A blood curling shriek came from the bathroom. Minjung clung to me like I had the ability to save her and Hana woke up from her nap and fell off the couch. “What was that?” whispered Eunmi.

Yun opened the door slowly and braced herself against the doorframe with one arm. Her head was bent down and her long hair hid her features. Minjung’s fingers painfully wrapped around my arm in fear. “Who… used… my… face… cream…?” Yun said in a careful manner.

I burst into laughter. “That’s what this is about?”

Yun finally raised her head and fury shone from her eyes. “Was it you? Did you do this because I told Baekhyun you had a sixth toe?”

Hana giggled and hauled herself up from the floor. “Sixth toe?!”

“Unnie, you don’t…” Eunmi eyes shot to where my feet where tucked under my bum.

I rolled my eyes, “You’re so mature, Lyra. No, Mimi, I don’t have a sixth toe. Lyra likes Baekhyun but Baekhyun pays more attention to me so she retaliated. No Lyra, I did not use your stupid face cream. You’re the one dumb enough to keep it in the bathroom instead of with the rest of your toiletries.”

Yun’s eyes narrowed down at my multiple insults, not sure where to start first. “Then who?” Her eyes swung to Hana next.

“Not me,” she said, deciding to chomp on some chips that had been left on the table beside her. “I don’t know the difference between body wash and hand wash.”

Minjung hid her face against my arm and I knew the culprit was right beside me. “I know it’s not Maia. She doesn’t have the balls for it.” Yun continued her process of elimination.

“I could have,” Eunmi muttered to herself. “We have the same skin type you know.”

Yun acted like she didn’t even hear Eunmi. Her eyes were already solid on Minjung cowering against me. “Maknae? Was it you? I swear to god, this is the last time you use something of mine!” She vowed with a long finger nail pointed in Minjung’s direction.

“Andromeda, save me,” Minjung begged, making puppy eyes at me.

“Maybe if you helped her when she asked your advice, she wouldn’t have to steal from you,” I pointed out.

“I’m not here to give out beauty advice. She should ask the make-up unnies. Or go to a department store. I’m here to sing and look good. You deal with your own issues.” With that Yun, promptly spun around and closed the door behind her.

Eunmi let out a sigh of relief, “I wish she wouldn’t scream.”

“Ditto,” I gave Minjung a stern eye. “Next time, just ask me. I’ll take one of her empty bottles and ask Sanghee to get you the same product. We do not need to give another reason for Lyra to hate us.”

“She doesn’t hate us,” Hana said, sending crumbs to tumble on the floor as she got up. “I heard her talking to her mom on the phone. She says that we’re all really nice.”

“You’re not helping, Carina,” I said through gritted teeth. “And can you please stop eating? Sanghee will in fact kill me if she finds out you’re not sticking to our diet.”

“But I miss snacks,” Hana pouted.

“I miss ice cream,” Eunmi sighed unhappily.

“I miss everything!” Minjung shouted, to top everyone.

“Do you want to look good in the outfits the coordi-unnies dress us in?” The three nodded eagerly. “Then don’t eat any food that’s not on the list of food we can eat!”

They all mournfully looked at the fridge that held the short list. “Come on guys. Don’t make me out to be the bad guy. You know it’s better for your health anyways.” I pinched Minjung’s still baby cheeks, “You need to lose this especially.”

“But Hana said my cheeks were cute,” Minjung protested as I got up from the couch. I was going to change into some practice clothes.

“They are cute,” Eunmi added her two cents.

“For a kid,” I said, as harsh as it was. “You need to look like a kpop idol. Not a child. Now get dressed for practise. Sanghee says it’s going to be a doozy.”

Sanghee saying it was going to be a doozy was a huge understatement. The new choreographer that the company had brought in must have been in the army previously, because the amount of work he put us through equaled to a drill sergeants timeline. We were sweating buckets and we hadn’t even touched the new choreography yet.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that our choreography was actually pretty powerful. They were using mine and Eunmi’s ability to dance to the max. It had a random hand gesture to bring the eye to Minjung’s cute face, and some smooth moves to focus on Yun’s rolling hips, but it wasn’t honestly cutesy or y. It was kind of perfect. The cherry on top was the slight acrobatic move. At the end of our dance, Hana and I were going to join arms and Eunmi was going to climb us to make a triangle that she was supposed to tuck her little body and back flip off. It sounded amazing, in theory…

“Come on Maia,” I said through gritted teeth. Sweat was rolling off Hana and making both our arms slippery and thus dangerous.

Eunmi took one step on Hana’s leg and then stepped on mine. My legs were already trembling from exhaustion. She moved to step on my shoulder and then Hana’s and then the worst happened: she slipped from our sweat and fell.

“Eunmi!” Minjung screamed her real name and that’s when we all started to freak out.

“Don’t touch her!” Sanghee warned and started dialing her phone for a paramedic.

Eunmi was only blinking and she looked dazed. “Don’t move, okay Mimi? Help will be here soon!”

Hana brushed the hair out of Eunmi’s eyes and Yun stood over her, chewing on her lip.

“Please be okay,” Minjung started to cry and Hana hugged her.

“Yah, quiet one, can you see my fingers?” Yun asked. Eunmi shook her head in a yes. “How many?” She was barely able to hold up three fingers but it was a relief to know she could at least answer that question.

“The paramedics are on their way. Eunmi, do you hurt anywhere?” She shook her head again but in a negative this time.

We all watched in shocked silence as our member had a neck brace carefully wrapped around her neck and carted out of our practise room on a stretcher. When everyone was gone, Sanghee included, accompanying her to the hospital, we all looked lost. Minjung had full out started sobbing and Hana started to cry a bit too. I had to hold onto my tears. If I broke, then it would be really bad. I saw Yun swipe away something at her eye and then said she had to fix her make-up and left in a hurry.

“Listen guys,” I said crouching in front of the two youngest. “We have to stay strong for Eunmi, right?”

Hana sniffed and I handed Minjung a klennex. “Unnie…will she be okay?”

“You know Eunmi! Remember that time you guys were playing and she ran into that door?” Hana snorted at the memory. Minjung smile wavered between sad and a little happy. “She’s got a think skull. She’ll be back here and dancing in no time. I promise.” Oh god, was I already making promises I wasn’t sure I could keep?

“Um, excuse me?”

My head shot up at an extremely cute but heavily accented voice cut through the air.

“Is everyone okay in here?” A different voice asked. There were two boys at the door to our practise room. Scratch that, three. The third poked his head over the shorter boys, looking inquisitive.

“Ah, someone just had an accident,” I said, standing up and trying to shield Minjung and Hana’s crying faces. “Let me guess, you guys know Chanyeol and Baekhyun?”

The tall one and the first one to stick his head in with the accent chattered in a language I didn’t know. Wait! Was that Chinese? They nudged the one who seemed to be their leader. He coughed into his hand, “Have my members been bothering you?”

My spine straightened at his formal talk. He knew I was his noona. Damn those boys! I also sensed the leader in myself respond to him. “They aren’t bothering me. Please don’t scold them.” I was going to regret sticking up for them, I could already feel it in my bones. “One of our members just left because she fell from a stunt we were practising.”

“Unnie…” Minjung pulled at my pant leg.

“Maybe we should go outside,” I suggested, ushering them out and away from my already fragile remaining members. Where the hell was Yun?

“I…I’m sorry to hear…about…” The boy with the accent struggled with his Korean, but I thought it was really cute.

I sent him a tight smile, not really able to give him anything more. “Thank you. I hope you guys don’t experience any injuries.”

“My name is Joonmyun,” The boy who was exuding leader qualities introduced himself. “This is Yixing and Zitao.” Yixing was the boy struggling with Korean and Zitao was the tall boy.

“Jinae,” I said back. “But we’ve been trying to get used to our stage names, so just call me Andromeda.”

“Then you should call me Suho,” said Joonmyun.

“Suho, you must be the leader of this group, right?” The amount of boys was starting to add up in my head. 9, including Suho. Wow, I was having an issue with just four other girls. I couldn’t even begin to wrap around my head what it would be like to try to keep eight unruly boys in line.

Suho nodded, “But not of these two. You met Kris right? He’s the leader of our mandarin group.”

“The tall and surly one?” I clarified. Yixing and Zitao burst into laughter at my description of their leader.

“Kris can be nice, once you get to know him,” Suho made sure that wasn’t walking away with a sullied name.

“The music… you were dancing?” Zitao asked, eyes glittery from laughing about Kris.

“We were!” I said, suddenly getting excited. “We just started to learn our choreography for our single!”

Yixing nodded thoughtfully. “We’ve been practising for two of ours for a while,” Suho said for him.

“I would invite you to talk with us, but as you can see, we’re a bit torn up right now,” I said, kind of lamenting that I had to shoo them away. Suho, Yixing and Zitao seemed a little bit more laid back then the others. At least one of them hadn’t flirted with me yet.

“It’s okay, really!” Suho insisted, a kind smile showing on his face. “We will talk again soon. We’re really busy with our debut but I want to get to know the next group that’s debuting after us.”

“What’s your group’s name?” I asked, kind of interested.

“We should practise,” Yixing suggested.

The three of them said “We are one. We are Exo!” in unison in English and I clapped for them. “Wow, that’s going to be so cool when you guys debut. Nine like Girls’ Generation-sunbaenims, right?”

“Twelve,” Zitao said.

“There are twelve of you? Like Super Junior- sunbaenims?” I felt my eyes got wide at the thought.

“Six for Exo K and six for Exo M. We are splitting up and promoting in different countries soon,” Suho looked sad at being split down the middle. I could understand that. If they decided to set up a subunit of the singers and bundle them off to Japan, I would miss my members too.

“Enjoy the time you have now then, right?”  I said encouragingly.

“I hope your member gets well soon,” Yixing politely said, with some help of Suho translating of course.

The boys bowed and we said goodbyes and I went back to the practise room. Yun had come back and I had arrived just in time. Yun was handing a bottle to Minjung and the maknae looked like she was just told she won a lot of money.

“Any news on Maia?” Hana asked.

“Nothing yet. You know how it is. Cell phones are shut off in the hospitals. Sanghee will probably just come home with Mimi and tell us it was just a bump. But maybe we should bring towels to wipe off our sweat next time,” I suggested and Hana agreed with me.

“I’m just glad it’s not me doing it,” Yun announced, checking out her make-up in the practice mirrors, as if she hadn’t meticulously arranged it before she left the bathroom earlier.

“Can we go home?” Minjung said in a small voice. She wasn’t crying anymore but she looked like a slight gust of wind would send her tears spilling down her still-chubby cheeks.

“We should get something hot on the way home!” Hana shouted, grabbing her bags and Eunmi’s without me asking and I sent a silent welcome to her.

“I think Running Man is on when we get home,” I said, lifting my bag and handing Minjung hers. “We all need a good laugh.”

When we got home, I cornered Yun in the kitchen. “I saw what you gave Minjung. That was very decent of you.”

The look of shock that she quickly covered up told me that I guessed right, and she had given the maknae the face lotion she had been keening over earlier this morning. “They have a new line coming out. I thought it would be a waste if I threw it out,” She said, opening the fridge door and pulling a water bottle out. Of course, Yun wasn’t about to break her I’m-cool-and-collected-all-the-time image.

“Regardless,” I stressed, waiting until her eyes met mine. “Thank you.”

Yun shrugged and walked away from me, but I definitely noticed how she snapped less at Hana that evening and didn’t wrinkle her nose in disgust when Minjung fell asleep against her shoulder. Eunmi came back with Sanghee later that evening, a little doped out from the drugs she got at the hospital but with the report that nothing was wrong with here internally. She was going to sport a nasty bump for a few days, but other than that, she’d be good to go.

I let Minjung, Eunmi and Hana sleep in a large puppy-like pile that night. They needed the reassurance when their foundations had been shaken from that fall. That’s when the realization occurred to me: who did I have to rely on?