Overdrive | NCT ✅

3. "You babysit a rich 19-year-old?"

Rose :

"Where are we going?" I ask my brother as we get into the car.

"To the place where me and Dad work," he answers.

"And that is?"

"Shin Intel,"

I raise my eyebrows.

"That sounds hella fancy," I say as the bright lights of the city blur past us.

My brother hums.

"I guess," he mutters.

"So what is it that you do exactly?" I ask.

"It's kinda hard to explain. The company itself is a huge business with loads of branches scattered across the world. Dad's in charge of the branch in Canada, but he manages it from a distance now. The CEO's called Shin Jeong Hoon. He's your typical power-hungry dude. The company used to be tiny but he managed to expand it by overtaking smaller....organisations and exposing their criminal activity over time. The thing is, he's gained enemies through doing that, and most of them are pretty dangerous and violent.

That's where I come in. Dad and I stayed in Canada for a few years after you and Mum moved to Australia, but when I was about fourteen we moved here. I made friends with this other dude who's Dad is probably the closest worker and friend to the CEO. He was working on a project called NCT. He planned to train a bunch of us around my age so we would be able to help with the company's enemies. Most of us have some kind of relative who's close to Taeyong's Dad or the CEO, that's why he decided to train us.

The CEO has a daughter, but their relationship with each other's...problematic. She was born out of wedlock so naturally, her stepmother hates her. She left home when she was sixteen, so she became an easy target for the company's enemies. It's like they all went "hey, why not go after the rich dude's daughter and hope he gives us ransom or something".

Anyway, her step-brother, Jinyoung, wasn't gonna have any of it so he made sure that she had some sort of protection. She started training with the other trainees and stuff, and the members of NCT were like her 'bodyguards' I guess,"

"So basically you babysit a rich sixteen-year-old," I summarise.

Mark stares at me.

"That...no, not exactly. She's your age and as I said, we were trained specifically to oppose the company's enemies," he corrects.

"So basically you babysit a rich nineteen-year-old and your side job is being part of some gang that fights bad guys. That's sweet. Apart from the fact that you babysit a nineteen-year-old," I say.

"Bro, it's not babysitting! She's like family to all of us!" Mark says, trying not to laugh.

"How many of you are there?" I ask.

"Twenty-one,"

"What? That's a lot!"

"Hmm, you'll get used to it," Mark says as he drives towards a skyscraper.

My mouth falls open as I crane my neck to look at the towering steel building looming over us. Glass windows shroud the building on every side, most of them lit brightly. The needle-like spire at the tip grazes the dark grey sky, a red light occasionally flashing at its tip.

"Woah...you work here?" I ask.

Mark chuckles as we cruise through a pair of sleek metal gates.

"Yeah," he mutters.

"Wait, what exactly does this huge business do again? Apart from, you know, training fourteen-year-olds to do the dirty work for them," I ask.

"They're in charge of the biggest software company in Korea. They're a bit like the Korean version of Microsoft. Jinyoung owns a couple of buildings and rents them out as a hobby and the wife's family has their own branch of hospitals," Mark answers, parking the car smoothly in the parking lot.