I could feel from the tenseness which Ara was radiating that she was going to scream her delight at having the famous Mir from MBLAQ standing before her. I knew that if she did it would cause greater problems not only for him but also for us, so without thinking too much I quickly plastered my hand over and held down with all of the strength that I had left, Mir who noticed shot me a look of gratitude before he recognized me.

“Hey, you are the girl from the airport!” Mir exclaimed as he slowly recognized me.

“Neh.” I wanted so much to come up with a better response. Alas as I stared up at the gorgeous boy in front of me I found that this was the best I could do. It was a sad reality that made me want to smack myself.

“So, I see, you managed to find the city’s hottest hang out café.” He said as he scratched his head, in what seemed like a combination of embarrassment and shyness.

“Is there any other place worth going to?”

“No I guess I see your point, you were here on training right?” I was shocked that he remembered. The Mir of MBLAQ, remembering me a little nobody.

“Yes we are training with Lee Yoan at the horse riding centre here in Seoul, this is Ara, she is one of my teammates.” Yet before Mir was able to reply another boy came to stand next to him.

“Hey Mir, introduce us to the hotties will ya!?”

I would have normally responded to the ‘hottie’ comment but then I noticed the other guys standing behind them. All along I had been trying to remain calm but it was a task that I was finding harder to do as I was confronted with the whole group.

“Hyungs, this is Lisa and Ara, they are here to train at the horse riding centre… Sorry for how long are you going to be here?”

“Definitely for a year, unless we get a permanent job after training.” To say that I felt uncomfortable would have been an understatement, with all of the guys staring at me in amazement. Which I was sure was due to the fact that I was not Korean but spoke Korean, added with what I had been warned about before arriving here: outside of Europe I would be considered exotic goods.

“You speak Korean?” the one who I recognized as Lee Joon answered.

“Neh.” It was a shy and awkward response which Mir seemed to immediately pick up on as he diverted the attention of his hyungs by pointing out that we should move to the counter before the line got too long.

“So you girls are horse riders, does that mean you play cowgirl all day.” Cheondong asked after he placed his order for a hot chocolate.

“haha, no we all have different specialities,” I looked over to Ara who had been pretty much drooling over Cheondong the whole time to tell him her speciality.

“I am a cross country rider.”

“Neh, while I am really more of dressage rider. But when you become an event rider it is mandatory to be able to do all disciplines.”

“Dressage? What is that?” Mir asked having no clue what the terminology meant.

“It means that I make the horse dance, and together we become a team.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see that all of the guys became extremely interested in the conversation after I mentioned that little fact.

“Really could you show us some day?” Mir and Joon asked at the same time, it was so cute that I could not help but laugh.

“Neh, you can come over to the stables and then we can hold a little talent show, how about that?” All five of the boys nodded their heads vigorously as they all voiced their delight in various forms.

“Hey would you two like to sit down with us?” I was amazed that even though he was the leader this was the first time that Seungho had properly spoken.

“We would love to but we have two of our friends sitting over at the other table.” Ara said as she gestured over to the table where Semmi and Alex were sitting.

“Bring them over to our table if you like.”

Not long after that we were all sitting around a larger table chatting with both the guys as well as ourselves asking questions to get to know each other better. Alex had been cool with the table change, I guess not being from Korea she did not really know who MBLAQ was. Semmi on the other hand had a similar reaction to Ara, but with some convincing we got her to not make a scene.

“So how was Japan?”

“huh, how did you know that we were in Japan?”

“You mentioned it when we met at the airport.”

“Oh yeah right forgot about it.” Mir said scratching the back of his head again, in a goofy fashion. “It was great! It was the first time that I was there, and deffinitly a place that I want to return to. My only regret is that we did not have longer time to explore.”

“What did you go there for?” Alex asked out of the blue.

“We went for a fan meeting and a concert.”

“Ooohh, concert who did you see?”

G.O who had been paying attention to Alex said “No, we preformed in the concert, we are a band, together we are..”

“MBLAQ!” everyone pitched in at the end in a rather hushed voice for fear of drawing too much attention to themselves, Ara, Semmi and myself all giggled quietly at their silliness which we knew was only part of their charm.

It was hard to tell how long we sat there for talking, but as they say all good things must come to an end. And so it was not long before the guys told us that they were only on a break and had to get back to the studio.

As we all said goodbye in our own ways I noticed that the Hyungs were pushing and shoving Mir around, and it was when the other girls had their attention diverted that I realized why. Slowly and shyly he came up to me.

“Could we maybe exchange numbers?.”

“Neh, sure, give me your phone,” and after punching in my details I gave him the best smile that I could, “Give me a call sometime.”

“I promise.” He said waving as he left.

We ourselves had only been on the road back to our dorms for a few moments when I heard my phone go off indicating a message.

Hey Lisa,

It was great meeting you, lets hang out some time.

Mir

I could not believe that he had actually texted, and on top of that had said that he wanted to hang out, it was a feeling which had placed me on cloud ten.

“What is that?” Alex asked noticing my state.

“Oh she got a message from Mir. Lucky duck, so when are you going out with him?” I looked over to Ara in shock.

“Ara we are not going out, he just asked for my number.”

“Yeah sure, trust me the boy is smitten.” Even though I tried to brush her off, I could not help but hope that she was right, because I certainly was.