THE MANAGER NIM

04. EP: DREAM - NO SUBTITLES!

That's your most favorite song, which is playing now in your iPod and you created this particular playlist to play whenever you want to feel at ease, but at this moment in time, the song is anonymously floating around your train of thoughts as a mere noise.

Your heart is flying along with the plane, at the proximity of your destination.

Cabin crew prepares for the landing as you get close to the destination and with a short jolt the plane lands down with idle engines quite fast.

'Shit! This is not a fricking dream; you arrived to the land of BTS, for real'.

You move along in the direction headed by your co-passengers, like a lost kid in a fair.

You're a person who visits shops like Miniso and Innisfree in shopping malls like a ritual, solely to see random Asians, precisely Koreans. For some obscure reason, you loved to see them. It always boosted up your serotonin.

And now, you're flooded by light skinned Koreans all around you in flashy outfits, but ironically you wanted to spot a brown skinned Indian to have a sense of belonging. You feel so out of place.

You can sense the nauseous feel rushing from the pit of your stomach while striding off to collect your luggage.

Squinting your eyes to find your uncle and aunt in midst of hundreds of welcome hoardings, your eyes successfully finds them in the left corner of the crowd, thanks to Shashi aunt's bright orange salwar kameez.

Feeling like an adopted stray dog, you let out a sigh of relief and rest your head over your aunt's shoulder, though her floral scent differs from your mom's woody fragrance, the warmth of their body feels similar.

"How have you been Ammu? Are you eating properly or not? Look, how thin you've become, Ramaaa!", your aunt habitually starts her erroneous rant about your potato body.

If only your sister was here, she would be rolling at the airport floor and pass out by laughing her lungs out

"Yeah yeah, she arrived safely. we found her...", Meanwhile your uncle relays the news about your arrival to your family.

Three of you climb into a shiny black Hyundai palisade, which reminds you about your uncle's workplace and world's biggest boy band simultaneously.

-

It's been a week since you've started to live in your aunt's mansion.

Every single day, you strive to fuse with your aunt's mini merry family.

Your twin cousins are a yin yang combo. Duality of their energies keeps you entertained all day and their actions often evokes the sweet chaotic memories of you and your sister.

In this past week, you realize how much your aunt loves tea, both literally and metaphorically.

Your uncle is your go-to person, at present. Though he looks grumpy all day, you soon discover that one should never judge this guy by his aura.

In spite of being a part of this wholesome family now, you can't contradict the fact that a major chunk of your heart feels homesick already.

Straying around this huge mansion instead of going out and exploring the outer world, feels a bit cloggy for your ambivert self.

Though all four of them offers to take you out for one or another reason, you declined all their offers for one week.

The reason behind your hesitation to step out is, you are too excited to explore the place which you dreamt about almost every day since your high school.

One interesting phenomenon about your character is that you always love to take your own time to explore things which you love the most and that's one of the reasons apart from your internal chaos, behind this procrastination of exploring this beautiful country.

But today you made up your mind to visit one particular place in this nation of K-pop.

You wanted to have solitary time for a while, which is nearly impossible in your aunt's chaotic household.

Hence, you decided to visit your ideal place in Seoul tonight, River Han.

-

Your uncle drops you off in the location with a prior warning to be safe as it is a brand-new surrounding for you.

Located at the centre of the capital, Han stands as an iconic symbol of nature.

You spot various people doing varied things all around the river like teens playing games, lovers walking along the pathway hand in hand and many more.

You find a comparatively quiet place over there to have a seat.

You sit in an ideal place with the best view of the river. When you casually turn around, you notice a kid vibing to an ambulance siren, she looked like that one molecule of serotonin which keeps you going throughout the day.

While gazing at her cute antics, you sense someone settling near you. Your head whirls around to see the person who dared to share your ideal spot.

A plumpy guy clad in black trench coat is seated next to you. He looks super suspicious with that black mask over his face although it's a common thing amongst Koreans.

You avert your gaze from him before he gets you off guard.

Staring at the denim blue stream ahead, you listen to the slightest chords of the soft breeze with closed eyes; abandoning your worries for a while.

A high-pitched voice pierces through your blissful state of calm tranquility, like a sharp javelin.

You turn around to that suspicious stranger who is gazing at you in an expecting state and you suddenly remember that he asked you something few seconds back.

Miserably failing at recollecting the memory of his query you stare back at him, arching both your brows in a questioning gesture accompanied by a 'huh?'.

Deciphering your state of mind, he repeats himself again loud enough for you to hear but, this time also you can't understand what he is asking.

'Shit!! Where are the fricking subtitles?'