To Kiss An Idol

Dae just kept his head lowered and listened to every word uttered by Chung-Ho. More than feeling shame he was feeling anger. His whole body was about to explode. His blood was boiling to the extent that he kept sweating profusely.

He kept glancing at smug Nivritti who was sitting before him. All she had to do was follow the template but nooo… she had to go and do extra. What was she trying to prove? That she was better than him. How dare she? She was just a stupid female script coordinator. What did she know about this industry?

Dae had been working for the company for years and she was trying to take his company away from him. Never in his life, Chung-Ho scolded him to this extent. Everything bad was happening to him after she came to the company. He kept clenching his jaw to hide his anger.

Here Chung-Ho kept berating him and there she was sitting in front of him with her head lowered, trying to hide her smile. She was enjoying the scolding Dae received. He kept glancing at his screen and then at her.

“I will make you pay for this. I will give the link of selected scripts to Missmatch today itself. Now, I don’t care about money. All I want is, you, out of here. I can see your smug smile. You think you are so intelligent so diligent in your work, so hard-working, but mark my word everyone will hate you soon. Your precious ASD will hate you, Choi-ssi will hate you, Jae will hate you and you will be thrown out of K&Q.

“You think everyone is your friend. Let’s see how much they will support you after they get to know that you have been leaking the information. Get ready for hate to rain on you. Stupid wench! Just go back to the country where you came from and stop thinking that you are smarter than us.

“Look at Jae, she just filled the template like an obedient kid but this witch, no, she had to show the world that she is better than everyone. I get that she has experience working in this industry, but it was in a different country. My country is different, I will never accept an ugly, over-smart, rude, lazy, arrogant, disrespectful, selfish witch,” Dae kept monologuing at the back of his head.

“What are you doing? You have still not filled a single question,” shouted Chung-Ho.

.....

His voice brought Dae back to the land of the living. He kept manually counting the scripts but every time he would glance at Nivritti, he would forget the number and he would have to count them again. “I… I am… I am still… counting, Choi-ssi,” Dae stammered.

“Count faster!” rebuked Dae.

Nivritti looked at Jae-Hwa and she looked back at her. Both were shocked that Dae was counting manually. Jae-Hwa elbowed Nivritti signalling her to help Dae, but Nivritti didn’t want to tell him that he was going the wrong way after he was so brutally scolded by Chung-Ho. She knew that Dae was feeling ashamed, and she didn’t want to pile on that.

But Jae-Hwa kept tapping her thigh and gesturing towards Dae. Finally, Nivritti clenched her fists, pursed her lips and cleared her throat, “um… Dae, you don’t… have to… count the scripts individually.”

“What?” mumbled Dae.

“Um…” Nivritti was still hesitant.

“Well, tell him,” scolded Chung-Ho.

“Dae, just select one script, press shift + the down arrow and keep selecting them till you reach the script up to which you have completed reading. On the bottom ribbon, you will be shown the number of the scripts selected and that will be your number for total read,” informed Nivritti.

“And then under ‘Nam Kyung-Soo’ folder just press ctrl + a and again look at the bottom ribbon, it will tell you the number of scripts in that folder,” said Jae-Hwa.

Dae bit the inside of his lip so hard that it started bleeding. He kept sucking on the salty blood but showed no emotions. His lips just turned up in an upward curve and he flashed the most awkward smile in his life. “Thank you, girls,” he croaked.

He followed their instructions and even then, it took him more than an hour to finish his list. He kept forgetting the shortcuts that girls told him and he had to ask about them again and again.

Never in his life had he ever felt this humiliated. His job was to write scripts, read scripts, correct scripts, edit scripts and everything associated with scripts. Since when his job changed to counting the number of scripts he read. Now he was even hating the servers he received. He thought that he was given the stupidest servers. Girls kept getting better scripts, but he could get none.

Chung-Ho kept checking Dae’s template and he kept making mistakes. His anger, his jealousy, his shame made him make mistakes at every turn. It was like Chung-Ho was hand-holding a baby. He had to tell him again and again that the bigger number belonged to a different question and the lower number belonged to a different question.

Chung-Ho lost his patience when he saw that Dae had not flagged a lot of plagiarised scripts. “What the hell you have been doing? It was weeks ago that we found out about the plagiarised scripts. Are you blind or just a plain MORON?” yelled Chung-Ho.

Chung-Ho looked at the girls and said, “You two, open his server, and run his scripts through the plagiarism extension. Flag as many scripts as you can.” He then turned to Dae, “And you, open every folder you have, double-check the numbers, and fill in the template correctly.”

All three started working according to Chung-Ho’s orders. No one spoke a single word. It was Chung-Ho’s kingdom now. He was the king, all three were just footmen, sitting in front of him just to obey his orders.

A few hours passed by, and Nivritti and Jae-Hwa flagged a lot of copied scripts. They both calculated the numbers and gave the figure to Dae. Chung-Ho again checked Dae’s template and when he was satisfied, he looked at his wristwatch.

“Girls! Go eat something and then come back. Jae! Wash your face. Your eyes are still red,” ordered Chung-Ho. He then jerked his head towards Dae, “You, even though I have checked your file, double-check it again and then take care of your look and come back. The meeting will happen after lunch.”

Nivritti wanted to ask Chung-Ho about the people who would be attending the meeting but was afraid to ask as he was fuming with anger, and she didn’t want to irk him anymore. Both she and Jae-Hwa stood up leaving their laptops open, plugged in for charging and they left the conference room.

They ran to the cafeteria and ordered two sandwiches as they both wanted to eat something light. They both kept looking at each other but both could not start the conversation.

“Okay, that was crazy!!” Jae-Hwa blurted out.

“Wow! Tell me about it, phew!” nodded Nivritti.

“I have never seen Choi-ssi to be that angry,” said Jae-Hwa.

“Have you seen Dae to be so incompetent? Do you think he has some problem he is dealing with? He is in this position due to his hard work then why was he so out of sorts?” asked Nivritti.

“No idea. Maybe he has some family issues he is hiding from everyone,” suggested Jae-Hwa.

“Don’t know. Let’s ask him about that after the meeting,” said Nivritti.

They both finished lunch and then ran to the bathroom. Jae-Hwa splashed water on her face to soothe her eyes and then redid her makeup. Nivritti too retouched her makeup and they both came back to their department.

The moment they entered the glass door, they froze. The CEO, ASD and a few other people were standing with Chung-Ho.

“Here they are,” shouted Chung-Ho, smiling as soon as he saw Nivritti and Jae-Hwa. Both girls bowed down to everyone and said Hello. Everyone reciprocated their greeting. Soon, Dae opened the door and came in. He was actively jumping from one leg to another, trying to hide his shoes.

“Seong-ssi! Late lunch?” teased Bong.

“Sorry, sir,” smiled Dae.

“Let’s start the meeting. Shall we?” said Bong. Everyone nodded and started following him to the conference room.

Everyone entered the room but avoided sitting as they saw laptops on the tables. They didn’t want to sit in the seats that the Script department had occupied.

“Rencontre team! Sit next to each other,” ordered Chung-Ho.

Nivritti and Jae-Hwa looked at their laptops. Their screens were blank as the laptop sat idly for some time. They shut the flaps and unplugged the laptop. Nivritti sat next to Dae and Jae-Hwa sat next to her.

It was time to start the summary. As Nivritti’s list was the best, Chung-Ho told her to start first. A loud gasp escaped her mouth, her eyes widened with shock as the black screen cleared and her folders opened before her. There was nothing. Only the scripts on the servers were there. There was no ‘Nam Kyung-Soo’ folder, no ‘bad grammar’ folder, nothing. A big blank white screen was staring at her face.