before you love me | jjk

chapter thirty-eight

━━━༻ ˚✩‧₊ august 2020₊‧✩˚༺━━━

The morning of Tianna's celebration, Narae was meeting with the woman who was in charge of the merch for the upcoming tour.

True to her word, after their impromptu fashion show a few months prior, Narae had brought the idea to the others and their management bring the designer of Namjoon's gift to Hobi on board to design the tour merch. Unsurprisingly, after seeing the designer's work they were all on board and the company had made preparations to have her flown in to discuss it further.

The plan was that there would be the standard merch – hats, long-sleeves, hoodies, scarves and jewellery amongst others, then there would be the additional eight custom limited edition t-shirts. Each individual would present a general concept for what they wanted their shirt to look like and the designer would then draw and present her designs to either be accepted or redrawn, edited and resubmitted for approval. Namjoon, Hobi, Yoongi, Jin and Taehyung had all finalized their designs, whilst Narae, Jimin and Jungkook were in their final stages.

It was Narae's fourth individual meeting with her, and she was overly excited with the direction that her design was going in. The designer herself was a tall, gorgeous African-American woman named Kamaiyah who had instantly made Narae feel like she had gained an older sister at their first meeting.

Narae knew half of the reason why her designs in particular were taking so long was because they never seemed to be able to stay on topic during their meetings. However, for once, they had managed to remain focused.

"Oh my God, I love this!" Narae exclaimed happily as she looked at the sketch on the iPad in front of her.

Kamaiyah had taken all of Narae's numerous ideas into consideration, and had also done her own research to create the design. It was designed to look like a page out of a scrapbook, using images from Narae's concept photos as well as celestial designs as a nod to both her current and former stage names. Though Narae had long since left ECLIPSE, she always carried part of it with her, something that Kamaiyah had noticed in her research and made sure to incorporate in her designs.

"I'm glad you do. I was thinking once you get the finalized song names, we could also add the titles for the ones you sing written in your handwriting?" Kamaiyah replied evenly. Narae loved the designer's voice. She was soft-spoken with the most adorable accent , the two qualities matching her gentle aura. 

Narae shot her a thumbs up, "That is a brilliant idea. I'm pretty sure that will be done this weekend, so I can get that to you by Monday if you like? I can also send over my favourite lyrics if you wanted to do something with those?"

"That sounds perfect." Kamaiyah added a note on the iPad to remind herself before a thought suddenly occurred to her, "Oh by the way, did you see that Cardi and Meg are dropping a song tonight?"

"Fuck off!" Narae's mouth dropped open in shock. Through their conversations whilst working, they had discovered their shared love for female rap. Kamaiyah was more into the oldies like Lauryn Hill, Queen Latifah and Bahamadia, whilst Narae leaned more towards Nicki as well as Ms Banks and Little Simz. They both absolutely loved Meg though. "Don't play with me right now." 

"Dead serious, look, they both posted earlier today." Kamaiyah brought out her phone to show Narae the Instagram post.

Narae squealed, "Oh my gosh. This is big. I can't belie—"

The sound of the door opening halted their conversation.

Namjoon entered the meeting room, his dimpled smile on full display as he made a beeline for Kamaiyah. He paused however once he noticed there was another presence in the room.