Against everything that had been said the swine flu situation hadn't gotten better but worse: not only were the three remaining members Key, Minho and Taemin infected as well but Jonghyun who had just recovered experienced a severe relapse. To make things easier they all had been hospitalized and put into one room and were now under supervision 24/7.

With all five SHINee members confined the great Lee Sooman was facing a serious problem: SHINee were in the middle of their promotions for "Ring Ding Dong", needless to say their schedule was overly packed with performances, visits, photo shootings and radio shows.

Either way he looked at it he'd have to cancel everything which would mean loosing lots of money and loosing popularity. He had no other choice, but as he was about to start dialing his personal assistant's number to invalidate all arrangements he got an idea. An idea so close to idiocy and fail that in the end it might work out. After all if you multiplied minus and minus you got plus...

-

It was 7 pm when the door of the Super Junior dorm had been opened by none other than Lee Sooman. All 13 members were abruptly interrupting everything they had been doing and gathered around their big boss.

"I need 5 of you to fill in for SHINee." That was all to make the whole bunch forget about breathing or blinking or thinking or anything you could possibly imagine.

Furthermore he explained that the two that were definitely in "SHINee" were Eeteuk and Yesung substituting Onew and Jonghyun. That left three vacant spots and eleven possible SuJu members.

So Lee Sooman left the dorm for the time being and told them to decide within the next hour (because time shouldn't be wasted since the choreography would have to be practiced as soon as possible).

8 pm, and there was still no result to be shown. Some of the members didn't really want to do it, some were overly eager and some simply didn't mind, so in the end Eeteuk, being the wise leader that he is, decided that they should draw names out of a hat (hat filled with 11 paper strips; 8 of it blank and 3 containing the names Taemin, Key and Minho).

Shortly after nine Lee Sooman called and was presented with the following results:

Kangin had drawn Taemin's name (instantly wondering if he could fit Taemin's clothes like Eeteuk had with Onew's),

Kyuhyun had drawn Key's name (instantly demanding to switch it with Kangin since he never ever had rapped in his life)

and lastly Heechul had drawn Minho's name (and started swooning over how amazing he'd look in Minho's various coats).

The boss was surprised but after all the plan had been risky from the start so what was there to loose anyway?

So the five members of Super Junior S(HINee) were practicing a whole day, non-stop and were simply thrown at the fans the next day.

And what to tell you? I was a full success: they continued gathering trophies in SHINee's name, spread the SM love all over Korea and were voted number one for best live performance ever.

And the original SHINee members? Well, they enjoyed their time-out together and started slowly recovering just in time to start recording their new album.

When asked what made them healthy again they simply said that Super Junior S did.

Because after all: laughter is the best medicine.

(14.3.2010)