To Kiss An Idol

29 The Hypnotism

Everyone was laughing and enjoying themselves together while Kyung-Soo and Him-Chan were crushing over Nivritti.

But then Dae interrupted, “Okay, enough chitchat, we all need to start working. You guys go do your work and let us do our work.”

Everyone nodded and went to practice. Nivritti placed her bag on the table. She wanted to avoid the gaze of Kyung-Soo so she chose to sit with her back on him but as every wall of the practice room was covered with mirrors, she could still see him dancing and smiling and talking with girls.

Kyung-Soo too noticed that her back was facing towards him. He smirked at her action as he knew that he could see her in the mirror, and she could too. No matter where she would have sat, they both would have seen each other.

She opened her laptop but would keep glancing at Kyung-Soo. He would smirk at her in return. No matter how many times she saw him dancing with girls, she would roll her eyes, hard. She didn’t like any girls in his arms. In anger, she would press the keyboard of her laptop, furiously.

Now there were a lot of scripts to read and filter. One after another, they all kept rejecting the scripts while the boys kept practising with loud music.

Suddenly Jae-Hwa screamed with frustration, “Oh my God! These scripts are hurting my brain.” And she pulled her hair with annoyance.

After looking at her annoyed expressions both Dae and Nivritti started laughing. They understood what she was feeling as they were feeling the same. They explicitly stated in the rules that no adult scenes or intimate scenes should be included in the script, but many scripts had mentions of kissing as though the fans would get to act in the scene.

Meanwhile, Kyung-Soo was trying hard to concentrate on his dancing but would glance at Nivritti every now and then. The moment he saw her laughing again, he moved his feet wrong and the girl he was dancing with fell on her derriere, hard.

.....

The music stopped, all went quiet. Everyone looked at her with concern. Several dancers, the choreographer, a few members of ASD and Kyung-Soo all went to help her and made her stand.

“Be careful King, don’t hurt other people,” shouted Dae, mockingly. Nivritti turned around and gave him back his smirk.

Kyung-Soo looked at Nivritti and whispered, “this girl!”

All kept asking the dancer if she was hurt. Kyung-Soo averted his eyes from Nivritti and bowed down to the dancer, “I’m very sorry. Please forgive me, it won’t happen again. I’m very, very sorry.” He kept rubbing his hand to apologise to her properly.

“It is okay sir, I’m fine. Let’s continue our practice,” the dancer comforted him and then addressed everyone.

After the incident, all concentrated on their work. ASD kept practising and the Rencontre team kept selecting suitable scripts.

“Is there a way I can filter the scripts which have non-existent English? Can we reject scripts based on grammatical error?” asked Nivritti.

“Hmm... good question. Um... If the concept is good, I think we can try to keep them on,” replied Dae, carefully.

“But then we will have to rewrite the script, especially dialogues,” informed Nivritti.

“Yeah right,” he said and then thought for a minute. “Okay let’s do this; make another folder and put such scripts in them. We can then get permission from Choi-ssi if we can present same to King and if he likes the concept we can rewrite,” explained Dae.

“Okay done,” nodded Nivritti.

For a few hours, all were busy with their work. ASD kept repeating every move to perfect them. The choreographer kept guiding them. Backup dancers kept helping them. The Rencontre team kept reading script after scripts but had not selected even a single one till then.

Then suddenly the music stopped, and the choreographer politely asked everyone to take a rest. All the team members sat on the floor with a thud and kept breathing heavily. Young-Chul and Korain let their body fall on the floor and they lay down with their hands under their head. But Kyung-Soo had no time to rest. He had to see if the Rencontre team had any scripts for him to read.

He approached the Rencontre team and sat next to Dae who was sitting alone in front of Jae-Hwa and Nivritti.

“What’s the status, guys?” he asked while wiping his sweat with a towel. He looked at Nivritti, but she was avoiding his gaze as always.

Even Dae didn’t look at him. He kept his eyes on the screen and answered, “still scanning and reading King. Scripts are coming at us with the speed of bullets. I don’t think we will be able to give you something solid for at least 3 to 4 days.”

Suddenly Jae-Hwa exclaimed, “Wow!!” she realised that she talked in front of a member of ASD, so she covered her mouth with her hand and looked at Nivritti for help.

Everyone understood that she stumbled upon a great script. Before Nivritti could come to her help, Kyung-Soo politely asked, “Looks like she got one. May I?”

But as usual, Jae-Hwa froze. Nivritti smiled at her and gave her a slight nudge and passed her laptop to Kyung-Soo. He carefully scanned the page and said, “Oh, it’s for Thae.” He kept reading for a few minutes and calmly observed, “yes, it’s nice. How do we save it?” he was looking at Jae-Hwa.

But she was speechless. She had no idea how to answer him. King was sitting in front of her which she never ever dreamed of. She never thought that would be possible. But there he was. Nivritti saw her expressions and realised that she was overwhelmed with Kyung-Soo’s presence.

“Jae, he asked you something,” she again nudged Jae-Hwa.

Jae-Hwa had her eyes widened. She cleared her throat and replied, “Um... we move it to this folder.” She signalled at a folder.

Kyung-Soo looked at the folder and found that the folder had his name on it. “This folder has my name on it,” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, because all shortlisted scripts will be approved by you so we are using your name,” educated Dae.

“Okay, keep reading and then I will see you after a few hours.”

The moment Kyung-Soo said that Nivritti opened the folder that had his name and opened the script that Jae saved a few seconds ago. It was meant for Thae. The theme was fantasy. The writer made Thae into a dragon rider. The scenario was that Thae was fighting evil while saving fans from the apocalypse. It was a well-written, beautiful script.

While all that was happening, Jeong-Eun and Jung-Hwa were sitting next to each other looking at Kyung-Soo and the Rencontre team.

Abruptly Jeong-Eun blurted out, “she is cute.” And smiled cutely looking at the Rencontre team.

Jung-Hwa was shocked, “Excuse me!”

“Don’t you agree?” asked Jeong-Eun.

“She is gorgeous but...” said Jung-Hwa, concerned.

“Hey! Don’t even think about her, I’m going to ask her out,” shouted Jeong-Eun at him.

Jung-Hwa was visibly worried, but Jeong-Eun paid no heed and he continued, “look at her cute face, her beautiful, small eyes...”

It struck Jung-Hwa as lightning. He thought, “small eyes? But she has the biggest eyes I have ever come across. Is he going blind?”

But Jeong-Eun was in his dreamland. “...her distracting bangs...”

“Bangs?” pondered Jung-Hwa.

“...her red hair...” Jeong-Eun continued.

His description confused Jung-Hwa. He screamed, “What on earth are you talking about?”

Jeong-Eun too was getting annoyed with Jung-Hwa’s constant questions. “She is sitting right in front of you. Are you blind?”

“From which angle do you see Ritti has bangs or has red hair? Her eyes are so big she can easily give competition to a doe,” snapped Jung-Hwa.

“Ritti? Why would I talk about Ritti? I am talking about Jae-Hwa, you idiot,” Jeong-Eun snapped back.

With his explanation, Jung-Hwa exhaled and relaxed himself. He whispered to himself, “Oh thank God! I thought NK Hyung is getting another competitor. Phew!”

Little did they know but Him-Chan too was staring at Nivritti. He suddenly heard her name and his ears pointed in their direction. “What? What about Ritti?”

“No one said anything about Ritti. Are you guys, tripping?” chided Jeong-Eun.

“No, you kept talking about a girl, and June took her name, so I thought you were talking about her.”

“I just said about a girl sitting in front of us. I never took Ritti’s name,” said Jeong-Eun.

Him-Chan started laughing and mocked him, “You are talking about some other girl when she is sitting in front of you.”

“To tell you the truth after I saw her scolding Kat, I am low key scared of her,” said Jeong-Eun.

“How can someone be scared of her?” Him-Chan was taken aback.

“Yeah, I find her anger, endearing,” smiled Jung-Hwa.

Suddenly a bulb lit over Jeong-Eun’s head. “Wait! I was talking about Jae-Hwa and you guys assumed I was talking about Ritti. How hypnotized are you guys that you can’t see anyone in the room except her? Oh my God! You guys kept looking at her through the mirror.”

Both Jung-Hwa and Him-Chan shouted “no” and moved away from Jeong-Eun in embarrassment to different directions.