One of the reasons you initially came to Korea was because you were a huge fan of kpop. Likewise, so were Caitlin and Julia. Likewise so were a few other people in your exchange program.

In-between classes, and now work, you all got together and began to practice doing dance covers to your favorite songs.

Oneus’ Valkyrie, Twice’s Cheer Up, Gfriend’s Sunrise… You guys practiced dancing to it all.

You also all were pretty musically inclined and decided to sing along with it, just like idols would. Yes, wow, it screamed Koreaboo, but when your professor found out about it, she had been thrilled. It was apparently a great way for you guys to get in touch with Korean culture and practice your Korean.

So with the encouragement of your teacher and the backing of your fellow students who all secretly knew that this idea was a little bizarre you all got together one night to perform your covers.

You were not the most talented dancer, and you weren’t the most powerful singer, but you believed that when you put together both of those two aspects you were pretty good.

You worked hard at dancing so it made you a pretty good dancer in general and you were also a pretty good singer, you could hit the high notes that you needed to rather well and you enjoyed singing and dancing. So you tended to follow the vocalists.

Seoho, Jihyo, and Eunha.

You were in all three of the dances that you guys were performing.

A lot of people showed up. You hadn’t really expected a lot of people to show up.

Surprisingly enough you weren’t too nervous.

“Oh god, what were we thinking,” Caitlin breathed. You patted her back.

“Relax, you’re going to do fine,” you assured softly. Caitlin huffed out a nervous laugh.

“Shut up, what do you know? You never get nervous.”

Sometimes, when you were really anxious your entire body revolted against you. It transcended your body shaking and your reddening face. It transcended all of that and became this awful feeling like your entire body was alive, it’s own entity. Like… Electricity was running through your joints… Like you could barely take in a single breath because all you wanted to do was get up and run but no matter how hard and fast you ran you won’t be able to kill the feeling, because you don’t really want to run, your body just senses your stress and thinks that running is the best way to cure that.

You wanted to run… You wanted to run so badly.

“It’s going to be fine Caitlin. We’ve been practicing this for ages, and we’re really good,” you assured softly. You looked out at the crowd of people. You in a sharp breath.

There were so many people.

“You remember Callum?” You asked. Caitlin nodded. He was a friend of theirs. He was Korean and when you had all first met him you had hidden that you liked Kpop till the death because you were afraid that he would think that was the only reason you guys liked him was because you were interested in idols. He found out when he walked in on you guys practicing a dance once time for fun.

He had been so nice about it. He always told them that they were good dancers and politely corrected their Korean if it wasn’t very good.

“If Callum was as nice as he was, what makes you think anyone in this crowd will be really mean about our performance? This is just for fun. So don’t stress okay? Just have fun.”

Caitlin’s worried expression melted into a smile.

One down.

You went to every other student. Everyone was so nervous. You understood why. You really wanted to run but as one of the originators of this ridiculous idea, you had to help make sure that everyone was emotionally okay before you were. Part of the job of any person in a leadership position was to ensure everyone was happy and felt good about themselves. You may not be a leader but people came to you for emotional support, and whether good at giving it or not you were always willing to try and help soothe everyone’s nerves.

You were pretty sure the only reason that you noticed when people were nervous was because you were used to the way that you acted when you were nervous. You kept to yourself, your smile didn’t quite reach your cheeks… You could see everyone’s nerves. You taught yourself to recognize when people wanted to be heard because you knew how you felt when you weren’t heard. You took it on yourself to make sure everyone around you was okay because you hated how it felt when you weren’t okay and had no one around to help you feel better.

So once you finally made it through the whole group, encouraging everyone to relax and do their best, you had ten minutes to rid yourself of enough social anxiety to kill a whale.

You really wanted to run.

You started to jog in place.

“First concert?”

At this point, you were so used to his random presence that you weren’t even surprised that he was there.

“Not really… Kind of,” you replied.

“Let me guess, high school theater?” Jihoon asked.

“Ding, ding, ding.”

You both smiled in a silent greeting.

“Well, I’m excited to see you perform. You guys have a fanchant yet? Lightsticks?”

“Yeah, you just yell koreaboo throughout the entire performance,” you joked right back. Jihoon laughed at that.

“Look, you’re going to do great,” he assured you thoughtfully He let out a yawn, and upon doing so looked embarrassed. You sighed.

“Don’t tell me you haven’t been sleeping.”

“Well-”

“I’ve been eating three meals a day, plus snacks at night, and I don’t think I’ve eaten breakfast since middle school,” you complained. “The least you could do is get some sleep. Relationships are about sacrifice you know?”

“Relationships?”

Your heart skipped a beat. Had you really just said the two of you were in a relationship? You swallowed hard.

“Ah, sorry, I, um, I haven’t been sleeping myself honestly,” you admitted. “I’ve been tired and it means I don’t really think over what I say before it leaves my mouth-”

“I haven’t had a lot of female friends before,” he interrupted. The lighting wasn’t very good, but you could see the red tinge over the bridge of his nose, and this time you knew it was a blush. “And I’ve never had a girlfriend before.”

“So I hear,” you replied softly. He looked around at the crowd of people and held his hand out. He wanted something.

You weren’t really keen on people touching you. You liked it most of the time from people you were comfortable around, and you really liked hugs from most people. Sometimes however, you didn’t like touch. When strangers touched you it made you really uncomfortable, and sometimes you could feel the touch for ages afterwards.

When boys in particular touched you, you also generally became very uncomfortable. Consensual or not, you often got chills. You avoided physical contact with people as much as possible because of this and generally just told people that you were uncomfortable with touch because then they would just avoid touching you. You weren’t really sure exactly what about touch made you uncomfortable sometimes, so it was generally just safer to lead people to assume you didn’t like it at all.

You placed your wrist in his hand.

He was warm.

He pulled you away from the crowd and the lights and into a nearby alley that was dark and empty. You should have been scared. Sometimes even idols were bad people. You still weren’t.

Maybe you were just dumb and naive.

“If you’ve never had a friend that was a girl, or a girlfriend before… What am I?” You asked. Jihoon stared at you, a contemplative expression settled on his face. He offered no answer.

You leaned your back against the grimy brick wall and looked up at the sky.

“You can’t see the stars tonight.”

Jihoon hummed and his eyes trailed up as well.

“No.”

You pointed.

“Polaris should be there,” you stated softly. Your finger crossed the sky. “The big dipper there. Altair, there.”

“Right, you’re a bit of a space geek aren’t you?”

You smiled.

“You know things about me…” You laughed in disbelief. “Jihoon what aren’t you telling me?”

You were mostly joking but you also weren’t. A lot of things about him didn’t add up. From day one he had known more about you then you really thought he should have. You hadn’t really thought to mention it before but at this point you couldn’t help but say something.

“It’s nothing bad,” Jihoon assured. “And I’ll tell you soon. It’s just not time for you to know yet.”

Jihoon was getting closer to you as he spoke. At this point, he was so close that your breathes nearly mingled.

You had never imagined you would ever be this close to Jihoon. Never in a million years. His eyes flickered down to your lips…

You’d never had a real kiss before. You’d never wanted to kiss someone before.

There was even a moment in which a guy had tried to get to kiss you. He took you out away from all the people and harassed you about if you had ever kissed someone, and whether or not you were still a . He continued to ask you again and again. What would you do if I kissed you? Your only response had really been to not do it… At the time you had been really scared the guy would kiss you.

“You never answered my earlier question,” you murmured. “About our… Uhm….”

“You’re a first,” Jihoon responded. His hand was on your cheek… When had it gotten there? He moved it slowly to the back of your head and tentatively looked you in the eyes. He was being very soft. You didn’t think any guy had ever been this thoughtful around you before. He guided your face slowly to his and then before you could really form any coherent thought your lips were pressed against one another.

You had never wanted to kiss a guy before.

You had never really actually kissed a guy before either.

You were surprised to be able to say that it felt… Really good to kiss a guy.

“Hey, we are about to perform!”

Jihoon’s lips left yours in an instant, he ducked his head away from the person at the end of the alley… One of your classmates and you turned to face them, wiping your lips off on the back of your hand.

“Yeah,” you responded, your face burning in embarrassment. “I’m right there!”

You didn’t say goodbye to Jihoon.

You didn’t think about it until you were performing, and when you realized you should have said something to him before running off you were approaching your first main part in Oneus’ Valkyrie. The part right before the chorus where the fan chant went. Your first time singing in Korean before a crowd. You looked out into the crowd… If Jihoon was there… It was okay.

You took center.

Click. Click.

Your eyes fell on a phone in the crowd. You almost broke character. Behind the phone was Jihoon, smiling as he took your picture.

Everything was okay.

Oh, and for the record, he later told you that your performance was incredible.

And when you finally stopped performing you noted that you no longer had the urge to run…