*Jacklyn's POV*

Jacklyn sat back against the edge of the bed in the hotel room she shared with Em, since there were only two rooms for the four girls, and skimmed through the pictures and videos she'd been sent from Mel. 

Apparently Mel had been to Japan and left already, and instead was in Hong Kong, leaving her friends to perform in Korea. But they'd be there for almost the entire year, so they'd see her when she got back.

Still, it was slightly annoying to look at all of Mel's pictures and think, "Wow. I'm still single."

Although, she had to give the girl some consideration. The two had been dating for several months already, and Mel, the most dirty-minded and fearless of the five of them, had not acted upon certain desires her friends were very well aware that she possessed. Sometimes, Jacklyn had to feel slightly bad for Zhou Mi. It was fairly difficult to keep up with Mel. Not in a success kind of way, but just her personality. One could never really understand what was going on inside that girl's head, because it was usually complicated. She had a tendency to randomly blurt out things completely irrelevant to the conversation at the time, because her mind jumped from one topic to another in less than a second.

But whatever. She wasn't even there. Whatever Mel was doing in China, Jacklyn was certain that she was enjoying herself. If Jacklyn had any kind of love life whatsoever, she would. 

She couldn't say that her friend didn't look happy, though. In all of the pictures, Mel looked like she was floating in the clouds, her toothy smile lighting up her face. Even when she'd had her scandal, she was as proud and confident as ever. It was hard to imagine any of them as idols. Of any kind. Yet it felt like Mel was the only one who really fit the title. It felt like, despite their international recognition, Jacklyn and the other Rstory members were only part-time idols.

When Em came into the hotel room, Jacklyn snapped her laptop closed. "I guess we'd better get ready to meet Tiffany, huh?"

Em shrugged. "And a few of the other FASE members. Not Henry, though. Since SJ-M's in China."

"And so is Mel."

The two girls looked at each other for only a half second before they started laughing. erted minds think alike.

"Do you think--?" Em asked, but Jacklyn shook her head.

"You know Mel. Trust issues. She has to make DEAD sure that he's not going to leave her before she gives anything up."

Em frowned. "I don't know... we haven't even really met him..."

"Well, we shouldn't worry about it. Besides, I think Henry's been developing the big-brother syndrome. I don't think he'll let anything happen. Meanwhile, we are single. All four of us. Do you think maybe we have too high of standards?"

Jacklyn shrugged. "I don't know. They're not any higher than Mel's though..."

Em drummed her fingers against the bedside table, then sat down on the edge of the bed and poked Jacklyn with her foot. "Come on. Let's go meet Tiffany. We've got our own problems to worry about without that girl."

Jacklyn nodded, getting up to go out the door.

"Okay, Mel and Henry are gone, so I wanted you to meet our new friends," Tiffany began, "We got some more guys! this is Sam from Lunafly, Hanbyul from LEDapple, and... Oh my gosh, I feel bad for this, but... what were your names again?"

Three guys sitting together on a couch answered, "Aj, Eli, and Kevin."

Ali looked at them wide-eyed. "UKISS?!"

They shrugged, smiling. Jacklyn had no idea how FASE kept adding members. She didn't know they associated that much. 

"Okay, and guys, these are the ladies from Rstory: Ali, Em, Eliz and Jacklyn."

There were general greetings, and then the serious discussion began. It became quickly obvious that the members of FASE were not INCREDIBLY familiar with each other, considering the slight amount of awkward tension, but they warmed up to each other quickly. 

It almost felt weird to be talking to Tiffany without Henry and Mel there. That was just the way it always had been. 

"Okay, so you guys don't really dance, right?" Sam asked, and Jacklyn had to stop herself from swooning at his accent. British. He had a British accent. And it was fantastic.

A glance at Em told Jacklyn that she was thinking the same thing. It wasn't until she looked back at Sam that she realized that he was expecting an answer.

"O-oh, yeah, that's right. We don't really... well, I do, a little, but I'm not that good," she answered, pinching herself in the arm under the table to remind herself to focus.

"Then maybe we can work as a group. Em, Eliz, Ali, Hanbyul and I can be a group. What do you guys think?"

"How long do you think this is going to be?" Eli asked, leaning forward to grab a chip from one of the bags on the table. 

Tiffany drummed her fingers on the table. "Well, I was talking to Heechul-oppa about it, and he said that we'd do rotating performances with each group. So we'd do one, and then Psycho Club would do one, and then Kyu-Line would do one... all to a full concert length. So... around six performances total."

Jacklyn tried not to look disappointed that Sam had left her out of the non-dance collaboration. But she'd brought it upon herself, saying that she danced a little. She had better coordination than Mel, but she wasn't exactly trained in dance, especially not at a dance-central company like SM. Still, she doubted she could take it back now without it sounding ridiculous.

Jacklyn wondered what the other girls were thinking at the time. Em just looked like she was listening to Sam talk. Ali and Eliz were trying to behave like adults, to become friends with the Ukiss members. Sometimes it was easy to forget that many of their idols were only three or four years older than they were. Half the age difference between Mel and any of her idols. Ten between her and her romantic interest. Comparatively, four didn't seem like many years at all.

She looked back at Sam. He was older than the UBeat members, born in 1987. She thought about it. She was born in 1996, so...

He was nine years older than her. Better stop fantasizing.

That reminded her. Where were Aron and Min Hee? They were in FASE, right? Was there some kind of Pledis thing going on that meant they couldn't come? Jacklyn really didn't know. She hadn't heard of anything with Nu'est, but she'd been so busy lately that she couldn't properly fangirl. It gave her slight jealousy towards Mel. At least Mel worked for the company of her favorite groups, so she could see them every day. Rstory was popular lately, but she didn't work for Pledis, so she didn't exactly get to see Nu'est every day...

She focused back on the meeting, which quickly ended, dissolving into a weird dorky time of throwing candy at each other and talking about the previous times they'd been to Korea.

*Eliz's POV*

The guys of UKiss were REALLY way too nice. Apparently Mel had talked to them on Twitter when she was commenting on something Simon and Martina had posted. So they'd started talking about FASE, which eventually led to them deciding that the group sounded cool. And they'd come, even though Mel wasn't even there anymore. 

She flipped through her phone, thinking about her future performance with FASE. When Mel got back. It was still extremely weird to think that she was in China, heading to Chile. And that all of these people she was meeting had already met her. 

Sometimes, it didn't even feel like Mel was really one of the Wisconsin Girls anymore. She tried, Eliz knew she did, but their lives were starting to get really far apart. They didn't share a lot of the same experiences anymore. 

Eliz shook her head to clear her mind and went back to what she was doing, going through the messages on her phone that she'd received since coming to Korea. The girls of Rstory, with their "internet sensation" status, had been receiving a lot of "love calls" asking them to participate in such and such show or program. They'd already been to a volunteer program in Louisiana, a charity benefit in North Dakota, and loads of other random events across the United States. That hadn't changed once they'd arrived in South Korea. Now she had messages from all kinds of variety programs, like One Day Two Nights, Happy Together, and Family Outing, asking her if she'd like to be on their show. 

She even got asked if the other members want to be a part of it, as if she was the leader. She wasn't. Rstory didn't have a leader. Yet, just because she was the oldest by almost a year, she got responsibility shoved at her. She didn't want that kind of responsibility. She wasn't even sure she wanted to be a singer or star. It just happened that way. 

"Huh?" Eliz asked out loud, opening a message labeled "Global We Got Married". There was no way they were seriously asking her to do this...

They were. And, to her own surprise, she was actually thinking about it. Who were the male candidates? Did they announce any yet?

*Em's POV*

Em sat down in the cafe, leaning up against the wall while she read through Eliz's messages. She tried to picture Eliz in We Got Married, but each attempt at picturing it just made her burst into laughter, leading to people in the cafe giving her weird looks. Which got her recognized. Which had people asking her for her autograph. After all, she stuck out in Korea. Maybe not so much as Mel because of her blonde hair, but she was still pretty easily identifiable as a foreigner. An American.

She looked again at Eliz's message about the invitation from We Got Married and started laughing again. She took a sip of her coffee and tried to drown her giggles, but it was incredibly difficult.

But then the message disappeared from her phone's screen, replaced by an unknown phone number accompanied by her favorite chipmunk's version of B.A.P's "Warrior". 

If she were still at home, a normal college student, she wouldn't have answered, but she'd been getting calls from programs lately, just like the other Rstory girls, so she'd been getting lots of numbers like this, that she didn't know. So she answered, warily.

"Yeobusseo?"

She expected some kind of company representative, or a manager, or something. That wasn't who it was. 

"Uhhhh... hello. Is this... All Sutori Emiri?"

Em blinked. "Um, yes. This is Emily from Rstory. May I ask who this is?"

"Huh?"

She was somewhat impressed that whoever had called was attempting to use English, but his accent wasn't getting her anywhere over the phone. So she switched to Korean. "Who is this?"

"Yeah, uh, this is Minho from SHINee. We... met... before."

Blood shot into Em's cheeks, and she looked frantically around the fairly busy cafe, realizing that this was not a good place to take a phone call such as this one. She dropped her voice to a whisper, trying her best not to look suspicious, already knowing that it wasn't going to work. 

"How did you get my number?!" she hissed, but then she remembered the way he'd pressed his own number into her hand, and figured it out.

"Mel gave you it, didn't she? Queen Be."

"Oh... yes. She said it was okay..."

"Why in the world would you be-?!" She realized her voice was rising in volume, and that people were looking again, so she dropped back into a whisper, her cheeks flaming. Also, she was being impolite, so she needed to go back into her formal speech. "Why would Minho-shi want to call me?"

"I wanted to thank you for... back then. You never called me when you got out of the hospital, so I was worried. Is that alright? I can take you out to eat or something."

"What?!" she squeaked, "like... like a date?!"

"No, just as a thank you! Not like that at all!"

"Uh... um... I guess... okay. If that's... what you want. You really don't have to repay me."

"I want to! We can go somewhere fun!"

Em tried to control her breathing. She felt extremely awkward right then. She'd met Minho only once. And she wasn't a big SHINee fan. She barely knew anything about him. But hey, it was just a thank-you, right? No strings attached. Absolutely nothing.

*Ali's POV*

Ali was the first of the girls to actually go on a variety show. She wasn't entirely sure what to do, but she hoped her foreign-ness would at least get her points for comedy. If nothing else, she could stun people with her Spudgey voice. But only EatYourKimchi fans would understand that... Oh well. She'd just roll with it. She could do that.

Running Man. Of all shows, that was what she was introduced in. But she had to do well in variety. She was representing Rstory, until the rest of the girls chose shows to participate in during the year they were in Korea. 

"And finally, all the way from the United States, Rstory Ah-ri!"

"Um, it's 'Ali'," she corrected the MC, and everyone burst into laughter at his mistake.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Let me try that again. 'All the way from the United States, Rstory Ari!"

Ali shrugged. "Close enough."

The other guests laughed again, and she felt a breath of relief escape from her lungs. That was easier than she thought it would be.

"Ali-shi, this is your first variety program, correct?"

"Yes, this is my first time on a variety show. We don't have very many in the United States."

"Are you nervous?" the MC asked.

"Yes, I am," she answered, laughing anxiously. "I hope you can all teach me how to do well."

"OOOOOHHHHH, she's very cute!" Some of the older girls on the show cooed, and Ali felt a bit embarrassed. She was trying to seem polite, but just sounded cute. Oh well. It was a start. 

"Rstory has a song for us in Korea, right? That's why you're here with us today?"

"Yes, I wanted to promote our new song, 'Distance'," Ali answered.

"Oooh, can you sing just a small part for us?"

Ali blushed. "Well... I don't sing the melody... I sing the alto parts..."

After lots of insistence, she really did sing, low notes and all.

"This distance has never made me love you less,
And although you don't know my name,
I'll never forget yours.
I hope my voice carries across this distance,
So you can hear it as a whisper in your ear,
telling you that I am always there,
even when no one else is,
even when you cannot see me,
when I cannot see you."

They all applauded, cheering. "Woah, Ali-shi, you have a very low voice!"

"Yes, I wasn't expecting that!" One of the guys remarked. 

"Is the song for anyone in particular?" the MC asked.

Ali shook her head. "We wrote it for our international fans, and for people that we are fans of. It sounds better with the harmony, though..."

The cast all disagreed, saying that it sounded fantastic, and they were impressed. And then they moved on, into introductions for everyone else, and then into the rest of the variety show. Ali only hoped she could continue to do well.