“Today’s the day.” I smiled in the mirror as I looked on more time. Short, dark brown hair tied up in a pony tail, with a few wisps that helped circle my face, carefully placed eyeliner that brought out my grey blue eyes. This was most definitely not something I did very often. Carefully choosing my clothing, making sure I looked decent before I left. So why should I start acting as if I cared about my appearance now?

    Well it all started with my Best friend Charlotte and her friends online.

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    I swayed to the music of one of my favourite bands in the quiet solitude of my room. It was even my favourite song. I heard the creek of a door as someone entered. I opened one eye and eyed the shorter lighter haired girl that walked in. She had a hidden smirk of a secret on her face and I opened the other eye as I turned down SHINee’s A-YO.

    “Hello Charlotte.” I smiled as I turned to face her better, and she sat cross legged on the floor in front of me.

    “Mai, have you signed on to that site I told you about?” she asked with her smirk slowly growing.

    “No, not yet, why?” I asked as she tried to hold back a giggle.

    “I’ve found some friends on there I think you’d be interested in.” She smirked. I looked at her with confused eyes and she let loose one of her giggles at the sight. I raised an eye brow and she shook her head. “I’ll give you a hint, their a band.” She said. I still looked at her bewildered.

    “The Monkees?” I asked. I assumed that was wrong when she burst out laughing. I loved Charlotte, she was my best friend and like the sister I never had, but she certainly confused me when she did this.  “Okay, not them.” She dragged her left hand across her left eye to remove the moisture from laughing maybe a bit too hard.

    “I don’t think it’s their kind of site.” She said tearing up. “Another hint. there are five of them.” I looked at her sceptically, cuz there weren’t 25 million bands that have 5 people in them. She shook her head and walked over to my laptop and turned the volume up as it switched to Lucifer. I looked at my computer, listening to the song flow, then back to Charlotte, then the computer, then charlotte.

    “SHINee?” I asked sceptically. She rolled her eyes and nodded. I immediately felt the excitement in my chest rise to a high I didn’t know. My eyes widened. “Really??? SHINee is on that site?” I asked as I opened up a new web page. She laughed as I made an account and searched for them myself. And there they were. It felt almost as if the world wasn’t real.

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    “MAI!” I heard from the next room over as I slowly opened my eyes. It had been almost one year since Charlotte had convinced me of  getting that account on that site.  We had even gotten an appartment together, but the site had really had been worth it. I was always too shy to say much, but when I did they were so nice. I smiled with the thought floating around in my head.

    “Mai!” I heard my door burst open and I rolled over, not wanting to wake up. “Come on, You’ll like this news, I promise.” I heard her say. I groaned and covered my head with the thick white blanket and I could feel that she rolled her eyes at me before she grabbed the blanket and yanked it off, tossing it to the other side of the room. I crumpled myself up into a small ball and shivered before sitting up.

    “Okay Charlotte you win.” I yawned. She sighed once in amusement at my difficulties. She opened to start her news when I decided revenge on waking me up, was a great idea. My hand searched for the pillow, grabbed it, threw it -hitting her face- and then I had ducked into a ball again using my back a shield before she even got one word out. And as I had expected, the pillow was now in her hands as she made her pitch.  I laughed hysterically throwing two back. Pillow fights were great ways to start the day.

    After around 30 minutes of tiring nonsense pillow fighting, we both collapsed in exhaustion, from not only the pillow fighting, but the side splitting laughter as well.

    “So what was this news you wanted to tell me?” I asked in a short breathed sentence. I was still trying to gain my breath back.

    “That’s right, I was talking to one of the boys….” My eyes shot open and I cut her off.

    “Really? Who was it? Why didn’t you tell me sooner? Why are they never on when I am?” I sighed a sigh of mass defeat when I realised it was quiet. I looked back to Charlotte who gave me an amused look.

    “Done?” she asked. I smiled sheepishly and nodded. She smiled, shaking her head, “Anyways I was talking to one of them and their going to be doing a concert in LA next month,” She paused watching for my reaction. Which was the widening of my eyes for the 3 ½ hour away concert. She smirked again and continued. “So because I’ve been talking to this one for a year, he invited me to come down, see the concert and meet them.” My jaw dropped. A chance to meet SHINee.

    “Wait….what one have you been talking to for a year?” I asked confused of the lack of knowledge to this.    

    “I told you before, if you forgot, then it’s a secret.” she laughed, I pouted a glare at her. Nothing in comparison to the Almighty Key’s glare, but playful. “But he DID say I could bring a friend.” My eyes shot as wide open as I think would ever be possible.  Maybe further. “I don‘t know, who do you think I should invite?” She asked me with an over acted quizzical look. I stuck my tongue out at her and threw another pillow.

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    Now to where we are now. The day we’re leaving for Los Angeles, California. I took a deep breath looking again. Simple yet decent. Flared jeans and a white tank top.  Nothing to worry about.

    “What am I insane? Of course there’s something to worry about, this is SHINee.” I pouted to the mirror. I didn’t hear the door crack open as Charlotte walked up beside me putting a hand on my shoulder.

    “Don’t worry Mai, They’ll love us. We’re friendly, and fun and love to laugh. It will go great.” She said patting my back and walking away. “By the way, we’re leaving in thirty minutes.” She said as she exited the door.

    “THIRTY MINUTES?!?!” I shouted as I ran to make sure all my things were packed.


    Three point five hours later we found ourselves entering the big city of  Los Angeles.

    “Hey, Charlotte, where are we staying again?” I asked as we drove along the roads.

    “I have an aunt who lives around here, She’s away on a business trip this week, so I volunteered to house sit for her.” Charlotte smirked as she looked at me with a laughing expression.

    “I should have known.” I giggled.

    It didn’t take long at all to find the place, and it was pretty simple, yet large. The building was  brick and siding, your average mix of stuff. There was a white door almost in the center of the front of the house. The garage connected to the left side of the house and stuck out a bit further then the actual living part of the place did. We walked in the front door and on our right was a doorway -not a door- to the living room, which was rather large, on our left a closet, on the other side of that closet was the garage. Just past the living room doorway was a staircase that lead up to the second floor, where the bedrooms were. Just down the hallway was a door to the washroom on the left, another doorway - not door- to a dinning room, then a kitchen, a rather large kitchen. Up the stairs were three bedrooms. One was Charlotte’s aunts, the one we probably wouldn’t use, and one was Charlotte’s cousin’s room from when she lived there, the final a spare room. There was also a washroom up there, but the one with a shower - for some odd reason- was down here.

    “Why do I feel that’s going to be more trouble than it’s worth?” I muttered to myself as I slowly dragged the large green overnight bag in the door.

    “What was that?” Charlotte asked. I smiled innocently.

    “Oh nothing.” I said waving it off as I followed Charlotte up the stairs to the rooms.

    To make a long story short, she is using her cousin’s old room, and I had the spare room. I began unpacking and placing my week’s worth of clothing in different drawers, and some on hangers in the closet. My room - it seemed- was a pale pink with a  white wall paper border at the bottoms of the walls with small flower print. I smiled and looked up. One light in the center of the room, the room wasn’t large, but big enough for me. There was a queen sized bed in the center of the room with sheets that matched the colour of the walls. To the left of that a white dresser, on the left the small walk in closet. This was almost better than the room at home.

    As I finished my unpacking I walked to Charlotte’s room and noticed here’s almost identical to mine, just instead of pale pink, it was a pale yellow. I smiled.

    “They’re nice.” I said as Charlotte rolled her eyes and closed her closet.

    “How about checking our grocery situation.” She offered walking to the door. I stood for a moment in thought, waiting for her to turn around, when she did, I looked at her.

    “Good idea.” I nodded in mock of  maturity. I smirked. “Maybe we’ll go out and run into one of them.” I giggled.

    Charlotte rolled her eyes. “Or all of them.” she laughed, and when she stopped she corrected the wording for the reality of things. “I doubt we’ll see them yet.”  Charlotte said as she walked down the stairs. I looked to her in wonder.

    “Why?”

    “Well, we made plans to meet later this week, I don’t even know if their here yet.” She said as she opened the fridge door. She peered around, then closed it. “We should be fine most this week, but how about we go out for lunch?” She smiled as she picked up an envelope from the fridge door and let it swing as she held it between her thumb and first finger. The envelop read “Pay for house sitting” on it.

    “We’re getting paid for this?” I asked. She smiled that smirk again. I should have known. I laughed and we headed out for our first LA adventure.


    Some Adventure. We spend and hour in line at a McDonalds to get lunch, then had to leave cuz there was no place to sit. We wandered for a bit -left the car at the house and bussed and walked around- until we found this nice place to sit, it was in the sun, and was just a wall of cinderblocks that went up to my chest. The building it was connected to was built on top of the large cinder block patio and had a staircase leading to the doors. A hotel. We figured we’d be nice and eat in the back.
    The sun was warm and made the wait to eat worth it. The area to sit between the end on the large cinder blocks wasn’t too large. Charlotte sat with her back leaning on the building, and I was opposite her my back to the parking lot, with about an inche of space before the drop behind me, and our food in between us. Again a thought entered my head. ‘Why does this seem like more trouble than it’s worth.” I sighed and shook my head.

    We were talking about our future meeting and the excitement of it.

    “I’m telling you Mai, we’ll be fine. If you start to stutter or need help, I’ll push you.” She smiled. I laughed thanking her.  We laughed a bit, then Charlotte took a sip of her drink, and her eyes flitted to something behind me, I gave her a curious look. Her eyes widened and then in shock -I’d guess- and she spit out the mouthful of soda.

    Now I think it’s obvious that a situation like this doesn’t go all fine and dandy like how it would in a movie or on TV. No, She spit the drink out in shock, which shocked me, making me jump a bit, not much, but enough to sway me backwards where I couldn’t catch my balance.

    My arms swatted in the air in a swimming fashion as I tried to regain my balance. Unfortunately for me, things just don’t work out that way. So I continued in my backward direction as Charlotte tried to grab for a hand. She wasn’t able to catch one. I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable pain.

    To my surprise, pain never came. Instead I felt two warm and soft bars wrapped under my arms and a soft yet firm and warm solid surface behind me. I slowly opened my eyes and looked to where I last saw Charlotte, she was looking to something above my head in complete awe. I blinked twice in confusion before looking up to discover what she was looking at, or I guess who would be the more accurate term.

    Choi Minho. I looked at him a minute in bewilderment. He had a shocked panic expression on. No, this was not happening. I looked to my left, Key and Jonghyun. My cheeks began to redden as realization began to sink. The same expressions stood on their faces. I look to my right, Onew with that same expression, and….. and I remembered suddenly there was nothing below me and the rest of me dropped to the ground, my arms slipping out of the grasp Minho’s arm’s had on them.

    Luckily for me, I only landed on the softest part of me. So nothing was damaged too bad. I grimaced in pain anyways though.

    “Ow.” I mumbled. My eyes clenched again. This time when I opened them I looked up to see Charlotte looking over the side of the cinder block patio, Minho from behind me, and Key was the next face I saw with an out stretched hand to me.  I smiled sheepishly and took his offered hand. I could feel heat just steaming from my cheeks in embarrassment. What a fantastic way to meet these boys.

    “Are you alright?” Simple, but to the point.  I nodded. My response being the same as it would for everything as my hands found their way to my sore bottom.

    “Yes. Thank you. I’m going to have bruises I’ll never see, But I think I’ll live.” I smiled sheepishly. I looked to Charlotte who had her hand currently running through her hair as she sighed in relief. Then her eyes darted to me in worry. I darted mine to Minho and  back to hers in a plea for help. She smiled and looked to him as well.

    “Sorry about that. That was my fault. I guess I shocked her.” she giggled nervously. She then looked to what was my right and smiled kindly.

    “Hello. How are you?” She asked. I looked in the direction she did and my eyes landed on him again. My foot slipped and I jerked downward, this time catching myself. That ground was hard and painful, it wouldn’t get the best of me twice. I looked up and eyes were on me again.  I sighed to myself and stood up and leaned on the cinder block patio. Then looked at him once more. In all his glory, he was really there. I couldn’t get passed the bewilderment. My legs began to lose their strength and were ready to fall, but that was what the patio was for.  Safety guard.

    “Well, I’m Charlotte Lynn.” She smiled to them. “And that there, is my best friend, Mai Maddison.” She said pointing to me. I smiled and waved with my right hand as I leaned heavily on my left arm.

    “Mai, I don’t think I need to introduce you. But you wanted to know who I had been talking to on that site. I think you know who he is very well.” She smirked and my eyes were again on him. I nodded.

    “Lee Taemin.”