The walk to Semmi's was painfully uncomfortable. When there was conversation to lighten up the atmosphere the trip usually passed by in a breeze, but since neither Semmi or I were in a chit-chatty mood it felt like we were on our way to the North Korean border for war.

With the mood being so foreboding, I wondered if agreeing to go to Semmi's house was a mistake. We did need to talk, and it was the kind of conversation that called for privacy, but being the black sheep in someone else's home would just make it even harder for me. What if she didn't want to listen to my side of the story and just blew up at me? What if her parents were home, heard the arguing, and sided against me with their daughter? I couldn't imagine a more fitting finale to the entire fiasco than being run out of my ex-best friend's house by her whole family.

I took in a deep breath as Semmi's house came into view and tried not to be nervous. I'd been to Semmi's house hundreds of times, had been friends with Semmi for years, and was on good terms with her parents. It's not like all of that would change with the snap of a finger. I had to give Semmi more credit than that if she was supposed to be the one trusting me.

Semmi and I entered the house, discarded our shoes and bags, and made a pit stop in the kitchen. I wasn't really in the mood to eat anything, but since Semmi played a good host and asked I agreed to share a fruit salad with her. After that we retreated to her bedroom and shut the door behind us.

It was go time.

I had no idea how I was supposed to start the conversation so I sat on the bed, across from Semmi, and nibbled on a few blueberries. Even if I'd wanted to be the harbinger and launch into my narrative, the words just weren't coming to me. It was a good thing, then, that Semmi was less patient than me.

"Let's get right to the meat of this, okay?" she more stated than asked. I nodded, fully complacent. Before Semmi brought out the big question she let her expression tenderize, her eyes turning glossy and her forehead creasing. "Why didn't you tell me?"

I scooted further back on the bed and traced the stitching on Semmi's duvet cover. I knew she'd be hurt by my secrecy, but seeing it on her face and hearing it in her voice was a little more than I'd prepared myself for. It probably would have been easier if she'd stayed angry with me rather than being disappointed in me. 

"I don't even know, to be honest," I admitted, giving myself a second before looking back up. "I thought meeting a celebrity would be the best thing that could ever happen to me, but it ended up being a disaster. I just wanted to forget it happened, so I guess I didn't want anyone to know it did happen."

Semmi regarded me thoroughly, searching my eyes for sincerity. I did my best to display that sincerity, picturing emotion pouring out of my eye balls vividly enough to almost feel it happening. Semmi was the first to break the contact.

“I’ve thought about it a lot,” she confessed to me, “and figured it was something like that. It was pretty painful just watching you.”

I winced to myself, giving the duvet my attention again. I waited for Semmi to continue rather than giving a follow-up apology. Even if I sort of felt like I was on trial, it wasn’t like I’d committed a heinous crime; if I kept begging for forgiveness it would only make me look guilty. If I just kept quiet and looked pathetic Semmi would probably realize she was overreacting at least a little.

“If I’d done what you’d done,” Semmi went on, “I probably would have put myself on lockdown for a month. And if I knew the rest of the country had seen me like that, I would have at least transferred schools.”

I wondered if she was trying to make me feel like a slug on purpose, out of spite. But maybe she was just being honest and not thinking about how she worded things. She did tend to do that.

“I’m actually surprised you handled it as well as you did,” Semmi said, switching gears, her voice growing smaller. This time it was her who avoided my gaze by fiddling with her skirt hem. “You were a little weird that one day, I guess right after it happened, but after that you were alright. And then you came to school after the show aired like it was nothing and ended up looking like a star.”

Even though Semmi refused to meet my eye I stared at her raptly. That almost sounded like a compliment. I wasn’t sure how to take it.

Semmi let out a breath, something stronger than your average exhale but not quite a groan or sigh, and looked off to the side. A few beats later she turned back to me, her expression set. “I can understand why you wouldn’t tell me about meeting Teen Top that first time, but why have you been ignoring me for the past few days?”

Her words aggravated something in my gut and I initially couldn’t do more than blink at her. “You’ve been ignore me for the past few days.”

The defense came out like a natural rebuttal, but I second-guessed myself once it was out in the open. Had I ignored Semmi? She’d started it, but I hadn’t exactly gone out of my way to clear the air between us right away. I had sort of ignored her just because she was ignoring me. Then again, we'd only gotten together at all because I’d pushed her into it. It was more her fault than mine, wasn't it?

I had mixed feelings about it all, but I bit my tongue while Semmi pursed her lips. She looked away again before returning to the conversation, switching to yet another topic.

“How could you have been so cool at Music Bank after what happened?” she questioned. Her tone was on the blunt side, like she was accusing me of something. Her expression seemed to smooth out and tighten all at once as she put together her next thought. “Did you see Teen Top again after that day at the store, before Music Bank? You were so calm in front of them, like you were used to them.”

My eyes went wide. Was she saying what I thought she was saying? On some level I couldn’t help but be eerily impressed by her observation. She’d been thinking that much about it?

The part of me that wasn’t impressed was whirling with some kind of mix of indignation, hurt, and fear. I did my best to collect myself and give a good answer without letting too much time slip by.

“I didn’t see them again before Music Bank,” I said slowly, thinking back and trying to decide if I was even telling the truth or just telling Semmi what she wanted to hear. “I guess... I don’t know. I was just in shock. I hadn’t wanted to go backstage at all, remember? But once we got back there I just went into survival mode and stopped thinking. I didn’t really realize what was going on. I’m not sure if it’s all even sunk in yet, the whole being on TV thing...”

I felt so lame all of a sudden. Maybe I did have to explain myself, my decisions and actions, but I didn't have to report on every detail of my life. Semmi didn’t have to know everything that I did or who I did it with. She was my friend, not my parole officer.

“So you don’t, like, know them or anything?” Semmi pressed after a pause. Unlike me, she seemed to be calming down. Her voice was losing its edge and her posture was loosening up. Her all-but-a-glare had turned more sentient. “You haven’t seen them since Music Bank?”

I wasn’t sure how long I hesitated, but it felt like forever. My eye brows pulled together and my insides wrapped themselves in knots. I didn’t know what to do. I should just be honest. Why did I not want to be honest?

“No.” The word fell out before I could stop it, so I had to scramble with my conscience and roll with it. “Of course not.”

Lying came naturally, even if I didn’t know why I was doing it. Maybe it had something to do with wanting to stay on good terms with Semmi, but telling the truth was supposed to be the best way to do that. I could have told her they’re been to the store again. That wouldn’t have been a big deal. It wasn’t like I knew them personally like she’d asked. I literally just saw them after Music Bank.

But maybe that, as little of a thing as it was, was something I wanted to keep as a secret for myself.

Semmi let out a long, slow breath and nodded. She reached for the fruit bowl and took a piece of melon, munching as she thought. When she swallowed, she smiled.

“Okay,” she said, scooting into a more comfortable position that brought her closer to me. “How cool would it have been if you did end up getting to know them after that, though? It'd be just like a drama or something!"

Semmi prattled on about the possibilities, and I watched her with an uneasy simper. Couldn't she tell there was something wrong with me? Couldn't she tell I was lying? Or was she just acting, too?

Some lies, like the one that'd made Semmi upset in the first place, could be forgiven because they were honest mistakes. I wasn't sure if this one was one of them. It might not have been the most major thing to keep hidden but to deny it outright in the same breath that I'd used to reconcile a relationship was pretty slimy. My body was reacting to it, my throat itching and leg bouncing, but my lips stayed sealed shut.

I felt like I'd just buried myself in a hole, but I made no attempt to pull myself out. I only hoped I wouldn't fall in any deeper.

Another week passed. There were no Teen Top sightings at the store, but Angels were never too far away. There were less Angels hanging around than there'd been at the beginning, but there were still Angels.

By then I'd realized that Teen Top really wouldn’t be coming back. Their appearances might have just been their way of making up for our first encounter; it was their way of checking up on me after what had happened. Since they’d seen for themselves that I was fine, there was no reason to revisit. There were only reasons not to revisit.

It was probably cosmic payback for not telling Semmi the truth, too. I’d lied about how often I’d seen Teen Top, so the sightings were officially over. Reality had returned.

I would have thought having the Angels around all the time would annoy me to no end, but it turns out that I really didn’t mind them. Even though I thought the girls who kept coming to the store were a little crazy, most of them were also surprisingly well-mannered. They started making small talk with me even before they’d figured out I was the same girl from the show. Once I found myself on friendly terms with them, they were more comfortable buying whatever food or drinks the wanted while they were there.

The Angel traffic had an effect on other people, too. Their comings and goings seemed to attract more of the general public to the store. There wasn’t a huge slew of new customers, but there was a noticeable improvement.

The increased sales must have been the only reason my mother tolerated the Angels. She wasn’t shy about voicing her opinion of them – not to me, anyway. I’d explained to her who they were and why they were always there, but that only seemed to lower her opinion of them even more.

“What are their parents thinking?” she’d complain to me whenever she got the chance. “Students need to study. How can a mother let her daughter waste her life stalking boys? What are those girls accomplishing? They need to be disciplined. Parents these days let their children take charge. It’s a shame.”

I would never comment when my mother went on one of her tangents. It was frustrating to listen to her vent about bad parenting. I might have been learning a few life lessons by being so busy, but I’d also grown a few grey hairs already. And if a student’s job was to study, why did my parents put me to work in the store so often when I could have been studying? I was probably with socializing because I rarely did it. I talked with my parents more than anyone else and half of the time we were together they were fighting. I had no hope of normalcy.

Rather than brood and stress about all of the things that went wrong in my life, I took it all as it came. I was tired of always getting worked up about everything that happened to me, so I did my best to chill out and get a better grip on my emotions. They'd taught us a few techniques in school to help us handle stress, like measured breathing and visualization, and as stupid as I felt doing stuff like that it actually did work somewhat. The world wasn't ever going to roll over just for me, so I had to roll with it -- or at least try.

I stopped thinking about my personal experiences with Teen Top. I started dreaming again, about other boys from other groups. Teen Top was out of the media limelight but there were plenty more idols to entertain my fantasies. I was perfectly happy becoming absorbed with them. Teen Top became something of a thing of the past.

Life went on. Life settled back into its usual routine. Life reverted to unremarkable.

I got comfortable and careless. I really did believe that Teen Top was gone for good, and I really did forget that they ever existed outside of my computer screen. Even though it'd only been a few weeks since I'd last seen any of them, they were out of sight and out of mind.

But Teen Top were real people when they weren't on stage or in front of a camera. For all I knew, they were completely different people from the personas they put on in front of fans. They definitely did look different, more so than expected. When I'd seen Chunji without make-up I'd wondered whether I would have given him a second glance if I'd met him casually, without looking too closely at his face.

I didn’t exactly make it a habit of looking too closely at strangers’ faces, so it turns out that even a celebrity that had ditched his glamour could pass under my radar. That’s why when Teen Top did show up again out of the blue I didn’t even notice. They actually had to introduce themselves to me.

It was L.Joe who stood in front of the register one day, his shoulders hunched and palm flattening out his bangs just so he could keep his head down. But when he did look up, he caught my eye and curled the corner of his lips up in a skittish sort of smile, quoting one of his own lines in one of his own songs by saying, “It’s me, L.Joe.”

And with that, just when I had found myself in a good place, there was a hair-pin turn and plunging drop.

Teen Top would undoubtedly, in one way or another, be the death of me.  I knew it from the very start but still didn't have the slightest idea what I was getting into.