Nara Paramita lightly tapped the tip of her pen against the glass surface of her desk. The tablet screen before her displayed a sharply rising line graph—too sharply, forming something like a vertical cliff no one could naturally climb.
Across the desk, Reno, one of their agency's star gaming content creators, wore a broad smile, but his eyes wouldn't stay still.
"This is an incredible achievement, Ms. Nara," Reno said, proudly handing her a copy of his monthly report. "My live stream broke records this month. Facebook Stars revenue from viewers is up three hundred percent, and engagement on TikTok has shot way past the KPI target."
Nara didn't return his smile. Her expression was as flat as a dead monitor. She drew a slow breath, swiped across her tablet, then turned it toward the young man. A series of demographic tables had already been marked with red highlights.
"Three hundred percent in less than forty-eight hours," Nara said calmly, without an accusing tone, yet cold enough to make the room feel several degrees colder. "What's interesting is that most of this surge in Stars and engagement came from accounts without profile pictures that weren't even a week old. Even more remarkably, your traffic peaked at three in the morning."
Nara leaned forward and looked Reno directly in the eyes. "Since when has your main audience—mostly schoolchildren and college students—started suffering from mass insomnia?"
Reno swallowed. He adjusted the collar of his esports jacket, which suddenly felt like it was choking him. "Algorithms can be unpredictable sometimes, Ms. Nara. Especially when a clipped video lands on the For You page—"
"Algorithms are math, Reno. Not magic," Nara cut in quickly. "And math never lies."
Nara leaned back into her ergonomic chair. Her fingers interlaced over her lap. "You injected viewer bots and manipulated a third-party Stars injection to chase your end-of-quarter bonus. That's what happened, isn't it?"
"Ms. Nara, I can explain—"
"No need." Nara raised a hand, stopping Reno's sentence in midair. "You know the rules at this agency. We sell engagement to clients, not empty numbers. If a client conducts a cross-audit and discovers these fake metrics, the agency's credibility is what's going to be destroyed. I'm terminating your exclusive contract today."
Reno's face went pale. "Ms. Nara, please. I need the agency's funding this month to buy new gear. I promise everything will be fully organic next month. Just give me a first warning. Do you have no feelings at all? I've brought in a lot of profit for the agency!"
Nara stared at the young man in silence. Feelings. The word sounded like a foreign language to her ears. In the digital world she inhabited, feelings were variables that compromised objectivity. Only data could be trusted. Numbers couldn't betray you, unlike people.
"Tias will handle your contract termination documents at the front desk," Nara said, ignoring the emotional plea. Her eyes had already returned to the tablet screen. The conversation was over.
Reno muttered under his breath, snatched up his jacket, and walked out of the room, slamming the door hard enough to make the glass partition tremble.
A few seconds later, the door opened again. Tias, Nara's bright-faced assistant in a mustard-yellow cardigan, peered inside. Her eyes flicked toward the hallway where Reno had disappeared, then turned to her boss.
"He's actually crying at the front desk, Ms. Nara," Tias reported with a grimace as she stepped in carrying a stack of gray folders. "Are you really sure about terminating Reno's contract? He's one of our biggest ad-revenue sources."
"Fake numbers won't last long, Yas. Sooner or later, the client will realize they're paying for phantom traffic," Nara replied without looking up. Her hands deftly deleted Reno's name from the priority database. "Besides, metrics are everything. Once your metrics are dirty, your value is zero. Is there anything more important?"
Tias let out a long sigh, already thoroughly familiar with her boss's pragmatism. She set the thickest gray folder right in the middle of Nara's desk.
"Our new client," Tias said, her tone turning formal but slightly hesitant. "They rejected the initial campaign draft we sent yesterday."
Nara stopped moving her fingers. At last, she raised her face and stared at the folder as if it had just insulted her. Her agency almost never received a rejection on the first draft.
"Who?"
"Orchid Edu," Tias replied. "An interactive education media platform funded by a ministry. They want to change the way secondary schools assess learning and make it more interactive. The contract value is massive, Ms. Nara. If we hit their KPI, our division's annual bonus could double."
At the mention of a bonus, a fleeting image of the bill for repairing the leaking dormitory roof and the overdue operating expenses crossed Nara's mind. She needed that project. She needed it badly.
Nara pulled the folder toward her and opened it. "What's the problem? The target audience doesn't fit? The advertising budget isn't big enough?"
"No." Tias bit her lower lip. "The problem is their Project Director. His name is Arya Dwipangga. A former academic researcher. He sent a very long reply email this morning."
"What did he say?"
"He said..." Tias glanced at the notes on her own tablet. "'Your agency's marketing strategy is too manipulative, relying on cheap emotional gimmicks and reducing the essence of education to nothing more than shallow entertainment for like-seekers.'"
Nara fell silent. Slowly, a rare crooked smile appeared at the corner of her lips. It wasn't an amused smile, but the smile of someone who had just been challenged to a fight in her own ring of power.
Academics. They were always the same. Always convinced they stood atop an ivory tower of morality, never realizing that without metrics and algorithms, their brick-thick journals would end up as nothing more than cat beds.
"Schedule a face-to-face meeting with this Mr. Arya tomorrow morning," Nara ordered sharply. She snapped the gray folder shut. "Let's see how far his idealism can keep his platform alive."