I can’t believe this is happening right now, I’m not even supposed to be out!

“Julie look!” my friend Hyorin practically screeched in my ear. I jumped as the long line of girls screamed and frantically began shouting their favorite member’s name.

“Kyung Oppa!” “Ukwonnie!” “ZICO OPPA!”

Finally, I thought, This fan signing was supposed to start like half an hour ago.

I looked at my watch and took note of the time 3:30. We skipped school which would’ve ended at 5:00, they usually expect me back at the dorm at 5:15 studying. Maybe if we can rush through this I can-

“Come on Julie!” Hyorin begged, interrupting my train of thought,“Cheer up! Everything will be fine, just tell them you had to do some group project or something. Your evening practices don’t even start until 8:00 right?”

I sighed and smiled at Hyorin, who was obviously super excited to be meeting her idols. She was the closest friend I had since moving to South Korea and even though we couldn’t hang out as much as I’d like, she still spent whatever time I had available with me. When she mentioned the upcoming Block B fansigning, she sounded so excited that she won two tickets in the raffle. I couldn’t turn her down.

“Yeah, it’ll be fine,” I lied, “I’m sure I could sneak through the back window.”

We both laughed at the thought of me scaling an 8-story building and stepped forward in line.

“Well, when you’re a big famous K-pop star you’ll have to get creative when running away from the Sasaengs.”

I laughed, “Silly, I’m a long way from that. I’m still just a trainee!”

“I know you’ll make it Julie, you work harder than anyone I’ve ever known.”

“Well, I am breaking the rules right now, and entertainment companies don’t take too kindly to that. Especially from us wild foreigners.”

As a K-pop trainee, we’re held under strict supervision. We have to be in our dorm at a certain time, we can’t go out too often, we’re supposed to practice hard and remain low-key. No one could know we were trainees because if we have the opportunity to debut, we’ll be fresh new faces (and hopefully won’t have any pre-debut scandals).

The only times we’re allowed out are the 1 hour breaks between morning, afternoon, and evening practice, and for the younger students, when we go to school.

I know that I can’t rely on being a K-pop star so I’m attending university on top of practicing. I lied about staying after school to study so that I could attend a fan signing with my best friend. Not only did I break the number one rule of not telling anyone I’m a trainee, I’m also breaking the rules about curfew.

“Hey don’t make that face!” Hyorin said, “This is exciting! We’re going to meet Block B!”

I smiled a little and she playfully shoved me. Unfortunately, with all of these thoughts of punishment running through my head, I wasn’t prepared and Hyorin’s small shove turned into some sort of super strength phenomena and caused me to lose my balance.

The long line was sectioned off with elastic dividers and I fell on top of them. The elastic snapped back into the metal rods and they fell one by one like a row of dominos. Everyone in line watched as the row of dividers fell with a loud CLANG. When the last one finally toppled over, everyone looked back at the cause, which happened to be me sprawled out on the floor.

I froze in fear while lying on the ground, the phrase “Remain low-key” repeating in my head with the voice of my company director.

I was wearing my sunglasses and average clothing (jeans and a sweatshirt), I was just another face in the crowd, but at that moment I felt like everyone automatically knew who I was.

My face burned hot and I jumped up yelling my apologizes in Korean and bowing. Hyorin rushed by my side apologizing with me and helped me pick up the dividers. We awkwardly tried to clean up our mess and received a lot of glares and scoffs from other fans, until the staff came by and said they’d take care of it.

Unfortunately, this whole fiasco meant that we lost our place in line and to the back we trudged.

When we reached our place of dead-freaking-last, Hyorin began to laugh.

“What?” I asked solemnly. I was still completely humiliated (I wasn’t normally clumsy) as well as horrified that we’d have to wait in line even longer.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said between giggles, “It’s just that, you’re an even bigger weakling than I thought!”

She continued laughing and when I began to think about it more, I began laughing too.

Hyorin was bigger than me, in size and in muscle. She was an athletic swimmer and was extremely fit. I, on the other hand, was not. I was a tiny dancer who couldn’t gain weight if I tried. And while she was curvy and y, I was flat as a board and incredibly awkward.

“Also,” she said, calming down from the laughter, “I feel bad for saying this, but I’m actually glad we got sent to the back of the line. We never get to spend time together and now, we have all this time to talk.”

I couldn’t help but feel so grateful to my friend at that moment. She actually, genuinely wanted to spend time with me and constantly went out of her way to hang out with me. I never had very many friends and now I had the best friend in the world.

“But, Hyorin, you know that I won’t be able to stay the whole time with you, I can’t be late for practice.”

She punched me in the arm

“Hey, watch it! Remember what happened last time? I think I can only take major humiliation like that once a day.”

She laughed and punched me again, a little lighter this time, “Idiot, you don’t think I know when you have to be back? This fan signing is over at 7:30, you’ll have plenty of time to be back for practice.”

I smiled a little at her thoughtfulness and planning, but she didn’t know about the dorm checks. Sure, practice began at 8:00, but we had to be back in our dorms preparing by 7:30. I had told Jae that I’d be ‘working on a project’ after school, but there was no guarantee that the dorm manager would accept that excuse.

I just smiled at Hyorin and decided to enjoy this time with her in case I returned to find that I was kicked out of my company and my plane ticket back to the US already booked.

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Hyorin and I were having such a good time, laughing at things that happened in class, tv programs we saw, just useless everyday things that I missed because I was so busy training, that I didn’t even notice we were 3^rd in line.

“Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!” Hyorin jumped up and down her eyes wide, “They’re right there, they’re really right in front of me! Block B!”

I smiled at her moment of fangirl weakness and decided to mess with her.

“Wait, who are they again?”

She stopped and glared at me, her eyes saying I see what you’re trying to do, playing dumb like that.

I laughed and looked up at the panel of boys.

Block B, I’d heard their music before (Hyorin was so shocked that I’d never heard of them before and demanded that I listen to all their songs before we could officially be friends) and thought it was pretty good. Especially considering that the leader produced most of their hits.

I suppose a part of me really did want to learn more about them. After all, I was working to enter the Korean music industry; it would be helpful to know who my sunbaes were.

“What did you bring to get signed?” Hyorin asked. I looked back at her and saw her clutching a copy of their latest album ‘Her’. I looked around and shrugged my shoulders. She gave me a look that said Seriously? We’re at a fan signing and you didn’t even bring anything?

I chuckled nervously, “Wait, wait. I think I might have something in my bag!” I quickly began to dig through my bag in search of something before Hyorin kicked my .

I grabbed the first thing I could find, my expired bus pass.

I smiled as I showed her the bus pass in it’s tattered plastic sleeve and she rolled her eyes.

“What? That’s totally boring! You should have them sign something else.” She grabbed my bag and began digging through it.

“How about this hair bow? That’d be cute.” I gasped and snatched my favorite hair tie out of her hands.

“No way! This is my favorite hair tie! And my only one because I lost the others.” I looked at the light pink bow and brushed off the dust and dirt from the bottom of my bag.

Hyorin scoffed, “Well, it’s better than your expired bus pass! You don’t even ride the bus!”

“I know,” I said, “It’s faster and cheaper just to walk to school, I bought it when I got here and didn’t bother renewing it.”

I could tell that Hyorin was about to argue with me again, but it was finally our turn to meet Block B.

She was so excited and ran up to the tables, gushing over her favorite member, Jaehyo. While she was busy fangirling over Jaehyo, I stood there, not sure who to approach.

“Miss can you please hurry, we’re already running late,” one of the staff members said.

I nodded, “Sorry.”

I walked towards the table and just approached the first one who met my eyes.

“Hello, how are you doing today?” he asked, “I hope the wait wasn’t too long.”

I shook my head and kept my eyes down. Low-key I thought.

He leaned down and tried to peek under my sunglasses, “Are you shy?”

I paused and quickly nodded again.

“Hey,” one of the members said, “Aren’t you the girl who knocked over the dividers?”

I was surprised and looked up at him, and back at the member who I approached, it was Zico.

“Uh, yeah,” I mumbled, “I’m sorry about that.”

Zico laughed a little and shook his head, “No, no it’s fine. You didn’t get hurt did you?”

I laughed and scratched the back of my head.

“No, I just hurt my dignity.”

I was standing straight up and he paused looking at me, not saying anything. I looked over at Hyorin who had moved on to other members and I looked awkwardly back at him.

“Could you maybe take your sunglasses off for a bit?” he asked.

“Sorry?” I asked looking at him confused. Almost as if coming back to his senses, Zico shook his head and laughed awkwardly.

“Sorry, sorry, never mind.”

I laughed at how he suddenly switched from being confident and happy to apologetic and awkward.

“No, no. It’s fine,” I said and forgetting about my need to be ‘low-key’ I took off my glasses.

I just looked at him and his mouth opened slightly, his eyes widening. I made a face because of the bright lights and saw him smile a bit as I scrunched my nose, but then he went back to just staring at my face.

So, I took the opportunity to look at him. I never really saw much pictures of Zico before, just in magazines or when I looked up Block B on the internet. I never noticed how brown his eyes were or how soft and full his lips looked in person. I noticed that he had dark circles under eyes similar to mine, so he must work even harder than I do. But, those lips, I just couldn’t tear my eyes away.

I don’t know how long we were looking at each other, but it took Hyorin nudging me in the arm for our gazes to tear off each other.

“Sorry,” she said through her perfect smile and bright eyes, “Could you sign this for me oppa.”

She slid her album (already signed by the other members of Block B) across the table to Zico. He stared at it for a second with glazed eyes and blinked before looking up at her and then back at me. The member to his left, Kyung, elbowed him and whispered something in his ear that made him snap out of his daze.

“Sorry, sorry, I’m sorry,” he said and he hurriedly signed her album smiling at her.

“Thank you so much,” she said, but instead of sounding like an excited fangirl, she sounded more like a disapproving friend meeting a boyfriend for the first time (polite but harsh).

Kyung turned to me and smiled, “Is there anything you wanted our Zico to sign for you?”

I was still a bit flustered and Hyorin had to nudge me again before I fumbled to get my bus pass.

“Here,” I said and smiled awkwardly handing the plastic case to him. He smiled awkwardly back and took it, but didn’t look at it.

“So, you’re a foreigner?” he asked, still holding the bus pass, “Are you visiting Korea?”

I smiled and glanced down at the bus pass, gesturing for him to sign. He took the hint and nodded, starting to sign it.

“Uh, yeah, I’m actually a student here at Yonsei University.” Is that safe to say? There are tons of international students who attend Yonsei, I’m sure it’s fine.

“Really?” he asked looking up at me. If I didn’t know any better, I’d have said he seemed a bit excited.

“That’s great!” he said, “What are you studying?”

“Uh, dance,” I said carefully.

“Wow,” he said, his eyes getting brighter. I couldn’t help but smile and laugh, he laughed too.

“Wait,” Kyung said, grabbing my bus pass, “Is this a bus pass?”

He showed the other members and I got embarrassed, it wasn’t even in a nice case.

“Woah,” U-kwon said and laughed, “It’s even expired!”

The members started to laugh and I awkwardly smiled.

“Sorry, I didn’t have anything else for you to sign and I just came from school.”

Zico looked at me and smiled, “What’s your name?”

“Julie.”

He smiled again and started to sign my bus pass. I looked over at Hyorin who was back chatting with Jaehyo and she even gave him the bouquet of flowers she bought before the meeting.

“Here you go,” he said and handed it back to me.

I smiled and caught a glimpse of my watch 7:50. I gasped and threw the bus pass in my back.

“Uh thank you so much, but I have to go,” I said hurriedly hugging Hyorin, “Um, and good luck with your comeback!”

“Call me after your practice,” Hyorin whispered to me. I nodded and smiled at her and at the members of Block B. I bowed quickly and glanced once more at Zico, who was looking at me with a sad, confused face, and smiled.

And right as I turned to leave, I suddenly realized that I butterflies in my stomach the entire time I was in front of him.