She woke up to the children’s laughs. She tiredly opened her eyes and saw all three of Ri El’s children jumping on her bed, trying to wake her up. She groaned and rolled over, covering her head with a pillow. When the children continued their pestering, she chucked the pillow in their general direction, sending them into a burst of giggles. “Auntie Mae Ri, wake up you sleepy head!” yelled MinJi, age 3.

  “Yeah, mommy said it’s late enough.” Stated JinHo, age 6, as he crawled towards her. LeeHyun, the youngest, just sat there giggling at his disarranged auntie. She stole a look at the clock 3:30 in the afternoon. –It does NOT feel like 3:30-

“Araso” she sat up stretching, yawning and scratching her head at the same time. “You need to get out so I can get dressed.” The children filed out and she looked tiredly through her clothes. All of her clothes were dark clothes, mostly black with some blues, dark greens, and browns. She wanted to remember her mother, even if everyone said a year and a half was more than enough time to mourn her. She selected a black t-shirt, black cargo pants, and checkered white and black suspenders.

  Sitting down in front of her mirror, she looked at her hair. It was all tangled from her sleep. While brushing it she couldn’t help but sighing. She missed her old hair, her dark blonde locks that had gone all the way to her waist. Instead she had pink straight hair that was a little longer than shoulder length, with multiple layers and side swept bangs. She had cut it to rebel against her pabo father. She put up her bangs with a polka-dotted black and white bow.

  The door opened a crack and Ri El poked her head in. “Um, hi dear, you have a guest downstairs” she smiled and shut the door.

  Wondering who it could possibly be she rushed out of her room and down the stairs. Reaching the bottom, she saw Jaejin’s beautiful black hair, he was occupying himself by playing with leehyun.

  “Jaejin-ssi! What are you doing here?!” He turned to face her and replied, “I’m here to take my old friend somewhere, and since we are ‘old friends’ you can drop the formalities.”

 “Are you taking me because you want to or because of the publicity our meeting created? And with that, I’m curious to know how much publicity you actually got?”

“WE actually got quite a bit of publicity. The boys were upset that I never told them about my friend in the States so I had to explain everything to them, and now they want to meet you. Can we go now?”

  Ri El yelled from the kitchen, “Wait till she’s eaten at least!”

“It’s okay ahjumma! The boys and I haven’t eaten yet either, so she can eat with us.” MaeRi rolled her eyes as the two of them began arguing what she should do. She went upstairs to get a jacket and shoes. When she came back down, Jaejin was waiting at the door. “Ahjumma! I’ll return her tonight!” He yelled as he held the door open for her

  After a while of walking, he asked if her favorite colors were black and white, shocked she asked how he knew “Clothes can say a lot about a person, and yesterday you were also wearing black and white, speaking of clothes your style is quite unique.” She looked to see if he was laughing at her, since many people have said the same thing and they had said it to make her hurt. He was being completely serious. She silently thanked him. Hearing her silence he looked at her, she had slightly open looking at him confused, “What’s wrong?”

She shook her head, “Nothing, I was just gonna say that because you’re the first person I met in Korea, I kinda consider you as my best friend”

“Then we’re best friends! When do you start school?”

“In two days.” She held up 2 fingers. He smiled down at her “Then I’m going to make those two days so much fun, I’ll have definitely earned the title.” Walking for about five more minutes, they came to a building and he took her hand as they entered the building. She didn’t look at the building they were entering because she was too busy laughing at a joke he had told her. Walking up some stairs, she heard familiar music.

 “We’re at your studio?” He gave her a ‘duh’ look and opened the door. She had been warned before that she was meeting the rest of the band, but she was still a little scared. Jaejin started laughing because of the look on her face, sheer fright. She looked at him and gave him a nervous smile and he gave her thumbs up.

  “You two really do look like old friends” Choi Jong Hun was the owner of the comment, to which they both smiled. He was looking at them with his arms crossed, laughter in his eyes. Hong Ki was standing next to him, looking disdainfully at their hands, which were still intertwined. MinHwan was sitting looking at them, interested in the short pink haired American girl. SuengHyun was sitting next to him, not looking anywhere in particular. Seeing where Hong Ki was looking, they let go of each others hand and scratched their heads looking in opposite directions. To lighten the mood, she bowed low ant introduced herself.

“Anneonghasayo, MaeRi-imnida! Nice to meet you!”

MinHwan said, “You can drop the formalities, if you’re Jaejin’s friend, you’re our friend!”

“Indeed” added Suenghyun, who was now circling MaeRi, inspecting her. Hong Ki scoffed. MaeRi choose to ignore him. “I’m just interested to know how an American who is 19 can be so short, and have such pink hair.”

“My mother was Korean, and my father wasn’t very tall either, so naturally, I also am short. And my hair is pink is short because I enjoy color I guess…” She didnt quite know how she wanted to respond to the last part, she still felt the reasons deeply.

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to”

“Nah, it’s okay, it’s just I don’t remember the exact reason why I dyed it.”

From behind her she heard Hong Ki say, clearly annoyed, “Now that we’ve played meet and greet, can we get back to practice?”-He doesn’t like me, why? Did I take his limelight away??- She looked at the clock while the members filed into the studio, 4:20. She sat down and tried to concentrate on everything but her hunger. Midway through Memorize, she felt her eyes droops and close.

SO yeah....Chapter 5.....sorry for the long wait if you were waiting!