Our Little Dorm Mother

Chapter 1- Going Undercover

My boss is a dick.

I looked at him from across his desk and smiled as sweetly as I could. "You called me, sir?" I asked politely in that sickly-sweet tone.

Richard, my boss, was sitting on his high-back office chair with his elbows on the desk and his fingers intertwined together. If I didn't know any better, he looked like the Godfather. And it didn't help that his hair was platinum grey and he had a thin, black moustache that was neatly trimmed resting across his upper lip.

He looked like he could have been one of the Kray Twins' henchmen. He was definitely old enough. And he was crabby too.

His mouth twitched slightly to signal that he was smiling—if you can even call it that.

"I called you here because I have something to discuss with you," Richard said in that gruff voice.

Uh-oh. This couldn't be good, I kept thinking as I shuffled my feet. Whenever Richard said that it was normally followed by—

"I have some bad news," Richard said steadily.

And here it was.

"Was there something wrong with my last report?" I asked worriedly. "If there was, I'm sorry sir, I'll get it fixed straight away."

"No, no, no." Richard waved his hand dismissively. "It's not about your report." He paused to think about it for a while as if I had just reminded him of something. "Although, you could work on your words better. Something about the word choice wasn't quite right."

My smile didn't falter but I was screaming internally. Nothing to him was ever quite right.

"No," he continued, "the reason I called you here was because of that interview you were going to do with that band." He put two fingers to his temples to signal that he was thinking. "What were they called again? Bang—"

"Bangtan Sonyeondan," I said finishing his sentence a little too excitedly. "Or, BTS for short."

Richard had his eyebrows raised. "Yes. Well, I have some bad news to tell you, I'm afraid."

Bad news?

"Oh, please don't tell me they've cancelled the interview!" I exclaimed desperately. "I've been looking forward to it all this time. I'm a massive fan of them, you see." I showed him my phone case. It had the letters BTS in bold, black letters. "If they can't do it on the day, I'm pretty flexible. I can do it whenever they want me to. I can even change my flight dates—"

Richard put up his hand as if to signal me to shut up. He had a way of telling you things without actually saying anything.

"That won't be necessary, Minami," he said.

"My name's Mirei, sir" I corrected him. Where did he get Minami from?

Richard gave a grunt as if to acknowledge his mistake. "Yes, Mirei." He says enunciating my name slowly. "Well, as I was saying, you will still be flying to Seoul, but you won't be doing the interview with..." He made circular motions with his hand.

"BTS," I say trying hard not to roll my eyes. But then his words just registered in my head. "Wait, what? I'm not doing their interview?" I could hear my voice rising in pitch. "Why?"

Richard was calm. "Unfortunately, our other reporter, who was meant to go undercover for us, has injured her leg and won't be able to do it anymore." He thought for a while then spoke again, "And since you're our only other..." He thought some more again as if he was trying to choose the right word. "Asian reporter," he said finally, "you're the only one who can pull off the job."