At last it was the day before SMTown, and the many artists of SM gathered in the stadium for the final rehearsal before everything went down the next day.

As we ran through the acts with an imaginary audience, the construction of the stage continued all around us. As music played and pumped, the whir of construction equipment was ever-present, until we either just got so used to it that we no longer hear it, or that it finally stopped. I wasn't sure which. 

Finally, a break was called, and I collapsed in a circle of the other trainees. "Minsung! Water!" I heard someone yell, and I threw the bottle in their general direction, too tired to look. I assumed they caught it, since I heard no exclamation of pain, but couldn't really know. I got up, moving to the edge of the stage with my second bottle of water, dangling my legs over the edge. 

In less than twenty-four hours, this place would be full of people. The fans had sorted themselves into sections, I had heard. The Shawols all in one area, the Exotics in another, and so on and so forth. The ELF would make their sapphire blue sea in that big section right there. Would they recognize me? I wondered. Would they see me onstage not as a backup dancer, but as the ELF Queen? I wouldn't know until the next day.

As I sat pondering these things, out of the corner of my eye I saw someone sit down next to me.  "Can I have a drink of water?" Kyuhyun asked, and I gingerly held the bottle out to him.

"I thought you don't like sharing things?" I wondered aloud as he poured the water from the bottle into his mouth, not letting his lips touch the plastic. 

"I don't. But since you do pretty much everything I ask you to, I consider anything that's yours, mine."

I glared at him. "There are a lot of things I own that you can't have, Kyuhyun-oppa."

"I'm scared to ask, so I'll just say that I probably don't want those things anyway."

I was tongue-tied, not knowing what to say. Kyuhyun was good at that, leaving remarks just quick enough that you couldn't think of a response, and it was maddening. "I do not do everything you tell me to!" I finally answered.

"Oh really?" He capped the water bottle, crossing his arms. "If I were to tell you to dive into the audience tomorrow, screaming 'SUPER JUNIOR IS THE BEST!', would you do it?"

I thought about it, decided that I was quite likely to, but didn't want to say.

He must have seen something in my face that indicated my complacency, because he snorted, leaning back on his hands. "Thought so."

"Is that such a bad thing?" I hissed, my face reddening. 

"Makes things easy for me. Less I have to do myself."

"Right."

"Hey, Jageun?"

"Yes, Kyuhyun-oppa?" I answered, deciding that I needed to think of an insulting nickname for him, to even the score.

"In SMTown, would you really want to be here, or up there?" he asked, waving his hand in the direction of the ELF's future encampment.

I thought about it. I thought about the familiar feeling of the ELF all around me, the screaming, the sapphire blue lightsticks pumping through the air to the beat of a single heart, because our hearts beat together, where we could enjoy our Oppas' company together. Yet... "I'd want to be here. It might be selfish of me, but the ELF in the stands only get to see you from a distance. I'm here, on the stage, and if I wanted, I could reach out and touch you. The ELF always strain their hands for a single graze against your skin, but to me it's easy."

To make my point, I reached out and poked him in the side, making him jerk. "Don't touch me," he demanded.

"Right. Sorry. Anyway, as good as it would feel to be with my ELF brothers and sisters, I selfishly would prefer to be here, where they can't be."

"Thought so." He looked around him, at the stage, then at the empty seats, then back at me. "Jageun."

"Yes, Oppa?"

"Go get me an energy drink."

I sighed, laughing a little bit to myself. "What flavor?"

"Raspberry."

"Okay, I'll be right back."

Kyuhyun always set my mind spinning, so going away was probably the best thing, before I started going a bit crazy. So, like always, I did exactly as he told me. On my way back to him with the drink, though, I got stopped by one of the coordinators.

"Are you the girl that's dancing with Henry?" 

I told her that yes, I was, and she started to steer me to the under-stage area. I paused, tossing the bottle to one of the other trainees, asking him to give it to Kyuhyun for me, and then let the coordinator take me away.

"Okay, try this on," she commanded, tossing a bunch of clothes at me. I sensed she'd been doing this a long time, and knew what she was doing, from the way she seemed to barely take any time to make the decision of what to have me wear. So I did as I was told. 

Unfortunately, I was not used to wearing things that weren't shaped like your standard clothes. The shirt was remarkably tight, and laced up in the back, not to mention short. The days were warm, but it still felt a bit chilly where the shirt failed to meet the waistline of the tight pants that I was still trying to button, because they were not quite loose enough for my hips.

She commanded my to take the pants off, although the top was perfect (her opinion, not mine), and gave me a different bottom, this time a set of fishnet leggings and black shorts. When I had these pulled on, she looked at me, pursing her lips.  "No... too dramatic. It won't match with "I Would", she murmured to herself, then commanded I take it off, handing me instead a pair of simple dark jeans with embroidered flowers down one leg. Thankfully, I slipped them on (although they were skinny jeans), happy to have some good old denim over my legs.

"Hmmm... not enough." She grabbed a belt off of the rack, and handed it to me. I slid it through the belt loops, hooked it, then looked up at her.  "Better. Now..." She leaned over and picked up a pair of black shoes with remarkably high heels. "These are for you. You're so short... even with Henry, we need to make you taller. You can dance in heels, right?"

I nodded with confidence, much to her surprise. I actually could dance in heels, something many of my fellow female trainees could barely believe. It was one of the only things relating to dance that I actually could do with any ease. I slipped the shoes on, looking at myself in the mirror. The combination of the skinny jeans and the heels made my look taller, and made my legs look less stocky, so that my wide hips actually looked quite becoming. Finally, she tried a few accessories, like a thick black bracelet and several necklaces before she found something she liked, and then told me that I would wear this the next day, and report immediately to hair and makeup so that I could be perfected before the show. Honestly, I'd never felt so important.

After I got out of the outfit and returned it to the coordinator, she let me go back out, but told me that I should keep the heels on for the dress rehearsal, so I could practice the dance in them (although I actually already had danced with Henry in heels since, over the past several months, I had developed a liking for wearing black high-heeled boots, now that I was away from home, and parents who disliked me doing such things). I headed back up to the stage, just in time to almost get trampled as the members of EXO ran across. I waited until all twelve members had passed before I crawled out of the stage hole and ran to find Henry. I eventually found him on the far corner of the stage, going over the choreography for "1-4-3".

"Mel, you're here! I was wondering where you went! Break ended ten minutes ago!"

"I know. I wasn't actually on break. I was getting my outfit for tomorrow figured out."

"Oh, okay. Nice heels, by the way."

"You noticed? Guys don't usually notice things like that..." I observed, honestly surprised.

"You're four inches taller. You're the same height as me right now. So yeah, I noticed."

"Oh, right."

"We're on right after EXO finishes, so you should probably get ready..."

"I'm ready as can be."

I heard the last note of EXO's song, then shrugged and started back towards the area under the stage. "Shall we?"

"We shall."

After a very, very deep sleep, Min Hee and I choked down as healthy of a breakfast as we could manage and hurried to the company. The day had finally come, and we were ready as we could ever possibly be. 

For hours and hours, the whole company was in utter chaos. All of the trainers were absent, leaving my fellow trainees and I to the mercy of the makeup artists and hairdressers. Unfortunately, the makeup artists had to focus on the artists and had little time for us, so they would do a quick, messy job, and we would then turn to each other to fix it up. It was a good thing we trainee girls knew what we were doing, or the guys would have been at a loss onstage. Hair, however, was supposed to be coordinated by a hairdresser. As soon as my makeup was done, I found myself spirited away to another dressing room, where a woman armed with a flat iron waited for me. 

"Your hair is so thin!" She remarked as she ran her fingers through my long blonde locks. 

"It is," I answered, eyeing the flat iron warily. "It doesn't handle heat very well, because it's so fine."

"Really? Hmm, that's a shame. Alright, I don't have too much time to do this-- what was your name again? --so I'm going to have to improvise. I'm not used to having to worry about girls with hair so thin that it's damaged by heat. But your hair is so soft!" 

"My name is Minsung. And thank you."

"Alright then, Minsung. Just hold still for a little bit, and we'll have this lovely, fragile hair of yours up in no time."

Soon enough I was getting chased out of there to make way for other people, with my long, thin blonde hair pulled into an elaborate braided... swirled... thing that made it look luike I had more hair than I actually did. It was the kind of hairstyle that Eliz, in one of her days when she wanted to do random things with my hair, would come up with. But it worked, and was done by a professional, so it was good enough for me.

I found the rest of the trainees waiting to get into our van, so we could go to the stadium together. We would be the first ones to arrive, so we could help get stuff ready for the artists when they arrived. Knowing that I was SuJu's housekeeper, they had happily assigned me to taking care of them, and setting up their backstage area. Most of us hadn't gotten enough sleep the previous night, but were all extremely hyper. When I arrived at the van, they were all waiting for the driver, jumping up and down. When he finally arrived, we climbed in the van, shouting and shaking. I sat between Min Hee and one of the guys in the seats just behind the driver, and as the van started up, we started our trainee chant.

"Where are we going?!"

"SMTOWN!"

"What are we going to do?"

"DANCE ALL AROUND!"

"Min Hee, Min Hee, name your Oppas, name your Oppas!"

"SHINee, SHINee, Shining shining SHINee!"

"Queen Be, Queen Be, name your Oppas, name your Oppas!"

"SuJu, SuJu, Super Super SuJu!"

This went on for a while, as each one of the trainees in the van called out their fandom, and we all clapped afterwards. We built in volume, to the point where I could almost hear the van shaking. And then when it was finally over, we all cheered, and then started to do Gwiyomi. Perhaps we were even more hyper than usual because there was a videocamera on the dashboard, recording us. 

"One plus one is--" Min Hee called.

"GWIYOMI!" We all shouted together.

"Two plus two is--" I yelled,

"GWIYOMI!"

I was fairly sure we had driven the driver sufficiently insane by the time we got to the stadium, but we were still incredibly hyper. As the backup dancers, we arrived via the back door, so we wouldn't be seen, and danced out of the vehicle and into the huge building, still yelling and singing.

Eventually we had to split up, disappearing into the different parts of the stage. I ran about, organizing the Super Junior area, sorting their outfits carefully onto different racks, my intense energy making me even organize them alphabetically. I stocked the room's cooler with both water and energy drinks, and had plenty of energy bars ready, in case they got hungry. I had lots of towels to wipe their sweat off with, and I also had some black-market deodorant for Eunhyuk. Everything was ready, and organized just right, but I still had fifteen minutes before they even arrived, so I quickly changed into my first outfit (the standard one for TVXQ, who would be going after SHINee), and then ran to go help Min Hee with SHINee's spot. She didn't need any help, so instead I helped one of the other girls with Girls' Generation's room.

As the artists started to arrive, the backstage and under-stage areas started to fill up, and my stomach started to twist into knots as I heard an increasing roar from the stadium that had been so empty the previous day. As everything backstage built up to the first act of the show, fans trickled in from every direction, filling the stadium with a rainbow of different-colored lightsticks, lighting the darkness with an ocean of colors.

But backstage, we were all running to our places. I had been ordered to go deliver a certain piece of repaired clothing to one of BoA's backup dancers, and so ran along in the narrow spaces under the stage, of which I was the only person who could do so without having to duck my head. I had less than a minute to get there and go back to my spot, so didn't waste any time. I ran fast enough that I didn't see Zhou Mi, and almost slammed into him, instead screeching to a halt, almost falling, and probably would have if he hadn't caught my arm. "Woah! Slow down, Niuwang!"

"I can't! I have to deliver this,' I replied breathlessly.

"Well, good luck, Niuwang."

"Thank you, Mimi! I'm happy to see you're well!"

And then I took off running again.

As the first song of the show pumped through the ground beneath our feet, the trainees danced together under the stage, barely being able to hold ourselves back from actually singing along, instead exaggeratedly mouthing, and making up a dance.

When it finished, we composed ourselves, ready for the first act we would be in. We could do this. No mistakes. Maybe no one knew who we were, but as long as they could see that we did well, it didn't matter.

So when it was our time to go up there, we appeared, did our dance, then went back down, as if we'd never been there. We changed into our next outfit, running to our next spot. This happened again and again, and I'd gone through two water bottles already by the time EXO started their act, and I was on deck for my performance with Henry. When I finally got there, he was almost fully dressed, just putting on his jacket. I helped him situate it, then patted him on the shoulder.

"You ready?" I asked, wondering if he had heard me over the roar of the crowd.

"Of course. You?"

"Fantastic. This stage isn't ready for me, I joked, raising an eyebrow. "Not in this outfit, anyway," I added, indicating the jeans and lace-up shirt.

"It's definitely not your usual style. But hey, new is good, right?"

I nodded, then paused and listened for a second. EXO would be finished soon. The backstage staff waved henry over to his entrance point, and I squeezed his hand and smiled. "Go get 'em, Mochi. I'll be there in a little bit."

I watched him disappear onto the stage, listening to the crowd go wild when the lights landed on him. They were cheering for him. I was proud of that. Mochi was loved. As he started singing "1-4-3", I took a drink of water, then set myself for entering. I danced along, seeing the behind the stage camera, then, as the lift went up, waved goodbye to it, putting my game face on as the music changed to "Off My Mind." 

I remembered the day when we had danced to it in the skating rink, when I had had much less control. This time, as he said "So take my hand and baby don't let go," I let me legs slip out from under me, holding onto his hand for dear life, then letting him lift me back to my feet, dancing, spinning, then letting the music slow down, coming to a stop, as he let go, and went to the center of the stage, where his violin was waiting for him, up against the side of the piano. He picked it up and played the instrumental version of "Trap", while the pianist went over the keys, and I watched, as I had practiced, as if Henry were trying to impress me with his violin skills, but, near the end, turned away, like I had barely heard anything. And then he put the violin down and whispered "I'm trapped." With that one phrase, the audience went insane, screaming wildly. 

He pretended to sing to me, and I had to always turn away, not letting him quite reach me. I pushed him away, my feet siding down the ground in a perfect split. I slid back up as he said "I'm trapped" for the last time, kicking out.

I was supposed to stand up and spin, falling into his arms as the piano faded into the first few notes of "I Would." But that wasn't what happened. Instead, my foot twisted, and I felt the ground rising to meet me again. Oh god, no! I screamed in my head. No, no, no, no, this can't be happening! It's all wrong! I've destroyed it! 

I felt his hand catch my wrist, stopping my descent right then and there, and I stared up at him as he looked down at me, as if sharing the thought. I'm happy you're here to catch me, Henry, I said with my eyes, breathing deeply. He nodded, almost imperceptively. He pulled me back to my feet, and he started my favorite of his songs, still looking into my eyes. I broke away, walking away, and I felt him watch after me. It was almost better this way than we had practiced. My look of panic had increased the dramatic tension, the act of him catching me had increased the illusion of romance. The audience would never know that it wasn't supposed to happen. Because Henry was just that good.

He seemed to be in pain as he sang it, moving to the piano to play it himself. "Nothing has ever broken me like you did... no one I ever wanted more... than you. Nobody else could make a man so weak, make him fall in love so deep..."

It was all an act, and we were doing perfectly. I loved this song. It always made me want to give him a hug. But instead I had to pretend that I didn't hear him. That it was easy for me to stay away.

"If I could just get over you, I would... don't wanna love you anymore, and missing you's like fighting a war. It's a battle I'm losing, and I'd give up girl if I could... If I could walk away as easily as you... I would."

I turned back around, knowing that he had stood up from the piano. The music stopped, and he faced the audience, made a face, and shrugged, as if to say, "You know what, I'm done with all of this dramatic stuff." The lights all went out as he yelled the first line of the last segment of his medley. "You've gotta be kidding me."

The lights were gradually coming up as he sang, slowly, building tension and excitement. "Hey~yeah, don't look so worried... And hey~yeah, this is just my way... Don't wanna wait, NO!" Suddenly the lights all blasted on at once, in addition to fireworks going off, exploding into the full energy of the song. The stage exploded in color as a bunch of the other backup dancers joined me onstage, and we worked the audience while he danced around and sang, pumping our fists in the air and jumping up and down. My heart flew to the ceiling, since I knew the acting was over. Now I could just enjoy myself.

"HEY~YEAH, think I need a holiday! HEY~YEAH, today I just want to follow the sun. Hey~yeah, I don't know where that will be, don't wanna wait, wait. HEY~YEAH, think I need a holiday. HEY~YEAH, before I go crazy. HEY~YEAH, time is too precious to think about it, yeah I need a holiday."

When the last note blasted into the stadium, the audience went crazy, and I heard plenty of screaming "HENRY I LOVE YOU!!!!! SARANGHAEYO!!!!"

Mission accomplished.

"Toast to a successful show!" Kyuhyun yelled to the gathered crowd in the dorm, despite how much I had tried to convince him not to drink any alcohol. "Jageun! You too!" I rolled my eyes and raised my glass of orange juice in the air, taking a drink and immediately sinking back into the couch and flipping open my phone. Still no call.

"Hey, what's wrong, Minsung? You just did amazing out there! What's to worry about?" Eunhyuk laughed. 

"I'm waiting for my sister's call. She's coming back to the United States today, from Australia, and she was supposed to call me as soon as she came home, since I sent her a text saying that the performance was done. But she still hasn't called..."

"She's probably just so tired that she fell asleep right away. That happens after jet lag, you know. You should have seen Kyuhyun in the airport this one time. He started to fall asleep standing up!" Shindong laughed, then, with a glare from Kyuhyun, fell silent.

I laughed, downing the last gulp of my orange juice and getting up to get more. 

When I felt my phone vibrate, I stopped in the middle of the room and picked up. "Hey, Jackie! What took you so long! I was starting to get worried, you--"

"Umm, is this the cell phone of... Min...sung... Choi?" Huh? Who was this person? Not my sister, I could tell that, at least. 

"Yes, it is." My phone's registry, since I switched phone carriers upon entering Korea, was now under my Korean name. 

"Are you the sister of Jacklyn Ahi...Ahe..."

"Jacqueline Ahekai?!" I exclaimed, feeling eyes turn to me. My sister's name was spelled the French way, and her middle name was Hawaiian, so I understood why the lady on the phone would have difficulty.

"Yes. Is this your sister?"

"It is. Why? Who are you? Is this some kind of prank call?"

Henry, sensing my panic, stood up, standing in front of me. "Mel, what's wrong?"

"No, Miss, this is a very serious phone call. I'm a nurse working for Saint Elizabeth's Hospital. Your sister is under intensive care for a reaction to a spiderbite. It seems that when she was packing her luggage from Australia, she had an unfortunate stowaway that, as she was unpacking, bit her. She had a very bad reaction, and we're not used to this kind of spider's venom. Your sister might not make it very long."

I felt the phone drop out of my hands and clatter to the floor. My face went white, and I felt sick. My sister... Oh god, my sister... Jackie, who never got sick. Ever. 

"Mel, what's wrong?" Henry asked again, looking much more concerned than before.

"Jackie..." I choked out, feeling the tears well up. "My sister... they think she's going to die."

I collapsed, falling forward. I couldn't imagine a world without my older sister. I remember specifically telling her that if she died, I would kill her. How could I kill her if she died?! But Henry was right there, and I let him put his arms around me, just holding me there. He didn't say anything, just let me hold onto him, bury my head in his shoulder, and let the tears fall.