Chapter 5 - The fan girls

The next morning when Emma exits her building, she finds herself being surrounded by the girls of last night. "We don’t know who you are" one says. "We don’t care." another continues. "But stay away from our Minhwan Oppa!" a third one finishes. They grab her bag and throw the contents on the ground. "This is your one and only warning!" They say before leaving. Emma stands in shock looking at the girls who are walking away. Normally she would have gone after them and hit them on the head, but she promised to do nothing that could cause a scandal, to her or the company. She looks at the time and hurriedly grabs her bag and starts to put her things back, but before she is done she hears someone walk out of the building. ‘Don’t be Minhwan Oppa, don’t be Minhwan Oppa’ she thinks to herself. "What happened Emma?" the person asks. "Nothing happened Minhwan Oppa, I just dropped my bag." Not wanting to make a drama about those girls, Emma decides not to tell Minhwan, even though he probably would find out eventually, as she promised Yonghwa to tell him if something weird would happen. Minhwan grabs some of her stuff of the ground and starts to laugh. "What is this picture?" Emma looks over and sees that he is holding the picture of her and some old school friends. It was at a party, so the picture was a bit blurry but you could still see that the theme of the party was crazy. Literally crazy. Emma tries to grab the photo but Minhwan is too quick again. "Can’t I keep this to look at when I’m sad?" to which Emma replies; "you’re an idol, you are not supposed to be sad, ever." Figuring saying something like that would shock him, she is able to grab the picture and put it back safely in her bag. "But luckily you’re human, so I’m glad you get sad at times." Emma continues while walking towards Minhwan’s car.

She decides not to care about those girls from earlier. She also decides not to worry about how to grab a taxi and just make Minhwan take her to the office. Not hearing footsteps following her, she starts to turn around but before she could turn around fully, she is pulled into a hug. "Just don’t move for a second, please." She hears Minhwan’s voice close to her ear, sounding weird. She does as he asks, trying not to think about the fact that her heart starts to race like a mad person. When he starts to loosen his hug, she looks up at his face. He is looking a bit awkward as he thanks her, not meeting her eyes. "Why the hug Oppa?" Minhwan doesn’t reply and pushes her towards the car. "You’re not going to say why you randomly decided to hug me?" Pulling the car door for her, Minhwan finally looks at her. "I don’t do things randomly. Especially not randomly hug girls." And with that he walks around the car to the driver’s side. "Are you getting in, or are you going to walk to the office?" Emma gets in, the words Minhwan just said floating around in her head. After an awkward car ride to the office, Emma decides to look for Yonghwa to tell him about the girls of this morning, but before she could, Minhwan holds her back. "Do you always walk away from your ride without saying goodbye?" he questions her. Knowing she did wrong, she bows to him and formally thanks him for the ride, before turning around again to find Yonghwa Oppa, not seeing Minhwan’s face as she walked away from him.

After looking all over the office, Emma finally finds Yonghwa in one of the small offices where the trainees practice writing songs. The moment Yonghwa sees her, he comes rushing over asking if she is okay. She didn’t realize how much the girls got to her and apparently it is showing on her face. When they leave the trainees room and walk to her office, she tells Yonghwa about what happened that morning. The moment she finishes talking, he grabs his phone and has a hushed conversation with his back turned. When he hangs up, he turns back and smiles. "Don’t worry about it for now and just get to work. At lunch we’ll talk about how to handle this, but you did well not going after them and smacking them on the head." He says with a playful smile before leaving her to her work. After a little bit of sitting around in her office, Emma realizes that just looking at the clock waiting for it to be lunch isn’t going to be of help. Even though she is very curious about the phone call and what Yonghwa meant with ‘how to handle this.’ she starts to get to her work. Soon she is so focused on her work that she doesn’t realize when lunchtime comes. Not until there is a knock on her door, and Yonghwa pokes his head in her office. "Come on, I have someone I want you to meet." The moment they walk into the cafeteria the first thing Emma sees is Seunghyun sitting close with to a blond western girl. To her surprise Yonghwa walks over to the two and shakes her hand, while telling Emma to come meet her. "Emma, meet Noa. She will be your bodyguard until we solve the problem with Minhwan’s sasaeng fans." The girl, Noa, sticks out her hand. When Emma doesn’t react, Noa grabs Emma’s hand and shakes it for her. "You haven’t been in Korea long, but it seems you already forgot that in Europe when someone sticks out their hand for a handshake, it is impolite not to shake it." Noa said while smiling friendly.

Getting over the shock of having a bodyguard, her en Noa are left alone for a while by the guys to get to know each other a bit. Noa, being in business mode starts by asking her about the girls of that morning. After telling the same story she told Yonghwa, Noa tells her not to worry about it, that she will take care of it and the girls will not bother her again. "I hope you can trust me Emma-ssi, even though we don’t know each other very well yet. Maybe it will help if I tell you I have been a bodyguard for Seunghyunnie for a long time, and we have been friends even longer?" "I guess I trust you Noa-ssi. But if you are a bodyguard for Seunghyun Oppa, then why are you assigned to me now?" Emma asks, while holding back her real questions for now. "Because I am the only female bodyguard here, and also not Seunghyunnies only bodyguard. He and I can be apart for a while." While softly, more to herself she adds "It might actually be a good thing." Deciding that if Noa wanted her to know, she would have said it louder, Emma shifts the conversation in a different direction. "How did you end up here Noa-ssi?" Pulled back out of her thoughts it took Noa a few seconds to realize what the question is. "Ah, I was born and raised here in Korea, my parents have always loved it here and decided to live here before I was born. That’s why I look like a foreigner but in reality I am technically a Korean born citizen. As to how I got my job, well that’s thanks to Seunghyunnie. We lived next to each other and we were best friends from the start, so when he got some fame he asked me to be his bodyguard as I am trained for it."

Before Emma could respond to her story, she heard loud noises outside of the cafeteria. Minhwan storms into the cafeteria, grabs Emma by the wrist and pulls her with him. Noa gets up to make him stop but Emma signs to her that she is okay, to just let it go. Once they are alone in one of the practice rooms, Minhwan finally let’s go of her wrist. He just stands and stares at her, while Emma tries to read his face to try and figure out what is going on. "Why did you not say anything this morning? I asked you what happened and you said nothing!" Emma curses under her breath, she was hoping he wouldn’t find out. Although she doesn’t understand why she cares if he knows or not, nor does she understand why he is so angry about it. "Why should I say something? It happened and now it’s getting dealt with. Why should I have told you?" Minhwan turns around and Emma can see him trying to be calm. "They are my fans and you are my concert coordinator. How is it not connected to me?" "I’m not saying it not connected to you, what I am saying is that you don’t need to worry about it." Emma sighs. "Why? Why can’t I worry?" Minhwan askes still turned around. "Why would you?" Emma askes softly, while she walks away.