Two weeks passed extremely quickly. Everything went so fast that I still had a headache from it when I was finally standing in front of the building where HALO lived on the fifth and sixth floor. Before I gathered enough courage to go inside with my suitcases, I looked back on the road that I took to get here. After the meeting with Jungsu and manager Hyunsoo a lot of things happened. That night I got a call from Jungsu that he had some trouble convincing a few members of the awesomeness of my plan. He said he would get back to me as soon as possible and canceled our meeting for the next day. I had the feeling reality finally and came to tear my dream apart, but after three days of depression I finally got another phone call from Jungsu, who told me that he got all the members of HALO to unanimously vote in favor of my blog. That night I cried from happiness so much that I felt like there wasn’t a drop of water left in my body.
In my head thousands of scenario’s developed about that one moment where I would finally shake hands with Minho, my bias. I hadn’t met him or any of the other HALO members yet, but I did meet with Jungsu a few more times. We had lunch, coffee, another lunch and finally, two days ago, he invited me to the office to sign the contract that we had carefully discussed.
I didn’t get any salary, but MFK would take care of all my expenses considering clothing, food, and anything else I needed to live a life among HALO as their bloggirl. On top of that I got an awesome insurance from them. I got one month probation and a goal that I had to achieve. Before the month ended I needed to have a stabile visitors rate of at least a thousand views a day. If I failed, they would arrange for me to return to Kyung Hee University to continue my study and graduate there as a major Journalism and Communication. If after a month the blog would still be running and successful, I would become a real employee. If somehow HALO got disbanded or if they would decide to retire after a few years, I would get a new job within the company, probably in the promotion department. There were only a few reasons for them to be able to fire me. First of all I wasn’t allowed to ever write about the dating lives of the members. MFK had this very strict rule that none of the members were allowed to date anyone during their time as active idols, or at least not in a way that the public or the company would know. If they got caught, they would have to pay a fee that was as big as their whole year salary. So writing about their dating lives was a no go, because that would mean I could pack my bags and they would not even give me a penny to start a new life with. The other rule was that I wasn’t allowed to date any of the guys, but I wasn’t really planning on doing that anyways so that shouldn’t be a problem. I was perfectly capable of being a professional objective journalist that would NOT fall for her subjects. And even if I did, I would never want a relationship that had to be so secretive.
So yeah I got the perfect contract. Nothing could absolutely go wrong.
There was one requirement that the opposing members needed to support the plan. I could only follow one of them around at the time, one member a week. This way they would still have their privacy with the exception of that one week. Because there were eight members, that would give them seven weeks of privacy and one week of me bothering them from morning till night. Of course I would still be their housemate and whenever they would be with the member I was following at that moment they would still meet me, but at least they would still have their freedom. It was a nice rule, because this way I could easily focus on stuff as well. Following eight members around at the same time would have been extremely confusing and tiring. It was better this way.

And here I was. The contract was signed and stamped and whatever. Today was the day I would move into the dormitory and I was nervous as hell. I heard that Minho and Taekyu had to share a room now to give me one of theirs, as well as Donghae and Hyukjae. I would start at the dormitory on the fifth floor where Youngmin, Donghae, Hyukjae and Jungsu were living. Minho, Taekyu, Tabi and Shinwoo lived on the sixth floor. I felt guilty because the members had to share rooms now because of me but Jungsu assured me that none of them minded it. Taekyu and Minho were practically glued together already anyways, so they wouldn’t notice any difference at all. For Donghae and Hyukjae it was the same story.
Secretly, I really liked the idea of Donghae and Hyukjae sharing a room together. They were always so close with each other that a lot of Angels (HALO fans) shipped them together as a couple. Lately it seemed that they noticed this because they started to do fanservice on stage. Not that they did anything more than hugging each other once in a while, but it still worked. When I got this job I decided that one of my purposes would be delivering even more ‘Hyukhae’ moments to the shippers.
These whole two weeks I had done nothing but fantasizing about what was going to happen after this very moment of standing here in front of the dormitory, and now that the time had come I kept procrastinating. I glanced at my watch and noticed that I was already late. I had to go inside before they would come out to get me. The moment of meeting my bias was finally here.
‘I can do this,’ I whispered to myself. Slowly, step by step, I walked to the front door and entered the hallway. I took another five minutes before I finally pressed the button next to the mailbox with number 507. Ten seconds later the familiar voice of Jungsu welcomed me. There was a buzzing sound and the door in front of me opened. A bit clumsy because I was carrying two enormous suitcases I entered the next hallway that led to the elevators.
While I was making my way up to the sixth floor my heart started to beat really fast. I was sweating all over and felt like a bomb could explode in my stomach any minute now. I had never been this nervous before. Something in my system told me to go back down and run away as far as I could, as if this job would be my death. Maybe it would be, I mean I was already freaking out so much and I hadn’t even met the members yet, apart from Jungsu that was one of my least favorite members. The idea of facing Hyukjae, Donghae, Taekyu and my favorite member Minho nearly killed me already.
The doors of the elevator opened on the sixth floor and I stumbled into the hallway with my suitcases. At the end the door with number 507 on it opened and Jungsu’s smiling face appeared behind it. I smiled back, happy because the first face I saw was a familiar one that I could handle. But as I made my way through the hallway to the door Jungsu got pushed aside by an enthusiastic Taekyu that gave me a broad smile. His innocent puppy eyes stared at me and his babyskin made it very hard to believe that he was 21 years old, the same age as me. He was even more perfect than he appeared to be on stage. I loved his natural look, his casual clothing, the lack of make-up. He was the perfect maknae of the perfect group.
My face was glowing red and I had a very hard time moving forward. I wanted to act normal, so that they wouldn’t feel awkward like they often did when they met their obsessed fans on stage or at sign events… but I couldn’t help myself. I was fighting tears of happiness and sincerely hoped that they didn’t notice how glowing red my face was. I lost all the power in my arms and just left my suitcases in the hallway as I walked towards Taekyu and Jungsu and shook both of their hands briefly. ‘Thank you for letting me stay here,’ I whispered with that weird husky voice again. ‘No problem at all, we are glad to welcome a new member to our home!’ Taekyu said with his high pitched voice. His cheeks and his two big front teeth made him look like a hamster a bit, but it didn’t matter because he was still perfect.
My brain slowly processed what he just said to me. He called me a member. A MEMBER.
How could I not cry? How did I manage to just smile and nod politely?
I don’t remember because right at that moment a new person appeared at the front door that made the world stop for a second.
Minho glared at me. His eyes had a dark expression, probably because of his strangely formed eyebrows that made him look eternally evil. At that time I realized that he was probably one of the members that opposed my presence in the first place, but it didn’t matter.
I was completely hypnotized by his appearance and felt like I had reached heaven and hell at the same time.