Chapter Six

Saturday came early for the four. They had all woken up over an hour before their alarms were set to go off and met in the living room. They were all too anxious to be grumpy or tired from waking up early. Aaron was sitting on his mother’s lap as they talked through the sequence he was going to have to work through. Usually he would be annoyed that she was talking him through something they had discussed every day for the past two weeks, but the nerves had set in and he was listening attentively.

A short time later, the girls decided it was time to get dressed. They all had matching outfits all in their individual colors. Each girl had a sleeveless dress made of jersey material that came up to their mid-thigh and flowed easily with movements. Lily’s dress was a bold red and had a grayscale photo of Park Choongjae. Briley’s dress was a royal blue with a grayscale Mun Junghyuk. And Nik’s dress was olive drab with Jung Pilkyo’s grayscale photo. They each had a faded denim jacket and solid black Converses. On the back of their jackets was Shinhwa’s logo bleached into it.

Nik stood behind Lily in the bathroom as she curled her friend’s hair, taking care to make sure that the curls would hold up to the long meet. When she was satisfied, they changed positions and Lily gave the Texas girl similarly soft beach waves. Afterwards, Nik took a straightener to Briley’s shoulder length hair to calm her extremely curly hair, giving her blue hair light waves to match the older two girls.

Lastly, Nik shoved her son into the bathroom to fix his hair. He was wearing a fanmade (by his mother) Shinhwa Jersey with Sunho’s photo on it and black basketball shorts. She tousled his hair to give it a messily styled look.

It was two hours before they were scheduled to start, so they made their way down for sound checks and run over everything that they had planned.

Sadly, time flew by for the everyone. Forty-five minutes before they were planning to start, they could hear people outside the doors. “This is really happening. I can’t believe this is happening. We are actually doing this. Oh my gosh,” Briley said.

 They were all nervous and excited and a bit nauseated. Fifteen minutes before they were to start, Aaron went to open the doors and let everyone in while the girls stood up on stage huddled and going over the order of events one last time.

Despite Nik’s OCD about punctuality, they waited an extra five minutes before they started. Nearly every seat was full. There were over three hundred people that had showed up to come see them. Aaron finally took his place at the back of the room where they had set up the computers that controlled sound and recording. He dimmed the lights other than the stage lights and hit the first song, Wonder Girls’ Like This started playing and the girls began dancing and singing. The crowd was singing along with them and hyped up.

After the song ended, everyone cheered excitedly. Once they could get the crowd quieted down, Nik began to speak. “Oh my gosh where did y’all come from? There are so many of y’all out there!”

“We want to thank everyone for coming out to our little event. We know that there are a lot of things going on across the street,” Lily said.

“But at least it’s nice and cool in here,” Briley laughed. Everyone laughed and cheered at that.

“Ok, well I guess y’all know, we are Fangirl Friday. I’m Nik from Texas.” Some cheers.

“I’m Lily from the Philippines and New York.” More cheers.

“And I’m Briley! Obviously from Es!” More loud cheers.

“Lastly, back in the back is my son, Aaron. He’s running everything for us today.” Aaron waved shyly from behind the computers. They continued talking for several minutes, discussing everything that they had done over the previous week and what it was like finally getting to meet long distance friends for the first time. It was time to sing and dance some more. They went through two more songs, We by Pristin and Got7’s Hard Carry.

“So tonight, there are some great performances, right?” Lily asked. “We just did my babies’ song, We. Who’s looking forward to seeing them tonight?” There were a lot of yells. She then turned to Briley, “Who are you most excited to see tonight?”

“You know I’m looking forward to VIXX,” Briley laughed. “What about you?” she turned to Nik.

“Well you know how much I love VIXX, but for tonight I am most excited to see FT Island.”

“Always the older group stan,” Briley picked at her.

“But of course, I am an old lady after all.” Everyone laughed. She was only 29 and looked like she was still in her early to mid-twenties. “So, we talked about tonight, which is sure to be amazing. But we can’t forget about the amazing show that’s going on tomorrow night.”

“There are some great groups set for tomorrow night. Who’s excited for KARD?” Briley asked the audience. Lots of loud cheers.

“What about Oh My Girl?” Lily asked. Loud cheers.

“And who can forget our legendary first generation men,” Nik started, and her friends shouted with her, “SHINHWA!!!” It took a few minutes for everyone to settle down before the girls could continue. They talked about the concerts for a few minutes, discussing the first music videos and songs they had heard from each group set to perform.

They set up for their next songs. They performed Hola Hola from KARD and BoA’s Camo. Nik walked to the back to get the girls water and a towel while Briley started talking to the audience again.

“So, as you know, this is our first time meeting in person.” She took the water from her friend. “And I’ll be honest, we haven’t discussed this yet.” She then turned to look at her companions. “What was your first thought when we met in person?”

“Your accent,” Lily and Nik said in unison, and the crowd began to laugh.

“You act like you don’t have accents! I can barely understand Nik sometimes when she gets overly excited.”

Nik then stuck her tongue out maturely, gaining more laughter. “I know I have an accent,” she said, pushing out a stronger southern drawl than she uses normally. “But I’m from the sticks, back woods East Texas.”

When it was time, the girls started the next group of songs. Oh My Girl’s Cupid, VIXX’s Chained Up which had the whole audience shouting out the lyrics and doing the dance, and Miss A’s I Don’t Need A Man. While they performed, Aaron went down close to the stage with a mic and a box.

“Alright, the next part is a little bit of Question and Answer. As you came in, everyone was told that they could drop a question into the box. Aaron, if you will, please read the first question.” Lily motioned with her hand for him to start.

“Alright, first question goes to all three of y’all. And I could answer this for y’all,” he laughed. “But I won’t. Do any of y’all have a boyfriend?”

The audience laughed. “That is a big NEGATIVE” Nik answered.

“We are all currently single and have been for a good while,” Lily continued. “Next question?”

“If you could spend time with any actor, who would it be?”

“Ou, that one’s hard.” Nik frowned in concentration as they all thought for a few minutes. Before starting, she looked to see if her friends were ready to answer. “I think if I could spend time with any actor, it would have to be Jet Li or Donnie Yen. Yes, I am choosing two. I love their movies and they are true martial artists. I would love to learn something from them.”

“I would definitely choose either Peter Sudarso or Master Mike Chat,” she turned and laughed. “I may get to meet Mike Chat next week actually. He’s in Nik’s Taekwondo organization.” Nik nodded and everyone cheered. “What about you, Lily?”

Lily stopped and thought for another minute. “I think it would be awesome to meet Daniel Radcliffe. I have had a crush on him since I was like nine.”

“Ahh, good choice, I like him,” Nik agreed.

Questions continued, varying from silly to very personal. During the last question, Aaron made his way back so he could start the next set of songs. He had a wicked smile on his face. They were supposed to perform the last three songs consecutively, but Lily had conspired with him. They performed Shinhwa’s Hurts and Venus together, Lily singing Minwoo’s parts and Choongjae’s singing parts, while Briley sang Pilkyo’s and Dongwan’s parts and Nik took all of the rap lines.

Nik was getting set for the last song when Lily started speaking. “Alright, so we would like to interrupt our concert for something very special.” Nik looked over at her friend confused. “What Nik doesn’t know is that I had something set up after reading all of your suggestions two weeks ago.” She walked back to the mystery blanket in the back and pulled it off, revealing two cinder blocks and a two-inch thick concrete brick.

Nik sighed and looked at her friend. “You have got to be kidding me,” she said while Briley started laughing her off. Nik ran her hand through her hair and shook her head in shock.

“Definitely not kidding. Mind setting this up correctly? I looked up what you needed to do a brick break, but I think you are more adept at setting this kind of thing up,” Lily looked so proud of herself for this surprise.

“I can’t break,” Nik thought suddenly. “I’m in a dress. If I dropped down in this, I would flash the audience!” She was still looking apprehensively at the brick even as she managed an excuse, but her son was soon running up the stage with her white dobok pants. “Traitor,” she mumbled to him before he ran back to his spot by the computers, but it was picked up on her microphone and the audience laughed. Nik then took the blanket that had been covering the bricks and held an end each to her friends so that she could pull on the pants without the chance of wardrobe malfunction.

Lily talked as her friend set up for her break. “So, has anyone ever seen a live brick break?” she asked. There were a few yesses in the audience, but there was an overwhelming sense of ‘no’ throughout. “I have only seen her do this once in the video she posted from the demo her dojahng had put on. What are you going to break with?”

Nik shot a glare at her friend, then smiled nervously out at the audience in front of her. “I’m going to break with a palm heel.” She bit her lip and checked the setup once again, ensuring that it was stable and not just going to fall over when she hit it.

“Alright, so we are going to have a countdown starting with three,” Briley said. “Are you ready?”

Nik closed her eyes and nodded after she turned her microphone off and made her friends take an extra step back. Briley put her hand in the air, holding up three fingers. Everyone began to count together.

“THREE! TWO! ONE!”

Nik then dropped down, throwing her right palm into the center of the brick as she yelled loudly, splitting the brick in half. She stood and bowed to the audience as they yelled and clapped.

After they got the mess cleaned up quickly, it was time for their closing song. “We would like to thank everyone for coming out to see us. This is our last song, so we hope you enjoy,” Lily said.

Super Power started, Nik speaking out Junghyuk’s part. They danced and sang out their parts, but in the back people were coming out of the weird room with the stairs. It was obvious very quickly who had come out to the girls on the stage. Aaron, being the brilliant child that he was, quickly gave the six men the spare microphones to connect onto themselves.

By the second chorus, there were now six male voices along with the girls, and the men were dancing in the aisle. Nik looked at her friends right before Sunho’s rap started, and then gathering all of the courage that she didn’t know she had, jumped down to rap in front of the original rapper. The other two girls quickly followed suit as Choongjae and Nik were basically in each other’s faces rapping and dancing in tandem. The song ended with a high that no other could match.