KEREM

"Kerem!"

"Ian!"

"And this beauty you have here?"

Why does my friend's question seem to me to have been about Juliet and not about my son? My eyes turn in his direction, lowering him into a murderous look of disapproval, furious at what I just heard him say.

I let out a snort full of rants and allow things to flow with total disinterest. My son also doesn't like Ian's face and long fangs looking in Juliet's direction, so he pouts until he breaks down in tears.

"Why don't we just go take care of lunch and then Ali joins us, okay?" I suggest to Ian.

Juliet doesn't seem to even notice that I've just moved on from her, but since my suggestion that she think about turning her talents into a business, she's been pensive. She is an intelligent woman with a lot of potential. I am not surprised that a suggestion like that generates a certain mental itch, remaining embedded and having to scratch it from time to time to feel the pleasure of getting an idea of ​​what this change of schemes that I have just finished would be like. Then I'll prick her even more with that. It's not that I care at all, but just as she's talking back to me, I can also leave her restless eating away at her own thoughts. And I promise to leave even more concerns on the surface of her.

Once we're inside, Ian warns me, "I thought you wouldn't come, mate. I'm glad to know you're here."

"I had no other choice. In this event there are the best ranked entrepreneurs in the entire market and they will be the ones who will make the great pivot of tomorrow."

"So like that?"

"I studied the numbers and the evidence. I subjected the result to falsifications and probabilities and got a minimal margin of error in most.

"One of them is already listed on the Stock Market and has the backing of Capitales Massera. The most curious thing is the market they were targeting at the beginning: from being a market for digital fiction books, they became a multi-entertainment platform that offers original products and could mark the future of a hybrid between streaming and traditional reading, plus it is fully interactive."

"Breaking down the fourth wall."

"Literally. They have completely got it."

"I've been watching it, yes."

"And now they want the impulse to hybridize."

"Hybridization with hybridization. That's what I call growing big, but as long as they don't lose their essence.

"Yes. I hear they want to incorporate virtual reality. Virtual reality glasses in the product to gaming strategies."

"Something, that at first were just books and amateur readers interacting, became the possibility of taking control of those stories and characters, even in a four-dimensionality that the gaming industry has provided."

"How much has that market sector changed? I wish I had had those opportunities when I was little, no one would take me away from my books and my video games, all in the same place."

"Don't worry, the main market is more the adult sector. It is the bank sector, entering here with a credit card is the key."

I like talking to Ian because he is very forward thinking and has an eye for business. Basically, we have never made a mistake when choosing an investment when we have tried to follow its conditions and indications by having a list in which to say emphatically "yes, this is where we should head". It is something that goes beyond the most exhaustive market studies, it is intuition in something that you like very much and you experience it from within, as a customer of your own product, the most widely consumed bilaterality that today makes the prosumer, it is say consumers who become producers and continue to be the ones who consume in order to continue producing.

I know, technicalities.

Some that are immediately erased from my head as we go up some glazed stairs that allow us to observe the gallery where there is currently an art exhibition in the building and I remain entranced observing the way in which Juliet appreciates the paintings and my son has his little arms entangled on her neck.

It's that I would take a photograph of both of them or send them for portraits to put them in the gallery hanging from an expensive frame. I like the image I have in front of me and I would not let it pass for the world.

"I have to do something," I tell him. "Hold this for me."

I pass him my tablet where I have digitized all the folders that will be necessary to view throughout the day.

We have to go to lunch, but they are both there and I don't know how they can fit in, being such sensitive beings in such a cold and hostile world.

"What's going on?" he asks me.

And I take out my phone, point it in the direction of Juliet and Ali and take their photo.

When I'm done, Ian looks at me with a frown.

"Did you just photograph your babysitter's butt?"

Two things.

Two things are what make me suddenly angry.

First, that he called her babysitter and second, that he looked at her butt. Well, it's not exactly what I did, but in a way, yes.

"What did you say? Take it back" I force him.

"Calm down, it was a joke. Did you also snap your son?"

"Of course, I'm not a pervert," I assure him.

Once he returns the electronic tablet to me, he continues talking about the products that they will show us today, however, once they are seated at the tables where each of us will be served, I reserve the chair and the place where both Ali and Juliet will sit. I take out my phone to zoom in on the photo.

Yes, Ian was right.

That skirt looks good on Juliet, but I wish it were shorter...

Wait a minute. Nope! What the hell is wrong with you, Kerem?! Focus!

"Kerem?"

I look up to see Elijah arrive with my son in his arms and Juliet behind.

"Look who we have here, little one, this daddy The Grumpy Ogre With a Face that Smells Shit! Let's say hello!"

Elijah talks to him stupid, but I don't dislike him. Because it makes Ali laugh and so does Juliet.

I swear I've never heard a more majestic melody than that.

B-but... Of course I'll never admit it! Never!