My family's convenience store wasn't located in the single most convenient spot, or so I'd always thought. Apparently, though, it was prime real estate for teenage girls like me, because it just-so-happened to be smack dab between Teen Top's dorm and rehearsal space.

The boys trickled in from time to time as winter winded down, usually just before closing at ten. I started volunteering to work the last shift more often when I caught onto the trend. The boys and I never really spoke to each other outside of generic greetings and thanks and such, but seeing them was still worth working longer hours. If Teen Top was going to be delivered on my doorstep, who was I to not be there to receive them? My bias CAP never visited, probably because he was the leader and the oldest and could therefore order his juniors to run errands for him, but that was probably for the best when I could only barely hold my own against the members I didn't actually have a crush on.

I found out that the store was close to Teen Top's two main headquarters the night I had my first post Music Bank conversation with the boys. It was short and rocky, but it was a conversation. Promotions for 'It's' had ended, and, rather than fade away all together, Teen Top's appearances at the store became more and more frequent. My curiosity bubbled up until I couldn't stand to hold my tongue.

"If you don't mind me asking," I started off slowly, bagging the boys' snacks at an equally hesitant pace, "are you guys preparing for another comeback yet?"

It was my theory that Teen Top was busy working, which would have explained their frequent, odd-hour visits. Well, either that or they had too much free time and ran their errands between late-night video game battles or something, but I was betting on the former.

Ricky and Niel, the pair on food duty that day, exchanged a quick look. I didn't let myself get stuck on it. As energetic as the two usually were, I was glad that they knew not to be too friendly with female fans, no matter how sane they seemed.

"Uh, yes, we just started preparations for our next mini-album. It should be out in time for summer," Ricky responded, looking slightly more at ease than Niel, who just stood there (a tall, gangly thing next to the more delicate Ricky) with a closed-lipped smile and nodded along. I hadn't expected Ricky to remember my face from backstage at Music Bank, but I wondered if he did and that's what made him a little more comfortable with me. But if he remembered my face from Music Bank, did any one of them remember me from our first meeting? They had to have if they remembered the store, right?

I put up mental blockades to keep all negative thoughts out of the way as I handed over the bag. Niel all but jumped for it. Like a cheesy scene from a movie, his fingers bumped against mine in the process. He was wearing gloves so there was no skin-to-skin contact, but I'm pretty sure I still blushed.

"If you don't mind me asking one more thing," I said while I was bowing. Ricky and Niel had already dipped their heads and were making for the door when I spoke, but they paused and glanced back. I caught my bottom lip between my teeth before spitting the question out. "Why do you guys always come here? To this store?"

I could feel how big my eyes were, so I blinked a few times to loosen up. Ricky and Niel exchanged another look that I pretended not to notice. After a second, though, Niel shifted his weight between his feet and cleared his throat. "Well, it's just close. Easy access between our practice space and dorm."

I put on a smile and nodded in understanding, but on the inside I was exploding. Why else would they have come to the store so often? Why did anyone visit the same one store so often? Wasn't that the point of convenience stores -- for customer convenience? What had I been expecting them to say? That was such a stupid question.

Once Ricky and Niel made it out into the streets, I leaned over the counter, resting my forehead on my forearms. It didn't matter how convenient the store was geographically; I'd probably just scared Teen Top away by being such a freak. I should have just kept quiet and enjoyed their company in silence. They would go a little out of their way to be served by an ahjumma over a prying fangirl, for sure. They couldn't risk being caught alone, late at night, with a girl who could easily ambush and kidnap them in her store. If I were Teen Top, I would be afraid or me. For all they knew, I was a sasaeng.

I just hoped I hadn't blown it with Teen Top so soon. As much stress as they unknowingly put on me, I decided I would have rather had them in my life than out of it, even if that only meant I got to see them out of idol mode from time to time. That was more than what most Angels could say.

I really hadn't realized that I'd been keeping my relationship with Teen Top a secret. My parents knew about it, obviously, but I hadn't been the one to clue them in and they had no way of understanding the significance of it. The only people who would see it from my level would be the kids at school, and the only kid at school I would have told would have been Semmi.

But I hadn't told her. It had never even crossed my mind to tell her. Maybe I was subconsciously paranoid that she would made a huge scene about it, or maybe I was subconsciously selfish and wanted to keep the experience for myself. Either way, it was what it was.

After everything my brush with fame had put me through, I'd neglected to realize one glaring, massive, truly life-shattering detail:

I'd met Teen Top when they'd been filming in my family's store. I'd embarrassed myself in front of Teen Top while they were filming. The entire thing had been caught on camera -- on multiple cameras -- and would, at some point, be broadcast to the world.

And it was, at some point, broadcast to the world.

I wasn't sure how I'd missed the original airing. If I'd seen the special I'd been featured in ahead of time I would have never shown my face in public the next day (or, you know, for the rest of my life). But I did miss the original airing, and I did go to school the day after the airing, and that was the beginning of the end of life as I knew it.

The day had started off like any other. There weren't any crowds waiting for me at the school entrance or whispers following me in the halls. It wasn't until I got into class that I noticed anything different, which was the other girls grouped together and whispering. That wasn't hugely out of the norm, though, so I didn't think much of it and went to me seat to unpack. As I did I stole a few glances at the other girls and kept my ears peeled, trying to gauge what they were talking about and if I could jump into it. I couldn't catch any of the conversation, but I did notice that they were stealing glances at me, too, and that was out of the norm.

I didn't have much time to process the change of pace before a couple of the girls, urged by their peers, broke away and made for me, weaving through desks and over book bags.

I was like a deer in headlights.

"Hey, Sol Mi," one of them, Hye-Jin, greeted with a nervous sort of smile. I returned it, nerves and all. Hye-Jin and her friend, Ji-Yun, met each other's eyes and pulled closer together, teaming up against me. I was confused, but the smile never left my face.

"We were just wondering," Ji-Yun started off before glancing at Hye-Jin. Hye-Jin, after catching her partner's eye again, got the message and cleared , leaning in closer to me. I held my breath.

"We were just wondering," Hye-Jin reiterated, putting obvious effort into beind tactful, "if you would tell us about Teen Top."

I was utterly lost and unable to slow my brain down to reason anything out. Instead, I latched onto the name Teen Top and fumbled with a hazy hypothesis. "What, you mean what happened at Music Bank?"

"No, no, no," Hye-Jin corrected quickly, shaking her head with every "no". For all of a millisecond I was relieved, although I wasn't sure why. "I mean what happened when they were at your store."

All of the traffic that had been keeping my mind from functioning properly came to a standstill. Other than that, I couldn't react much before Hye-Jin, apparently refueled after getting past the toughest part of her mission, launched into a rigmarole.

"It's so cool that you were on TV with them! I mean, it probably wasn't the way you wanted to be seen, but no one can really blame you for it. Getting surprised by idols like that must have been so scary; I would have passed out, I swear! But they must have been so nice to you once they shut the cameras off, right? Did they give you anything or sing for you to make you feel better or something? There's no way they just walked out and left you behind the counter like that, so what happened? What couldn't the crew film? What was Teen Top really like?"

I couldn't decide if my mind was still stumped or moving so fast everything was just one huge blur. It didn't really matter either way. I was still screwed. I could at least figure out that much.

What little power I did have over my cognitive abilities wasn't going towards Hye-Jin's questions themselves but what they implied. She'd talked about Teen Top being in my store. How had she known Teen Top had been in my store? How did she know it'd been so scary for me? Why did she think idols would have been extra nice to me? Why did she think I would know what Teen Top was really like?

My internal monologue was pointless, because the answer to every one of my questions had been there the entire time. I just didn't want to admit it to myself. I couldn't face the fact that whatever Teen Top had been filming that day had been presented to the public, and I hadn't been cut out of it. All of South Korea had seen me at my worse in every sense of the word. Life as I knew it was over.

"Uhm," I managed to gargle, doing my best to push aside my panic and just live in the moment. I could fall apart later, but right then and there I had a live audience watching me. My smile had to have been shaky, but Hye-Jin and Ji-Yun were too bust hanging off my words to notice. "Yeah. They were really nice. They, uh, did offer to sing something for me. The kept asking if they could do anything for me."

Hye-Jin and Ji-Yun awed, and a few new girls, seeing that I wasn't flipping out or anything, gathered around to join the Q&A. My face was hot and my fingers and feet slightly sticky from sweat, but I kept smiling and talking. I hadn't actually interacted much with Teen Top the day we'd met, so some of what I ended up saying was pure fabrication, but I couldn't help it. I was only half tuned into the discussion. A slightly larger portion of me was having an out of body experience, the kind I tended to do automatically to make sure I didn't make a mess of myself in a bad situation.

By the time the bell rang and my classmates were forced to go back to their seats, I wondered if I would have been better off just crying ang hiding under my desk. I wasn't even sure what I'd been talking about; what exactly had I just told everyone? Would it come back to bite me in the ? With my luck, probably.

Hit with a sudden wave of sickness, I slumped in my seat, leaning back and looking around the room for any signs, good or bad. A few boys' eyes flickered towards me, maybe just curious about the mob that'd surrounded me earlier. They looked away as soon as they noticed my attention on them as if they hadn't been looking in the first place. Some girls caught my eye and gave me deliberate grins or waves that I was basically compelled to return, but my heart wasn't in it at all.

Seriously, what was happening to me? Wasn't my life supposed to be normal and boring?

My body seemed to act on its own and zeroed in on Ju Il. He was staring straight ahead with a complete deadpan, but he tilted his chin in my direction when he must have felt my eyes on him. He stared more through me than at me. On any other day that would have been ordinary, unorthadox Ju Il behavior, but on that day it sent a shiver down my spine, and I had to turn away. My eyes landed on Semmi on the other side of the room instead. She was sitting in her seat, her posture almost pin-straight but her head dipped down so that she was looking at her lap. My brows furrowed in concern but there wasn't anything I could do at the time, so I had to sit back and wonder what could have been wrong with her.

I got a pretty big hint when Semmi glanced my way. Well, she more like glared my way. It might sound stupid, but the scathing look she gave me really did pierce my heart. When I was already feeling vulnerable, any little thing had the potential to tear me down.

I sunk down lower in my seat, trying my best to hide from the world. Everything from my expression to my mood seemed weighed down by a piano or one of those cartoon one-ton anchors.

I blamed Teen Top for it all.

Author's Note:

So, yeah. That "special" Teen Top was filming in Chapter One is to remain nameless and themeless. The details of it don't really matter... Sorry if that bugs anyone. It does sort of bug me, but I'm too lazy and unimaginative to do anything about it.

**Insert Kris' Face**