To Kiss An Idol

“Let’s go, Jae! JJ keeps talking nonsense,” Nivritti pulled Jae-Hwa and moved out of the room.

“Did she look angry to you guys?” asked Kyung-Soo.

“Angry? No. A bit annoyed? Yes,” replied Korain.

Nivritti and Jae-Hwa reached the main entrance of the building when they saw all the dancers, manager Park and Dae coming back from their lunch. Nivritti immediately hid her palm behind her back to hide the phone.

“Ritti!” shouted Dae. “What are you doing outside? Why are you walking on that injured leg? You should rest.”

“I wish, Dae but I have to buy a new phone and get a sim and without my identification, I cannot get them,” replied Nivritti.

“You could have asked me and Jae. We would have helped you,” said Dae.

“You could have gotten the phone but what about the sim, Dae? Don’t worry I am feeling fine, and Jae is with me,” replied Nivritti.

.....

“Do you need any help, Ms. Rathod,” asked Manager Park.

“No, Mr. Park, I am fine. You all should go in. Hope you had a lovely lunch,” smiled Nivritti.

“Oh yes! Thank you for asking. I will go in, you please take care,” Manager Park bowed before her and then signalled everyone to follow him.

“Let me come with you,” said Dae.

“No!!” shouted both Nivritti and Jae-Hwa, simultaneously. First, Jae-Hwa didn’t want him near herself. Second, Nivritti didn’t want him with herself as she wanted some alone time with Jae-Hwa to ask her about Dae and third, both didn’t want him with themselves as they had to hide the fact that ASD gave a phone to Nivritti.

“No, no, it’s fine, Dae. We don’t want to trouble you,” apologised Nivritti.

“It’s no trouble, let’s go,” he grabbed Nivritti’s and Jae-Hwa’s arms and stood between them.

“Excuse me!” A beautiful woman climbed out of a luxurious car and addressed them.

“Wah!” exclaimed Jae-Hwa and stared at the woman. The girl was clad in pink from head to toe. She had a pink silk ribbon tied to her hair like a hairband. She was wearing a white shirt paired with a bright pink skirt and jacket. Her high boots covered her slim calves. Half of her beautiful face was covered with large black sunglasses. She looked like a celebrity.

“Yes, please,” nodded Nivritti.

“I am looking for Seong Dae,” said the girl.

“You are in luck, he is Seong Dae,” said Nivritti and pointed at Dae. She looked at him, Dae’s mouth was open, and he was staring at the beautiful girl with wide eyes. Nivritti immediately unlinked her arms and stood away from Dae. Jae-Hwa followed suit.

“We need to talk, alone,” said the girl and stared at Dae.

“We will see you later, Dae,” shouted Nivritti and pulled Jae-Hwa away with her.

“Wow! She was beautiful,” commented Nivritti.

“Hmm…” replied Jae-Hwa.

“What?” asked Nivritti.

“She looked familiar, but I can’t put my finger on it. I know her somehow, I have seen her,” Jae-Hwa kept rubbing her forehead and spoke.

“Maybe you saw her somewhere. Maybe she was a trainee or something. She looked like a model, maybe you saw her on TV,” suggested Nivritti.

“Hmm, no, not that, not on TV, somewhere else. Oh, where did I see her?” shouted Jae-Hwa.

“Okay, don’t get worked up. Tell me where I can get a sim,” asked Nivritti.

“There is a shop nearby. Let’s go,” replied Jae-Hwa and took Nivritti to the nearest store.

After proper verification and showing the police report, the store issued her a duplicate sim. The technician helped her insert the sim in her new phone and told her to wait for a few hours in order to get the sim activated.

She thanked the technician and walked out of the store. Nivritti sighed, “Jae! Can we sit somewhere for a bit?”

“Is your leg troubling you?” asked Jae-Hwa, worried.

“No, I just want to rest my leg so that it won’t trouble me at night,” replied Nivritti.

“Let’s go to that small convenience store. Most Korean stores have tables and chairs so that people could eat store bought food there,” said Jae-Hwa.

“Let’s go, we can have some juice too,” said Nivritti.

Jae-Hwa grabbed Nivritti’s hand and helped her walk all the way to the store. She made Nivritti sit down and went to buy two bottles of juice.

“Feeling fine?” she asked and placed the juice in front of Nivritti.

“Sit!” Nivritti softly grabbed Jae-Hwa’s arm and made her sit next to her. “Are you okay?”

“I am fine. Are you fine?” asked Jae-Hwa.

“Jae! You know you can talk to me,” said Nivritti.

“Yes, I know. I tell you everything,” said Jae-Hwa and took a sip of her juice.

“Really? Then why didn’t you tell me about Dae?” asked Nivritti.

“I wanted to but first I was too shocked. When I came to my senses, I wanted to call you but then JJ made that group. All kept asking about you, but you never replied. Then Oppa came home and asked about you, I had no answer. He made me call you, but it said that call could not be completed. Even he called you from his phone and then we rushed to your house. I wanted to talk to you then but NK and MY were there. Also, in the morning, Oppa was there. We really didn’t have any moment alone after that,” Jae-Hwa was looking down and fidgeting with the wrapper on the bottle of juice.

Nivritti took her hand in hers and pressed hard. “Tell me everything.”

Jae-Hwa sighed and looked at Nivritti. Her eyes filled with tears. Nivritti looked sympathetically at Jae-Hwa. “You know you left, and I went to the parking lot with Dae. I wanted to sit in the back, but he insisted that I should sit in the front. He said that he would look like my driver, and I didn’t want to offend him. He kept saying ‘we are friends’. At first, he did nothing but sitting close to him in such a little space felt awkward and uncomfortable. I don’t why but he always keeps talking about you and our friendship.”

“About our friendship?” inquired Nivritti.

“Yeah, he always talks about you. Once he even asked me if I am not jealous of you,” said Jae-Hwa.

“What?” asked Nivritti.

“And yesterday was not the first time he touched me,” said Jae-Hwa, sadly.

“Excuse me!”

“Yes, he always does that. He touches me and then apologises for touching me,” said Jae-Hwa.

“Jae! Tell me everything in detail,” said Nivritti.

“The day he lost his phone and you suggested that he should look for it in his bag. He said that I should claim that idea as mine which was a bizarre thing to say. When we were leaving for home, I am sure that he tripped me and then saved me from falling. He pulled me closer to himself and his hands were on my waist. I felt like electricity ran through my body. I didn’t think much about it that day.

“I ran away from him, but he called me back and started spewing nonsense about you. He said that every good idea came from you, and you were getting annoying day by day. He said that I must be jealous of you and from now on I should be smart and start telling everyone that your ideas were mine.

“He said that competition was tough and I need to work smart to survive in this industry. When I took your side, he just drove away. Then yesterday, he again started talking about you and our friendship and when I said that we were good friends, he said that he was envious of our friendship. He said that you are new, yet you have a lot of good friends, and he has been working for long, but he never had such a friendship with anyone.

“To ease his mind, I just said that we are friends now too. I don’t know if he took that as a signal and he placed his hands over my thighs. I tell you I wanted to puke at that time. I froze. I even stopped breathing. His touch was creepy. He had a smirk on his face. I didn’t like his expression, his touch, I just wanted to jump out of the car. He just kept saying that he will be a good friend to us.

“Even though he touched me over my clothes, it seemed as if his touch was seeping through my clothes to my skin. My stomach turned and I clenched my fists and curled my toes. I don’t know how or why but he removed his hands and started talking about plagiarised scripts.” narrated Jae-Hwa, sadly.