineer at an IT startup. I think I will pick the Cap Gemini one.”

“Why? Isn’t engineering major job is supposed to be engineer?” Sybille asked innocently with her big puppy eyes.

He smiled. “I didn’t know what I wanted first. Then I tried a few different internships during all my summer breaks. Through the internships I found that I fit better as management consultant than strait-jacket engineer. “

“That’s why I recommend you to start thinking what you want, because the earlier you know, the lesser time wasted on so-called ‘wrong internships’ or God forbid, ‘jobs’.” He continued while pouring coke into Sybille’s empty glass.

Sybille never had big brother, and now she knew how nice it was to have one.

When a group of her girlfriends passed by and joined them for a while, Max didn’t even seem awkward. He introduced himself to them and immediately blended in the conversation. “I saw Crystal from the Business major walking with another guy today. I think he’s from engineering. She’s really cheap!” giggled one of the girls.

“Ah, I heard about Crystal. She’s pretty well known among us the engineering guys.” Max chipped in.

The girls beamed. A guy who understood gossip! He immediately became their buddy.

After the lunch, they parted ways. Sybille went with the girls and Max on his own. But before that Sybille managed to fish out his number. “For future contact in case I also want to get into management consultancy!” she reasoned. And he happily gave it to her. He said that he could even give her contacts from his previous consultancy internship. Sybille’s future was secured.

“I think he’s interested in me.”

Cora looked up from her nail painting session. They were in their room, Sybille was browsing consultancy jobs and Cora was deep in her manicure pedicure ritual.

“Who?” Cora asked loudly, like she couldn’t hear.

“Max. That’s why he’s always very nice, you know?”

“Um, he’s always nice to people it seems.”

“But I think he’s especially nice to me.” Sybille smiled dreamily. Cora looked at her suspiciously. “You better reduce the size of that big head of yours.” She grumbled. “There’s no way someone so charming, successful and fourth year on top of that, interested in flat-chested first year with borderline grades.”

Sybille threw her a pillow. “Hey! No grade talk!”