After everything was written, packaged, wrapped, labeled and stamped, I left Min Hee in the dorm to take it all to the post office. It was all too difficult to take on the bus, so I had to take a taxi, and then postage cost an arm and a leg, so altogether I was spending a pretty good chunk of my fortune on mail back home. I had to be careful, or I wouldn't have much money left to eat with. I couldn't wait until I got my songwriter's check for "A Dream by the Sea". It wouldn't be much, but at least it was something.

When I got back, I walked back into the building and heard a peculiar sound. Was someone... screaming? As I walked up the stairs towards our dorm, it seemed to get louder. No way. It couldn't possibly be...

"Min Hee?! What the heck is going on in here?! Are you okay?!"

"Minsung! I'm in here! In the bathroom! I- AH!!!!!" she screamed, "HELP!!!!" I dashed in, expecting the worst. Had someone come into the room? Was Minsung in real trouble?! 

I rushed into the bathroom, yelling "I'm here Min Hee!" and got a blast of rank-smelling water in the face. "What the-?!"

Min Hee screamed again. When I wiped my face and opened my eyes, I saw her sprawled out on the bathroom floor, completely drenched. She had a plunger stuck into the toilet with one hand, and her other hand was desperately trying to use a towel to sop up the mess of water all over the floor. It wasn't working very well. The toilet water was still spilling over the top, and if she leaned over too far, it would spurt fountains of nasty water.

I grabbed another towel out of the cabinet and began to mop the water up with my foot, to try to stop it from flooding into the other room, while I fumbled for my phone to call somebody.

"Who should I call?!" I cried, "119?!" No, probably not. I figured this didn't count as the kind of emergency that Korea's 911 would respond to. "I don't know any phone numbers for this!"

Min Hee tried to answer, but got blasted by the water.

"God I hate this apartment!" I screamed, giving up on the towel and dashing out to get the phone book. My hands were wet, so as I flipped through, the ink was starting to blur. Meanwhile, Min hee was still screeching, trying to make the water stop.

Finally I found a number for an emergency plumber and dialed. When I glanced over, I saw that the water was starting to spill out of the bathroom. S***. What if it reached our stuff?!

While the phone rang I ran over and desperately pulled the blankets off of my bed and piled them in front of the bathroom door to try to stop the water from getting into out room, screaming, "Jesus, Min Hee, what did you DO?!"

"NOTHING! She screeched back, "I just flushed the bloody toilet and this happened!"

Suddenly I heard the phone pick up. "Emergency plumbing services. Please relay your problem."

"Yes, yes, hello?! I have an emergency!"

"Please speak in Korean."

I hadn't even realized I'd been speaking English. I said a very innappropriate word, and then ducked a spray of water.

"Our toilet exploded! Water is getting everywhere! All we did was flush!"

"It's probably a burst pipe. It happens sometimes if the plumbing of your building hasn't been taken very good care of."

I dodged another spray of water. "Yeah, but can you fix it?!" His calm was starting to annoy me. I mean, it sounds hilarious if you're not the one experiencing it. I'm sure anyone who hears me tell this story is going to be laughing their butts off. Heck, maybe I'd be laughing about it later myself. Right then, though, I was too busy freaking out.

"Maybe. You'll have to shut off the water supply to the building, though. And give me your address. It may take a while to get there."

"Yes, thank you!" I rattled off our address and apartment number, then dashed down the stairs to get to the owner's apartment. I felt sorry for leaving Min Hee there with the toilet, but she'd be okay, right?

I slid my phone back into my pocket, thundering down the steps as fast as my bare feet would take me, since I hadn't taken the time to put on my shoes. As I went past the floor right under us, though, the door flew open, revealing a very angry EXO member whose name I didn't know.

"What is going on up there?!" He yelled. "Water is dripping into our dorm like crazy! Do you want us to go complain to the company!?" 

I didn't have time to explain. I just paused, did a 90-degree bow, then took off again, yelling "I'm sorry, Sunbae, I'll explain later! It wasn't our fault!"

It took a long time to convince the owner that there was a serious problem, and to convince him to turn off the building's water. He said that we had three hours to fix the problem before he turned the water back on, because he didn't want to have to deal with complaints from the rest of the apartment building. 

When I got back up to the dorm, Min Hee was very, very drenched, and very bad-smelling. Not to mention the three EXO members sitting on the bed looking like they wanted to be as far away from her as possible. When I walked in, she asked, "So what's the story?" 

I explained the story to Min Hee, and she seemed to take it pretty calmly. Maybe all of that freaking out took all of the energy for freaked-outtedness out of her. But then she bit her lip and looked at the EXO members. They weren't any of the members I knew (which was severely limited when it came to EXO, so it wasn't that surprising), but they looked equally upset.

I sat on the floor next to Min Hee, looking up at them. In her ear I whispered, "Did you tell them what happened?"

She nodded. "But they're saying that they want us to help clean up their apartment since we made such a mess."

"What?! But this isn't our fault!"

"Explain that to them."

I looked back up at them. "Well, umm, EXO... sunbaes... umm... we're really, really sorry, and we didn't mean any harm, and, uh..."

"Forget it. Just clean it up. Our dorm smells like a sewer now." I almost laughed at that comment, since of course, our own dorm probably smelled ten times worse. And that's where they were sitting. 

"Well, there's really no use in doing it now, since the emergency plumber still has to arrive. For all we know we might have to clean it up again. Sorry... sunbae..."

"We can't even clean it up since the water's shut off, anyway," Min Hee added. It really was an accident, sunbae. Please don't get us in trouble with the company. Believe me, we would never do anything like this on purpose. If the plumber is able to fix things, we will be down there right away to clean it all up."

"We will?" I asked.

Min Hee elbowed me in the side and hissed "Do you want to get kicked out of the company?!"

They just stood up, through, looking at the bathroom and shaking their heads. "I suppose you won't be able to pay for damages, either?"

"No, not really. Unlike you guys, we haven't debuted, so we don't have any money coming in."

One of them shrugged, then hit one of the others on the shoulder and pointed out the door. They began to leave, and he just called over his shoulder, "just try not to make any more trouble for us, okay? You two seem to be good at that."

Sadly, he was right. We were constantly making trouble for them, first with our loud music, then with this... what was next? I really never meant it to happen. Granted, I forgot they lived underneath us half the time, but I never deliberately made things miserable for them.

The plumber came and looked at our toilet with a surgical mask over his face to protect him from the smell. He said he'd be able to fix it with some replacement pipes, so Min Hee and I made sure everything somewhat valuable in our dorm was either locked away in our safe (Another find from the side of the road that we fixed), or carried with us, and then went to get a replacement pipe from the hardware store. When we came back and gave it to him, he said that it'd probably take several hours. 

Min Hee turned to me. "Well, since we have time, but no water, do you want to go to the public bath and wash up? I can't stand smelling like this. I feel disgusting."

I'd never been to a public bath. Honestly, it sounded like fun, but I was a bit self-concious about being in front of other people . Maybe it was an American thing, but it still made me feel uncomfortable. But how bad could it be?

"Mel! Come wash my back!" 

I had my towel tightly wrapped around myself, and didn't want to step out from the locker room. Okay, I admit, I'm not really nervous about changing around people. I don't really care how much people see of me. So long as I'm wearing underwear. This was the first time I'd gone completely skyclad. If you all can figure out what that means. 

I looked around the women's bath area. Most of the people here were older women, chatting with each other as if nothing was wrong (Which, I suppose, for them, nothing was), with the exception of Min Hee sitting in one of the tubs, looking calm and beautiful as usual. Meanwhile all I could think about was the roll of fat around my tummy. But then, of course, I looked back at the older women and realized that I had nothing to be shy about. I hung my towel up on one of the racks and stepped into the water.

"Wash my back please." Min Hee said again. I grabbed the sponge and did as she asked. While I scrubbed, she asked, "So you feeling okay about the whole public bath thing? You looked a bit uncomfortable for a while there."

I shrugged, not that she could see it, since her back was to me. "I was for a bit, but I guess it's just another step into becoming completely comfortable with myself. One more step into becoming desensitized."

Min Hee turned around, and I stopped scrubbing. She held her hand out. "Here, let me scrub yours now." I turned to let her, and she continued, "I'm a bit envious of how comfortable you are with yourself already. If I had to do the kind of performance that you and JiHoo are doing, I think I would have a really hard time. I'm really uncomfortable with getting touched. Maybe it's because I'm British."

"Aren't you Korean?"

"I grew up in London. Those are the kind of people I lived with. Maybe it's also the reason I'm not very expressive. Not like you. Honestly, I can tell how you're feeling and what you're thinking from twenty meters away, because you're not afraid to show it. I wish I were like that."

"Well, I'm actually not as self-confident as I seem. Believe it or not, there're always the thoughts in the back of my mind: God, I need to be skinnier. I have too much of a tummy. My skin isn't flawless enough. I shouldn't be here in the Kpop world... The things that come out of my mouth are really embarassing... I'm not smart enough... Actually, I think about my shortcomings a lot. I just choose not to care."

It was the truth. I was less than perfect, and I knew that. And I'd dealt with that most of my life. When I got glasses, I'd been called "Harry Potter". Guys were afraid of me because I was violent, yet they constantly harassed me. Over time I became really guarded and self-punishing. I was careful about what I said, how loudly I spoke, and what people thought of me.

I'm not really sure exactly when I started to open up again. I think it came as a direct result of being desensitized by the theatre group, so I realized that there were people aside from my closest friends that didn't care about my shortcomings, only what made me good as a person. But I don't know when I started to become obnoxiously expressive. Actually, I think it might have had something to do with discovering Kpop. I had something I could obsess about, and had people to idolize who didn't hide their shortcomings. Instead, they flaunted them. Maybe I was just idolizing a bunch of bad influences, as society might see it. Though, in my personal opinion, the American stars that try to hide that they're getting into alcohol and drugs are ten times much worse.

 When I explained as much to Min Hee, she was quiet for a while. Then, after a long silence filled only by the murmer of the other voices in the room, "you've lost weight since you came here, didn't you notice?"

I looked down at my belly, then used my two hands to grip it and feel its shape. "I haven't noticed."

"Well, you have. And your skin is clearing up. Thanks to the help of a certain very awesome roommate."

"Yes, thank you, Min Hee. But it's really okay. I'm just going to be a songwriter, right?"

"I don't know. I see you as an actress, too. But still, I think those things that you think are your shortcomings can be easily fixed. So when you become a famous songwriter or actress or whatever, you and me can go to them and prove that they were wrong. Deal?"

She had one hand holding her towel around herself, and held the other out to me. I shook it. "If you say so, Min Hee. And we're also going to go to Europe and show your family, right?"

"Yeah, that too."

 Min Hee and I returned to the dorm, feeling fresh and clean, only to find a very expensive plumbing bill and a whole night's worth of cleaning both our bathroom and the EXO dorm's-- waiting for us. 

Fortunately the actual mess was just water, so it didn't take too much time to clean up that part. Unfortunately it also smelled really bad, so we had to scrub and disinfect everything. Well, there went my Grandfather's living expenses money for me.

The next day went as usual, though. Our pipes were fixed, so we took showers and went to our separate lessons. I went to my Korean language course, and Min Hee went to vocal training. Then I went to school, and when I got back to the company for dance class, My heart was beating fast again. I had almost forgotten tha today was our dance test. Well, actually... I'd actually forgotten about it because of how crazy everything was last night, but Min Hee remembered enough for us both, so we were okay. I walked into the dance room, and she held up my outfit of choice, raising one high-arched eyebrow.

I'm really glad she's my roommate.

JiHoo was already dressed, waiting for me. "Hurry up, Minsung! We're going fourth, remember?"

"I'm going! I'm going! Why don't you stretch or something while you wait?" I called over my shoulder.

I changed as fast as I could, coming out in the clothes I had modified specifically for this dance. When I came in, the first performance had already begun. I sat next to JiHoo and stretched, watching. It was a team of two boys, one being twelve and the other being twenty. It was a bit of a strange combination for a performance of Girls' Generation's "Run Devil Run" in terms of gender, age and height, but hey, you don't always get ideal circumstances in randomly selected stuff.

 They played it off really well, though. Since one was a lot smaller than the other, they did a kind of a breakdance style, with the twelve-year-old doing flips over the older one's head, and spinning on the ground. It was pretty cool, making me slightly nervous. To take my mind off of it, I leaned over to JiHoo.

"What did I miss?"

"Well, those people over there are our judges. They're the other dance teachers." 

I saw them, sitting with Sunsaeng. "No idol judges?"

He shrugged. "Not this time. Oh, and by the way, Sunsaeng says that the top two performances get to perform for the public at SM's charity event."

Oh. By the way. Just wait to tell me the most important thing last, why don't you?!

Their performance finished, and I applauded. I resisted the urge to bite my lip nervously, and applauded encouragingly as Min Hee and SoHee got up. I'd seen bits and pieces of their performance, and it looked like it'd be awesome. A jazzy, peppy version of f(x)'s "Hot Summer", Min Hee looked ten times more beautiful than I could ever be, spinning and whirling, her skirt flying up, her shiny black hair whipping around... the only problem was... she wasn't smiling. Actually, her face looked pretty expressionless. I knew she'd complained to me about that, but I'd never really seen it until then. She was singing a cute song, so she shouldn't look like she was at a funeral, but she did.

On the other hand, SoHee's dancing wasn't quite as perfect, but her expressions made her fun to watch. She was cute, really. I could never do the aegyo thing very well, because although I had big eyes, with my square face, I couldn't make my cheeks look babyish. Sad face.

Still, watching Min hee's performance gave me knots in my stomach. In spite of myself, I bit my lip and glanced at JiHoo. He must have been doing the same thing at the same moment, because he smiled at me and patted the top of my head. 

When they finished, I clapped as loud and hard as I could, to remind Min Hee that I was supporting her, even though she was technically my competition. When she came back and sat down next to me, she picked up her video camera and grinned at me, mouthing, "remember what I promised Henry?"

Crap. That's right. She was going to record me. Guess I'd better do this right, or I'l never hear the end of it from Henry.

My heart was beating faster as the next team performed. My eyes were starting to blur with nerves, and no matter how well I tried to watch, I wasn't really seeing anything. Could I really do this? This wasn't a Super Junior song. My fangirl powers couldn't help me this time. All of the Super Junior members but three were in China. They couldn't support me.

I heard the applause through a vague haze. It was our turn. Our turn. The words echoed through my brain.

JiHoo stood up and held his hand out to help me up. "Come on, Minsung," he whispered, "your Oppas are waiting to be impressed." 

I took a deep breath to calm my heartbeat and focused, clearing my head. I was going to rock this, I told myself. I didn't desensitize JiHoo for nothing.

I took his hand and stood up, brushing the dust off of my bare legs. Mirotic. Mirotic. Mirotic. That was all that mattered right now. Even if I lost, as long as I performed it well, it would be ab accomplishment. I'm sure that's what any of my Oppas would say.

JiHoo nodded to our classmate that was in charge of the music. I stood next to JiHoo, meeting his eyes and nodding.

The music began.

The concept JiHoo and I came up with was a guy that's repeatedly trying to get the girl, but she keeps teasing him, and then running away. Of course, that description makes it sound ten times more innocent than it actually was. But of course, it depends on how you interpret the term "teasing." Not to mention that in our choreographed version of the song, he doesn't exactly try to "get the girl" necessarily very nicely.

I filled myself up with that feeling. I wasn't much of a dancer, but I was a pretty good actress. And what was this performance but the acting out of a story? 

I don't know if you know how it feels to perform a dance. If you do, then all the more power to you. But if you don't I can only describe itas practicing to the point that the music just kind of takes over. It flows through you like a current, directing every move. 

I spun out, and, as we practiced, he grabbed my arm and yanked me back in, and I "fell" into him, sliding down his chest and onto the ground, then using his hands to lift myself back up, then push away and escape.

It felt incredible. Was there an audience? Were we doing this for a reason? Did it matter? I was dancing. I was dancing and the choreography was flowing out like water. If JiHoo didn't become an artist, I would be depressed, because our choreography was just as good as the original Mirotic's.

The performance ended when I pushed him over and smiled, symbolizing that the girl had won the fight. 

The magic ended when everyone started clapping. I shook the daze out of my eyes and remembered where I was. I bowed, then held my hand out for JiHoo. He got to his feet, then bowed and muttered "Kamsahamnida". 

When the applause ended, we sat back down. My cheeks were bright red and I was still breathing hard, and Min hee was grinning at me, triumphantly holding her video camera. When we got back, she whispered to JiHoo,  "You'd better be careful. A certain big brother might get a bit protective." She winked, shutting the camera off.

JiHoo seemed confused. He asked me, "Big brother? I thought you only have a big sister?" 

"I do. Henry just acts like my Oppa."

His cheeks paled. "Oh... I see." We both turned back to watch the last two performances, and then tensed up while we waited for the judges to discuss.

"The wait is killing me!" I muttered to Min Hee, "Can they hurry up and decide already?!"

"Hey, give them a break. There were a lot of good performances today. Yours among them."

I was surprised. "You really think so?"

"Absolutely. If I didn't, I wouldn't have said so. Good job, JiHoo. Minsung has officially desensitized you. You were pretty cool up there."

His ears turned red. It was a bit endearing.

He looked like he was going to say something, but then Sunsaeng stood up. "alright, kids, we're going to announce our placements. Remember, first and second place get to go to the charity concert and get their names out there. Ready?"

We all yelled "NAE!"

 He started from the bottom and worked his way up. I buried my face in JiHoo's shirt, whispering "Not last place, not last place!"

"Sixth place... Jung Ah and Da Na with BoA's 'Hurricane Venus'."

I started breathing again. I felt bad feeling relieved, because obviously somebody had to get last place, and they'd had a difficult song (Not that Mirotic was easy), but I just didn't want to be last. Honestly, I was hoping for third or fourth. Fifth was probable. It didn't really matter as long as we didn't get last. I was happy that way. 

Sunsaeng kept giving out names. Fifth, not us. Fourth, not us. Did they forget to judge us? Third... not us. That left...

"Second place... Min Hee, SoHee, Minsung, JiHoo, you must all be nervous. Not that it really matters, since you're all going to be performing. But since you're curious, second place was the y performance of 'Mirotic', by Minsung and JiHoo, leaving Min Hee and SoHee's 'Hot Summer' for the first place!"

The class clapped, and the four of us stood up and bowed.

"That's it, everyone!" Sunsaeng cheered, "These four will be spending the next few days practicing, and the rest of you will come back to me tomorrow for class! Good night and good luck!"