“If you look at this,” Julia says and scrolls up on the tablet to show the picture from the airport of 5 Pieces getting help by security through pushy fans, she then scrolls back down to show the very nice picture of 5 Pieces and two men in suite hand them a diploma and a bottle-looking award; “and then look at this… what do you see?”

Manager Lee’s forehead is frowning as he is trying to understand where she is going with this. Julia looks so seriously at him that he is certain he has missed the point in what she is trying to show him but all he sees is one crazy picture from the airport and one formal picture of 5 Pieces accepting an award from today.

“No,” he ends up shaking his head, giving up after what feels like an hour of trying.

Julia sighs in frustration and scrolls back up to show the airport picture, her fingers tapping on the screen to zoom in on the picture. She zooms in on herself.

“That,” she annoyingly taps the screen for him to take a look before she is fast to scroll down and zoom in on herself in the other picture. “And that.”

He looks up at her face, confused by what she means and then looks up at Emelia stepping up in front of them to see the tablet, leaning forward and turns her head to see the picture.

“Aah, you’re still talking about that?” Emelia asks Julia, a smirk growing in the rapper’ face. She gives Manager Lee a nod. “She looks sleepy in the pictures, that’s what she’s trying to show you.”

Manager Lee frowns at getting the answer, grabbing the tablet to tilt it for him to see again and as he apparently can’t see what Julia sees, he looks up at her with an expression that obviously shows that. Julia sighs at that, saying he should see it and that he isn’t even looking if he doesn’t see it.

They have arrived for rehearsals at the O2 arena in London. They arrived in the morning but left for three hours before coming back and now they are waiting to get up on stage and actually start the rehearsals. While Julia is worried she looks tired in public photos, Hannah is wandering around the O2 with Carolina and admiring the place.

It’s the same thing they did when first arriving; admiration over the place. This is where the best of the best performs. None of their colleagues in South Korea have performed here before, 5 Pieces will be the first.

“Do you want fish ‘n chips later?” Carolina asks the camera-man who is filming the two ladies. He is walking backwards, slowly, and the ladies are walking slowly while looking around.

“I have had it once before actually,” he tells them.

“Carolina loves it,” Hannah points out, smiling at her friend who looks happy to have someone else say what she loves.

“It’s what every tourist should eat when visiting this country,” Carolina tells them and the camera-man is nodding. He seems to be agreeing with her and Hannah looks to the side with a big smile.

Hannah looks at the camera-man when they are walking inside the concert hall, holding out her hand to touch his arm so he won’t bump into the door.

“Be careful, Antony,” Carolina chuckles and walks past him, stopping her steps to hold out her arms at the place that soon will fill 20.000 fans. “This is amazing!”

Rehearsals ends up being anything else but amazing. Everyone is lost from beginning to end, no one keeps up with the changes they have made though it isn’t really anything else than removing the cover of Ciara’s [Like a boy] and add Queen’s [Don’t stop me now] during the encore. Such tiny changes but everyone is blank during Queen’s cover for the encore rehearsals. It’s awful from beginning to end that the director and teachers gathers everyone to sit down and have a pep talk as well as a focus warning as D-2 is coming to an end.

The rehearsals comes to an end and everyone head to the hotel to get some rest and prepare their minds and bodies for D-1 coming next. 5 Pieces doesn’t really rest. They wash up and meet up in one of the hotel rooms to practice their Queen cover and go through for the concert again, to not repeat the day’s messy rehearsal. Emelia films it, parts of it as she seem to mostly just capture the ladies messing around and laughing. They are tired. After practicing a few times they settle for the night to get some sleep.

London’s winter is as Seoul’s and Tokyo’s. The air is chilly but it isn’t that cold that it snows; instead it rains. It’s been pouring and it will keep pouring for days. Hannah likes it, the platter against the window in the hotel room. She hears it when falling asleep and she hears it when waking up.

Back at the stadium for rehearsals she can’t hear the rain anymore. Even if there was a window nearby, the noise around her would be too loud for her to hear the rain.

D-1, Monday, goes better than D-2 with the rehearsals. It seems like they just had to mess up the first day of rehearsals to be able to adjust for today. The funniest mistake that is done though is Maria singing the Japanese version of [Girls Power], not just once but she does it several of times during the song and every time she does, Emelia is laughing. Other than that, no one makes any big mistakes today.

“Look here.”

Emelia turns the opposite direction than what Sukmin tells her and she is smirking hearing him groan for not getting the picture he wanted. He has been sneaking around with his phone for hours, snapping pictures of everyone but when he looked through the pictures he saw that Emelia is never captured. She turns away or holds up her hand to cover her face, once she even put her hand up to cover Carolina’s face. His target has become Emelia. At the end of the day he will have a secretly taken picture of her.

“You,” Sukmin says and points his phone at Myung, filming now instead of taking a picture, “Let’s bet that the person who takes a secret picture of EM before midnight, will get to choose room for the European concerts.”

“The whole month?” Yongji leans out behind Myung to look at Sukmin. He is interested in the suggestion while Myung is just smiling at them.

Before Sukmin can make the deal with them, everyone is called out to focus and get in position for rehearsals. Sukmin motions his hand when stopping to film, his expression asks Myung and Yongji if they are in on it. Yongji nods while Myung is just smiling, even when he is asked if he is in, Myung just shrug his shoulder and takes his position.

A few seconds later their dance teacher calls out for Sukmin to put away his phone so he can focus on the stage. Emelia is smiling again when hearing those words, looking behind her as she knows very well what he is trying to do.

But whatever he tried to do during rehearsals without success he is one of many having that goal once rehearsals ends for the day. Yongji had been hiding by the band during the ballads to try sneak a picture, but since Emelia wasn’t looking his direction he failed. Julia got in on it too, along with some band members and more from the dance crew, so at the end of the day Emelia is hiding with a scarf around her head and a cap to hide her face, too aware of that most friends are in on a bet to take a picture of her without her knowledge; her face has to be captured.

Hannah is one of few not in on the bet. She isn’t much for betting and the bet is to choose hotel room for this European concerts they have this month; which Julia has no impact on but she is still in on the bet. It’s only for the dancers and band members, as they have always receive an amount of hotel rooms that they divide each other in. Some get better rooms and others get smaller rooms.

After lunch they have a break from rehearsing and those that wants can conquer the O2; climb over it. Hannah is one of them because Daekyon kept saying ‘you only live once’ and since 5 Pieces are using the hashtag ‘YOLO’, it felt like a must to do it. Hannah, Julia and Maria went up. Carolina was sleeping and Emelia used fear of heights as excuse, a lot of staff members and fro the crew do it too so they are three groups in total climbing over the O2, in the rain. It wasn’t pouring rain like the rest of the day, so it went well. It went by quickly, but they got it on tape for the movie and Maria got a few seconds filmed on her phone for SNS where she filmed herself and called out for Hannah behind her, everyone struggling in line up to the top. She used the hashtag YOLO to upload the video.

After those two hours they are back for rehearsals, continuing with what they know and Maria’s legs are weak from conquering the O2.

“Help me out, will you?” Yongji whispers next to Hannah, his eyes are focused on hers as he walks next to her off the stage, the touch on her arm seems as desperate as the look in his eyes. “If I can get that picture, I won’t have to share room with Haneul and Wan Fu. They speak too much Chinese, please, Hannah, help me out?”

“Out of all people you can ask and you ask me?” Hannah grimaces a bit. She can’t look at him for long, she smiles at a staff member who takes her microphone.

“That’s why I choose you,” Yongji smiles, looking proud as he points to his head and says; “I gave it some thought. Emelia would never suspect you, of all people, to help out. Because … well, it’s you.”

She laughs at his words and shakes her head, looking behind them to see if Emelia is nearby. She sees Shiwon look suspiciously at them, and the reason he looks at them like that is because Yongji directs Hannah to the opposite direction than where everyone else are going.

Again she laughs. “Doing this, everyone will be suspicious of me helping out,” she points out and looks behind again. Yongji looks behind them too and when seeing Shiwon coming up to them he takes a quick step away from Hannah.

“What are you two whispering about?” Shiwon sounds curious as he comes up to them, wrapping an arm around Yongji’s shoulders and looking from Yongji to Hannah.

“Hannah asked me for some stage advice,” Yongji lies with a smile.

Shiwon looks at Hannah again. “If you need advice, just come to me. I’m pretty incredible on the stage, you know,” he tells Hannah. Hannah takes a deep breath, nodding at them both while looking like she doesn’t want to have this conversation. “What do you need help with?”

With a grimace she wonders what to say. She doesn’t really need help with anything. She gives out a sigh, still grimacing when looking at Yongji and Shiwon.

“Aren’t you hungry?” she asks them, then nods at herself and starting to leave. “I’m hungry.”

Shiwon laughs loudly after her but pulls Yongji along.

“I’m starving!” Shiwon exclaims. “What trouble did you have on stage, lady? Did the little one here help you out?”

”The little one,” Yongji sighs, pretending to be upset while he is happy Hannah didn’t say anything about the bet to Shiwon. Her way to dodge his question is funny though, it’s obvious. Shiwon hugs Yongji with the arm around he has around him, happy that Yongji doesn’t like what he was called.

“Ask away,” Shiwon says with confidence that he can do better than Yongji on giving advice.

“I have nothing to ask,” Hannah answers in front of them. She smiles at the floor, hearing Shiwon laughing behind her.

They are done for the day. It’s after nine in the evening but everyone is hungry and the topic is only about food when getting ready to leave. Outside it’s still raining but inside it is excitement rising over tomorrow’s first London concert and for what they will eat for dinner.

“We’re eating at the hotel?” Carolina asks around when they are leaving.

“Room service~” Julia cheers.

“Some of us are eating at the restaurant,” Emelia answers, pointing over at Hannah with a questioning look, asking if she is in on it.

Hannah nods. They had decide earlier, about seven of them, to go eat at the restaurant at the hotel. The hotel have two restaurants and one of them has an Asian cuisine, so of course their crew wants to go there.

Reaching the doors to head out to the waiting vans, Hannah spots some of the dancers getting umbrellas to head out too.

“I’m sharing with Minhae!” Julia shouts and rushes by Hannah to link arm with the female dancer who laughs.

Before anyone can charge in and steal Minhae from Julia, they head outside. Minhae keeps laughing for being pushed outside. There is a roof above them, giving Minhae a chance to open up the umbrella and for Julia to see the crowd of fans at a distance giving out a cheer at the sight of her. The sky is dark outside, the lamps are shining up the place and fans have been standing there the whole day, being kept on a distance but not too far that they can’t see Julia coming out in the rain.

“HELLO!” Julia roars out and waves with her whole arm to the fans that starts to jump and wave back.

Minhae holds up the umbrella over their heads and with linked arms they step out in the rain. Julia is in a great mood, she keeps waving over at the fans. She likes that those fans have been there for hours even if it’s been raining the whole day, covering themselves with raincoats or hiding under umbrellas.

“You know you can order from the restaurant up to the room, right?” Carolina is heard saying behind them.

Minhae looks over her shoulder to see who Carolina is talking to, smiling as she sees Hannah nodding along to what Carolina tells her. The youngest dancer Yonghyeon, who is only 18 years old, glides in under the umbrella Carolina holds above their heads, smiling as Carolina lets her in. Hannah has her own umbrella, not interested to be informed about room services that she has known about for years – they usually order up to their rooms from restaurants, it’s nothing new so she doesn’t understand why Carolina brings it up.

“We can have a movie night in my room?” Carolina suggests for both Hannah and Minhae, looking from left to right for them both to know that.

“We share room already though,” Hannah points out and Yonghyeon laughs.

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