NOVEL WEB Chapter 54: Influencer
Thousands of kilometers from their gaze…… on a far southern island, several men and women were making their way through the dense jungle.
They were moving swiftly through the jungle, which remained hot and humid even after the tropical sun had set below the horizon, in pursuit of something.
[Hey, Amanda. Let’s stop this already. Even our interpreter is scared.]
[What fainthearted things are you talking about!? I have over half a million followers! How can I give up here!?]
The woman called Amanda strongly rebuked the large black man for his cautious remarks.
As she was the de facto leader of the group, the rest of the men could only be reluctantly dragged along through the jungle.
（●）
A few weeks ago, Amanda was at her home and office in New York City, facing the monitor, deep wrinkles appearing between her beautiful brows.
[This month, we’re down 2.7% in follower growth and 14% in comments…… That’s a serious slowdown.]
[The number of followers and commenters is also showing a trend toward fixation. Unfortunately, I think we have hit the ceiling of our niche. I think we need a new strategy, Amanda.]
Amanda Turner has dreams. She has ambitions.
She had the youth, beauty, and accomplishments to have shallow ambitions.
She is an American with Indian roots, and her oriental beauty and yoga skills have made her a core favorite in the “yoga” cluster of the social networking app, “Winstagram”.
However, her popularity has been diminishing recently.
They were having a meeting today to address this, and Amanda couldn’t ignore the opinion of the producer who had helped propel her to her current position.
[You’re saying my sequence is stale!?]
[I didn’t say that. However, followers simply get bored easily. I admit there is a deep philosophy in Amanda’s yoga sequence, but maybe it needs a strong visual impact to convey it to non-followers in 3 seconds.]
[You want me to do Extreme Yoga? Why don’t you just go ahead and tell me to do a balancing act in some backcountry?]
[I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that a trip to the roots of yoga, as proposed by the planners, sounds like a good idea.]
At those words, Amanda bit her neatly trimmed nails in frustration.
It’s easy to reject the producer’s proposal.
However, what awaits her would be the dwindling numbers of followers, a future of obscurity and the prospect of joining the ranks of the mediocre yoga stylists who subsisted on vague titles such as writer and photographer while teaching yoga in a middle-class New Jersey neighborhood.
She wanted to go higher.
She wanted to have that absolute charisma that draws people.
[……Was this because of my Indian descent? I’ve never been to India.]
[Your followers wouldn’t care about stuff like that.]
At the best resistance Amanda could muster, the producer only shrugged in the monitor.
（●）
One’s experience of life in India changes a person, or so they say.
For Amanda, arriving in India was a shock.
In a bad way, that is.
[The streets are dirty! The air stinks! There’s trash everywhere! Where’s the heck is a winstagrammable spot in a place like this!!!?]
Ever since landing at the airport in New Delhi, Amanda’s image of India continued its descent.
Whenever they tried to scout locations at famous spots such as the gorgeous Taj Mahal Palace or Mother Ganges River, they were immediately surrounded by a crowd of locals and Chinese tourists, making it impossible for them to shoot a yoga sequence.
The candy wrappers and plastic bottles strewn about by the tourists also interfered with her meditation.
The photos she posted on Winstagram, titled as their travel in search for the land of origins, are deceiving pictures of scenic lands that avoid the dirty reality, avoiding the cities, but she was running out of options.
[Isn’t there anywhere we could use? What’s the best winstagenic spot that really deserves to be the roots of yoga?]
In a hotel overlooking the cape at Kanyakumari, on the southern tip of India, Amanda lamented.
Since landing in India, she has been plagued by bad dreams and chronic headaches.
Perhaps, it’s because of the fact that even the most remote cape has been turned into a tourist destination, and is now crowded with people.
The funds for her stay aren’t unlimited, and it’s even more difficult to keep her followers interested in topics other than yoga.
As Amanda felt impatient, her film crew split up to ask the locals.
They also dived into social networking sites, searching for information, whether it was confirmed information or just dubious rumors.
Amidst all this, one of the crew members came across some information.
That “in Ceylon Island, there is a jewel-like beach”.
It was the most beautiful white sandy beach, untouched by human hands, and not a single coconut leaf was found on that beach.
The informant had uploaded a photo with location information, but many people commented that it was a “doctored photo”.
In fact, to the eyes of those accustomed to seeing Indian beaches with large amounts of trash washed ashore, the photo of a beach without a single coconut leaf around looked even more unrealistic.
It was just another piece of garbage information that the staff had been fed.
However, Amanda’s reaction to the photo was different.
Her eyes widened as she stared at the photo.
The headache that had been plaguing her for so long had subsided, and inspiration struck her mind.
This place……
It’s the spot.
[Northeast of Ceylon Island…… It’s not too far if we hire a cruiser.]
[You’re not thinking of going there, right!? It crosses the border, and in the first place, it might be fake news, right? No, that’s definitely fake news.]
Upon their objections though, Amanda told her staff.
[No, this beach is the real roots. 《《I can tell.》》]
The stall lost all reason to object upon the strong conviction in Amanda’s voice.
Perhaps it was because they saw in Amanda, at that moment, not the young and beautiful woman, of which there are many in New York, but a dignified being, as if she was a prophetic maiden.
With the staff busy with their work assignments for the next day, Amanda’s gaze turned to the far southeast horizon beyond the southernmost cape of India, where the sun had set and a sticky equatorial sea breeze was beginning to blow.
And reflected within Amanda’s eyes was a black horizon, with not a single light in sight.