Noi doesn’t get a chance to say anything before Khun Intapong breezes back into the room with a man who looks to be aroundforty, dressed in dark pants and a vibrant blue shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest. His shiny boots have at least a two-inch heel.
“This is Khun Sukprasert—“ Khun Intapong says as the man surges forward to grab our hands, squeezing each of them in turn.
“Call me Sign, please. We’re going to be very close from now on. Unless you have your own agent?” When I shake my head, he claps his hands together. “Good, then! Shall we go into the common room?” He heads out the door, and Noi and I have no choice but to follow.
“Don’t worry,” I whisper to Noi. “I’ll tell Khun Intapong.”
“This is our workshop room,” our new agent tells us as we walk into a large space with mirrors along two walls and a few tables with chairs set up on the side. A couple of young men and an older woman sit in the corner reading scripts.
“This is where we will get you ready for filming, my darlings. I can’t tell you how excited I am about this series. I watched your audition. You two have so much chemistry! Oh—has anyone given you copies of the novels? They’re on my desk. You’ll have to read them, of course.” With a graceful one-eighty, he leads us out of the room and down the hall, the heels of his boots clicking on the shiny wood floor.
“Have a seat,” he says when we reach a small, colorfully decorated office. He indicates two blue upholstered chairs, then turns and begins shuffling through the piles of papers and books on his desk.
“Tada!” The agent turns back to us, holding out two paperbacks, one in each hand. We take them, and he sashays around his desk, sits down, and crosses his long legs. Smiling like he couldn’t be more pleased, he studies us with artfully kohl-smudged eyes.
“You’re both in school here in Bangkok, right?”
“Yes, Khun, khap,” Noi answers.
“Ah, ah. None of thatkhunandkhapstuff. I told you we are going to be very close. You can call me P’Sign. Now, I’ll need your class schedules.“ He hands us each a pen and a pad of paper. Noi immediately begins writing, so I do, too. I’m not sure why Noi’s going along with this when he isn’t going to be taking the part, but we can talk about it when we get a moment alone. I’m feeling an odd combination of excitement and…what? I have to call it dread. Because without Noi, I’m wondering if Rainbow TV will still want me. And if they do, who will they get to be my partner? The thought is like a stone in my stomach, even though I should have been preparing myself for this all along.
P’Sign keeps chatting away, telling us how he occasionally acts in a series as an uncle or a neighbor. When I hear talking in the hallway, I look out the open office door just as two young men come into view. Because I’ve done my homework concerning Rainbow TV, I recognize them immediately as the most popular shipped couple in the company.
“Tar! Payu!” P’Sign calls them into his office. “This is Sud and Noi, our newest hires, although they haven’t signed the contracts yet.” He winks at us. “They’ll be playing the secondary couple in your series.”
We all politely give the wai. I hand P’Sign my list of classes, and so does Noi.
“Welcome to the company,” P’Tar says. He’s very handsome—a mixture of Thai and Korean genes that have given him light skin, a prominent jaw, and large eyes. I’ve followed his work for a while and know he’s twenty-six and that he played in several popular Korean bl’s before moving to Thailand and partnering with P’Payu, who is a couple of years younger than he is. As Rainbow TV’s most popular couple, they’ll bring a lot of eyes to the series.
“Mee Noi…what a cute name,” P’Payu says. He’s shorter than P’Tar by a couple of inches, and has a cute, pert nose. “We’regoing to be friends, I can tell. Come with me.” He hooks his arm with Noi’s. “We’ll be right back!” P’Payu calls over his shoulder as they disappear out the door.
P’Sign smiles at me. “I have a very good feeling about you two as the secondary ship. The producers loved your audition. Get ready for your life to change.”
Sweat breaks out on the back of my neck. I want this, but everything’s going so fast. “We, um, we’re in school right now.”
P’Sign flaps a hand at me, his gold rings catching the light from the ceiling. “Don’t worry about that. Most of our actors are in school. We work around it. Isn’t that right, Nong?” he says to P’Tar, who nods. “This series won’t begin filming until you’re on summer break. You’ll be doing workshops until then.”
Swallowing, I nod. I want to be on cloud nine, but I have to wonder if all this is going to come crashing down around me when Noi tells them he isn’t interested in acting.
Chapter Thirteen: Mee Noi
When P’Payu walked in the door of Sign’s office, he struck me as unfriendly with his bold, dark eyebrows and solemn expression, but all of that changed when he grinned and hauled me out of my chair to take me on a tour. He points to offices, telling me about agents, producers, actors, and a bunch of other people I’ll never be able to keep straight. Not that I’m going to be taking the job. I’m not an actor. Yeah, maybe I kind of enjoy acting with Sud now that I’ve done it, and the fact that they want me definitely boosts my ego. But I’ll be sure to mess it up eventually, and then what? I’ll be fired and Sud will be left worse off than he would have been if they’d partnered him with someone else from the get-go.
Only, I don’t want Sud partnered with someone else. Thanks to Jess’s sister and all the boys’ love-related social media she’s sent to me, I know what fan service is all about. Whomever Sud partners with will soon become one of the most important people in his world. I glance at P’Payu, who has paused the tourto look at his phone. He and P’Tar are an extremely popular shipped couple. Sud and I really lucked out getting into a drama with them.
A little voice whispers in my ear that this series could be my way out from under my parents’ respective thumbs—a way to earn my tuition and release myself from them forever. No other job I could get right now would pay as much.
“Are you and P’Tar close?” I ask P’Payu as he stuffs his phone into his pocket and leads me into what appears to be a breakroom.
P’Payu grins at me before getting a couple of bottles of cold drinks out of the refrigerator and handing me one.
“I’ve never been closer to anyone,” he says happily. “At first, when we didn’t know each other at all, it was awkward. We had to do a lot of skinship practice. But now, there’s no one I would rather hang out with. I’m lucky, though,” he says. “Some guys have to go through several partners before they click with someone. P’Tar’s one of them. But he’s my first and he stuck. The good thing is if you click, your ship becomes popular with the fans. And then, if you’re handed a shitty series or two, the fans will back you up anyway because they love you.”
I nod, understanding for the most part.
“Do you know Sud well?” P’Payu asks, wiping his mouth after a long drink.
“We’ve been friends since we were six,” I say.