Dara:

I didn’t go outside my room for the next three days after that incident with Jiyong at Mina’s birthday party. I didn’t even bother saying goodbye to the others properly; I couldn’t stop myself for sobbing so hard because I was hurting so much that I wanted to just explode into nothingness. If Jiyong didn’t even want to see someone who as according to him, dirty as me, then might as well disappear from his life and YGE completely.

The phone at home was ringing incessantly after that too, much to umma’s bewilderment. She wasn’t the type of mother who would get all inquisitive all of a sudden and she knew me best; she knew I was having some crisis and while she would always cook food for me and give me short but encouraging words in the days that followed, she didn’t bother asking what my problems were. And to me it was more than enough -- umma has a lot of problems to think about, I didn’t want to add up into it that much. My cellphone was unreachable as well. I didn’t bother charging the damned thing because I knew Mina and the others would bombard it with calls and text messages.

I’m wishing that I’d just disappear altogether one day. Or better yet, tomorrow. I was curling my body into a tight ball praying for the impossible when I heard a knock on my bedroom door.

“Who is it?” I answered weakly. Didn’t Sanghyun get my message last night? I said I want everybody to just leave me alone for a few more days.

“Durami.” The voice answered simply on the other side of the door. I bolted up straight, surprised. She’s back?

“Well, unnie. Won’t you open the door?”

I grudgingly pulled myself out of my bed and unlocked the door so she could go inside. She entered the moment I was just starting to pull the covers up my body, not wanting to see her with me looking more pathetic than usual.

“What are you doing there?” She asked, closing and locking the door behind her. “Did you seriously think that your problems would disappear by just locking yourself up?”

I sighed in irritation as I placed one of my pillows on my face. I don’t need this. And I’m not getting it from my younger sister, too.

I could feel Durami sitting on the chair in front of my dresser quietly, and at that moment I knew she wouldn’t leave until she gets her point across. Umma would always say that sometimes she feels frustrated for having stubborn children, and when it comes to being stubborn Durami was the worst; she was more stubborn that Sanghyun and me combined. I knew for a fact that this morning would be one of the longest mornings I’d have for this week. When Park Durami starts saying what she thinks, the only way to make her stop is to agree with her convictions completely.

“Unnie, I’m seriously tired of the phone ringing downstairs. I just arrived from Busan last Sunday and you very well know that what I did there was no walk in the park. I can’t even get a damn wink of sleep because if it’s not the phone ringing, it’s your friends calling your name outside our house that’s stopping me from getting a decent rest.”

I gasped the moment she mentioned friends supposedly visiting me, but I didn’t take the pillow away from my face. Who are those ‘friends’ Durami was talking about? Mina and the others?

“And oh, by the way. Sanghyun filled me in about what happened to you lately. I felt like we’ve been separated forever; the hell that you’re a YGE trainee now and that...you supposedly “fell in love” with BigBang’s GD. Talk about all this showbiz stuff we used to find so overrated, and weirdly enough you’re now a part of. Tell me about it.”

“I don’t want to Durami. In the future. I’m hurting so much right now.” I could care less if my voice came out muffled, my sister could interpret my reply any way she wanted.

“Right. You’re hurting. Like it would stop if you continued acting like a coward.”

This was the first time I heard her being that blunt to me, her older sister. I quickly pulled the pillow away from me as I faced her, completely surprised with the way she commented on my case. “What happened to you in Busan?!”

Durami slapped my arm playfully, laughing at my shocked and worried response. “Dang, unnie. Nothing happened to me in Busan. But it sure toughened me up.”

I stuck out my tongue at her. “If anything, you’re still the stubborn kid umma and I used to be so frustrated about.”

“Yeah, yeah, still am.” She moved the chair closer and grabbed one of my pillows to hug it while she placed her legs comfortably on my bed. “So tell me about you and your days as a trainee! I honestly didn’t see that coming! You’re gonna sing and dance?”

“Ugh. First things first, why did the words singing and dancing come out of your mouth as if you’re so disgusted with the idea of me doing it?” Only my sister could drive me this crazy, aside from Ji Eun. I knew she would get on my case hard once she knew that I’m into singing and dancing workshops nowadays.

“I am not in any way disgusted. I’m just surprised. Most of all, I am deeply shocked and well...appalled that you actually had the guts to enter YGE and get that anti movement of yours materialize right in front of GD! And yeah, I also almost fainted when Sanghyun mentioned that your plans backfired because you fell in love with him but...really! I just...this is bizarre, you know? I always thought unnie would never really do such thing, even though we always knew that you hated BigBang’s leader for the lamest reasons, haha.”

I sat up and leaned on my bed’s headboard as I sighed miserably, somehow agreeing with my younger sister’s opinion. “I know right. I thought I was 100% fool-proof for this ‘mission’. Now it totally blew up at my face and I lost two of the most important people in my life, Ji Eun and Jiyong.”

“Ji Eun unnie’s not visiting here anymore?”

“Not only that. She totally disappeared from my life completely. Ji Eun won’t even answer my calls, and could you believe that she changed jobs without informing me at all? That’s just so uncharacteristic of her. We always tell each other everything.” 

“Well, I heard she didn’t exactly know that you were dating Jiyong already and that you didn’t really tell everything about your romantic feelings for him. For a person who supposedly follows that ‘tell me about everything’ rule, you pretty much failed yourself. Hard.”

And Durami’s being so blunt about her opinions for the nth time for this conversation, but she was being right more than ever as well so as much as I wanted to just hide all of my misgivings under the rug and reprimand her for having no sympathy to me at all, all I could do was take in everything that she was saying.

Durami looked at me intently, a smile slowly forming on her lips. “Why are you suddenly so quiet?”

I crossed my arms and pouted, trying to lighten up the seriousness of the conversation. “Because I didn’t know Sanghyun was that talkative. And he’s a guy, I can’t believe he told you everything!”

Both of us laughed out loud at our younger brother’s expense. “You know I have my ways,” Durami said in between laughs. “He can’t say no to me. That’s just like doing the unthinkable.”

“But seriously, Durami. I’m giving Ji Eun the space now, but what about Jiyong? He was being all-out rude to me.” As my younger sister prodded me more about it, I finally told her everything that happened between me and Jiyong after he found out my real intentions. I buried my face once again on my pillow as I finished the story. “I’ve never felt this miserable before.”

Durami reached out her hand so she could ruffle my hair sympathetically. “Oh, unnie. Looks like you loved each other too much but the truth was just so harsh for the both of you to continue loving each other. I’d like to say that I absolutely find it romantic amidst everything bad that happened to the two of you but...I could see that it hurt you so bad.” She sighed. “But then again, would you just give up like that? You mentioned about that co-trainee of yours -- don’t let that b1tch win!”

“I wanted her to lose but she’s winning by a mile now,” I replied dejectedly. “She has Jiyong.”

“I don’t think so. If you would move your ass right now she won’t win completely.” She took away the pillow away from me and removed the covers as well. “Why don’t you start by getting up, taking a bath, eating breakfast and going straight to YGE? And train hard, debut successfully and whatever it is? Just don’t stay here and mope around in solitude. It’s the worst thing you could do.”

“I wish it was that easy.”

“Look, unnie. Nothing in this life is easy. No day is perfect. If it were the case, how could we learn some important lessons along the way? Get up!” She grabbed my arm and dragged me away from my bed. Without anything better to do, I stood up finally. 

“Let me check my minihompy first.”

Durami laughed. “You’re still the virtual geek that I know! Obsessed with the internet still!”

I scowled at her as I walked past her on my way to my personal computer across the room. “Well, I have to check my messages there. My mobile phone’s been dead for days now. Would you be so nice to charge it for me, Durami? Pretty please?”

“Oh, darn it. Sure.” She opened my drawer as she looked for my mobile phone’s charger. “Go on with your minihompy updates and announce to the whole virtual world that you’re still alive.”

I ignored her last comment as I my PC and entered cyworld’s web address. I hope they didn’t bombard it with messages or something. Ah, yes. Here we go.

I hurriedly typed my username and password. But instead of seeing my profile, a different page appeared.

INVALID LOG IN

That confused me. What? I refreshed the log in page and typed my username and password, this time more careful than the last. I hit the submit button and after that it was still the same message.

INVALID LOG IN

What the fcuk? Something was definitely not right. I refreshed the log in page again and clicked the forgot password? button. I typed my e-mail address and clicked submit. Instead of the usual e-mail sent message, another one appeared.

Sorry, we did not find any account that matched the e-mail that you submitted.

This was not happening. My heart was beating fast already, and not in a good way. Trembling, I typed another web address where I could log on to my e-mail. I carefully typed my address as well as my username. I was able to access my inbox, and while it looked relatively normal, I saw that I received a new message. I hesitated for a while before reluctantly clicking it. 

The message that I saw almost made me fall off my chair. I couldn’t even talk, or breathe, for that matter.

If you want me to return your minihompy and avoid yourself for being humiliated more, reply to this e-mail as soon as you read this. 

The message came from an unfamiliar address I only got to see now.

“Durami?” I called my sister. Suddenly I wanted to throw up. Durami must have sensed something because she immediately stopped fixing my bed and went straight beside me.

“What happened?”

I weakly motioned her to read the e-mail I just received. “This,” I said quietly. “someone sent me this.”

Durami moved closer to me as she scanned the message. “Holy sh1t,” She cursed under her breath. She tapped my shoulder and asked me to move away from the chair so she could sit in front of the computer instead. “Let me open my minihompy so I could visit yours.” I obliged without asking anymore questions and watched behind her back as she logged out my e-mail and went to cyworld to open her account.

Both of us didn’t say anything as she was able to successfully log in. She immediately clicked her friends list and searched for my name. She clicked my name the moment she found it.

What we saw completely left us utterly speechless.

My minihompy looked completely different from the last time I visited it. My profile picture, although I remember taking it myself, surprised me. 

I didn’t know it was that incriminating back then. It was a solo shot of me lying on the bed, wearing a tube top. The selca shot, although taken at normal conditions, made me look like I was taking a picture of myself while I’m only with a blanket to cover my body.

“Unnie.” Durami was beyond shocked. She was completely disturbed. She went on to see the photo albums the hacker created, and as she clicked on those, I felt like crawling back to my bed and just die.

The pictures were all from my private folder and I recognized them as my own pictures, but apparently the hacker chose the most incriminating ones. I felt like crying as I saw photos of myself wearing a bikini top (that was taken two summers ago with my family!), a photo of me at a party of one of my friends last year with me wearing a short and slinky silver dress and holding a bottle of beer as I smiled cheekily at the camera, me wearing a loose shirt and hot pants so short it made me seem like I wasn’t wearing anything but my underwear, me taking ‘just woke up’ shots while lying on my bed that made me think (right at this moment) that I just woke up doing more suggestive things than what the photos meant in real life.

And the worse has yet to happen. 

Durami clicked something on my welcome message and right at that moment we found ourselves staring at a website that I think, was meant to tarnish whatever reputation I have forever.

Seoul’s hottest. 100% satisfaction guaranteed -- more than a thousand girls to choose from, click away!

Durami was livid by now. “WHAT THE FCUK?! Who fcukin’ did this?!”

There were pictures of different girls on the front page, moving like some sort of a marquee, encouraging guys to click whoever they might fancy.

As if today’s revelation wasn’t enough, we found my picture included in the marquee. Durami clicked it right away and gasped as we were connected to my supposed ‘profile’.

Park Dara, 18. I’m more than willing to make you totally hot and bothered, all night long.

The description couldn’t be any more disgusting. Durami this time kept cursing as if there was no tomorrow. “Fcuk whoever who did this! I’m going to kill that motherfcuking a**hole. I’m going to kill that b*stard! Nobody could do this to my family. Fcukin no. I’m going to kill this person!”

“Durami...”

“Fcuk this! Fcuk them! Nobody does this to my family and gets away with it! No fcukin one!”

“Durami!” I almost screamed. “Calm down. I could --”

“Calm down?! Calm the fcuk down?! Do you know what this b*stard did to you?! Made you look like a !”

Exactly, I thought bitterly. Not only a , but a very disgusting one at that. I don’t think I could --- 

Sh1t. I was so into my emotions that I forgot the others who might know this already.

YGE. 








Jiyong.

Now I truly felt like dying.

Trembling, I changed my clothes and grabbed my bag. I left Durami as she went totally berserk over the incident. I know that I should let her calm down first, but I had better things to do.


Like going to YGE fast and try to prevent anymore damage, If I still can.

-----------------------

The receptionist was surprised with the way I entered the building. Although she mentioned that everyone was looking for me right at this moment as I signed in, she didn’t expect that I would come looking like I just came from a war zone. I was trembling and looking miserable.

“They were already looking for you since mor---”

I didn’t let her finish because I sprinted away the moment I dropped the pen in front of her.

My instinct told me that I should visit Mina and the others first. I ran all the way to 9th floor on to the training room.

“Unnie?!” Chae-rin and Minji collectively exclaimed as I opened the door, panting a little. Bom and Mina looked shocked. Aera was nowhere to be seen. Nevertheless.

I saw the laptop in front of Mina and Chae-rin. They saw how my eyes landed on the laptop as well, and their faces paled as I marched towards them.

All of them were trying to stop me from looking on whatever it was on the laptop. They were either denying my suspicions, or flat out lying to me.

But what else is lost? I’ve already had enough humiliation to last a lifetime, whatever they’re hiding to me would obviously mean nothing.

“Dara, don’t look. It doesn’t concern you.” Bom was still trying to stop me by giving lame reasons. Girl didn’t know how to act.

I pretended to not hear her and continued walking over to Mina and Chae-rin, who were busily arguing in front of the laptop.

“Move.”

“Unnie...” Chae-rin pleaded. “We don’t want to hurt you anymore.”

“Get away from that computer.” I pulled Chae-rin away and sat in front of the laptop.

Trainee from big entertainment company involved in service?

Not this. Most especially not this.

Jiyong wasn’t kidding when he mentioned a week ago that I was indeed,  myself down.

My tears started to fall down for real as I read the article, and the negative comments aimed at me. Someone was out to destroy me, and while I knew that all along, I didn’t expect that it would be this bad.

“Park Dara?”

We all turned to look. Standing by the door was our acting manager. He looked serious. 

They knew already.

I hastily wiped my tears and stood up. “Good afternoon, Manager Kim.” I greeted weakly, bowing down ever so slightly as I acknowledged his presence.

He didn’t even smile, like he used to whenever he’d talk to me, to us. 

“Follow me. The president wanted to talk to you.”