THE FIRST MEETING
Summary: Following an awkward board meeting, Rose, Amelie and Karine meet the dreamie boys for the first time. Will everything run smoothly or will it go up in flames? (Also , honorifics are a bit of a problem.)
Members: Rose, Amelie, Karine, NCT DREAM
Genre: kind of fluffy, a bit of humour, a bit of angst.
Word count: 1.4 K
Warnings: Mild swearing
BOLD TEXT-English
NORMAL TEXT-Korean
Italics-Thoughts
March 29th 2019
For someone who had been told they were about to debut, Rose Murphy could not have been more ticked off if she tried.
“I have to debut with….with boys?! And not just any boys, the NCT Dream unit? NCT is great, but the fans will eat me…eat us alive!” she groaned dramatically into the pillow she was holding.
Her best friend Lily Kim calmly watched on, as she further buried her head into her pillow. Rose had dramatically burst into her dorm half an hour ago after her meeting with Lee Soo-Man with the news she would debut in NCT…but in the dream unit…with two other girls. She was well used to Rose dramatically bursting into her room to rant or cry, but this felt different.
She’d known Rose for so long, and now the day had come that she’d always feared-she was finally getting the chance to become an idol and leave her behind. Yet, she did not voice her fears as she calmly removed the pillow from Rose’s arms. “Rosie, it’s going to be ok. You’re finally getting to debut! It doesn’t matter whether it’s with NCT or not, whether it’s with boys or not-”
“But I don’t get to debut with you” Rose sighed, pouting slightly at her best friend.
Lily sighed softly in response, shaking her head. “We’re lucky that we got accepted together in the first place…you know there was always going to be a chance one of us would debut in a different group to the other. It was just a matter of when.”
Rose nodded slowly. “I’m just…I have to move into a dorm with them. I have to live with them..”
“Look, it’s no harm that you get to make new friends. I’m sure you guys will get along great and you know that if I can, I’ll always sneak out of the dorms here to visit” Lily reassured her, patting her head and chuckling when Rose swatted her hand away.
“I know you will…I’ll just miss you, that’s all” Rose sighed.
“I’ll miss you too.” Rose quickly pulled the older girl into a quick yet firm hug at her words.
“Now, go! You’re meeting the dream guys in..twenty minutes right?”
Rose checked the time on her phone and swore violently. “They’re going to kill me if I’m late! I…I’ll text you, I need help packing!” She quickly dashed out the door, leaving Lily to roll her eyes fondly at her back.
Little did she know that her own chance to debut was arriving sooner than she thought.
—
“I sure hope she won’t be late…”
“I highly doubt it somehow. A UFO sighting would happen more quickly than her arriving on time.”
“Again with the aliens and UFOS? Amelie, you really need to stop with all of the supernatural stuff.”
“Ah ah ah!” Amelie Du Bois chose to use her two-foot advantage to smirk down at her friend and new member. “You have to use Amelie-noona now, it’s only polite.”
Karine Botcharova simply rolled her eyes at her, pouting sadly as she scanned the busy bustle of the SM lobby from where they sat. “Sure thing…noona. I have to use honorifics with everyone now. It’s so weird.”
“Well, that’s Korea for you” Amelie shrugged, before looking around her in excitement. All around her, the hustle and bustle of trainees and idols alike rushing up to practice rooms, managers discussing concepts over cups of coffee, sounds of chords and vocals drifting from music rooms, and stylists carrying materials up to their offices were mixing together and filling Amelie with a sense of giddy excitement.
Soon enough, they’d finally stop becoming trainees and break free of being SM Rookies and Amelie would finally become part of that world and she’d successfully debut with NCT and become an idol and there wouldn’t be a house in Korea that didn’t know her name-”
“I’m so sorry I’m late!” An accidental elbow to her iced coffee cup jolted Amelie out of her daydream, as she quickly caught her half-empty cup before turning to the older girl who had plopped herself into the chair beside her.
“Hey, Rose-noona” Karine cheerfully waved at her. “You’re pretty early.”
Rose nodded with a smile, slightly out of breath to notice how slightly weird it was to hear that. “Yeah, for once…”
“You almost knocked over my coffee” Amelie stated bluntly by way of greeting, setting her coffee cup down.
Rose resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the French girl, trying to do what Lily would do and keep a smile plastered on her face. “Hi to you too, Amelie.”
“Hello…Rose-noona” Amelie dragged out more slowly with a slight smirk on her face, realising once and for all how much Rose hated the honorific.
“Uh…you know what? Maybe don’t use noona? Unnie is fine” Rose suggested weakly.
“Your wish is my command, Rose-unnie” Amelie continued to smirk, reaching for the large velvet scrunchie around her wrist, pulling it off as she started to tuck her long blonde hair into a ponytail.
“At least you don’t have to use…oppa…on any of the boys” Karine gulped nervously.
While Amelie simply laughed at her pain, Rose tried to offer the poor girl some comfort by reaching over and awkwardly patting her shoulder. “It will be ok, we’ll figure out something-”
At that exact moment, the Dream manager called their names out from across the lobby, causing Rose and Karine to stare at each other in a slight panic.
“Or not!” Amelie promptly got to her feet, her ponytail swinging. Rose quickly drew her hand back from Karine’s shoulder to let Amelie confidently make her way over to the manager. Rose and Karine simply stared at each other and shrugged, before following Amelie over to their new manager.
Once the introductions had been made, the manager led them up to where the dance practice rooms were. In theory, the boys were meant to be brainstorming new choreography..but when the girls entered the room behind their manager, it was anything but productive.
Jaemin was practically on top of Haechan, smothering him with aegyo. Haechan was squealing at his invasion of personal space, while Jeno was giggling to himself as he recorded the whole thing on his phone. Chenle and Jisung were in their own little world, doing a silly dance to amuse themselves. And in the middle of it all, quite literally was Renjun lying on his hoodie, face down, seemingly taking a nap.
All in all, it was pure chaos.
Pure chaos that paused the instant they spotted the manager glaring disapprovingly at them.
“And you call this working? Is this any way to greet your new members?” their manager shouted at them.
“Relax Miss Manager, it was just a bit of fun” Chenle piped up cheerfully. “Anyways, Jisung and I were kind of working, right Jisung-ah?”
“We invented the jellyfish dance!” Jisung beamed proudly.
“Our dreamie bros won’t mind, they’re just like us” Haechan quipped cheekily, taking advantage of Jaemin being caught off guard to roughly push him off him and send him rolling sharply onto his back.
Rose could no longer bite her tongue. “Well, last time I checked, all of us dreamie bros all had a set of boobs, so you tell me” she huffed, finally stepping out from hiding behind her managers back, Amelie following as she gently dragged Karine out to face the boys as well.
“Boys, meet Rose, Amelie and Karine. These girls will be joining you in NCT Dream. Be kind to your new members.”
Another silence fell over them before Haechan blurted out the only thing that felt appropriate to say in the situation- “Holy shit.”
—
After awkward introductions and after Rose and Haechan had been given out to by the manager for “foul language”, the girls were left to sit awkwardly with the boys.
“So..who’s the youngest again?” Jaemin eventually piped up, causing Karine to awkwardly raise her hand.
“Me…I’m fifteen years old.”
“Wait!” Jisung gasped. “That means…I’m your hyung!”
This sent the dreamies into a fit of slightly nervous laughter at the thought of their group baby no longer being the maknae. “Ohhh, look at you Jisung-hyung!” Haechan yelled, more than amused at the thought of it.
The sudden outbreak of teasing caused Karine to giggle shyly and shake her head at them.“Don’t worry too much about it! I’m sure we’ll get along great.”
“I’m s-sure we will!”Jisung stuttered, grinning widely at her.
“So. Boys. Who believes in aliens?” Amelie states bluntly, causing Karine to groan.
“Oh my god, not again!” Karine sighed, before turning to the other boys. “Please don’t mind her, she’s been so obsessed with aliens and UFOS and all of that kind of stuff recently-”
“You too?” Renjun cut across Karine in wide-eyed shock at Amelie. “I thought I was the only one!”
The two instantly fell into an intense discussion, while Jisung and Karine conversed quietly, leaving Rose to stare silently at Chenle and her fellow members born in 2000.
“So…what’s with you then? Rose isn’t it?” Jaemin asked with a kind smile.”Are you intimidated by us?”
Rose nodded and then shrugged as an answer.
“Looks like she can’t resist my charms” Haechan smirked teasingly, as he pretended to mock faint.
His cockiness finally made Rose roll her eyes and snap at him “I sure as hell can’t Haechan-oppa.”
Haechan promptly froze and then hid his face in Jeno’s back whining “Nooo, you can’t call me that!”
“We’re the same age as you, you don’t use oppa” Jeno chuckles, shaking his head at Rose. “Or oppa in general for that matter.”
“Good because I’m sure as hell not calling any of you my oppas” Amelie piped up from her corner of the room where her and Renjun had moved to.
“Well, what are we supposed to call you? Honorfics are kind of a thing here, it’s being polite” Rose shrugged.
“How about just calling them our dreamie bros? They came up with it, and anyways we can play dumb and say we’re European” Amelie shrugged.
“But you’re girls!” Haechan whined again, taking his head up from Jeno’s back to glare slightly at Rose, “Why did Soo-man think it was a good idea to make Dream a coed unit? The saesangs will kill us! Literally, they ring up Jeno all the time. We’re a boy group-”
“Yeah, but the concept of NCT is to spread all around the world. And it never said anything about limiting gender. We know how much hate we’ll get, but we’ll be able to handle it” Rose shrugged.
Haechan scoffed slightly at her and shook his head. “You really don’t have any idea do you? The hate that girls get in this industry because their bodies don’t look a certain way or they don’t act a certain way is bullshit. We can’t be bringing any of that into NCT, and Karine is the youngest out of all of us!”
“We’ll handle it, Haechan. I’m sorry if you guys get hate because of this, but it’s not our fault “Rose spoke sharply.
At that moment, the manager came back to further discuss the schedules for the comeback, leaving Rose to focus and sit slightly away from the rest of the boys. This was finally her chance to debut and she’d be damned if she let anyone try to convince her otherwise.
