Isabela

The English tutor looked at herself in the mirror one last time before leaving. First impressions, she thought, are the most important. She wore a white button up shirt under a wool vest that was dotted with warm colors and beautiful patterns. She wondered if her jeans would be frowned upon and seen as unprofessional, but she didn't really have time to dig through her clothes and find a new pair of pants. When she looked up to study her face, a wide-eyed girl stared back at her. Her heartbeat was erratic with nerves.

"Calm down," she told it.

She took a deep breath and pushed up her glasses. She was annoyed that the contacts hadn't arrived yet, but there was nothing she could do about it, so for today she wore her oxford glasses. For their first meeting, she would have to look like a geek. Great.

She grabbed her purse and walked out the door.

A few months ago, she had joined a translating company that not only paid well, but also gave her the chance to travel abroad. She translated calls, meetings, documents, etc. Her superiors visited one day because of the wonderful work she was doing and asked her how she had learned six languages.

"Well, I'm a tutor," she explained to them. One of them eyed her curiously.

"A tutor? Like, a teacher?"

"Similar to a teacher, except tutors are more hands on with the education of our students. We usually take a group of one to ten, and pay special attention to each one of them so that they'll properly learn not only pronunciation, but grammar and how to communicate fluently," she bowed. This particular superior of hers was the CEO of the whole company, and had started it from ground zero in Gangnam, later moving it to Chicago.

"Ah, I see. Your name is Isabela Arrellano, correct?" He asked her. She was so surprised to see a Korean pronouncing her name so well, but then she remembered he knew about 12 languages, including Latin. She decided not to underestimate this man.

"Yes, sir," she said, nodding.

"Alright. Keep up the good work, Ms. Arrellano. We may use you more in the name of this company," he said before making his exit, the rest of the superiors following. His last words made her wonder what he meant. In the last two months, she had climbed the corporate ladder at a blinding speed, and that had welcomed both admiration and criticism. Many of her coworkers thought she had sold herself for the position she was now in, which was managing a whole translation team from Korean into English. Every few days, they'd ask her to work in a different language department, being Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, or Mandarin, which she had perfected the year before. What more work could they give her?

She the charm on her necklace as she worked in her office. She remembered that night in Rising Sun, where she had eaten dinner with EXO. That experience had completely changed her, and she realized she needed to work harder than ever before, giving her tutoring her all. Things changed when she tutored the CEO's son, who didn't speak English well enough to enroll in a specific private school in the city. She had been hired by his mother, but eventually the CEO would begin to watch her and when the son was accepted into the school, she was offered a full time job at his father's company.

The charm on her necklace was from that night with EXO. It was at first a cheap metal sun that could break easily. It had come with the rice cake bag Jongdae had bought for her to take home. She couldn't imagine parting with it, so she had gotten it to a jeweler, who had coated it in gold and added a small loop for her to be able to wear it on a thin chain.

Now her little golden sun was a reminder of that magical night with all of them.

As she walked the streets of Seoul, she wondered what EXO was up to these days. To be perfectly honest, she tried not to dwell too much on the fact that they were supposed to be in the same city she was now in. The thought made her too giddy, and she couldn't have those thoughts now that she was going to meet her new clients.

The crisp cold wind reminded her of her old home in Chicago, but that was about all that was even slightly similar. The streets were cleaner and nicer, and the architecture was different from the towering buildings that had once surrounded her. Even her cheap apartment in Seoul was far better than the room she rented in Chicago.

She still couldn't believe she was there, in South Korea. The thought was so unreal, if you had told her six months ago she would travel to Asia in less than a year, she would have never believed it. But there she was, and she smiled to herself. Her hard work had payed off.

Isabela was on her way to meet a group of new clients she was supposed to tutor in English. Her CEO had personally assigned her this job, so she couldn't mess it up. She was there representing the whole company, and a lot was riding on her shoulders.

The entire ordeal had been very... Odd. The group was apparently made up of very prominent individuals, because she had signed a contract that instructed her to not talk about the people she met, post photos of them, their location, or, in fact, anything that tied her to them in any way. In essence, the group and her would not know each other. She also had never spoken to anyone in the group directly, but always with a mediator through cryptic emails that completely hid their identities. She wondered if they were politicians, or businessmen who wanted to be world renowned. Perhaps it was a group of gangsters who wanted to extend their drug dealing outside of Korea.

Yup, Isabela had too broad of an imagination.

The GPS coordinates stopped her in front of a plain building that she didn't bother reading the name of. One look at her watch had her running into the place and up the stairs in a hurry.

Room 200.

She panted in front of the door labeled that way. She controlled her breathing and once again reminded her heart to slow down. Her palms were clammy, and she was thankful that it was too cold for her to sweat any more. She pushed her glasses up and patted down her hair, brushing her bangs with her fingers then dusting off her vest. Clenching her purse tightly, she inhaled and opened the door.

"Meu Deus..." She gaped.

The first one she laid her wide eyes on was Kyungsoo, who mirrored her expression and dropped a piece of sandwich onto the carpet. The conversation in the room died down when they noticed her.

So, she thought, this is how I die.

Her heart did a backflip and landed in her stomach. wasn't closing, or moving at all. It seemed to her like her brain had short-circuited. She could only blink.

"Gentlemen," their manager said, gesturing at Isabela, "this is Ms. Arrellano. She is going to be your new English tutor. Ms. Arrellano, meet EXO."