Like the Red Sea parting, the train of students passing through the school’s corridor began to veer off the center to make way for the four girls who strode as if they own the world. And maybe, if for their looks and wealth combined, they could.

Beautiful faces…check.

Slim, well-proportioned bodies…check.

Glowing, smooth and white skins…check.

Shampoo commercial -worthy tresses…check.

Nice, fancy clothes, shoes, bags and accessories…check.

Pleasant personalities….X.

And another X.

Here come the Cover Girls, the most popular clique in Risen Sun Academy, a private, heterogenous high school where rich parents usually send their kids to study. The group consists of four of the most popular girls in the said school. They all look like living dolls and they are the center of admiration and desire of boys, and the focus of hate and envy of girls. But looks could be really, really deceiving…

Kang Jiyoung, only child of a business tycoon, looks and somewhat sounds harmless. With her unwitty, stupid remarks, and sometimes foolish smiles, she could be considered the nicest one among them.

Suzy Bae or Bae Sue-ji, heiress of a popular chain of hotels in the country and abroad, has a sweet, innocent face, but a very cunning mind. She is often the mastermind of the girls’ schemes.

Krystal Jung or Jung Soojung, the youngest daughter of another business giant in the country and an internationally renowned Korean superstar, has the looks that match her personality: cold and calculating.

And finally the leader of the group, who has the cutest and sweetest face of them all, Choi Jinri, or simply Sulli, the only daughter of the very wealthy businessman who owns Risen Sun Academy to his second wife, who is an international supermodel. She is spoiled rotten by her parents and her elder half-brother. What she wants, she gets. Consider yourself dead once you get in her way.

The four met three years ago, when they were all aged fifteen, in a photo shoot for a teen magazine. All of them were hired as models, and after stiff competition as to who would grace the cover of the magazine, the staff finally decided to put all of them in, thus the name Cover Girls, which Suzy coined (with Jinri’s approval, of course). The girls were driven together by a common ground; all of them were hated and alone in school.

And so they set themselves to let the other students see who are the bosses and the real queens in school. You go against them and you’ll die a traumatic social death. You get the spotlight from them and you’ll suffer the same fate.

Just like the new boy, who was the talk of the whole school that morning.

“Who are they talking about?” Sulli growled after pushing aside a small girl with eyeglasses and pigtails who happened to unfortunately stepped away from them a tad too late. She turned to face Jiyoung, the expert when it comes to gossip.

Sulli could hear murmurs from around her as she walked down the corridor with her three friends…

Have you seen him? Gosh, he’s really cute…

What’s his name?

He’s in my class and Mr. Kwon made him show his talent…he danced and I nearly fainted. Those moves…

Sulli hated it when someone else rather than her and her friends is the main talk of the student body. She hated it when the spotlight isn’t trained on her. But most of all she hated it when something goes on without her knowledge. She absolutely loathed being behind some news or juicy gossip.

“It’s the new student. He was in one of my classes,” Krystal answered.

Sulli’s eyes narrowed at Krystal. “And why am I not informed of this?”

Krystal shrugged coolly. “I didn’t think he was that significant to be worthy of telling you, Ssul. I barely even noticed him if the teacher didn’t make him stand and introduce himself in front of the class.”

Sulli took a deep breath. “But apparently, he became someone significant. They are all talking about him.”

“Let it go, Ssul,” Suzy said. “For sure the attention would fade soon.”

“Oh, for sure,” Sulli agreed, smirking. “But I’m not worried about that, especially that he’s a boy and not some pretty girl trying to take away our crown. What I’m upset about is the fact that I didn’t even know about this guy until now,” she looked pointedly at Krystal, who just crossed her arms over her chest and pretended to examine her nails.

“What’s his name, Soojung?” she asked.

“Hmm..” Krystal thought for a while. “Something like Lee…Lee Min…”

“Lee Taemin!” Jiyoung said correctly, clapping her hands.

“Yes, that’s it, it’s Lee Taemin,” Krystal said.

Sulli froze, some long forgotten memory resurfacing from deep in her mind. But then she immediately recovered. No, it can’t be.

She rolled her eyes at Jiyoung and sighed exasperatedly. “And how did you know his name?”

“I looked him up in the net last night…oops,” Jiyoung covered and looked at Krystal and Suzy for help, but both just gave out a sigh and shook their heads at her.

“And why would you do that?” Sulli’s eyes narrowed at Jiyoung.

“I…I…I really don’t know why, Sulli-ah. M-maybe it’s…aliens taking over my brain?” Jiyoung answered, smiling at Sulli weakly.

“Oh, wow, aliens taking over your brain? Jiyoung finally came up with something imaginative, Ssul!” Krystal said with a fake cheerfulness in her voice.

“Yah, do you even know what aliens are?” Suzy scoffed at Jiyoung.

Sulli rolled her eyes again and decided to let it pass. After all, she considers Jiyoung the weakest in their group, with a brain of a new-born puppy and a disposition of a toddler. All alone, Jiyoung could never be mean and scheming, just plain stupid.

“So tell me, where can we find this Lee Taemin at this time?” she asked.

No one answered.

“Oh, of course, you wouldn’t know,” Sulli said, annoyed. She scanned the sea of students in the corridor and her eyes stopped on Kim Jong In, the nerdy Science and Math whiz who also happened to be the school paper’s editor-in-chief. He was standing by his locker, fishing out some books, and Sulli strode toward him and grabbed him by the collar.

“Yah, you,” Sulli began. “You’re definitely making a story about the new boy,” every new student in campus gets to be featured in the school’s newspaper. “So I’m sure you know where he is.”

Jong In, or better known in the campus as Kai, looked at Sulli, unblinking through his glasses. “His first class is History. Room 34B.”

Sulli let go of his collar. “Thanks,” she smiled.

“I wonder what you want with him, Your Majesty?” Kai asked. He was actually unafraid of Sulli as she couldn’t do anything drastic against him. With him holding the school paper, he could in a way break her and her friends’ images in school.

Sulli’s smile grew wider. “Oh, I just want to personally welcome him to our school,” she answered, flipping her luscious brown wavy locks before turning and walking away.

The two other girls, Krystal and Suzy, followed Sulli, but Jiyoung hung around, staring up at Kai and smiling cutely.

Sulli stopped on her heels and whirled around, sensing that her entourage is incomplete.

“Kang Jiyoung, what are you doing?! Come on!” she yelled.

Jiyoung jolted upright and ran to join her friends.

Kai shook his head in disbelief as he watched the four strut down the corridor. Barbie doll and her plastic friends, inspiring awe and wreaking havoc to whomever they passed and gets in their way, are on their way to make Lee Taemin’s life better or worse.

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This is exaggerated, I think, but I'm having fun writing this fic. LOL.

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