“Welcome, everybody, to Super Junior: Kiss the Radio!”

Those were the only words I understood before Eunhyuk lapsed into Korean too fast for me to understand. For a solid minute or so he talked into the microphone, Sungmin interjecting once in a while. I understood some of the words, but not enough to make total sense of what they were saying. Then Eunhyuk clicked on something on his Mac, and a song began to play as the two pulled away from their microphones to talk quietly to each other.

I could only imagine what they were saying. Probably something like, “Why on earth was this girl dumped on us?” They sure were glancing at me a lot, enough for me to not be able to focus on the book in my lap again opened to ‘Basic Conjugation.’ That, and the song blaring from the speaker on the wall was pretty distracting too. And the aching hunger in my belly. And the burning flower carved into my back. I inwardly groaned at all the distractions, feeling strangely like I was at an amusement park, trying to take in everything at once.

I slyly leaned my head on one hand and plugged that ear with one finger, trying to tune everything out and read, until Sungmin gently tapped on my shoulder to get my attention. As I raised my head again, trying to hide my slight irritation, he pointed at the speaker on the wall, which was now screaming out, “I’m so curious, yeah!” “Shiny,” he said.

What? “Shiny?” I asked, flipping to the dictionary section of my book for the words I needed. “Song or…artist?” I read the Hangeul haltingly. Why on earth would a song or artist be called Shiny? Maybe it meant something else in Korean, but in English, it was a kind of strange and hippy-ish name.

“Artist. This song is Sherlock,” Sungmin replied slowly, allowing me to absorb the words. I nodded, then thumbed through my book again. “Like ‘Shine’?” I fumblingly asked in Korean, my finger on the strange word.

Sungmin’s eyes widened in surprise, and he let out a laugh. “What? No!” He produced a piece of paper and pen from nowhere and wrote something on it. “Shiny,” he said, pointing to the piece of paper.

SHINee

“Oh.” I felt dumb; there was still so much for me to learn about Korean music, I supposed. Inclining my head, I said, “Thank you,” in Korean as the speaker blared out, “SHINee’s in the house! Wooh!”

As the SHINee song ended, Eunhyuk clicked again on something else, and another song started to play as the boys huddled together to talk again, leaving me to listen. This song had a much slower beat, and the girls singing it sounded really sad. I could feel my eyebrows furrowing as I listened. Although I couldn’t understand the Korean, I picked out random English phrases like, “I don’t know,” “Baby I’m sorry,” and “Lonely.” Then the chorus started. “Baby I’m so lonely, lonely, lonely.” Interesting; maybe that’s why the girls sounded so sad?

I leaned my head on the back of my chair and brought my knees to my chest, closing my eyes. The song was so beautiful. The girls sounded so heart wrenchingly sad, they had so much talent. I wished I could sing like that…

“Mom, mom, look!” I squealed, dashing through the house, a piece of paper grasped tightly in my little fist. “Mom, look what I did at school today! Mom!”

I sprinted around the corner into the kitchen, where my mom was always waiting for me after I got home from school. But my feet pattered to a stop as I rounded the corner and saw an entirely different person waiting for me. The piece of paper in my hand dropped, fluttering slowly to the ground.

Mary grinned. “So, little girl. What did you do at school today?”

My breath caught, and my hands trembled as I slowly knelt to pick up the piece of paper. I showed him the big ‘3^rd Place, Congratulations!’ printed on the front. “I got third place in the classwide singing competition at school,” I meekly squeaked out.

He looked at it in distain. “Third place? Third place? That’s all you could do?” I jumped as he slapped the paper out of my hands and watched it fall back to the floor. “I knew you were no good.”

I was stunned. After all the hard work I had put into memorizing my favorite song, after overcoming my stage fright and singing in front of thirty-five of my classmates, and after receiving third place, I was no good?

Anger sparked in Mary’s eyes. “Third. Place!” he practically screamed at me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking me. “Third place isn’t winning, girl! It’s saying that you were good enough to win, but you didn’t put. In. The. Effort!”

My lip trembled. “B-but I did!”

“Yeah? What were you doing last night when you could have been practicing?”

My breath hitched in my throat, and my answer came out as a whisper. “Playing a game with Henry…”

Mary huffed and released me. “You can’t sing worth , little girl. Third place isn’t first place. Third place is loser’s place. Third place is I-can’t-sing-worth--like-other-girls place. And Henry made sure that you can’t sing. You can’t sing, so don’t bother.”

I bowed my head. “I guess not.”

“Rynnie dear? Who are you talking to?” my mom’s voice said as she walked into the kitchen.

 I whipped around and tried to put on a brave face. Out of the corner of my eye, I could tell that Mary had disappeared. I gave my mom a big hug. “Mary.”

She chuckled, squeezing me tightly. “And what was Mary saying?”

I wiggled out from her embrace and bent down to retrieve my certificate, showing it to her. “He said I could have done better.”

She laughed again and tousled my hair. “Wow, third place! Great job, honey! How about cookies to celebrate? I made chocolate chip cookies while you were at school.” She bustled around the island and took out a hidden plate of cookies from behind the knife rack.

My heart sunk. Mary had banned me from eating cookies just last month. “But, third place isn’t worth celebrating! Mary said I could have done better!”

She turned and gazed at me kindly. “Rynnie, what your imaginary friend says isn’t important. It’s what I think that is important. Now, come have a cookie.”

My eyes suddenly opened, my mind in a fog. I must have fallen asleep. Someone was shaking my shoulder and saying my name with a heavy Korean accent, “Taelyn? Taeeelyyn!”

I pulled my cheek off the arm of the chair, groaning. “I’m up, I’m up! Sorry!” What I was sorry for, I wasn’t aware of yet. Shivering in the cold and groggily blinking to dispel the sleep in my eyes, I saw Sungmin over in the corner, grabbing coats and such, and Eunhyuk right over me, looking at me with a gummy smile. My eyes widened. Did he kiss me or something? Why was he looking at me so weirdly? Suddenly I felt very unsafe, trapped in a room with two guys I didn't know very well. I instinctively tried to back away, which a feat difficult to accomplish in a chair, as I learned.

Eunhyuk laughed and extended a hand to me, saying something in Korean to Sungmin. I warily took his hand, still not entirely sure if he had tried to kiss me or something, and stood, the muscles in my cramped legs screaming. Sungmin threw me my coat, for which I was grateful; why was it so dang cold in here?

As I pulled on my coat and put my book back in my backpack, I asked Eunhyuk, “What are we doing now?”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eunhyuk’s face go blank and his hands go still in the middle of putting on a coat. Then I realized I had spoken in sleepy, extremely-hard-to-understand-because-it’s-so-slurred English. I cleared my throat and asked again, much slower and more clearly, “What are we doing now?”

There we go. His face relaxed, and he said in halting English, “We go home now.”

I nodded. Home, even if it was just the Super Junior dorms, sounded like an amazing place to be right about now. I hoped there was food and heat.

~~~~~~

Hey guys, and happy New Year! I hope you liked this chapter, please subscribe and leave a comment if you did :) By the way, the second song played after SHINee's "Sherlock" is 2NE1's "Lonely", just in case you didn't know. I wanted to do T-Ara's song "Day by Day", but the release date of that song didn't correlate correctly with the setting of this story :(