To Kiss An Idol

162 The Movie Night

“What should we do next?” asked Jae-Hwa, excited.

“I am taking you home,” said Jae-Geun, sadly.

“What? Why?” inquired Jae-Hwa.

“I have to go to the hospital, received a message that one of my patients needs emergency care,” lied Jae-Geun.

“Then why would you waste time in dropping us? Leave for the hospital, we will take a cab,” suggested Nivritti.

Jae-Geun closed his eyes in disbelief. Clearly, he didn’t think it through. It was now hard to get out of his lie. He wanted a spend a few more minutes with Nivritti but at the same time wanted to run away from her. His heart was bruised as she saw him just as an acquaintance and not as a friend.

He thought after they spend an intimate moment in the hospital, she too felt something for him, but he was wrong. She only thought of him as Jae-Hwa’s brother. But she asked him if he wanted to be her friend and they shook hands. If she thought of him as her friend, then why was she not treating him like one?

“I still have time, they are in transit and will take time to reach the hospital,” Jae-Geun lied again.

“If it’s an emergency, why they are travelling? Why not go to a nearby hospital?” asked Jae-Hwa.

.....

“I am his doctor. He wants me, is that a crime?” shouted Jae-Geun, angrily.

“Woah! Are you okay? It seems he is an important patient,” Nivritti tried to calm him down.

“I wish he thinks of me as someone important too,” he looked at Nivritti, sadly. She thought he was talking about his patient, but he was talking about her.

“You are his doctor. Of course, he thinks you as someone important otherwise why would he travel so far to see you?” assured Nivritti.

“You are right,” he smiled at her. “Let’s go.”

Both girls walked behind him and reached the parking lot. The whole way he kept glancing at the backseat looking at Nivritti, who kept smiling, laughing, and talking with Jae-Hwa. He had been on multiple blind dates, courtesy of his mother, but he never thought about dating anyone. For the first time, a girl pulled at his heartstrings, and she was not at all interested in him. It was heartbreaking for him.

He was handsome, tall and a doctor. Girls lined up for his attention in his hospital, but he treated everyone as his colleague. No matter how many girls confessed their feelings to him, he never felt an iota of emotions for them. But the moment, he saw Nivritti at her door, he lost his heart.

He again glanced back at Nivritti when her phone chimed. It was the hundredth time that she looked at her phone. When she took out her phone, she was smiling and the moment she saw the screen, her smile vanished and the same annoyed expression that she had in the morning came back.

“Is she waiting for her boyfriend to message her?” thought Jae-Geun. “Does she have a boyfriend? She just arrived in Korea, it cannot be a Korean person, it must be someone from India. True, that a long-distance relationship is hard. Maybe that’s why she was so frustrated and out of her mind in the morning.”

Jae-Geun’s heart leapt out of his chest. The empty chest cavity ached with pain as he realised that she had a boyfriend.

“Who is messaging you? Why do you look annoyed?” asked Jae-Hwa.

Jae-Geun eagerly wanted an answer to that question. “Oh, nothing! All these marketing gimmicks. I gave my number to the superstore where I shop and they send me messages every hour about some or the other discount,” she lied and angrily dumped her phone in her purse.

Jae-Geun was relaxed after hearing her answer. Little did he know that Nivritti kept waiting for Young-Chul to reply to her once, but he never did. All the messages she received were from the members of the ASD updating her about his condition. And every time she would receive a message and that message would be from someone else, she would get more annoyed.

“I am not going to message him again,” contemplated Nivritti. “If he can’t make an effort to message me back, why should I waste my time? Anyway, I get his update four times a day and he is doing well. I wonder how he is doing in his therapy. Is he talking, sharing, or just keeping mute like he always does? Oh, why do I care? He can do whatever he wants. I don’t care.”

Jae-Geun dropped the girls outside the building. “I will come tomorrow to get you. Do you want anything?” he asked.

“Call me when you are about to come, then I will tell you depending on my mood,” teased Jae-Hwa.

“So, nothing. Okay, Bye!” still talking he moved his car and drove away.

“Oppa!” screamed Jae-Hwa, poutingly.

Nivritti laughed and pulled Jae-Hwa to walk with her. “Let’s go. He will call you, I know that.”

She pulled Jae-Hwa all the way to her apartment and punched in her code. After changing into comfortable clothes, they sat on the couch and relaxed.

“Now tell me what is bothering you?” asked Jae-Hwa.

“What?” asked Nivritti, confused.

“You were irritated, and frustrated, all your energy was drained when I arrived. You had no idea where your phone was. The morning pancakes were placed before you on your plate. You didn’t even finish them, and you kept staring at your TV till noon. What is wrong?” explained Jae-Hwa.

Nivritti sat upright and looked at Jae-Hwa. “Nothing! I told you, I am just bored after reading the exact same script day in, day out. Just last night, I found some of the plagiarised scripts. I slept late, I woke up late. If I wouldn’t have felt hungry, I think I would have slept for a little longer.”

Nivritti tried explaining her situation to Jae-Hwa. She had to sound convincing. She was not supposed to tell anyone that she was angry at Young-Chul.

Jae-Hwa was slightly relaxed after her explanation. “It is true, reading the same scripts every day is a bit boring. And we have to do that for months. Also, we were late in catching plagiarised scripts. I think we will keep finding some scripts every now and then.”

“Yeah, I keep flagging the scripts and the IT department keeps banning the writers, but they pop up like whack-a-mole. We tag one, and another one appears,” sighed Nivritti.

“Yeah, and then we have to deal with the scripts that have non-existent grammar. I have so many good scripts that I will have to rewrite,” Jae-Hwa sighed too.

Both the girls folded their arms over their chests and melted into the couch.

“We have a long road ahead,” said Nivritti.

“Yeah, we do,” replied Jae-Hwa.

“Let’s not talk about work today. Let’s just relax and waste our whole day doing nothing,” proposed Nivritti.

“Let’s do that. We won’t even cook. Let’s order takeout, watch TV and relax. What say?” jumped Jae-Hwa, with excitement.

“Sounds like a plan,” smiled Nivritti. “What do you want to watch?” she asked.

“Let’s start with horror,” Jae-Hwa rubbed her palms, thrilled.

“Then let’s set the mood. You get the lights, choose the movie and I will get popcorn and drinks,” Nivritti jumped out off the couch and ran to the kitchen.

Jae-Hwa immediately stood up and switched off every light except the footlights. She sat back on the couch and kept searching for a good horror movie on an online streaming app. She settled for a Zombie movie.

Nivritti came back within minutes with steaming hot butter popcorn and drinks.

The whole night they kept watching movie after movie. They started with a horror one, then watched an action flick and finally ended the movie marathon with a sad movie.

They ordered spicy Chinese food and cried while watching the last movie. They kept telling each other that the tears were because of the spices but the reality was they kept crying because of the highly emotional movie.

All the tissues were wet, and they kept sniffling.

“So spicy!” sniffled Nivritti and turned away from Jae-Hwa’s eyes.

“Yeah, so spicy,” sobbed Jae-Hwa and wiped her tears.

“Why did they have to make the movie so spicy?” Nivritti said with a frowny face.

“Yeah, do they want to kill us?” cried Jae-Hwa.

They finished the food and had no excuse for why they kept crying. After the movie finished, Jae-Hwa commented, “huh… they said it was emotional. I felt nothing.”

“Yeah, me too. If it would not have been for the food, I would not have cried even a bit,” replied Nivritti.

“Right?”

“Right!”

They both looked at each other and burst out laughing. They both knew that the movie was amazing and even made their hearts cry.

“That was an emotional one,” smiled Jae-Hwa.

“Tell me about it. When she left him for his own good, I felt it here,” Nivritti pointed at her heart.

Talking about the movie, they cleaned the table and went to bed afterwards. Jae-Hwa fell asleep first. Nivritti sighed after her phone chimed with a notification. She knew it was an update about Young-Chul.