Page 15 of A World Apart (Between Worlds #1)

M y feet were dragging as I headed into Jeremy’s office. As usual, he didn’t look up from where he was tapping away at his laptop.

“Tired?” He asked, gruffly but not unkindly.

“It’s just been a day,” I answered, puffing out a breath as I leaned against his open door.

“Any problems today?” He asked, angrily hitting a key several times in a row.

“Not a one. The boxes have all been arranged in a very Tetris-like way, the hard-drives are all downstairs and Donna has the call list you gave me. Oh, and she told me to tell you to ‘call your own damn covers, next time’.” I said, ticking off my tasks on my fingers.

Jeremy huffed a small laugh at the last one.

“She’s a real hard-ass, that one,” he muttered.

“She’s always been a peach to me,” I said, earning me a quick look up from Jeremy, his eyebrows raised in disbelief before he saw my wry grin.

“We should send her to negotiate with these union punks,” he grumbled, “the lot from tech would be back at work within the day.”

Deciding not to comment on that one, I instead asked if he wanted a coffee as I was going that way .

“Only if it’s laced with cyanide,” he groaned, dragging his hands down his face. I flashed him a look of sympathy, even if I was secretly on the side of the ‘union punks.’

“Sorry, boss, we’re all out of cyanide.”

Just then, the elevator down the corridor chimed and I instinctively looked over my shoulder to see who it was.

To my surprise, Youngsoo stepped out, followed by Jihoon and another man I’d never seen before.

They turned right to go down the corridor that led to the conference room and the lounge, where Jihoon and I had had lunch together on Saturday.

Only once they’d gone out of sight did I go a few further steps down the corridor to sneak a peek around the corner. All three men went into the conference room at the end of the corridor.

I stood there for a few moments, looking in through the narrow window in the door, catching glimpses here and there of the men getting settled into the seats around the table.

Behind me, the elevator chimed again, and the doors clunked open, and then closed.

A hand suddenly ran down my arm from shoulder to elbow, squeezing me slightly and scaring me half to death.

I jumped and pulled away before even looking around.

When I saw Trevor Kyle standing there, smiling down at me, I had the strongest urge to press myself against the wall.

I held myself still, however, trying to control the expression on my face.

I could still feel the heat of his hand on my skin. It burned like shame.

“Get us some drinks, would you, sweetheart?” he asked and winked at me, luckily turning around and walking down the corridor towards the conference room before seeing the gag I’d only just suppressed when he’d winked at me.

I couldn’t, however, suppress the sinking feeling I had at understanding that I was now on Trevor Kyle’s radar.

If I’d had any doubt before, it was gone now.

“Everything alright, Kaiya?” grumbled the far more welcome voice of Jeremy as he walked to where I still stood, next to the elevator .

“Yeah,” I answered on an exhale, pushing myself away from the wall, “TK asked me to get some drinks for the conference room, but there’s not many of them so I won’t be long.”

“Don’t worry about it. Sort them out and then you might as well take off, there’s no point you starting anything else today,” Jeremy said.

“Alright, thanks, boss,” I said, knowing full well that I’d only be hanging out with Becka until she finished anyway.

With that, I hustled to the lounge to get started on some refreshments.

Becka had showed me how this went on my first day, just in case I was ever asked to do it.

Normally, it would be someone from her office, but you never knew and it wasn’t complicated.

I brewed a fresh pot of coffee and piled everything I needed onto a large tray; mugs, spoons, one container of milk, individual sachets of sugar and some napkins.

I also grabbed some water bottles out of the fridge and waited for the pot to finish brewing.

Once it was done, I grabbed one of the mugs and poured coffee into it, topping it up with frothy milk and a shot of caramel syrup.

Once done, I picked up the tray and carefully made my way to the conference room.

I had to push the door open with my back and I tried my best not to clatter the tray too loudly.

From the screen on the wall and the mounted speakers, I could hear other people speaking, the meeting having obviously already begun.

I didn’t look up, but I could hear the other party speaking very fast Korean.

As I walked around the room to the other side where there was a table to set out hospitality items, I could hear someone in the room speaking quietly, it sounded like there was someone translating into English.

Once I slid the tray onto the table, I chanced a look round and saw the man I wasn’t familiar with leaning in closely to Trevor Kyle, presumably translating.

Looking back round, my eyes naturally snagged on the big screen.

I inhaled sharply and looked away immediately, my hands tightening on the tray.

There, on the big screen in full, sharp definition were the other four members of GVibes: Park Minjae, the eldest of the group and the leader, part of the vocal line with Jihoon, Kim Seokmin, the third vocalist and also the youngest of the group, Choi Woojin, the group’s best rapper and lastly, Lee Sungmin, second rapper and also the best dancer of GVibes, except for maybe Jihoon.

I listened to Minjae speaking, the voice so familiar to me, feeling so surreal I had to really fight to keep from giggling at the absurdity of my life right now.

I took a deep breath and resolved to focus on my task.

I grabbed the water bottles and ducking my head down, hurried round the table, putting them to the right-hand side of each person sitting there, not lingering before heading back to the table, where I grabbed the coffee I’d specially made for Jihoon, and two little packets of sugar.

I carefully placed the mug and the sugar packets on his left.

“Thank you,” he whispered, lifting his eyes to smile ever-so-slightly at me.

I returned it with a small smile of my own, before turning to Youngsoo and quietly asking if he’d like a coffee.

I repeated this with everyone else and bustled away to pour coffee into mugs, adding milk when it was wanted and adding spoons, napkins and sugar packets to each person in turn before I was done.

I’d done a very commendable job of pretending my favourite band in the world weren’t live on a screen just a couple of meters away, weren’t able to see me as the camera captured the full width and breadth of this room.

I also did an amazing job of drawing absolutely no attention to myself, and as I silently slipped out of the room, I mentally high-fived myself on not falling over, not spilling coffee on anyone, not knocking anything over or otherwise similarly making a spectacle of myself.

“Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod,” I panted, practically galloping down the corridor and hot stepping into the office space Becka shared, earning me several looks.

“Babes, what?” Becka said, looking up at me in surprise, pushing aside her laptop.

I low-key loved it when she dropped everything for me, and even in the midst of my fan-girl-freakout, I felt a warm glow of love for her.

“I just saw GVibes! All of them!” I dramatically flung myself into the chair opposite her desk like it was a fainting couch, earning me a couple of laughs from the other people on her team .

“What?” Becka said, frowning, “Are they here? We didn’t know about that, did we?” She directed this to Celine, a couple desks away, who looked up like a meerkat scenting danger.

“Here? No!” Immediately she shoved her glasses up her nose and started squinting at her computer.

“No, no!” I say quickly, waving my hands around for emphasis. “They’re on the video conferencing screen, they’re in the conference room right now. TK made me make drinks for the room.”

“Oh God, don’t do that to me,” Celine slumped back into her chair, heaving a sigh of relief.

“Sorry Celine,” Becka and I chorused, and then giggled.

“Holy hell, that was so wild!” The grin stretching across my face felt manic.

“While that is very cool, and I am happy for you,” Becka began, “I’m confused as to why this seems like a much bigger deal to you, when you’ve been in physical contact with the idol for days.”

Celine sharply looked up, the laser focus of her glare was almost a tactile feeling and Becka quickly looked over to reassure her.

“Stand down, Celine, figure-of-speech, I just mean that he’s been here, in the building and we’ve seen him walking around. She has not, I repeat, not touched the idol.”

Mostly true, I thought to myself, a small smile teasing the corners of my lips.

“She better not have,” Celine muttered darkly, pushing her glasses higher up her nose and narrowing her eyes at me. I held my hands up in silent surrender, and she turned back to her laptop.

Becka and I shared a grin. “You done for the day?” she asked.

“Yeah, Jeremy said I might as well finish early, so here I am, riding high and fancy free.” She rolled her eyes at me but smiled.

“Alright, I’m nearly done and then we’ll head out, okay?” Understanding that she needed some time to concentrate on her task, I got up and said, “I’ll go and get my stuff out of my locker and meet you by the lifts?”

“Sure,” Becka said, waving a hand at me but having already gone back to staring at her laptop .

I left the office and wandered slowly down the corridor, turning into the Ops hallway toward the lockers. I took my sweet time, letting the quiet stretch as I reflected on how bizarre my life had become.