Power walking through the corridors, Ani finds the closest bathroom and locks the stall. She thanks God that she brought her duffle bag with her in case he wanted to see her dance. After all, she applied to be a choreographer. She rapidly changes in the bathroom stall and runs to the elevator. Pressing three, Ani hops from one foot to another as she constantly checks the time. Twenty more minutes until I'm thrown into my first job, she thinks. This is absolutely crazy.
The elevator dings and she steps out. Once again, she peeps through each door until she stops in front of a door with music blasting from the other side. Slowly, Ani clutches the doorknob and turns it. Poking her head through the crack, seven boys are messing around with each other. Some of them are tackling one another while others are just sitting around on their phones. One of them is getting a piggy-back ride. Sensing her presence, one of them looks up and they all stop.
"Uhm miss. I think you're lost. This isn't a gym," one of them speaks up. Although the rest of them snicker, he sounds genuinely concerned.
Ani enters the room completely and scoffs. "And this isn't a playground either." She folds her arms in front of her chest and all of them stop laughing. The CEO wasn't kidding when he said I'd have my work cut out here.
"Who are you?" A tall boy walks toward her in a non-intimidating way. "That wasn't meant to sound rude at all; I'm just curious."
"I'm Jeong Ani, your new choreographer."
All of them look at each other and panic. "Sorry. We didn't know."
"Neither did I, until a few minutes ago." Ani scans the room. "So this is how you guys warm up before you practice?"
"Uh no. Just some stress reliever," another boy pitches in.
"Well, I'm gonna be your choreographer for the next couple of weeks and we're gonna do things a bit differently." She places her hands on her hips and stares at each of them. Although she's coming off as assertive and powerful, internally, she's dying of nervousness. I'm not used to this! Ani screams internally. I don't know if I'll be able to handle this, but mama didn't raise no bitch and I'm no quitter either. "Alright. Stretch for ten minutes and I'll do the same. I wanna see if you guys stretch essential body parts and if you're doing them properly."
While the boys stretch, Ani multitasks; she stretches her body as she observes the boys stretching and she thinks of a warm-up routine for tomorrow's practice. She notes that they have the basic stretches down; they make sure that their arms and legs are warmed up but they don't really do anything about their neck or back. She stands up and claps her hands. "Alright boys. I want to see what you guys are capable of. I'm going to put some of your songs on shuffle and I want you guys to perform the dance for that particular song. Here's the catch: you'll never know when I'll switch the song, so be alert and jump in as quickly as possible. Don't hold back."
Ani walks to the aux cord and plugs her phone in. She scrolls through the multiple songs she had to download to prepare herself in case she got the job. Hopefully, all of these have a dance to them. She spots one that says, "피 뚬 눈물" and selects that one first. Immediately, the boys scramble to their starting formation and begin dancing. After she feels comfortable with their abilities of this song, she switches it to another one. Ani continues to do this for about half an hour and until she's selected every song that she had on her phone.
The boys are exhausted at this point and so Ani tells them, "Okay. You guys can take a lunch break." She checks the clock. "That is, if you haven't eaten yet. If you have, I'll just make it a snack break or whatever. But I'm going to assume you haven't eaten yet. Afterwards, we're going to continue. Got it?" They all nod.
