Flashing lights, loud music, effortless movement, and her powerful voice. The stage was finally hers, as Seomin had her debut performance in mid-September. She felt alive as people screamed her name, singing along and following the company’s fan chants. Seomin could not believe people had come out to see her, and that fans from other artists were cheering her on too. After her performance, the MCs did a quick interview, in which she thanked everyone for their hard work and for coming out to cheer her on. Surprisingly, being in Korea had allowed Seomin to correct her pronunciations, and through speaking only Korean with Donghae and everyone else around her, she was beginning to sound as if Korean was her first language. There was even a time where she felt her English had slipped away, when her tongue twisted during a greeting to international fans.

Seomin was now in the changing room, waiting for the rest of the artists to finish performing. She knew that she was not going to win, but it didn’t matter anyways. This was her first performance, and to be this far already in her short life, Seomin was proud of that. While she waited for Donghae to return with more water, she scrolled through the internet, happy to see positive reviews of not only her performance, but her whole album. Netizens were becoming curious, pulling any photos or information from her past. Seomin was glad she hadn’t done anything stupid when she was younger, and she even chuckled, knowing that all their hard work would be for nothing.

“What are you laughing at?” Donghae interrupted her thoughts, placing an icy cold water bottle beside the laptop.

She took a long gulp and replied, “They’re not going to find anything interesting about me on the internet.”

“Really?”

“Well I didn’t have access to the computer for most of my teenage life, and Hyeyoung only posted nice photos of us.”

“That’s a bore. Your fans need something from you. Social media will play an important role in keeping you current. It’s especially useful when you aren’t promoting and in the spotlight.” Donghae turned the laptop towards him and began to do a lot of typing. After a few minutes, he turned the laptop back to reveal her very own twitter page. “Change the password. Right now it’s just 234.” She changed the password and updated her information. Seomin put her album cover as her profile picture and then looked at Donghae. “What?” he asked.

“I don’t know what to write.”

“Something nice? As long as you don’t get yourself into trouble. I’m not helping you out if you do anything stupid on twitter.”

Seomin typed, erased, and typed again. This happened for a few minutes before she was finally satisfied. She read it aloud to Donghae. “Hello, this is Park Seomin! Did you see my performance? Off to my fan meet! Who will I see there?” With his approval, Seomin tweeted for the very first time in her life. She wanted to refresh the page and wait until she saw her first follower, but was whisked back onto stage for the ending of the show. After the ending, Seomin greeted all the other artists, since she was the newest artists at the show. Donghae had her give them a copy of her album, in hopes that they would listen and help promote her through their own twitter pages. Once all the formalities were done, Seomin and Donghae headed off to the fan meeting.

“Hello? Yes, we are on our way. Fifteen minutes at most,” Donghae replied to the organizer on the phone. He was sitting in the front seat beside the driver, pointing to turn right on the road while Seomin was reading through her schedule, mainly preoccupied by the fan meeting they were heading to. At three in the afternoon, she was going to meet her fans up close. How many people would show up, she didn’t know. Donghae never shared those details with her. Why? He never asked upper management about it. To him, statistics and money were not important. Of course, Donghae wanted her to be successful, but he wanted to convey to her that success was not popularity and money – success was happiness. “Seomin,” she looked up to see Donghae intently looking at her, “Read the schedule breakdown later. Eat this.”

In the first box was simple sliced apples. When she opened the second box, she smiled at the cute rice box with