You rushed to the studio. You were supposed to arrive five minutes ago. You were still not late yet, but you were the kind of person that like to have more time to prepare themselves before starting to work. In this case, you needed some time to calm yourself down, freshen up your mind and stretch your fingers. You also had to prepare your ears as you knew it would be quite noisy later.
"Sorry, I'm late," you greeted everyone on set and quickly sat on your station. You checked the laptop in front of you and took out your own earphones from your bag and plugged it in. You made sure that it was working just fine with the laptop before setting it down. You checked the script for just in case, though you knew that it was a waste. The boys would likely not following the script as usual. Soon, you heard some rustling and you could see that the boys started to come into the room. They greeted everyone else on the set, including you.
"Oh, aren't you our translator last time?" Mark asked when he spotted you and you nodded. You were amazed at his memory. Somehow he managed to recognize you even though you were wearing a face mask. "Hey, Jinyoung! You're right," he shouted and the boy that he called turned his head around to face you and you could see Jinyoung smiled a bit when he saw your face.
"Wait, is that mean you're our exclusive translator?" Bambam suddenly asked. "You also translated for me last time right?"
"Um, yeah – er, no, that doesn't mean I'm exclusive to you guys. I'm exclusive to this company. And since there aren't many Korean-English translators here, that's why you get me again this year," you explained and they just nodded.
"Well, even though they don't appoint you, we'd ask for you no matter what," Jackson chipped in, giving you his best smile and Jaebeom frowned at his statement. They could request for stylist and makeup artist, but translator? Since when did they pay attention to a certain translator?
"Coffee?" Jinyoung suddenly reappeared in front of you with a cup of coffee in his hand.
"Thanks, but no thanks. It will make me more anxious than I'm already am," you refused the coffee apologetically and he understood. Too much caffein haywired your nerve, especially before a big event like tonight. You talked with the boys a little bit, asking them a little about their latest comeback so you knew at least the names of their songs and stuff so you didn't type it wrong.
"Sorry to interrupt, but we're going live in 5," a staff cut your conversation short and you stood to walk toward your desk but a tap on your shoulder stopped you. When you turned around, you saw Jinyoung lifting up his thumb quickly before walking away. You smiled at his thoughtful gesture and sat on your station. Soon, you saw the light blinking, indicating that the show was now live and the boys were walking to the set. Soon, the chaos started. The boys were talking all over, completely forgetting the script. You had to type, delete and re-type several types. Their voices were overlapping that made it harder to translate it live. And the volume. Ugh, you had to pull your earphones off because they were too noisy. Even Yugyeom pointed it out at some point when he saw you pulling off your earphones. And the worse part was, you still had to translate it so everyone knew that you couldn't stand their volume. Mark read a comment that the fans knew your pain for translating them. You chuckled inside as even though they were noisy, but you were just fine. It was still bearable.
From your peripheral view, you could see Jackson noticed that Jinyoung threw several glances at your direction. Then he shuffled to Mark and tried to say something. Sometimes the boys forgot that they wore microphone and it could catch everything. Even if they whispered. You could see from the side of your eyes that Jackson tried to persuade Mark into some kind of conspiration against Jinyoung. He talked about it to Mark in Mandarin, hoping that the rest didn't understand them. However, Jackson forgot that there was another person in the room. You.
Jackson tried to persuade Mark to conspire against Jinyoung.
You typed it as Jackson's voice was quite noticeable so you still had to translate it and miraculously, despite their chaos, someone managed to read your translation.
"Hyung! Jackson hyung tried to plan something against you," Youngjae read your translation out loud and Jackson looked startled. He squinted at the monitor, and there was your sentence. The translation to whatever he was saying to Mark before, that he said in Mandarin, to English.
"Hey! I thought you're supposed to just translate from Korean to English!" Jackson whined at you and you couldn't help but tried hard to put a straight face and continued typing.
Jackson protested to the translator for translating Mandarin to English.
"Hey!!" Jackson read your translation again and started to stand up, pretended to look crossed while the boys were all laughing, rolling their asses off the floor at the scene.
"Thank you for calling out his evil plan," Jinyoung said, looking straight at you and you nodded from behind your laptop, accepting his gratitude.
"Okay, boys, let's focus back to the Q&A," Jaebeom clapped and the boys put their focus back to the show and read more comments and answered some of the questions again.
After an hour of chaos, they finally ended the live. It didn't take long for Jackson to strut toward your place and voiced his protest again.
"Really? You have to translate it?" he still pretended to be angry and Jinyoung rushed forward to shield you from Jackson.
"Hey, you're the one that's cheating. Talking to Mark hyung in Mandarin," Jinyoung called him out before turning around to face you. "Thank you again. So, does that mean you can understand Mandarin as well?"
"Hmm, yeah. But not as fluent as Korean," you told both of them. Jackson pouted while Mark and Jinyoung laughed at him.
"Maybe you should talk in Thai, hyung," Bambam added, still laughing at Jackson. "You don't understand Thai right?"
"No. Thai is difficult," you admitted.
"But I can't converse in Thai either," Jackson smacked the back of Bambam's head. "Okay, since you have to translate everything, why don't translate this then?" He started to speak in Mandarin before switching back to Korean. "Okay, now translate it to them," he pointed to the rest of his members, including Jinyoung. Even though Jinyoung didn't understand Mandarin, he still caught his name in the middle of Jackson's sentence and judging by his look, he at least could guess whatever Jackson was saying. Maybe he could see your red face that he started to command you not to translate it while the others requested the opposite. Only Mark that smiled knowingly since he understood Mandarin as well.
"Come on, cat got your tongue?" Jackson prodded and the rest started to demand the translation as well.
"Okay, okay!" you half shouted to shut them all up. "I'll type the translation. Just – just stand there, don't crowd me," you pushed them away from your station to put some distance between you so no one could see you typing. "I'll call you guys when I finish typing it and you guys can see it." You typed the translation and let them see it after you ran away from the scene. You were done for the day so technically you could leave. You were about to swipe your card to the log machine to record the time when someone grabbed your shoulder. You turned around to see a breathless Jinyoung.
"Are you leaving?" he asked while still panting and you nodded, still unsure how you could face him after Jackson's revelation earlier. "Since everything's in the open anyway, what about coffee on the way? We're going to the radio after this, you're heading the same way, right?" Again, you nodded and half curious at the same time, how come Jinyoung knew about your schedule? "I'll give you a ride and a coffee while on the way. And don't worry about the rest. They won't ride in the same car as us," he assured you and you nodded again. You were just about to reach the car door when Jackson whistled and shouted at the back in Mandarin, Jinyoungie got a date!
a/n: yep, you might guess that i got the inspiration after watching their translator's vlog for twitter blueroom. video credit to the translator: ringmybella7
