Jessica smiled as she looked down at the kid in front of her. He was so cute, she felt like she had to . Starting to wave the Korean flag in front of him, she almost laughed when she saw the bewildered look on his face. She was in such a good mood—today had been great. Their performance of Hoot had gone well, and she was having lots of fun fooling around with all her friends.

Suddenly, Jessica flinched as she felt a hand brush up her side, feeling her up. Quickly drawing her arm back in reflex, the smile immediately fell off her face. Had that been on purpose? She couldn’t discern, and now the MC was trying to hand her the mike. Grabbing the mike, Jessica smiled reflexively as her training kicked in. She couldn’t look uncomfortable—not on national television. However, once more, she felt hands on her, this time on her back side. Cringing, she looked back and saw the man had moved behind her earlier.

He was still quite close, so Jessica inched closer to Hyoyeon—as close as possible without looking suspicious. Then, she tried to hand off the mike to Sooyoung in order to have a route of escape. She couldn’t really move away with the mike—it’d be too obvious and there’d be too much risk that it’d be caught on camera. Sooyoung gave her a questioning look and asked her why she didn’t want the mike. Jessica couldn’t explain so she just glanced back at the man before smiling and beginning to give a speech. She tried to finish as quickly as possible, wrapping up with a quick bow.

After handing the mike back to the MC, the smile immediately fell of her face as she turned back to Hyoyeon, who was smiling and clearly unaware of what happened. All the other members seemed clueless as well, so Jessica took a deep breath and after a moment’s hesitation, started whispering in Hyoyeon’s ear.

“The man behind me keeps feeling me up,” she said urgently, a tone of desperation in her voice. She had to get away from him, somehow. Jessica saw the smile drop from Hyoyeon’s face, replaced with an expression of shock and disgust. Hyoyeon pulled Jessica in front of her and looked at the man who had been behind Jessica. She glared at him angrily, before turning her attention back to Jessica, who was now whispering into Sooyoung’s ear.

Sooyoung had noticed Jessica moving in front of Hyoyeon and asked jokingly why Jessica was moving towards Jonghyun. As Sooyoung learned what had happened, the smile instantly fell off her face. Meanwhile, Yuri was clearly curious about why all this whispering was happening, so Hyoyeon whispered into her ear what happened. They all stood in silent shock for a second before Hyoyeon grabbed Jessica’s hand.

“Let’s move back,” she said, “away from that creep.” The whole group retreated backwards, before regaining composure and once more smiling. The show wasn’t over yet. And now the perpetrator was far away—he escaped the instant he realized that Jessica was telling other people about it. Luckily, the cue was given for people to start leaving the stage.

Wanting to get away as fast as possible, Jessica grabbed Seohyun’s hand and flashed a quick smile to Minho, who seemed concerned at what he had overheard from their conversation. She realized that her actions had definitely not been as discrete as she hoped—almost all the members of SHINee clearly knew something was up, with Key and Jonghyun practically pacing the floor and Minho shooting her questioning looks. By the looks of it, they definitely got the general gist of what was up and were angry to say the least.

Jessica began to run off the stage, wanting to escape it all. Seohyun, who had been one of the still clueless members, was quite surprised when she was nearly dragged along. Luckily, as the rest of the members departed from the stage, others around them began to depart as a large crowd moving offstage.

Now it won’t look so strange, Taeyeon thought as she sighed in relief. She still had no clue as to why Jessica would want to suddenly take off running like that. However, she could hear see the distress on her face and decided that whatever happened was important enough to hurry backstage for.

Upon reaching their dressing room, Hyoyeon locked the door right away. The hairdressers, makeup artists, and other staff weren’t in the room, so it was just the girls. Now that there was no one to put up a front for, Jessica teared up. She suddenly felt weak, and her knees gave out as she fell to the ground.

“What happened?” Taeyeon asked softly, Jessica’s hair as the younger girl tried to stop herself from crying.

“That guy—the one standing behind me—he was feeling me up,” Jessica replied, her voice dwindling to a near whisper towards the end of the sentence. “I couldn’t tell if it was on purpose at first, but then…he did it again and I had to get away—I’m sorry.” The members who hadn’t known were shocked beyond words.

“What are you apologizing for?” Hyoyeon exclaimed, clearly the angriest of them all. “It’s not your fault he was a disgusting, erted old man. I would’ve clobbered him if we weren’t on TV!”

“Yeah, it’s not your fault Sica-unnie! I should have known something was up when he moved in front of me—I was going to say something because me and Seohyun were getting cut off from the rest of you but he…he looked important so I didn’t,” Yoona said. She then looked guilty. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice…he was right in front of me…”

“It’s okay,” Jessica said, blinking back tears. She tried to get herself back together. “I’m okay—really. I think I just…I just realized what really happened—that it really happened. But it really wasn’t that bad. It really wasn’t.” It sounded as though she was trying to convince herself of that fact, let alone the other members.

“You don’t sound okay,” Seohyun retorted. She could hear the distress in her unnie’s voice.

“I just—I need to take a walk,” Jessica replied, pushing her way past the other members.

“Wait, you can’t go by yourself. Not after what just happened! That guy is probably still roaming around!” Sunny protested, following her. However, Taeyeon caught the younger girl’s wrist and prevented her from following Jessica. Jessica didn’t even glance back as she almost ran from the dressing room.

“She needs some alone time,” the leader stated. “It’s okay, she’s a smart girl. She knows where is safe and where isn’t.”

The seven members remaining in the dressing room stared at the now closed dressing room door, hoping, above all, that Jessica really would be okay.