I simply could not believe what I had just read. What exactly could Henry want that would compel him to arrange for all of the Wisconsin girls to come visit me in Korea? He was planning something tricky, I just knew it. Don't get me wrong, I was really happy to hear that I would see my friends again soon, but I couldn't help but feel that there was some kind of string attached. 

Slightly confused, I pulled out my phone and texted Henry. "So when were you planning on telling me that you were arranging for my family to visit your family and for my friends to come to Korea?" I wasn't mad, really, just suspicious. 

"Darn. I was hoping they wouldn't tell you in their letters..."

"Henry!"

"It was supposed to be a surprise!"

"What are you planning?"

"Hey, you know Heechul is the evil mastermind, not me!"

">.>"

"I'm not planning anything."

"Sure you're not."

"I'm not!"

"So what exactly are you asking of my friends in exchange for helping them get here?"

"...nothing."

"You are a terrible liar."

He didn't respond after that, so I flopped down on the floor and threw my phone onto my bed. Min Hee looked down at me from her leg stretch.

"So... what exactly is going on?"

"The idols in FASE are helping my friends come visit. But I have a sneaking suspicion that there's something sneaky going on."

"What do you mean? Don't you think they're just giving you a present because they like you?"

I laughed. Min Hee didn't spend that much time with them, did she? The members of FASE loved playing games. Admittedly, I was no exception, but that wasn't the point. 

"Yeah, maybe. But you have to admit, there's something fishy going on here. Any references to Donghae aside."

"Any references to Donghae-sunbae aside, you mean. Come on, Mel, you need to keep using formalities. Just because they're getting attached to you-"

"Doesn't mean I can start being impolite," I finished for her, "Yeah, yeah, I know. I went two years as a fangirl. I'm not used to calling them by anything more formal than 'Oppa'."

"You need to do it eventually. That and your homework. Don't you have a test coming up soon? Maybe you should stop reading letters from your friends back home and start studying!"

I groaned and rolled over, pulling my textbook out from under my bed. "Fiiiiiiiiine..." I wasn't in the studying mood, but I knew that I had to keep my grades up.

I woke up a couple hours later to a puddle of drool on the hardwood floor and the sound of our apartment's version of a doorbell; an angry buzz that sounded like a dying hornet. 

I sat up, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and wiping the drool off of my face. At least I hadn't fallen asleep on my textbook.

"Who could that be?" Min Hee asked. It was a school night, and already ten at night, not an unusual time for the two of us to be awake and studying and/or practicing, but a slightly unusual time for visitors.

I yawned, reaching for the roll of paper towel on our "counter" to wipe up the drool puddle. "Probably just John." He'd been coming to our dorm more and more frequently and at odder and odder times, claiming that he "needed my help with school", and then not spending any time at all studying, instead talking to Min Hee about "back home in Europe". It was slightly annoying at times.

Min Hee got up at the second buzz, opening the door to see our visitor. I wasn't looking at her, too tired to worry about John, but I could hear her say, "Umm, yes, come in. That is, she just woke up..."

I was climbing into my bed, shivering from being asleep on the cold wood floor, getting ready to say, "Go away, John," when I looked up and saw a very determined-looking Jessica walking towards me. 

I was so surprised that I slid right off the bed, pulling my blankets with me. Untangling myself, I stood up. "Jessica-sunbae. What do you wa- I mean, what brings you here at this hour?" 

Believe me, it was extremely tempting to kick her out then and there, but I was pretty sure that wasn't  a good way to stay in the company. So I was playing nice, hoping that would get rid of her faster.

"I need to talk to you."

"So talk." I was being rude, but I have to admit, I'm cranky when I'm tired.

"Privately."

Privacy with Jessica had never turned into a good thing. Usually it involved painful chores and getting pushed down stairs. Since I didn't really trust the apartment building's stairs on the best of days, I wasn't in the particular mood to be rolling down them headfirst.

So I replied, "What's wrong? Min Hee can't hear?"

Min Hee stood up and went to the door. "Don't worry about it, Mel. I was going to go to the convenience store to buy some noodles anyway. You want anything?"

"A rice ball, please."

Just to be polite, she paused before heading out the door. "Jessica-eonni?"

"Nothing, thank you." 

Min Hee shrugged and headed out the door, leaving me alone in my crappy dorm with SNSD's Jessica.

"Well, now we can talk in private," I grumbled, sitting down on my bed, "go ahead and talk."

"You probably hate me, don't you?"

I was surprised. She suddenly seemed soft, not quite as icily vicious as I had gotten used to. It was completely unexpected. I was too thrown off-guard to answer, so she answered it herself.

"Of course you do. I don't see any reason why you wouldn't. I've given you every reason to hate me: threatened your trainee status, forced labor, physical and emotional abuse... it'd be strange if you didn't."

I could only stare open-mouthed at her in shock. "Well... you're not wrong," I finally replied.

She chuckled. "I'm sure you're wondering why I'm like this all of a sudden."

Well, yes, that was one of the many questions whirling around in my head. Along with "Are you drunk?" and "Did someone hit you on the head?" and "Have you been posessed?" and "Is this some kind of trick?"

"A bit," was all I said. 

"I'm apologizing for the way I was before. I'm not actually like that. I wanted you to know."

"You're not... like that. So you're like this instead?" Don't ask me what I meant. I'm not entirely sure.

Jessica seemed to get it, though. "Yeah. I came to explain it."

"Explain what? Why you treated me like dirt and took every opportunity offered to you to make my already miserable existence even more miserable?" I was getting a bit defensive now, even though I knew that I should try not to provoke her while she was actually being nice. It was hard not to, though, after months of torture and pain. Once, she had invited me to eat dinner with her, and I'd had no choice but to go. Then when we were there she tried to harass me by loudly declaring to the waitress that I was American and couldn't use chopstix, so she needed to go get me a fork. Of course, she was the one who walked out of there embarassed, because I can, in fact, eat with chopstix, but I had to pay for her embarassment later. Hence the whole pushed-down-the-stairs thing.

"Yes, that would be it. See, your audition got a lot of attention from the people at the company."

"Huh?" This started with my audition?

"People were excited to have someone so wonderful at English as a songwriter. But they also wanted you to be an actress. And they considered you as a singer. But I knew that if they had so many plans for you, it would put incredible pressure on your shoulders. I had to make sure you could handle it."

I was starting to put the pieces together. "So you were testing me."

"You really are just as smart as your Oppas say you are."

"Thanks," I replied, waving the compliment away. "Why'd you bother? I mean, I'm just a trainee."

"You reminded me of myself. You were so confident, and yet unsure at the same time. I saw your audition and wondered if you would quit under pressure. SM could use a good English songwriter, but it can survive without one. Sometimes I'm embarassed by the company's English, too, though. I wanted to make sure you succeeded."

I sat silent, digesting this for a while. "So you were helping me by making my life Hell." Believe it or not, I actually saw where she was coming from. A weak songwriter would do the company no good.

"You're tougher than I thought."

"I'm an ELF. I have personal agendas to meet at this company. No matter what crap you did to me, I would've taken it. I'm not leaving this company. Not unless SM forces me out." The words surprised even me.

"That's good then. So... you understand what I was trying to do?"

I smiled, for the first time, genuinely, at Jessica. "Yeah, I understand. Thank you." I meant it. Now that I thought about it, my frustration over Jessica's treatment of me had been a major push towards my increased determination to stay in the company no matter what, and becoming a trainee worthy of becoming an artist.

She sat down on the bed next to me, and leaned over and hugged me, and I didn't push her away. "I wasn't planning on stopping quite so early, but when I found out that you were friends with Krystal, I just couldn't keep up the act anymore. She asked me why I was being so mean to you earlier today. So I came here as early as I could because I didn't want my sister to be mad at me for a misunderstanding."

The Jung sisters were so cute. Really, honestly. I was starting to like Krystal more and more, and Jessica seemed to genuinely care for her little sister.

"Okay, I forgive you, Jessica-eonni. Can I call you Eonni?" Previously I had always referred to her as "Sunbae".

"Of course." She seemed so much sweeter now that she wasn't pretending to hate me.

"Okay, I forgive you on one condidtion."

"What's that?"

"You need to join FASE. We're having lunch tomorrow. You should come. I mean, you are an English-speaker, right?" It was a silly question and I knew it, since the entire conversation had been in English.

"Do you think that would be okay?"

"If I don't mind, I don't think anyone else will."

Min Hee came back right about the same time Jessica left, a grocery bag with our food in her arms. She bowed to Jessica as she passed, and then closed the door behind her.

She dropped the bag on the floor and then plopped next to me on the bed. "So what did you talk about?"

"Nothing."

"Come on, it had to be something if she wanted to talk to you in private!"

"It was nothing."

"Come on, what is it you're always annoying me with? 'Nothing means something and something means I want to know'?!"

"None of your beeswax!"

"Hey, just because the whole 'bee' thing is your concept doesn't mean you can use it on me! Tell me! I'm dying of curiousity! Why are you not even mad at her anymore?!"

"I'm sure you're not actually 'duyyying' of curiousity," I replied, mocking her British accent. "But since you're so nosey, I'll tell you that we've settled our differences. Now where's my rice ball?"

So, long story short, Jessica was cool from then on. She joined us in our FASE activitivties, which sometimes involved playing tricks on the members of Kyu-line or Psycho club. Personally, I never dared try anything on Kyu-line, since I feared Kyuhyun's wrath too much, but Psycho club was fair game.

Which was the unfortunate way that I finally met Heechul.

So, generally an idol's schedule is so packed that they don't get bored very often. But when they do get bored... they get really bored. Which usually means someone's going to get messed with. The planned victim of that particular day was to be Psycho club's Jungmo. You know, the amazing guitarist of TRAX.

So, I hadn't actually met Jungmo before, but I wasn't particularly scared of him, so I decided to go along with Henry, Amber, and Tiffany's plan to steal his guitar and hang it from the ceiling of the practice room. Actually, their master plan required my assistance, because, as a trainee, I could float in and out of rooms without anyone paying any attention to me, something none of them could do. Of course, it was a slightly degrading comment, because they actually said that I "wasn't important enough yet to be noticed by anyone." Thanks, guys. I appreciate it. I knew they were just teasing, but they were right, in a way. My fellow trainees and I were able to walk around the company and barely even get glanced at. We were invisible.

The next thing I knew I was walking through the company building with a length of rope in my backpack while Henry and Amber were busy distracting the TRAX members. Tiffany was in the practice room across from where I was headed, keeping an eye out for anyone who might interrupt me. 

I passed by plenty of people on my way there, to include a few groups' managers. I always held my breath when they walked by, but sure enough, they never even gave me a second look. 

Soon enough I was in TRAX's practice room, identifying Jungmo's guitar based on Tiffany's description, and pulling the rope out of my backpack. I giggled to myself, tying the rope around it, and taping on the note that Henry had written. I was almost ready to start stringing it up when my phone buzzed. It was Tiffany. 

"TRAX's manager is heading towards the practice room! Mayday, mayday! Eonni, stop him before he can discover us!"

Uh-oh. I needed to hurry. What if I got caught?! What if my friends didn't rescue me?

I started breathing again when I heard Jessica's voice out in the hallway. "Excuse me, but do you know where Jay-shi is?"

"Last I checked he was talking to Henry."

"Oh, really? I wanted to talk him about this song that one of the trainees wrote. I thought it would be good for TRAX to try it out."

"Hmmm... can I see?"

"Oh, sure!"

Jessica was buying me time. But I was safe for the moment. 

Hurriedly I swung the loose end of the rope over the ceiling beam and grabbed it when it came back down. I was just in the process of pulling it up to the ceiling when I heard someone behind me yell.

"Hey, what are you doing?!"

I whipped around, letting go of the rope from surprise and just barely getting ahold of it again before the several-hundred-dollars-worth guitar could smash back to the ground. 

"Hee-hee-hee-Heechul-shi!" I was stuttering. What could I do? I needed to think of something, and fast. How had Jessica let him slip by?!

If Kyuhyun was scary, Heechul was even more so. At least with Kyuhyun, if you apologize enough, he'll forget about it. Heechul had a tendency to hold grudges for a very, very, VERY long time. He'd been gone for a while, re-adjusting to life with Super Junior, so I hadn't been worried. But apparently he was back with Psycho club now.

What could I do?!

"Who even are you?" He looked at me weirdly, like I seemed familiar, but he couldn't quite recognize me. This was good! Maybe I could get away before he figure out who I was! He had a bad leg, from when the bone was shattered in a car accident several years before, and I was more physically fit than I had been in years, so I could probably outrun him.

Reacting quickly, I yanked the rope so that the guitar was up amongst the rafters, and threw the loose end up so that it coiled around the beam, securing the guitar there. And then I ran, opening my phone and dialing.

"Henry! Abort the mission! We've been caught!"

I passed by Jessica, who was still distracting the manager. Heechul must have gone in without her noticing.

"Who? I thought Jessica and Tiffany were supposed to be keeping you secure?"

"Heenim got past them!"

"HEECHUL?! Roger that, get out of there, Queen Be!"

I flew down the hallways, hearing him yell after me, "Ya! What were you doing?!" but not daring myself to look back. I ducked around a corner and into a custodial closet, slamming the door behind me. 

"Tiffany's going to try to distract him so you can escape. Calm down, Mel," I heard Henry say, "We've dropped the mission. TRAX is going back to their practice room. We're coming to cover you. Meet us in the vocal training room."

"Roger that. Queen Be out." The official spy-sounding stuff had been a bit of a joke. We didn't think of it that seriously, but it was kind of fun to talk like that. I was terrified to encounter Heechul, but it was hard to keep myself from laughing over how ridiculous this was.

After I had sufficiently recovered my breath and halted the giggles, I turned back around to open the door...

And it was locked. 

Frantic, I jiggled, the handle, shaking the door. I twisted the knob back and forth, hoping it would move, but it didn't.

I know about ten different curse words in four different languages, and I can assure you, every single one was running through my head right about then. I had officially just locked myself in the closet.

It would be super embarassing to have to call one of my friends and ask them to come rescue me, but it didn't look like I had a choice. 

I pulled out my phone, ready to dial Krystal, the only one who had decided not to be in on the plan, but never got the chance.

Because right about then the door swung open. "Found you!"

I screamed and buried myself in the mops and brooms. "Heechul-oppa, it was just a harmless prank! I'm sorry, I'm sorry!"

"Agh, this little brat. What were you doing with Jungmo's guitar?!"

He was poking me in the sides, causing me to spasm away from him.

"Hyung, don't !"

Henry to the rescue at last!

Heechul backed up out of the closet, and I jumped up and dashed out of the closet to hide behind Henry. This seemed familiar somehow, but I couldn't put my finger on it for some reason.

"Ya, Henry-ah, is she with you?"

"She's my Dongsaeng."

Heechul tilted to the side to try to look at me, and I spun so Henry was still between me and him.

"So that's your pet? You keep rats?"

"Huh? Rat?" Henry looked at me, and I shrugged, indicating that I had no idea, either. I mean, I was born in the year of the rat, but I'm pretty sure that's not something Heechul could tell for certain just from looking at me.

"She looks like a rat."

"Ya!" I yelled, then ducked back behind Henry. Heechul didn't have Kyuhyun's death-glare, but he was terrifying simply because you knew that behind that smiling, pretty face was a plan for your demise. 

"What makes you say that, Hyung?"

"She's tiny! And with that mop of hair..."

"Not everyone can be born with a pretty face and hair like you, Heechul-shi!" I called out, starting to feel slightly more confident, but still afraid for my life.

"You think I have a pretty face?"

I peeked out from over Henry's shoulder and nodded. "Nae. All the ELF think so."

"Oooohhh, so you're an ELF."

"Nae."

"Well, since you're an ELF, I guess I can forgive you, just this once," he said in a way that made him seem like he was forgiving me more because I had said that he had a pretty face than because I was an ELF.

I made a heart over my head with my arms and yelled, "Saranghaeyo, Kim Heechul! Milky white skin, Kim Heechul!"

Henry turned around, surprised. "Wow, Mel, you really know these things. Even how to pacify Heechul-hyung..."

I put a finger to my lips. "The more we talk the more likely he finds something to get insulted by."

I stepped out from behind Henry and bowed. "Annyeonghasseo, Heechul-sunbae. I'm Choi Minsung. Actually, I have a lot of names. But you can call me Minsung. That's my Korean name."

"What's your real name?"

"Melissa-"

"Mel, are you alright?!"

It was Tiffany, running to catch up to us. She paused, seeing me bowing to Heechul. She turned to him, putting her hands on her hips. "Oppa, are you teasing our little Mel? Silly, she's just a trainee. What harm could she do?"

"But what was she doeing in TRAX's practice room?"

"Oh, nothing special. Just helping us with something."

Heechul looked at her suspiciously, then at Henry, then at Amber and Jessica, who were peeking around the corner and giggling.

"You guys plotted to stick Jungmo's guitar in the rafters, didn't you?"

Henry and Jessica exchanged glances, realizing they'd been caught red-handed. Well, technically I had, but now there was no escaping it.

"Can you keep a secret, Oppa?" Tiffany asked, hopeful.

"Come on, it'll be fun! just until he finds it. I really want to see his expression," Henry urged. If we could get Heenim to go along with it, technically we still succeeded. 

"Ya, you little brat, Jungmo's my friend!"

I'd heard plenty of stories about Heenim being defensive of his friends. He was just as protective of his friends as I was of the SuJu members. Of course, he also liked to play pranks on his friends. He loved to play pranks on everybody.

Finally he grinned. "Okay, I want to see his face, too. Come on, let's go watch."

I will admit, it was pretty hilarious to watch the members of TRAX try to figure out how to get it down.