Chapter 13

Chapter 13: The Approval

The moment Thae entered the room he lost his mind. He refused to sit down. All his team members waited for him, but he kept standing near them. He started spewing hate for Nivritti.

Thae was ripping her apart and everyone just kept listening on. The whole script team, the marketing team, the finance team, none of them had any idea how to stop Thae. Only his team members stopped him, well tried to stop him. But he was not ready to listen. Kyung-Soo even scolded him, but Thae was not done.

Nivritti was feeling guilty, so she accepted every word that Thae said but then Kyung-Soo pointed out that the dog was not even hurt, he was fine. Kyung-Soo scolded him again.

But Thae was not ready to back down. “I don’t care. Yong was lucky that he didn’t get hurt. He was running all around the office. He stopped near her, she could have picked him up, made sure he was safe but no she hit him with her chair. He is just a baby. How can a human be so cruel? Do you even have your humanity or you are just mean and nasty?” Thae’s words were like a dagger to Nivritti.

Nivritti let him speak yesterday, she let him scold her as she thought she was in the wrong. But it was clear that she didn’t hurt the dog and Thae was holding her responsible for the thing that never even happened. Slowly she was losing her cool.

All members kept pulling Thae’s hand trying to make him sit but in vain. He kept standing and staring Nivritti down. Hatred was written all over his face. He called her nasty. She anything but nasty. She kept trying to control her anger but failed and shouted at him, “Shut up!! Just shut up.”

Thae looked at her with an open mouth.

.....

Hu Bong stood up immediately and said, “Whoa!! Whoa!! Everyone, calm down.” Even Kyung-Soo was shocked to hear her talk like that.

And it was Nivritti’s turn not to back down. She humbly looked at Bong and said, “I’m sorry, if you want to fire me, please go ahead but there is a limit to the stubbornness of a child.”

Kyung-Soo facepalmed mentally. He thought, “there she goes again with her child talk. Now I need to know her age. Is she 100 years old?”

Nivritti after addressing Bong, looked directly at Thae and continued but in a harsher tone, “I have always heard how kind and polite you guys are, but you keep screaming at me as if I am a criminal. I get that you love your dog but is it okay to hate someone because of him? No human in one’s right mind would run away from a puppy then why did I run away, have you ever thought about that or are you just dumb?” everyone gasped as she called him dumb. Thae too was taken aback to give her any response. He just kept listening to her silently.

“I am extremely sorry for not taking care of your dog because I can never take care of dogs. Dogs scare me, I have cynophobia.” She wanted to move ahead and look into Thae’s eyes closely but there were a lot of people. She raised her voice instead, “Do you even know what that is? No, why would you? You have this prejudice that if a human being can’t look at a dog; one must be unkind, cruel, wicked, heartless, nasty and whatnot. And saying those nasty things to me what that makes you? Don’t judge people based on your assumptions, it makes you look like an idiot.”

“She called me an idiot,” murmured Thae.

But no one heard him, Nivritti continued with her rant, “And why did you let him run away from you in the first place, isn’t taking care of your dog your responsibility? Why don’t you scold yourself for letting him run around the office? Now sit down before I spew more hate towards you which I don’t want to do.”

Shocked, Thae went and sat at the only remaining seat next to Jeong-Eun. He was looking down at the table, his brain churning ideas after ideas. He listened to her every word but never believed her.

Nivritti looked at Hu Bong and asked for permission, “May I proceed with the presentation?” Bong signalled her to continue with her presentation. Thae was still sitting down with his head hung in shame after the scolding. But he was not ready to accept defeat.

Meanwhile, Nivritti again repeated every word of her presentation carefully so that everyone could understand what she was trying to do and ultimately approve of her idea. After completion, she reached the side table where water bottles were kept. She opened a bottle and emptied it within seconds. After shouting and explaining for long her throat was completely dry.

Kyung-Soo looked at her. The ebb and flow of her throat while drinking water made him gulp with lust. His eyes widened but he controlled himself before anyone could notice his reaction. He wanted to run his finger over her neck. He grabbed a piece of paper and crumpled it in his fist under the table to control his emotions.

After drinking a whole bottle, she breathed heavily and calmed herself down. She looked at seven boys sitting before her. Thae was still not able to look her into her eyes.

“Do you guys have any questions?” she asked.

No one spoke. All were stunned, first by her scolding and then by her presentation. Kyung-Soo was still pondering over what he just saw. He gulped hard but spoke nothing.

The first to speak was Jung-Hwa. “um... our ‘Rencontre’ will be for 7 days so can we allow winners to be here for all 7 days so that they can attend the concert.”

“I’m sorry; I have no say in that, so you need to ask that to finance guys,” she answered politely.

Before the finance team could answer Bong replied, “that’s a good suggestion, June.” He then looked at Nivritti and the script team and said, “Let’s add that in their winnings. They will get a chance to direct ASD in a video; spend a day with their bias and tickets for the final concert.”

After hearing his input Nivritti looked at Jung-Hwa and smiled. Her smile melted his heart, and he smiled back at her.

“Will you set up the blog sites?” inquired Korain.

“I get that I’m Indian so I must be a software engineer, but no blog setting will be done by the IT department,” replied Nivritti.

Korain was shocked and ashamed for making that assumption. It was a stereotype and he knew it. he immediately contrasted, “no, that was not what I was saying. I just have a few ideas.”

“I was kidding,” she said with a bright smile on her face which made Korain smile as well.

“I will inform them to talk to you Coin; you can give them your suggestions directly,” suggested Chung-Ho.

“You said 6 blog sites according to the continents, but there are 7 continents,” Thae tried to show off his intelligence.

Nivritti raised her eyebrow and mocked him, “how many ASDians do you think are living in Antarctica?” she realised that she was being harsh to him so she controlled herself and replied, “we can merge Australia and Antarctica in one as per your suggestion. Thank you for your idea.” She politely bowed down to him.

Kyung-Soo kept listening to what everyone had to say. But his mind was focused on Nivritti.

“Who will approve the scripts?” interjected Kyung-Soo.

“Production team,” replied Nivritti.

“So, you guys will read each and every script and select the winning ones,” asked Kyung-Soo.

“Yes, King,” replied Chung-Ho.

“No, If and that’s a very big if, if my team likes the idea, I will approve the scripts for each member,” announced Kyung-Soo. Everyone was stunned.

“What? But guys already have such a hectic schedule, why you would want to add on more work?” asked Chung-Ho.

“Because we will be in the video written by people we don’t know. We don’t approve your work because we have been working with you for years and we have built that trust through years,” answered Kyung-Soo.

“How do you want to do this?” asked Bong.

Kyung-Soo leaned back in his chair. “First, let me ask them what they think about this idea. So, guys what say?” he turned to look at his team members.

“I like it; this will bring our fans closer to us,” said Young-Chul.

“Me too,” said Him-Chan and Jung-Hwa simultaneously.

“You know I’m always ready to try new things,” nodded Jeong-Eun.

“I like it; I’ll get a chance to get away from you guys for at least a day,” joked Korain. The atmosphere was too gloomy, so he tried to lighten the mood of the conference room. Everyone laughed except Thae.

“Kat?” Kyung-Soo addressed him.

“I’ll do whatever you tell me to do Kyungsoona Hyung.”

“Okay, my guys are in. Congratulations Miss Nivritti, your very first idea got approved,” he smirked at her. She bowed down to him and everyone clapped. He knew this was her idea now he had to do something that he could see her every day. He could not wait for the meeting or his trip to the script team to catch a glimpse of her.