The first round of meat had finished cooking and the family of three sat down to eat the food. The helpers took over in the meantime. In the case of Leah, the little girl was in the midst of cutting her steak.
"Come, give me your plate. Papa will help cut your steak." Gray reaches out his hand as he offered Leah aid. However, his offer was rejected resolutely by the little girl.
"No! I want to learn how to cut properly!" Puffing up her cheeks, Leah focus on cutting her meat. Although it was slightly messy, she was able to do so in the end. "I did it!"
"Good job," Sato smiled while he watched on the side-lines. Seeing how independent Leah was made him extremely proud to be her father. Within a year, Leah had metamorphosised and became an improved version of her past self. She had kept many of her outstanding traits and had gotten rid of her bad habits. She was definitely bubblier and acted more like a child her age should.
"You're growing up so fast." Gray complimented with a tear in his eye.
"I want to grow up faster to be like Papa and Daddy!" Leah giggled gleefully.
It was these moments where Gray wished that he did not have to go back too Country Z so often. Seeing how Leah would learn something new every time he came back to Country U, Gray would feel very depressed that he could not witness it in person.
"Are you sure you would like to go to school?" Gray asked the question that was burning inside of him all this time.
"Yes! I want to have classmates and friends like the movies!" Leah's eyes sparkled as she thought back to her favourite movie, High School Musical Re-edition. It seemed that home schooling her had made her lonely.
"You will have to tell Papa and Daddy if anyone were to bully you in school, okay?" Gray asked.
"Okay…" Leah sighed as she replied. This wasn't the first time she heard this from her overprotective fathers.
"Do you promise?"
"I promise!"
"Okay…" This time it was Gray's turn to sigh. It seemed that Leah was really sure of it this time. Sato noticed this.
Placing a hand on Gray's thigh, he said in a comforting voice. "We can't keep our little chick trapped in a cage forever."
"Yeah, the chicklet has grown up so fast." Gray agreed in the end.
"Hey I'm not a chicklet!"
"Hahahaha!"
…
At night, after tucking the little girl in for bed, Gray and Sato sat in bed together, discussing current topics.
"How are things on the end for father and your brother?" Sato was worried in regards to the business pressures on the Tobion family. With the merger in the car industry and the strengthening of shares in the Lee's and Tabola's subsidiary companies, the Tobion family was facing a barrage of attacks on all fronts.
"Not looking too good. The shares for Gale Foundations, Hayfield Limited, SYMBOL were hit the worse out of our subsidiary companies." Gray did not hide anything from Sato. Although the situation wasn't exactly going well for them, the General did drop some good news at the end. "Though, this does not mean that we would be sitting duck. I heard from Noah that SYMBOL and Gale Foundations had a counter-attack planned."
"Oh?" Noah was Gray's younger brother and he had inherited the family business, since his older brother wasn't interested in the business sector. Noah, luckily, had a keen and sharp eye just like his father and grandfather. Being able to nit pick talent from a crowd of individuals was the reason why Gale Foundations rapidly rose to success in the past 10 years.
"It seemed that Noah had been keeping a close eye on the car industry for the past 5 years ever since father gave him a warning about a potential merger between the Lee and Tabola family." Since Gale Foundation was in the car industry that both the Lee and Tabola family dabbled in together, it was easy to tell which company of the Tobion family would be hit the hardest. In this case, Noah and Alex had been afraid that their number one spot in the car industry would be taken away behind their backs.
"You're saying that your brother had been babysitting their progress all these times?"
"Yes." Gray nodded, "In regards to SYMBOL, the timely arrival of Delilah had allowed for new heights to be broken in our phone's Artificial Intelligence Department."
"Right… How is she doing?" Sato had heard from Gray that the woman had once confessed to Gray about her feelings for him, but had been thoroughly rejected from the get go. Even after that, the lady held no grudges and proceeded to pour her heart and soul into developing her prize baby, EVI. EVI was the Artificial Intelligence that was created by Delilah and it was nothing short of genius.
Even though EVI was an AI that was created in the five years of Delilah's recruitment into SYMBOL and did not have an extensive century of history like the Bapple company's AI, Sear, Delilah had essentially perfected and picked out every strong suit of Bapple's AI and installed it into EVI. The best part was that such an approach was not be legally binding to SYMBOL as they did not exactly copy any aspect. They simply had the once head developer of Bapple redesign and improve on their old AI.
"The AI is in the final testing phase and if nothing major pops up, the new line of phones would be released." As Gray had said, Delilah had managed to complete the EVI's final phase half a year ago and now, EVI was undergoing the strictest of quality controls. SYMBOL and Delilah wanted EVI to be perfect as they were competing not just with the number one technology company in the world, Bapple, but also with the second-place company, HuaMei, which was owned by the Lee Family. It was time for SYMBOL, who was now third in the rankings, to rise above the two mega technological giants and with the help of EVI, the goal was finally in their grasp.