~Chapter TWENTY-TWO~

“Five, six, seven eight!” Andrea counted off.

She had almost managed to get everyone in her crew synchronized, and she had promised herself that today would be the day that they practiced to the level at which Andrea would feel comfortable showing President Park her choreography and her crew’s skills.

She had technically been given a month to come up with a dance, then two weeks to practice it with her crew, before practicing it with Miss A for the first time, but Andrea wanted to take this opportunity to show off a little. She had finished the choreography in roughly a week, and she and her dancers had worked every day for two weeks to perfect it, and they were so close to being completely in sync that Andrea could have cried. They had been working tirelessly; they basically lived in the dance studio at JYP Entertainment, only taking breaks for food, sleep, and calling family members back home, which was especially important for Andrea, as her father was the one paying for everything right now.

Through the dance, Andrea could feel the vibrations in the floor from everyone’s feet, and she felt completely confident that she could just worry about herself, rather than everyone else. She actually ended up losing herself in her thoughts as she danced, and didn’t realize that the song was over until she had hit the final step.

Breathing hard, she began to clap, her exhausted dancers falling to the floor, knowing they had succeeded.

“Very nice, everyone,” Andrea said in between gasps.

Everyone nodded, acknowledging her praise, but too tired to say anything back.

Andrea sat on the floor too and tried to catch her breath. The one thing President Park had instructed her in was that the dance had to be eye-catching. Andrea had gone back through past Miss A videos, live and studio, seeing what they had done in the past, and she could tell, based off of those, that the dance was a pivotal part of JYP Entertainment music as a whole, but Andrea made sure that the dance she came up with the music the President had given her was very different from the dances the girls had done in the past.

The only problem with this set up was not having the girls with them as they came up with it. It meant that the girls in the crew had to fill in for their moves, and because there were only three of them but four in Miss A, some of the guys didn’t have the same level of comfort with the dance, and the girls weren’t as comfortable with where they would be once Miss A joined.

But Andrea pushed her worries out of her head and sat back up, breathing finally back to normal. “Everyone, take a three hour break. We’ll meet back here to meet President Park and show him what he got.”

Before she had even finished speaking, her crew were standing up and gathering their things, talking and laughing amongst themselves, in a good mood from the way practice had gone.

“Try to stay loose,” Andrea warned as they started leaving.

“Aren’t you coming?” Bre asked, tying and retying her street shoes.

Andrea shook her head. “I’ve got to tell President Park that we’re ready, and then I’ve got another meeting after that.”

Bre laughed. “Meeting,” she scoffed. “Right.”

“Hey! It is!” Andrea exclaimed, throwing the high heel she had been practicing in at Bre’s feet.

Bre laughed and stuck out her tongue. “Whatever, Leader,” she said. “Just have fun and do well.”

Andrea watched Bre go, still sitting on the floor, grumbling to herself about annoying dancers.

After a little more thinking on Andrea’s part, as she tried to remember anything that could have been fixed in the dance, she stood, groaning, and walked over to the corner where she had left her bag and street shoes.

As she was shoving the heels in the bag, the door to the dance studio opened. Andrea straightened, thinking it was one of her dancers coming back for something they had forgotten, but it wasn’t.

Instead, three men, around Andrea’s age, walked in, talking amongst themselves. At first, they didn’t notice Andrea, too caught up in their own conversation, but then one happened to look up and see her. He was tall and seemed lanky, but Andrea couldn’t have denied that he was attractive. In fact, all three of the guys were attractive. They were probably coming in to practice, as they were wearing wife beaters and sweats. Andrea could tell that they were built, even just by how they moved.

The guy who saw Andrea first tapped the guy next to him, who was even larger. He looked and saw Andrea, so he grabbed the final man by the shoulder, stopping the shorter—and blonder—man from going too far into the studio.

Each party ended up staring at each other, and Andrea couldn’t figure out who was supposed to introduce themselves first, and considering her shaky Korean, that was the last thing she wanted to do.

The second man was nudged by the first, and Andrea knew why this man was singled out as soon as he opened his mouth.

“Hello,” he said, in perfect English. “I’m sorry we barged in on you,” he continued. He took a few steps forward and offered her his hand. “I’m Taecyeon.”

Andrea took it, surprised at how gentle the man seemed. Considering he was the largest of the three, he seemed the most intimidating, but his hand and voice were actually quite soft. “Andrea,” she answered quietly. One thing she hadn’t been counting on today was introductions.

Taecyeon turned slightly, motioning to the other two and saying something in Korean, making them step forward.

“This is Chansung,” Taecyeon said, introducing the man who had noticed Andrea first.

Chansung bowed slightly and offered and shook Andrea’s hand, obviously a little uncomfortable and amused.

“And this is Wooyoung,” Taecyeon motioned to the blonde, who stepped forward and took Andrea’s hand confidently, though Andrea could tell he was trying to figure out why she was here.

“Where are you from?” Taecyeon asked, still speaking in English.

“LA,” Andrea answered quickly. “You’re from the East Coast, aren’t you?”

Taecyeon looked a little taken aback, but laughed. “I lived there for most of my childhood. I graduated high school at a school in Massachusetts. How did you know I lived there?”

Andrea gave him a small smile. “Your accent. I have a thing for knowing which accents are which, so I could pick yours out.”

“Wow,” Taecyeon marveled. “But you’re in Korea for…? Oh! Are you the foreign choreographer Miss A is using? The one that one the competition?”

Andrea nodded, a little embarrassed that he had known about her, but she had no idea who he was.

Taecyeon turned around and said something to his companions, who were wandering around a bit, obviously not understanding too much of the English conversation. Andrea picked out “Miss A” in the phrase, so she assumed that Taecyeon was telling the other two why she was in the room.

They looked appreciative for the information and they visibly relaxed. Apparently, they had been under the assumption that Andrea had snuck in or something.

“I’m sorry we’re in your way,” Taecyeon said, turning back to her. “We’ll go use on of the other studios.”

He turned to leave, but Andrea grabbed his arm to stop him and said, “Oh, no! It’s okay, I was leaving anyway.” She turned around a picked her stuff up.

“Are you sure?” Taecyeon asked, looking at how disheveled her stuff was. She hadn’t had time to organize everything, so her arms were full.

Andrea nodded and started towards the door. “I’m positive. Sorry for bothering you,” she said, looking at the other two, feeling bad that they had been so left out. “Have a good practice.”

She left before any of the three could say anything else.

-           -           -           -

“How was work?”

“Fine.”

“Just ‘fine’?”

“Wait….how do you say, ‘I met people’ again?”

“Oh, you met new people?” Jay asked Andrea, breaking the chain of Korean in favor of English.

Andrea was doing relatively well with and getting the hang of simple phrases in Korean, if she could say so herself. The pronunciation threw her off at times, but overall, Korean seemed like a much more intuitive language than English ever had been.

“Yeah,” Andrea confirmed. “They were coming into practice as I was leaving. One of them spoke English, so he was able to introduce them….and I’m blanking on their names…” Andrea tried to think. She had never been very good at remembering names, but she could remember thinking that those guys had cool names. She couldn’t remember anything else though. “But the one who spoke English lived in Massachusetts.”

“Oh, really?” Jay asked, playing with the fried chicken in between the two of them. He had ordered too much, but it was so good, Andrea couldn’t stop eating it.

“They seemed intimidating,” Andrea continued. “You could tell that they worked out a lot. But they actually seemed quiet.”

Jay choked on the piece of chicken he had been in the process of eating.

“You okay?” Andrea asked, alarmed. She was really not prepared to do the Heimlich on Jay Park in the middle of her living room.

“Yeah, yeah,” Jay assured, waving her away. “Chicken just went down the wrong way.”

Andrea still watched him cautiously, in case he started turning blue because of lack of oxygen.

“I can feel my face melting from your stare, Dre,” Jay said, not looking up from his chicken.

Andrea blushed, but shoved the Korean textbook towards Jay. “Come on, Teacher Jay. Teach.”

Jay laughed a little, and they continued with the makeshift Korean lesson.

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And again, I thank you for your patience. I'm currently going through midterms, so I'm very busy. This chapter was even a surprise to me, but it kept nagging at me.