Gyuri was bewildered when I told her about what happened. She seemed more disappointed in herself than in the fact the guy was an . “Aish, I should have known.”

“Unnie its ok…”

“No it’s not!” Gyuri then went into drama queen mode, “stupid, stupid, stupid.”

“We need to pack,” we’d both forgotten that we were flying back to Japan tomorrow morning. Thankfully Seungyeon reminded us of this as she entered without notice.

“Yah we still have time!” Gyuri argued. I then went off to do exactly this as the two bickered. They were like an old married couple sometimes, except we didn’t know who was the man out of the pair.

I knew she felt bitter about it. Gyuri was very independent and strong, if he had tried anything with her she would have been more than likely to yell at him. I on the other hand was not as confident as she was.

May 10

We slept on the plane as we flew to Japan; it was going to be a tough several months in the foreign land with the schedules starting to pour in. After we filmed an appearance for Arashi’s Homework in a video message we would then start the numerous show cases and hand shake events that were to follow.

At the end of the past two days we were exhausted. We’d treated about eight thousand fans at the Grand Prince Hotel and a day later it had been three thousand at the Yokohama Minato Mirai hall. For the rest of May and half way through June three hours of sleep, a meal maybe once or twice a day if we were lucky became part of the norm.

The harder part was contact with family. I had to stay awake at weird times just to say a few words to my parents, my grandma and even friends. Seungri told me that the next time I was in Korea he could introduce me to a boy band member that he’d recently become friends with.

***

9 August 2010

“Alright are we ready?” We nodded to the producer. He then started to play the music as we started to sing around the microphone.

“Cut,” we’d barely even started.

“Someone’s out of tune,” the girls all then inclined their heads to me. My face fell. I hated being singled out like this. The producer politely gestured for me to come out.

“Hara, come out for a bit please,” I did as he asked. For about five minutes in the sight of the others he got me to do vocal warm ups.

“Alright try it again,” he patted me on the shoulder as I was hustled back into the booth. The girls were impatient, I didn’t blame them. We were all tired. Gyuri nudged me and mouthed to me to stop pulling a face. I gave a quiet sigh and we got back into it.

“I know you’re stressed,” began Gyuri’s lecture to me later that night as we were settling down in our dorm. “But snap out of it, we have to do well here!”

“But I hate it here,” I groaned letting my head fall against my pillow.

“You what?!” Gyuri exclaimed yanking my pillow out from underneath me. My head hit the mattress. I abruptly sat upright.

“I miss my family, speaking our birth language, kimchi and…”

“Stop it now!” Gyuri yelled looking as if she was going to murder someone.

“Unnie,” I was starting to get frustrated myself. “Please, can we go back...”

“Not until we’re finished here! We still have another three weeks before we return.” To our surprise we heard the creak of the door opening. A bleary eyed Jiyoung and Nicole came in.

“Unnie, what’s going on?” Jiyoung asked as Nicole came to my aid hugging me firmly.

“You made Hara-yah cry,” Nicole added. I wasn’t even aware of this until she said it. My hands went to wipe my slowly falling tears.

I’m starting to come across a road block with this fanfic. Nothing too serious but it means I’m scraping around my brain for ideas for ‘filler’ chapters as you could call them. But here’s the first update for the week so I hope we like it, the next one will be on Friday