To Kiss An Idol

120 The Night Work

Nivritti was still pondering upon what her mother said. She had to find a therapist soon. She needed to talk about her shifting to a new land, her nightmares, and her fear of dogs. She also had to discuss about her feelings for Kyung-Soo. She wanted to stay away from him so why did he always pull her heartstrings when he would be in front of her?

“Yeesh!” she shouted when she realised that she was thinking about talking to a therapist and finally landed on Kyung-Soo. “Why? Why? Why always him? Why can’t you think about someone else? Wait! Why do you have to think about anyone? Think about your work. Concentrate on your work, stupid.”

After giving herself a pep-talk, she went and grabbed her laptop. “Should I try to reconstruct the scripts that are in the bad grammar folder? They too need my attention. But then I have a lot of scripts to read.”

She opened her laptop and opened her continental servers. She changed the option from freshly received to last received and started reading the scripts. The scripts that the Rencontre team rejected would still be visible on the server for all to read as they could not delete anyone of the scripts which would inform the whole world that their script was rejected, and the suspense of the winner would be destroyed. Only the K&Q IT team and Rencontre team could see the ‘rejected’ mark on the rejected stories.

Every member of the Rencontre team had different notions for saving the scripts. As discussed, selected scripts were being saved in common folder named ‘Kyung-Soo’. Dae made sure to dump every script he chose in that. Nivritti chose to make two sub-folders according to her servers and would transfer the selected scripts according to her servers.

The highly efficient one was Jae-Hwa. She not only made different folders for her servers but also for every member and kept sorting the scripts accordingly. And everyone had a common folder named ‘bad grammar’ for transferring the scripts with non-existent grammar.

Nivritti opened her folder that had all the three sub-folders, but a yelp escaped from her mouth when she saw that only two sub-folders were visible on her system. The ‘bad grammar’ one was gone. It just vanished. She quickly refreshed the folder and finally all three folders started showing on her screen. She sighed with relief.

That made her realise that she could lose any folders or scripts at any given time. She had to think of a way to make sure that even if she would lose the folder, she would lose her hard work. Otherwise, she would have to go back and read every single script on the server once again.

She worked for a few hours meticulously and after hours her brain signalled that it was tired with a loud yawn. She looked at the clock. It was 11 at night. “Oh, shit!” she shouted and jumped from the couch.

.....

She ran to the kitchen and placed all the food she was going to eat in the microwave. While her food was being heated, she shut her laptop down and placed it back in her bag. Quickly she finished her dinner, washed all the dishes, and retired for the night.

A new morning, a new day and the hard work continued. Nivritti went to the office and the preparation for Rencontre continued. That morning, the Rencontre team worked in the office for about an hour waiting for someone to come and receive them.

Nivritti had no idea why she was getting restless as time passed on. At first, she didn’t want to see Kyung-Soo every day but now it felt bizarre not working in the practise room. Doing her job while staring at dancing Kyung-Soo in the mirror had already become an integral part of her life.

Her heart was pounding in her chest thinking that Kyung-Soo didn’t have time for reading scripts today, so he didn’t send anyone. Yesterday they demanded the daily scripts be sent to their email, what if the same things happened today? Will she not be able to meet him? Her heart started aching.

“Why am I feeling as if something is missing as if I forgot something at home? Concentrate, Ritti, concentrate,” she pondered.

Finally, she beamed with happiness when Jeong-Eun came for the Rencontre team.

“Apologies for being late,” said Jeong-Eun and he smiled at Jae-Hwa. Nivritti bit her lower lips to avoid smiling at both of them.

“No worries, One. You guys are busy, we understand,” comforted Dae.

“Why didn’t you guys send only your driver to get them? You didn’t need to come. That way you all can save so much of your precious time?” suggested Chung-Ho.

“It’s fine, Choi-ssi. We don’t mind,” smiled Jeong-Eun.

“One! May I ask why King called and cancelled today’s script?” asked Chung-Ho. Nivritti was shocked to hear that they were not shooting their daily video for the ‘nettube’. Was everything alright? She pondered.

“I don’t know the details Choi-ssi but that was something he and Hu-ssi discussed and finalised,” replied Jeong-Eun.

“I told him not to add reading Rencontre script to his schedule. Surely, he is overworked,” commented Chung-Ho.

“Choi-ssi! Don’t worry we all are taking care of ourselves,” assured Jeong-Eun. “Now, I must leave. We have a lot to practice.”

“Fine, fine,” Chung-Ho patted Jeong-Eun’s shoulder.

The Rencontre team followed Jeong-Eun to the parking area. To Nivritti’s shock, Thae was standing near the car. He saw Nivritti and ran towards her with three coffee cups in his hands. He first hugged Nivritti sweetly and presented the coffee cups to the Rencontre team.

“What are you doing here?” asked Nivritti, smiling.

“I came to pick you up,” replied Thae.

“That I can see but why two of you?” asked Nivritti. She glanced at Jae-Hwa who was shaking her head in no. “What?”

“Oh, you don’t know,” smirked Thae.

“TK! What?” shouted Nivritti.

Thae started laughing loudly and stood next to Jeong-Eun. He wrapped his arm around Jeong-Eun and mockingly said, “my dear friend, PJ, does not know how to drive.”