“And a one, and two, and three, and four. Up five, and six, jump seven, land eight.” Even though I hadn’t been the one dancing, I was nearly out of breath right there. I applauded my dancers and turned to the audience.

Ms Yoo was jotting down notes on her clipboard with the same stone cold look on her face that she always wore for evaluations. “Alright, next. Lee Jiae.”

Huh. I had started to notice what Jiae had been talking about. She really was being put right after me in so many evaluations.

Jiae took to the stage and I gave her a quick thumbs up while I went back to the green room to change and to check my messages.

« Good job. You killed it. :) » It was Joshua, and it definitely put a smile on my face.

There was another message from Sungkyung, and also a missed call from her. « Oh snap I forgot you were in class today, sorry. I need to talk to you! Call me when you leave school! »

Just as I was about to put my phone away, I got yet another message. This one was from my mom. « Does Joshua have any allergies? »

My stomach flipped as I remembered that tonight was the night Joshua would come over for dinner to meet my parents. He’d been pestering me for weeks about it ever since he got back from LA and resumed promotions. I kept putting it off, telling him I was too busy, but my stalling couldn’t last forever. Eventually Pledis Girlz were all trained, he was done his bigger chunk of schedules, and my final condition had just been realized: I was done my final project for Choreography. I sighed and returned my mother’s text with a quick, « No. »

I slid back to the auditorium to watch the rest of Jiae’s performance. Her dancers were pretty good at picking up what she was telling them to do. Considering two of the people before me had already failed immediately for showing a move, the pressure was on for us to stay very still, and so far Jiae was doing great.

“Alright miss Lee, you can go,” Ms Yoo said after Jiae was done. “Next? Lee Dohyung?”

Jiae rushed off stage to sit beside me. “How did I do?” she whispered.

“Honestly, better than me,” I told her with a reassuring pat on the knee.

Jiae snorted. “Okay, but you were awesome,” Jiae rebutted.

“So that’s saying something,” I responded with a wink.

“Ladies!” Ms Yoo yelled. “Quiet!”

We sat in silence for the rest of the performances. Even as everyone else who had already performed left, we stayed still so as not to anger Ms Yoo any further.

We were the last audience members in the auditorium by the last performer, Yoon Miso.

“Alright, Miso, you’re free to go,” Ms Yoo said, standing up. She stared at Jiae and I for a short second and cocked an eyebrow up. “You two are still here?”

“It’s very important to keep learning from your peers, Ms Yoo,” Jiae said matter-of-factly. I nodded.

Our instructor shrugged. “Suit yourselves. I’ll grade this class first, since you are the only one of all my students who just needs one class to graduate.”

I bowed. “Thank you.”

We went back to the green room, and Jiae went to the bathroom, leaving Ms Yoo and I alone for a bit. “How is work going at Pledis?” she asked me.

“It’s, umm, actually done. I was just contracted for one song.”

She nodded as she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder. “Well, I can’t wait to see your choreography being performed, Alice.” With that, she left.

Jiae came back and checked her phone, gasping at what she saw. “Oh my goodness, I have three missed calls from Minhyun. And one from Sungkyung. Why can’t they just text like normal people?”

Sungkyung. Right. “Yeah, she told me to call her once I leave school. I wonder what it’s about.”

Sungkyung answered on the first ring. “Alice! Hi!”

“Hi? Is something the matter?”

“Yes. Emergency. SOS.”

I frowned. “Sungkyung, what is going on? Are you in danger?”

“In danger of being way too naive, yes!”

I stopped walking. “Okay, now I’m even more confused than before.”

Jiae tilted her head and I shrugged, placing the phone on speaker.

“Vernon asked to meet my parents.”

I gasped. “No way.”

“Yes way. He wants to meet my parents, and then take me to meet his at some other point. We’re not dating, why is he doing this?” I could only picture Sungkyung pacing around her room, pulling at her hair.

“Does he know you're not dating?” Jiae asked.

“I thought he did! We’re just supposed to be a casual, non-committed thing! Why would he want to meet my parents?”

I took a deep breath. “Maybe you’re reading into things. Maybe he wants to meet your parents for something else? Like, networking?”

“What else could it be? My mother sells cakes she bakes at home for a living and my father drives a taxi.”

Jiae nodded. “Yeah, he definitely thinks you’re dating. Or at the very least, wants a serious relationship.”

“I can’t be in a committed relationship! He’ll find out all my secrets, and not like me, and then spread them all around, and then they won’t be secrets anymore, and no one will like me ever again!”

I chuckled. “What could he possibly find out? Are you secretly in the mafia?”

“Worse,” Sungkyung whispered. “I wear glasses.”

I could swear I heard her wrong. “What was that?”

The girl on the other end of the line took a breath. “I know, it’s crazy, but I wear glasses.”

“I have literally never seen you wear glasses, ever,” I said.

Jiae nodded, frowning. “Also, wearing glasses isn’t the end of the world.”

“I wear contacts. All throughout grade school I was bullied for wearing glasses because my eyesight is actually so bad I had coke bottle glasses. They don’t make contacts in my prescription number. I wear the highest they have and just squint my way through life. That’s how I got hit by that truck and ended up in the hospital.”

I covered the mic of my phone and mouthed to Jiae on the side, “How is this her biggest secret?”

“Kids at school used to taunt me, saying ‘Ankyung, Ankyung, Ahn Sungkyung’ and as soon as I left them all behind to go into a conservatory, I started wearing contacts. Basically, I have never seen either of you two clearly in person. I know what you look like based on pictures that I look at with my glasses on when I’m at home.”

“Kinda strange,” I commented. “What’s stranger is that you never told us this.”

“Wait,” Jiae interjected. “Hasn’t he slept over multiple times?”

“Yes, and it was fine because after we’d have I would go to the bathroom and take my contacts out, and go back to my room from memory. Him being my boyfriend is a whole new level of intimacy no amount of sharing a bed can prepare me for.”

I nodded. “Could have done without the details but I suppose you have a point.”

“Could you guys just come over?”

Sungkyung met us at her door fifteen minutes later and pulled us straight into her room. “What do I do?”

“Tell him your parents died in a tragic accident,” Jiae suggested.

Sungkyung shook her head. “My mom posts on social media daily and Vernon knows her handles.”

“Here’s a wild idea: why don’t you just have him over to meet your parents and then you’ll go meet his, and then you’re dating!” I told her.

Sungkyung shot me a dirty look. “The glasses!”

I sighed. “Okay. Look. Him finding out about your dumb glasses won’t make your world crumble. I had a secret that I kept from Joshua, and he found out by accident, and yeah he still makes fun of me for it, but otherwise nothing bad has happened. Besides, Vernon is head over heels for you. He’ll probably think they’re cute.”

Sungkyung sighed.

“I hid something from Minhyun, too, when we started seeing each other again. It didn’t feel right to keep it from him and eventually it became the best thing when I finally told him and now we’re happier.”

Sungkyung tilted her head. “What in the world did you tell