A little over a month ago, she wouldn't have thought spending time with these five guys was a bad thing. Hell, she would have probably looked forward to it. Lee Taemin was so cute and sweet, no matter how much the stylist changed his hair and clothes to make him look tougher and older. Choi Minho was really just as quiet as he looked. Sure, he showed charisma while doing nothing, but she thought he would have been distant and indifferent to her, the unnamed and not very important errand girl. However, she discovered he was kind, gentle, and a great listener. Kim Kibum was a lot more talkative than she thought he would be but he treated her well and never offended her unless he was just teasing. Kim Jonghyun talked a whole lot but he was oh so fun to tease and, much like Key, he was not afraid to say what was on his mind, a trait that she admired. Lee Jinki was adorable when she got to know him better. She had imagined the leaders of groups to be manly and strict. He was clumsy and cute but the other members still trusted him to be their leader.

Yes...at that time, she would have never seriously protested against spending maybe a week's vacation with them. They actually asked her and she expressed great joy at that time. But upon thinking about a trip with SHINee, she changed her decision. She half joked that she wouldn't want to be jumped by Shawols or anything. The other reason she gave was because her aunt and uncle, who she was living with at the time, would never allow it and also because she had schooling to think about.

Well, SHINee took it well at first, but then she started spending less time with them. That was understandable since the shooting for the MV was over. The only job left to do was to put on the finishing touches and do the preparations for the group's comeback. These were all tasks for more important people. She still saw them at SM though when she was there helping other people. They often spent their lunch and dinner breaks with her if they were all at SM that day or goof off in an empty dance studio. But then, her studies at the university resumed and she saw them even less. She received text messages from them often, pretty much every day, but she didn't think much of it. They had all grown close over the past few weeks. For maybe a week, she would faithfully reply back to each of their texts in a reasonable amount of time. After two weeks, she didn't respond to every one of their messages. Ignoring the random ones completely or responding to multiple messages with just one message sent maybe a day or two later. She hadn't seen any of them in person for a while at that point.

SHINee didn't seem to like that. But then both parties finally had coinciding free time and so met up at the cafeteria of the SM building to catch up and eat lunch. Everyone was happy again for that one moment. Then, they all had to go back to their own lives. SHINee was starting to let the word out that they were going to release a new mini album, so they were busy with promotions. She was busy herself and cracked down on her studies. SHINee members still found the time to text her at least once every other day and she found the time to reply. She had complained to them about their overtexting her so they had lightened up on the messages thankfully.

Then, the worse possible thing (for her, that is) happened of which she had no control. She was walking home from the library late one night when an older, taller man bumped into her. She was in the middle of apologizing when she saw that her handbag was in his grasp. The two people promptly started a tug of war with the handbag. When she started screeching at the man, he slapped her. Yes. The man slapped her! She was so shocked that her grip loosened on her bag. The man pushed against her chest forcefully with one hand, her grasp fell away from the bag, and he bolted out of there. She fell into the street. Of course, even though it was pretty late and that area didn't have many late night drivers, a car chose that moment to come speeding around the corner and right into her.

She woke up three days later to find bandages wrapped around her arms and head. Amazingly, she didn't break anything, but she was pretty scraped up and she felt like her head was being repeatedly run over by a car. Her aunt informed her that the thief turned attempted murderer was still on the loose. The story about her accident was not well circulated because it occurred in a really small, quiet district that got little to no action. All the big news was focused on the inner cities really. Maybe her incident got a small blurb in a local newspaper, but it didn't make the evening T.V. news or anything like that, for which she was thankful. She didn't want that kind of attention. She had to stay in the hospital for over a week so doctors could run more tests just in case. On the fifth day after she woke up, she realized she was really bored. The past four days, all she had really done was sleep, which she really wanted to do. By the fifth day, she felt she couldn't possibly sleep anymore and started getting agitated.

She asked her uncle to bring in her laptop. She checked her email and saw that her mailbox was flooded with "Get well soon"s and "Oh my goodness!"s from friends and family. Some of her professors were so kind as to send her assignments that needed to be completed. 'Well,’ she had to be positive, 'at least I won’t be too behind on my studies...' The remaining 80% of her unread messages were from SHINee members. She was a little surprised. She got the gist of all the messages and sent a reply to leader Onew because she knew he would pass on the message.

The next day, she was pleasantly surprised to wake up to five faces staring at her. They saw that she was awake and promptly hugged her until her bones started to hurt. She hadn't really said anything except that she was hospitalized in her email, so she gave them all a summary of the incident. For the first time, she saw the most furious expression on their faces. It was rather scary to her. They left shortly after because they had a schedule to keep up with.

The day after that, she was finally discharged from the hospital and was going home. When she opened the door, followed by her uncle who was holding all her stuff, her aunt hurried them to watch the evening news. She plopped down on the couch beside a boy who looked about her age. He kissed her on the cheek and pulled her closer to him.

"Breaking news! After firefighters put out an out of control fire in an apartment building, they discovered the man who they think supposedly set the fire had committed suicide inside his burning apartment. The heavily scorched body has been identified to belong to Yeok Deulgi, an alleged thief..."

She gasped but no other sound was made by anyone in the room. Her uncle said vindictively, "Well, he's not going to go rob anyone else anymore." Her aunt whacked him upside the head.

After dinner that night while her aunt and she were washing the dirty dishes, the doorbell sounded. The aforementioned boy got up from the couch, where he was conversing with her uncle to open the door.

"Oh my GOD!" the boy exclaimed in accented English. He continued in Korean, "It's SHINee!"

She wiped her hands with a towel and went to greet them at the door. The family invited them in and they all chatted in a polite manner. The adults left the younger generation alone downstairs so that they may speak more informally and in a livelier way.

They did some karaoke and SHINee gave a mini live performance.

By the end of the night, they were all laughing heartily.

"I didn't know you were a SHINee fan, honey." The girl said to the boy who was showing SHINee his practiced dance to the song "Replay-Noona Neomu Yeppeo".

The same word reverberated in each SHINee members' head. 'Honey?'
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THEA's Corner <3
So...if you notice below, I put a question mark next to the total number of pages. Why? Well...the truth is that I left this story on my other laptop which I won't see for a month. Luckily, I had some of this "random oneshot" saved on google docs but that was before I started using MS word to type it (b/c it got so long that using google docs became slow). So I don't know how many total pages of this fic I have typed up. Also, I'm struggling to see what scenes I should type up in place of the scenes I was going to post (which are on my other laptop of course...) Whatever. Just tolerate me for the next few weeks.

Posted: 2009 Dec. 23 (on Winglin)
Edited: 2010 Jan. 24
Posted: 2010 July 18 (on Asianfanfics)

Approx. length: 2.3 pages out of ?