“Oh my god, oh my god!” Gina heard Tamara yell from the living room (what did she have a bedroom for, if she was always out there?).

“W-what’s going on?” Gina rushed out her own room to see.

“You!? Kai!? You and Kai?!” Whatever Tamara was watching had her entire vocabulary out her mind because all she could do is point and look back and forth from the TV to Gina.

It was one of those trash news shows. Not TMZ level, but there Gina was. Being shown stuck in a swarming mass of people. Then the camera view zoomed in and caught the moment where Kai had helped her up. Except in slow-mo.

It was a drama scene without a ballad. Grossly taken out of context, Gina grimaced.

Why was he looking at her like that? And why did it seem, for the briefest moment, she was looking at him back some type of way?

“Completely manipulative.” she said aloud, crossing her arms and walking back to her room.

“Wait, you have to tell me what happened!” Tamara screamed, yelling after her.

“Nothing happened,” Gina said, closing her bedroom door, but before the lock could click, Tamara swung it open.

“What do you mean “nothing happened”. That thing I just saw clearly happened.”

“Don’t start getting smart.” Gina said, returning to her book, wishing Tamara would spend her own free time reading maybe instead of obsessing over these kids. “I was picking Dev and Matt up, accidentally ran into your little boyfriends, and one of them helped me up. That’s the start, middle, end. Nothing more.”

“Did Kai say anything to you? Is he just as beautiful in person as he is on TV? How did his skin feel? Did he smell good?” Tamara was in an unblinking trance.

“Okay, firstly, step back before I get some holy water out because you’re clearly being possessed and secondly, I either don’t know or don’t remember.”

Tamara threw her hands in the air in exasperation.

“I can’t believe this! You, of all people, get to be that close to Kai by accident. Meanwhile, I, can’t even get mom or dad agree to let me go to a fanmeet.”

Gina didn’t know how to reply so she just shrugged.

“It’s so unfair!” Tamara stormed off, slamming the door behind her.

It was a move that would’ve gotten her in trouble with her parents but Gina let it slide. As dramatic as her sister was, she was a tough kid and her strength in life had never really been acknowledged. Because how well she could fit in with the customs, Gina wondered if her parents really knew how hard things could be sometimes. But then again, they had their struggles too. They’d left behind just as much, even more, than Gina and were only now grasping the basics of the language. Thank god for translators and other international companies that were based here. It was a miracle the family had lasted as long as they did, when she thought about it. But there was no use in thinking about it. It was time to focus on the future.

Gina had just graduated high school and was taking a year off before university which wasn’t custom in South Korea but she didn’t care. Her schooling had been no joke. She thought she’d held up pretty well in America, but school here was on another level. She constantly felt two grades behind everyone else and it was traumatizing to see her classmates go through so much stress and pain. She even knew people that had committed suicide so when graduation came, she said the only thing she wanted was time. Just time to breathe and think and possibly live.

Gina heard a bing from her phone and looked down to see a notification from Dev.

“What is this, girl?!”

She’d sent a blurry picture of Gina and Kai from the airport.

“Oh my god, is this going to be my life now,” she said, dropping backwards to lay her head on her pillow.

She quickly typed back.

“Nothin”

“How is it nothin when it’s clearly sumthin!!”

‘Tamara spends too much time around, Dev.’ she thought.

“U got me. Been secretly in love w EXO this whole time. Used u and Matt as an excuse to see them at the airport. Kai and I are dating and in love.”

“!!! Why didn’t you tell me?!”

Gina groaned.

“Will someone release me from this boy group hell?!”