"Where you at, hyung?" Kibum asked, and Jinki could tell he was fumbling between his bags and the phone by the plethora of static. After what seemed like an intermediate span of audio fuzz he seemed to gain more control over his assets.

    "Boston." Jinki managed, throwing his single backpack over his shoulder, nonplussed by Kibum's obvious trouble with excessive luggage. With three months ahead of him, Jinki figured he could just have the managers ship his overseas. No one in Boston had much anyway. "You?"

    "California. Los Angeles. Beaches, girls, parties, booze. I'll have a song in no time. Whether or not it sounds like something by Ke$ha, that's a different matter." Kibum lilted, giggling in that feminine way that had a tendency to make Jinki wonder what he was doing with his life, living and working with those boys. "What're you going to find in Boston? Ooh, those Harvard girls, so y. Chinatown girls, so classy."

    Jinki laughed gruffly. "Yeah, It wasn't my first choice. You had dibbs on L.A., Minho found his place in Harlem, Jonghyun in New York, and Taemin someplace in the South, mingling with the cows and chickens." Jinki returned a glare he got from a businessman, clearly judging a young man speaking Korean in America. "I'm starting to have second tho-"

    He saw her sit down in the car in front of him, a Red Line train. Something about her caught his attention enough for him to close his phone without thinking about it, leaving Kibum to scream about his insolence 3,000 miles away. It may have been her simplicity, the plain French-braided brown hair down her back, her eyes down-turned upon a binder of papers, slight form, gray sweater and big black backpack hulking in the seat to her right. She was an image of somber serenity, innocent maturity and over-worked sickness. The girl with a career to work towards, a sweet ode to the homely education-dedicated girls of the world. A hit song, and a thoughtful image towards Jinki, something he could use at this point. She was his song. He watched the doors begin to slide closed on the train car and he panicked, making a dive for them and sliding in just in time, almost crushing his foot. The few people on the train looked up at him with un-amused stares and he apologized, took a deep breath and sat down next to the brunette girl.

    When the oriental boy who had thrown himself into the train and mumbled a deep '미안 해요.' to the general public sat down next to Juliette, she thought he was going to mug her. It was too early in the morning for there to be enough people on the train to fill it up completely, and there were a myriad of empty places for him to sit that wouldn't put him in such close proximity to another human being, which was generally the preference if one wasn't a mugger. But he made no move to even talk to her, and she eventually went back to her graph. She scribbled the formula for population density down, just in case her stats were wrong, and she could check them using the same formula used on animals in her Biology class some three years ago. She couldn't go through with it, as she could feel his gaze burning through the back of her skull. Stealing a quick glance at him through her peripheral, she marveled at the clearness of his skin, the curl of his lips, the hollows of his eyes, his thick charcoal eyebrows. He could have been a geisha, if geishas were male and Korean. Juliette quickly realized what an absurd comparison this was, but she couldn’t quite dismiss it, especially with his obvious staring.

    “저기 봐.” Juliette said to him, if only to guide his gaze elsewhere, pointing to the window.

    ‘Look there’ had been one of the few phrases she had remembered from having a Korean exchange student in her home in Middle School, and thought she might as well use it. As he turned to look at the window she studied the curves of his face as the train suddenly left the tunnel and burst out into a rising pink sunrise. He grinned at her, wide and open-mouthed, and his teeth were nearly as blinding as the sky.

    When he smiled, Jinki wasn’t sure if it was because she had spoken Korean to him, or that the sunrise was so beautiful. But he smiled. He smiled and smiled until the girl was awkwardly smiling back. That was just how he did things. But her smile was uncomfortable, and she was looking him up and down as if he was a weirdo for sitting next to her. The game was harder when girls didn’t know who he was. He offered an admiring and mildly surprised “You speak Korean.” and nodded his approval.

    Juliette had no idea what he meant by “당신은 한국 말로”, so she gave him another awkward smile and looked away without answering, hoping she looked mysterious, or perhaps even rude, so he might leave her alone. The train slipped into another tunnel, and the brilliant morning light fell away. She couldn’t really handle herself around people, even after living in Boston for a full year and being packed in with millions of them. A handsome man talking to her about anything was a rarity, let alone in a foreign language. The idea was a little much for Juliette to cope with, and she squinted at her binder again with a fierce intensity that she prayed could sweep the affair from her mind.

    “어디가는거야?” he asked.

    Juliette grimaced. She didn’t know which was more unfortunate, that she understood the ‘Where are you going?’, or that she had used up all her knowledge of Korean, and couldn’t possibly muster the sentences to reply correctly. At last, her mother’s lessons in politeness won, and she switched to English.

    “Ah, to school. M-my classes start very early at MIT. I hope to graduate in only three years, or at least excel, after putting all that work in to get accepted. My whole day is filled between that and dance, so I start out fairly early.” She stammered, and tried again to go back to her work, but it was clear he wasn’t through yet.

    “Dance?” he asked, the single word thickly laden with accent.

    “Yes. My sister Kate, she owns a dance studio near the school. I take lessons there today, Wednesdays and Fridays after classes. I’m not very good, but it gives me something to do.”

    The train eased to a halt, and Juliette was horrendously relieved, collecting her things and scurrying off without saying good-bye. She furrowed her eyebrows all the way across campus, and never even was able to finish her statistics. As she took her seat in the back of the classroom, and the other students washed by, ignoring her, she couldn’t push the look he gave her from her head. The toothy smile, with his eyes scrunched shut from the light, not just next to her, but at her. She almost felt bad for lying to him; her whole day wasn’t busy at all. In fact, her life was emptier than it had ever been before.