The Korean Music Festival concert in Sydney was one of the most amazing events in Kang Jiyoung’s life. The opportunity to perform alongside other K-Pop stars in front of a new audience in a foreign land meant the world to the 18 year-old.

  However, it was also a tiring experience. Not that she disliked performing, it was just badly timed.

  She had just finished her SATs when she had to fly all the way to Australia. There were sleepless nights involved for her to be able to pass the exams, and she hadn’t had the chance to properly rest yet.

  The concert itself took one whole day, with the press conference and rehearsals and whatnot.

  She would give anything then to sleep in a comfy bed, but luck wasn’t on her side as all of the artists had to catch a flight back to Korea once the concert was over.

  A bus had been prepared to take them straight to the airport. KARA was unfortunately the last group to board the bus – the members were delayed as they had to search for Gyuri’s misplaced phone.

  “Okay, I plan to sleep the whole way to the airport,” Jiyoung said determinedly to the others. “Only God knows how tired I am.”

  To her dismay, she couldn’t find a seat for herself, and her fellow members had claimed the last four available seats. Alarmed, she was about to ask Hara and Nicole to squeeze aside for her to sit, when she heard someone calling her from the back of the bus.

  “Jiyoung, there’s an empty seat right here!” She saw SHINee’s Minho waving her over while trying to fight off a pair of hands from strangling his neck.

  Frowning at the strange sight, she breathed a sigh of relief and headed for where Minho was after getting some encouragement from Hara and Nicole, who also teasingly gave her a push.

  When she neared Minho, she noticed that “the pair of hands” had won their way around Minho’s neck. And it belongs to a furious-looking Lee Taemin, the boy she has had a crush on since their Christmas collaboration in 2008.

  Jiyoung gasped when she saw who it was, and it prompted him to look at her. As if he just got a volt of electricity going through him, Taemin quickly retracted his hands and faced towards the window next to him as if nothing had happened.

  “Aarghh,” Minho groaned, rubbing his sore neck, and stood up from his seat. “Here you go. You can have my seat.”

  Eyes going wide, Jiyoung protested. “Oh, no, no. Then you’ll have nowhere to sit!”

  “It’s okay, it’s okay,” Minho said, smiling sincerely. “I need to go talk to Leeteuk-hyung anyway.” He nodded towards the front of the bus where the Super Junior leader was sitting with s.

  Jiyoung still felt somewhat bad about taking Minho’s seat, but the young man insisted. She noted, to her confusion, that he was also suppressing a grin and kept glancing at Taemin.

  ‘Oh, my God. What do I do? I can’t sit next to him! I’ll act like a buffoon! Unnies, help me!’ she thought in despair. ‘Maybe if I just stay quiet, everything will be okay. Let’s just hope we arrive quickly.’

  “Oppa, if you’re done talking and you need your seat back, let me know, okay?” Jiyoung tells Minho.

  He nodded and turned to Taemin. “Taemin-ah, enjoy yourself. Be brave this time.” The grin that had threatened to break out finally did.

  “Hyung!” Taemin scolded indignantly. To his annoyance, the older boy skipped away gleefully, leaving Jiyoung standing (and at times wobbling due to the moving bus) there uneasily and perplexed at what just happened.

  Taemin gulped and hesitantly looked up at her. “Er, go ahead and sit,” he croaked and gestured to the empty seat next to him. “Or would you prefer the window seat?”

  She smiled nervously at his thoughtfulness. “Yes, thank you.”

  The boy slid out from the seat and waited until she had looked comfortable in hers before sitting down.

  Jiyoung sat frozen, her heart going a mile a minute. She tried not to make any movements at all to avoid attention (and maybe friction) from the cute boy next to her.

  ‘Please, dear bus driver, get us to the airport quickly!’ she begged.

  Her wishes were not answered as she noticed that the bus was moving as slowly as a snail. When she looked out the window, she noticed that they were in fact caught in rush hour’s traffic jam. She growled in rage at her misfortune as softly as she could.

  Jiyoung was beginning to get a crick in her neck from looking out the window for more than five minutes since she first sat down, when she heard Taemin take a deep breath and say, “So,” he cleared his throat, “how have you been?”

  Avoiding his eyes, she turned to look his way, and then quickly looked down at her lap. “Good. I’m just tired lately, because of my SATs.” She turned back to the window.

  “Oh, yeah, I heard about you taking the exams.” He shivered. “Urgh, I don’t know if I can go through with it, with SHINee’s schedule and all.”

  “And you have so many things going on for you right now, like promotions for STEP, big concerts like this one, and Invincible Youth…” He sighed. “I really have a high level of respect for you for doing it,” he said honestly, looking at her.

  Ignoring the strange warmth that started bubbling in her heart from knowing that he knew so much about what had been happening to her recently, Jiyoung turned to look back at him in surprise. “Really? I’m sure you yourself are great with your studies.”

  “Nah, not really. I mean, I’m okay, I guess.” He shrugged. “Our president wants us to focus on our next album anyway, and work hard for it, so I’d have to postpone my studies for a while.”

  Jiyoung nodded in agreement. “Sometimes it’s tough being us,” she said with a teasing smile.

  Taemin laughed. “Yeah.” He paused and looked down at his hands on his lap, thinking. “But I won’t give this up for the world.” Turning to look at her, he smiled sincerely.

  “Me too.” Jiyoung giggled, feeling oddly calm and at ease.

  “Anyway, I have to say that I’m a big fan of STEP. I have even mastered the wiggle dance,” Taemin said, his face showing mixed emotions of pride and shame.

  Jiyoung gave out a shout of laughter. “That’s not what it’s called!” Taemin laughed along with her. “You have to show me some time how good you are.”

  “Oh, I am good,” he stressed boldly. “If you don’t believe me, you can ask Minho-hyung. I spent hours watching your music video and music show performances just to…” he trailed off as he realized what he has accidentally revealed. “I mean,” he began, trembling, “I wanted to know the steps correctly, you know, so I had to watch…”

  Jiyoung giggled. “Yeah, yeah, I understand. I’m curious, however, as to why SHINee’s best dancer would need hours of watching our videos to get the steps right.”

  Rendered speechless, Taemin froze and literally went red with embarrassment, eliciting in more laughter from her.

  Jiyoung could not believe how elated she felt and how much fun she was having while talking to Taemin. She was surprised that whatever exhaustion she had suffered from earlier had disappeared. Also gone were her stomachache and clammy hands, replaced by an extremely content feeling that she never knew could exist in her. 

  She remained smiling as she thought about the boy whom she had secretly been watching whenever she had a chance to catch him in person or on TV.

  She’d never been as comfortable with a young male idol all her life as she was at that moment with Taemin. They had never spoken much to each other before, besides greeting one another in waiting rooms or while passing by in the hallways.

  And from what she remembered, she was the braver one between them as she would she would try to catch his eye while he would avoid her gaze as often as possible. What had brought on this courage for him to speak to her so comfortably today?

  To her, this talk she had with Taemin totally makes up for all the prior years during which they were too scared to approach each other.

  As she glanced at him, she wondered if all of this meant something.

  “I saw the episode of Strong Heart that you were on with Nicole,” Taemin said, breaking her train of thoughts and looking at her with a glint in his eyes.

  “Ah, really?” Jiyoung asked worriedly, her hands flying up to cover her reddening cheeks. “Oh, no! How embarrassing!”

  He laughed. “Hey, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about,” he assured her.

  Jiyoung’s reaction was to shrink in her seat and cover her face fully with her hands. “Why would you watch it?” He heard her moan in humiliation.

  “I didn’t realize that you were going to be on it. Key-hyung made me watch it with him,” he paused, “and I’m really glad he did.”

  Dropping her hands, she looked at him curiously to find him smiling shyly at her. She found herself smiling back when she noticed the hidden meaning behind his words.

  Looking deeply into her eyes and leaning closer to her, he said softly, “If you were my girlfriend, I wouldn’t look at other girls.”

  Jiyoung stared at him and gasped softly as her mind registered what he had said. Her heart was almost bursting in her chest and she could feel her smile growing again. She could also feel that her body was tingly all over, and another layer of warmth had enveloped her.

  Not knowing how to react without embarrassing herself, she gingerly tried the daring way. “Oh, really?”

  Taemin chuckled. “Yeah, really.”
  “Well, we won’t know that for sure until we try, now, will we?”

  His smile grew. “That’s true. I guess we’ll have to go on a date to prove it.”

  Positive that she was glowing pink, Jiyoung nodded and gently laced her hand with his. “I guess I’ll have to be your girlfriend then,” she whispered teasingly.

  Taemin could only smile even bigger, if possible, and squeeze her hand. “Let me do the honours. My lovely Jiyoung, will you be my girl?” he asked nervously.

  She giggled. “Only if you promise not to look at other girls.”

  “Deal.”

  Taemin held on to her hand until the time when they had to get off the bus. She got that tingly feeling again when he had rubbed his thumb continuously against her skin.

  Jiyoung was a little upset that their seats on the plane back to Korea were far apart, and they were separated once they passed through the immigrations.

  Pouting, she was about to enter KARA’s van that will take the five girls to their dorm, when she felt a hand pulling hers. She turned to see Taemin smiling nervously at her.

  “Hi,” she greeted shyly, her previous gloom now non-existent.

  Still holding on to her hand, he cleared his throat and gulped. “Jiyoung-ah, I just wanted to ask you, in person, if you’re free tomorrow night.”

  Jiyoung then heard a few loud gasps coming from behind her. Whipping around, she realized that the van’s door was wide open for her unnies to hear the whole conversation. Letting out a loud gasp herself, she slammed the door shut.

  Turning back to an amused Taemin, she replied with a smile, “Yes, I am.”

  “Great! I thought maybe we could have dinner. You know, to get to know each other better. What do you say?”

  “I’d love to have dinner with you.”

  Taemin grinned and they exchanged numbers. “I’ll pick you up at 7, okay? I’ll call you.”

  Jiyoung felt as if she was in heaven. “Okay,” she breathed dreamily and got in the van. “Bye now.”

  “Bye.” Taemin himself also looked love struck as he waved to her shyly.

  Giving him one last smile and wave, Jiyoung turned to sit in her seat properly before covering her grin (her whole face, actually) with a pillow. She let out a small scream of joy and put the pillow down, just to see the curious and shocked faces of her unnies.

  “Yah! What was that?!”

  “She’s in love?!”

  “SHINee’s maknae likes our maknae?!”

  “Jiyoung can get a boyfriend and I can’t?!”

FIN

AN: Sorry if the ending is a bit rushed and weird. I just didn't know how to end it!