Even with the makeup Sei had put on her, Rina started getting paranoid about her hickey as they drove to their first event of the day.  She made Sei promise to stay on that side of her in case the makeup started to flake off.  It didn't help matters that the day's events were all close-up events:  A grand opening of a record store, lunch at a restaurant one of their seniors was opening, a podcast interview, a fansign, and then an appearance on a cooking show.

Suyeon spent the ride to the first event trying to get up the nerve to talk to Lua.  She knew she'd said absolutely the wrong thing the day before, and she wanted to try to make things right.  She just wasn't sure how to start.  Finally, when she saw they were only about 10 minutes away from their destination, she knew she had to do something now or never.  She reached up to the seat in front of her and tapped Lua on the shoulder.  Lua turned around, and as much as she tried to hide it, Suyeon couldn't help but notice the fleeting expression of disappointment that crossed her face when she saw who wanted her attention.

Suyeon took a deep breath, in hopes of getting it all out before Lua shut her down.  "Lua, I just wanted to say again that I'm sorry about yesterday.  I didn't really believe those things about Jennie, and I don't believe them about you - or any of our members!  I was just talking without thinking first, which is a bad thing to do and I'm going to try to stop."  The torrent of words finally came to a stop when she ran out of breath. 

Lua thoughtful as she considered what Suyeon had said.  After taking several calming breaths, she looked Suyeon in the eyes.  "Suyeon, I believe that you're sorry, and I accept your apology.  But it's going to take some time for me to trust you the way I did before."  She stopped and looked down, thinking.  When she raised her eyes back to Suyeon's, her eyes were glistening.  "You're still my friend, and you're still my Leader Ji, but I just wish you'd never said those things, you know?"

Suyeon leaned forward to the limit of her seatbelt and hugged Lua.  "I wish that too.  I'm so sorry for hurting you like that."

Just then they heard their manager's voice from the front of the van.  "OK girls!  Last-minute makeup checks!  We'll be there in 3 minutes."

Suyeon disengaged from Lua and looked her over.  "Believe it or not, your makeup's still okay."

Lua surveyed Suyeon.  "Yours too!"  They laughed together, the tension apparently broken for the moment.

Just then the van stopped and they could hear the Ki-Lings screaming for them outside.

"Time to go!" Suyeon said, unbuckling her seatbelt and straightening her blouse.  "Okay everybody," she said, "these Ki-Lings have probably been waiting a couple of hours for us, so let's be sure to make it worth their while."

The record store appearance went great - virtually everyone there was a Ki-Ling, so even if they had screwed up, the crowd would love them anyway.  The lunch appearance was a little more challenging.  The audience there was mostly foodies, for whom the appearance of a K-pop group was at best irrelevant, and at worst a distraction from the ramen.  So they posed for selfies and signed autographs for anyone who approached their table, but spent most of their time just sitting there eating their ramen, trying to keep the focus on the food.  They must have been doing the right thing, because Nara-sunbae stopped by their table twice to thank them for coming and to tell them what a great job they were doing. 

The cast interview was shaping up to be the worst ever.  It was for an American podcast, so that meant that they had to have a translator for the questions and their answers.  The other downside of being interviewed for an American podcast was that the host didn't know what questions to ask and what questions not to ask.  So far, pretty much every question was something a Korean interviewer would never ask about:  Their dating ban, drug use among K-pop idols, their opinions on the LGBT community, Fantagio's business operations, Korean attitudes toward mental illness.  Finally, they got to the question they'd all known was coming, but they were all dreading.  "What are your thoughts about the Burning Sun scandal?"

Lua opened to say something, but Suyeon rushed and started speaking quickly before Lua had a chance.  "We have every confidence that the investigators will find the wrongdoers and bring them to justice.  But even more important, that they'll be able to clear the names of anyone who has been wrongly implicated in this affair."

Lua smiled and nodded at Suyeon.  Doyeon raised her eyebrows, impressed that Suyeon had beem able to come up with that on the spur of the moment.

The interview seemed content with this answer and turned the interview in a different direction.  "Back to dating for a moment, and I want to ask each of you this:  If you were a guy, which of your bandmates would you want to date?  Let's start with Lucy."

Lucy's eyes got wide - she hadn't expected the question to come to her first.  So far the interview had been questions that were all better answered by her unnies, and she'd been sort of drifting along, not really paying attention.  Now she started to panic:  Should she name Sei?  Or should she name someone else to call attention away from her relationship with Sei?  She looked back and forth from Sei to Doyeon, but failed to see anything in their faces that gave her any guidance.  She even looked at Suyeon, but saw nothing helpful there either.  She was about to open and hope that the first thing that came out would be acceptable when Yoojung spoke up.

"If Lucy was a guy," Yoojung was saying, totally drawing all the attention off of Lucy for the moment, "I would hope that she would date me.  Lucy is always so thoughtful, and so concerned about the feelings of others that whoever gets to date her once the ban is lifted is going to be very lucky."

Lucy looked at Yoojung and silently m