"Sunny! For 's sake, you can't keep doing this!"

 "I'm so sorry, Miyoungie-"

 "And don't. Call. Me. That."

 "Fine, Tiffany. I'm sorry okay. It's out of my hands!"

 "You can refuse to show up to a gala, Sunny. You can say no."

 "Miyou-" Sunny clears . "Tiffany... I can't. My dad set up a blind date for me and I can't just stand him up."

 "Why? It's just a blind date." Tiffany is not understanding the logic here.

 "In our circles, y'know, high society blah blah, if I don't show up that's like a huge you. I'd be risking my family's livelihood." Sunny explains it with her eyes wet and wide, like a puppy dog. It reminds Tiffany of a scam artist. She is not convinced. Sunny sighs and finally concedes:

 "I'll cover your lunch for the rest of the month."

 "Should've started with that," Tiffany mutters and stands up from her chair. It'd been nice sitting with Sunny and doing business, but work was about to start. "Your station is West wing third floor, right? Studios 47 to 78?"

 "Yeah, that should be it. There's someone else on bathroom duty, though, so you don't need to get those."

 "Awesome! Did Hyo assign the intern there? What'd she do?" Eh, work could wait, Tiffany could never pass up on gossip.

 "Apparently, she put a poster mock-up into the shredder. Heard the PR managers were pretty pissed about it since it was part of the pitch for a new artist." Sunny had shifts working as the janitor's assistant, so she was at the company building at reasonable hours to hear all the buzz. Tiffany only worked night shifts out of her volition.

 "I'm surprised she didn't get fired." One would expect such a mistake to be fatal. It's cutthroat in this industry, whether or not you actually work in it. Merely residing near its spaces, like as a cleaner, for example, was enough for it to sink its claws into your backside.

 "The artist did get signed in the end. That's probably the only reason why she didn't get fired asap. Besides, Hyo needs more work since Siwon and Yunho are quitting." Tiffany scrunches up her nose at that. "Don't be so negative. Not all celebs are bad, you don't even know them."

 "I don't need to know them to know them." She sasses back and turns around. "I'll see you next shift! You better have a blast at that gala thing while I cover your !"

 And that's how Tiffany ended up spending her Friday night. Cleaning almost the entirety of floor three. But it's no big deal. It's not like she had anything better to do. She'd probably be watching some late-night television, eating so many high-sodium foods her eyes would be swollen shut the next morning. Then she'd nod off on her couch with the television still on. Mundane and boring, just the way Tiffany liked it.

 She'd been just that for very long. She'd lived in SK since high school, she one could say she had acclimated quite well. She was a normal Korean woman, perhaps with better than average English skills, but other than that there was very little separating her from her peers. Perhaps that's why she hated celebs. They were so different from her, not to mention obnoxious and self-absorbed. She could vividly remember Byun Baekhyun calling her 'the cleaning ahjumma' a few months ago. He had handed her a cup her half-eaten noodles, smiling like he was doing a good deed. The interaction had ended with him dripping in broth, chiffon blouse thoroughly ruined. Hyoyeon, the cleaning team's manager, had taken the dry cleaner costs out of Tiffany's salary. She did not mind. The look of Baekyun's pretty, chiselled face coated in slimy noodles had been totally worth it.

 Maybe her trigger-happy temper was also a thing that made her a bit less than mundane and boring. Still, the memory makes her smile. Luckily she'd been assigned new stations, where Baekhyun would not frequent. Speaking of said stations, Tiffany checked her cart for all the needed supplies and made her way to the third floor. The janitor and cleaners' equipment was kept in the basement floor.

 She gets to work as the sun sets. She makes herself an entire pot of coffee to keep in a thermos. The people around her grow scarce. Not that she noticed them much, anyway. She didn't have friends in the workplace aside from Sunny. Her uncle owned the business that catered cleaning services to the company building. Their friendship had been a total coincidence, though. Tiffany had to admit knowing the big boss' niece was a huge plus. She probably didn't have a lot of work friends also because of the whole Throwing Noodles On Byun Baekhyun Thing. That had severely lost her approachability points. But Tiffany didn't need friends like that. She was boring and mundane. Mundane and boring.

 As the night dims to inky darkness and the silence grows loud, Tiffany decides some music is in order. No one's around and the night guard couldn't care less. The other cleaners have already finished, but since she has Sunny's section to cover, she has to stick around for longer. She pulls out her iPod and earbuds. She looks for a good song for a while but eventually finds exactly what she needs. There's nothing better than to vacuum to the smooth beats of 90's rap.

 "It was a clear black night, a clear white moon, Warren G was on the streets, trying to consume... Some skirts for the eve, so I can get some funk. Just rollin' in my ride, chillin' all alone." She raps to herself, the mellow but funky beat of Regulate by Warren G rushing through her. It feels like home all over again, memories so far away but still so vivid. As the songs switch, ranging from the 90s' to early 00s', all hip-hop or R'n'B, Tiffany makes good progress on Sunny's behalf of the third floor. She works tirelessly for what feels like mere minutes when in reality it was most of her 5-hour playlist. The sky turns lighter by the hour. But she keeps singing:

 "Here I go, here I go, here I go again." She ads the adlibs as well."Again? Girls, what's my weakness? Men! Ok then, chillin', chillin', mindin' my business — word!" She's not entirely sure how she ended up rapping Shoop, but it's not like she's complaining. She knows the lyrics word by word, so as she cleans studio 56, she has no qualms confidently reciting them.

 "Yo, Salt, I looked around, and I couldn't believe this," She sprays some chemicals on a small coffee table and wipes it down. "I swear, I stared, my niece my witness. The brother had it goin' on with somethin' kinda... uh..." She takes the small vacuum cleaner and cleans up the corners. "Wicked, wicked ooooh — had to kick it. I'm not shy so I asked for the digits." She sways her hips and bounces to the beat all the machine up crumbs from the producer's chair. She's blissfully unaware of a peeping tom listening to her little performance.

"A ho? No, that don't make me. See what I want slip slide to it swifty. Felt it in my hips so I dipped back to my bag of tricks." She gets braver as she gets deeper into the verse, the lyrics so good, Sandy's style so effortless and — Tiffany could live in this song. She switches out the plastic bag in the bin.

"Then I flipped for a tip, make me wanna do tricks for him. him like a lollipop should be . Came to my senses and I chilled for a bit. Don't know how you do the voodoo that you do. So well it's a spell, hell, makes me wanna shoop shoop shoop..." She finishes the verse with a shake of her hips. She turns back to her cart to get the watering can so she could treat the plants in the room some loving. But there's someone leaning on it.

 "Oh..." Tiffany doesn't know what to say. She should probably be embarrassed, but she's too tired and too high on caffeine to react like a human being. 

"Good evening." She says instead, retrieving the watering can as if nothing happened. She will with utmost certainty die of humiliation tomorrow, but for now, she couldn't care less. She needs to get this done and then she can go home and sleep. Even if hip-hop was keeping her alive and having fun, her fingers were numb with the number of coffee stains she'd had to clean up. Not to mention the mysterious stain on the corridor wall past the office spaces...

 "Good evening." The stranger is a pretty woman. Actually, an exceptionally pretty woman. Tiffany takes a double-take. "You're pretty good." The woman says, her lips plush and pink. Wow. 

 "Just doing my job." Tiffany replies and the stranger laughs. It reveals a straight, white row of teeth. Tiffany's sure this woman could do an ad for Colgate like it's nothing.

 "Not your cleaning! The way you rapped there. Though, from what I can tell, you're really good at cleaning too." She winks and Tiffany, tired and delirous, flirty by nature, matches her energy.

 "I'm multi-talented, what can I say?" The Pretty Stranger, a name Tiffany had coined just now, laughs again. Tiffany has to join her because it's so contagious. She sounds like an old woman.

 "What's a pretty girl like you, with rapping skills nonetheless, doing as a cleaner? For all I know, you could be on my side of the business." Ah. So she's a... At that exact moment, Tiffany loses the desire to talk to this person. She's an idol, or a singer or whatever. She's a celebrity. Even if she's not famous, she wants to be and that's almost as bad in Tiffany's books. She grows cold and the pretty lips and loud laugh suddenly aren't as charming.

 Silence stretches on and the Pretty Stranger's smile falters. Tiffany's glad for it.

 "I dunno... Perhaps I didn't want to waste my life showing myself off so someone could love me and be obsessed with me even if it was all superficial and meaningless." She says, the sentence unnecessarily long and complicated. Pretty Stranger winces back, surprised by the sudden shift in atmosphere.

"Maybe I wanted a normal life." She pushes the cart past Pretty Stranger, almost bumping into her, and stares her down. She's clearly shocked and doesn't say anything back. Tiffany is pleased with herself.

 "But since you're not very smart, considering your career choices, I'll put it in simpler terms." She lifts her hand, flipping the bird blatantly in Pretty Stranger's face. She wiggles it and giggles fakely, a smile too sweet to be saying what she just said.

 "Sit on it and spin." She says just as sweetly, but her smile drops just before she turns her back. Next is studio 57. here's to hoping Pretty Stranger doesn't bother her anymore that night.

 (She doesn't. Tiffany isn't disappointed. She's actually relieved to return to her mundane and boring life. She really is.)

 (The more she repeats it, the less believable it gets.)