Right. I don't really know how the music shows run and I know what's broadcasted is actually pre-recorded, so I'm just gonna go with my own imagination here, alright? :)

____________

Backtracking a little bit, the morning of Sunday dawned bright and early, stirring Evie from her restless sleep. Restless because she was too excited to actually get a good night's rest. Why? Today was the day she and Jung Mi were going to attend Inkigayo.

Checking her watch, she realised it was still only 5am. Great. She was going to be dead tired by the end of the day. Throwing back her duvet, she sat up on her bed and ran her fingers through her long hair. Unruly and wavy in the mornings, Evie reached for her hairbrush - not a comb, because she couldn't stand those thin combs that would get stuck halfway through her hair making her scalp feel as though it was getting pulled off - and leisurely brushed her hair. Setting it down on her bedside table, she got up and walked to the window to throw back the curtains. Sunlight streamed into her room making her squint. Looks like good weather for a good day.

Evie flipped her laptop open and plopped her on her comfy swirly chair. She first accessed her email and glanced through the latest of her 2000+ unread emails. Yeah, she'll get to those... one of these days. One email caught her eye. Well, well. Mr. Choi Seunghyun. She clicked on it.

"Hey, Evie.

Sorry I haven't texted or called you. I've been really busy with promotions and all. Dare I hope that you've at least looked us up on Google by now? =P I'll call you soon alright? I don't have credit in my phone at the moment so when my manager gets to it, I'll give you a call. Talk to you soon!

Seunghyun"

Evie blinked. Was it even possible that an idol such as him could have no credit in his phone? Shaking her head and muttering to herself, she typed out a reply, at the same time retorting that no, she hadn't googled them yet - since when did she become a liar? - and clicked send.

She opened another email from her friend Rachelle who was back in Paris managing Sweet On You. It was a short update on how things were going. No major problems, just that one of the junior chefs destroyed a couple of cakes because he'd mistaken icing sugar for flour. Grinning, Evie remembered how she had done the exact same thing before. Hey! No judging! They do look and feel the same. Rachelle also mentioned that business was doing well as usual but that she missed Evie's presence in the little shop. Eyes misting a little, Evie in turn, updated Rachelle about Seoul and Sweet On You Too.

Just as she clicked send, she heard the apartment door open and close. At the sound of a pair of heels clicking on the floor, Evie frowned and opened her room door, poking her head out.

"Jung Mi? Did you just get in?" Evie asked the obvious to the disheveled and tired looking girl walking in what was clearly last night's dress.

"Mmmm. I'm gonna get some shut eye. Wake me up an hour before we leave, alright?" Jung Mi replied sleepily.

"Er... yeah. Sure. One of these days you're going to have to explain to me where you go all hours of the night when I know you don't have a boyfriend."

Jung Mi just waved her hand in Evie direction without turning and she walked to her bedroom and shut the door.

Evie frowned, wondering where Jung Mi had been the entire night. Shrugging her shoulders, she got up and walked to the kitchen to get some breakfast. Jung Mi would tell her when she wanted to and it definitely was none of her business until then.

At 10:30, Evie made her way to Jung Mi's room to wake her up. The woman was sprawled across her bed with nary a care in the world.

"Jung Mi-ah. Ireonah. You gotta get ready," she said while shaking Jung Mi's shoulder lightly.

"Mmmm. 5 more minutes." Jung Mi shook off Evie's hand and rolled over in bed.

Tsk-ing, Evie took a step back from the bed and yelled, "Oh my god! It's already 1 o'clock. We're going to be late! Jung Mi Inkigayo STARTS at 1!!!"

"Wha-what?! I'm up. I'm up! Give me 5 mins!" Jung Mi shot up from bed and ran into the bathroom, slamming the door closed.

Evie grinned evilly and went back to the kitchen to finish preparing lunch. The plan was to leave by 11:30 and get to the Inkigayo venue by 12:00. Then they'd line up with everyone else. Jung Mi had mentioned that even though their passes said the event started at 1:00, security and staff let fans in at 12:30. By 1:00, doors a closed and no one else gets to enter. If you were late, that was too bad for you. Idols didn't have a lot of time on their hands so everything had to start exactly on time.

10 minutes later, lunch was done and after another door slammed, Evie heard Jung Mi curse at her. She'd found a clock.

"Lunch is ready! Come and eat first, you can finish getting ready after." Evie put the two bowls of noodle soup on the island in the kitchen and sat down on one of the high stools.

Jung Mi joined her not long after that with a big scowl on her forehead. "You," she practically growled out. "You tricked me."

Shrugging her shoulders, Evie dug in to eat. "It was the only way I was going to get you to wake up on time. You had less than 5 hours of sleep. Nothing short of that would have woken you up."

"True. Fine. You win." Jung Mi conceded.

"Where were you last night? and every night?" she queried.

"No where." 

Evie kept silent and continued to eat. Truth be told, she was a little worried for her friend. There were only so many night jobs out there and most of them were seedy.

Jung Mi finally spoke up. "Look. It's not that I don't want to tell you, okay? It's just that I can't take any chance that this would get back to my parents."

"Your parents don't know you're working at this job?"

"No."

"Are you stripping?!!"

"NO! Geez. It's not anything like that."

Evie narrowed her eyes at her.

"It's not! I swear!"

"Fine. You just better not get into trouble. If not I'll have to go through a whole lot of headache to find a new flatmate." Evie said jokingly.

"Gee thanks for your concern." Jung Mi said wryly.

"Right. You done? We better get going."

"Mmm. Just about. Let me go put on some makeup then we can leave." She set down her chopsticks and got up. "You not putting on any?"

"Makeup? Nahh. Too lazy."

"Suit yourself," Jung said, shrugging her shoulders.

_____

They arrived at the SBS building a little early. They stood in line waiting with everyone else. The fans there were mostly 13-17 year olds so both she and Jung Mi felt a little out of place. But when it all came down to it, fans were fans. They chatted with some of them and found out that about 99% of them were from the official fanclub. A bunch of them immediately became suspicious when they learned that Evie and Jung Mi weren't fanclub members and demanded to know where they had gotten their tickets. Jung Mi, being the one with more fluent Korean, managed to calm the irate girls down by saying that they were here for business reasons and had gotten tickets from their company but were also fans themselves. After the group drifted away, Evie breathed a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness you were smart enough not to say that we had backstage passes," she whispered to Jung Mi.

"Yeah. These fangirls can get pretty crazy and might have forced us to 'trade' tickets with them," Jung Mi said in an equally low tone. "Although, reports say that VIPs are considerably more sane and reasonable."

"THIS is reasonable?!" Evie said incredulously.

"Well, you should see what some of the other fandoms do. Some idols have sasaeng fans following them every hour of everyday. I don't know how they can live with that."

"Sasaeng? What is that? I've never heard the term before," Evie questioned.

"Basically, they are super stalker fans who go way overboard in invading their idol's privacy. There was a case where one of them got into and idol's house at night and snapped pictures of him while he was sleeping." Jung Mi shivered at the thought.

Evie gasped. "Are you serious?! Why don't they get arrested and thrown in jail??"

"Most of them are minors and laws here aren't like in the US. Most things that will get you sued a thousand times over won't even get you a fine here. Which kinda for the idols that are over-exposed by the media. Think about it, the media in the US is invasive but doesn't showcase their stars like they do here in Korea and yet those stars have paparazzi, stalkers and crazy fans following them everyday. So what more here in Korea where they conceptualise the variety and talk shows to get the idols to spill their daily lives and everything about them," Jung Mi reasoned.

"You're right. I haven't watched any of these variety shows yet but from what you're saying, the media is technically to blame for all this." Thinking about it, Evie new that it was true. She hadn't watched the shows yet but what she heard from her co-workers who did, it was like they knew the idols personally. Their habits, what they liked to eat, the way they talked. Everything. But in a way, without this, k-pop stars would probably have never been very famous. The entertainment industry here wasn't as established and recognized like the US'. They were still trying to breakthrough to the world mainstream music market.

"On a lighter note, I hear Big Bang doesn't have any of these sasaeng fans." Jung Mi grinned at Evie. "Hence, the 'more sane and reasonable' comment."

Putting the scary thoughts aside, they moved on to more neutral topics and soon enough they heard the staff calling for the fans to enter the studio. Both of them started getting all excited again. Jung Mi had heard from whatever source it was that GD&TOP were going to be performing and so was Seungri. Also, Evie didn't know much about them but Beast was going to be performing and their songs were pretty good. Evie was literally bouncing up and down with excitement and all her 'feels'. Jung Mi was a little more calm but had that look in her eyes that told Evie that she was going to start spouting her 'oh mai gawds' anytime.

They were led to their seats in the middle of the other VIPs and she realised something. They didn't have any crown lightsticks, scarves or even a fanmade poster proclaiming their love for the Big Bang members, all of which seemed to be a requirement based on what she saw. ALL of the fans had something in their hands. They were so going to stick out like a sore thumb. Not to mention Evie definitely did not look Korean or remotely Asian. Jung Mi seemed to be happy about this though because it was going to get them noticed.

Evie looked at the stage which wasn't too far away from them. It was pretty big and looked normal enough until staff started dragging in props and lights and chairs and everything imaginable for the first performance. If Evie wasn't sure they were in the right place, she might have thought that they were watching live theatre.

The lights suddenly dimmed and there was hush in the crowd. Then the music blared and the spotlight shone on the first group performing. It didn't matter that Evie wasn't familiar with any of them but the atmosphere was so catching and hyped up that she just went with the flow and screamed and chanted along with everybody else. The live vocals of some of the performers were a little questionable but one thing for sure was that the dancing and choreography way better than anything she'd ever seen. Their stage outfits were over the top, too brightly coloured and awesome. She LOVED it. To think that such a thriving industry existed outside her knowledge before this was just amazing. How could she not know this and not fall in love with all of this?

Seungri's performance was good. His vocals, amazing. From it you could see that he was confident and a little cocky but somehow that didn't give Evie a bad impression. Knowing he was the youngest, she kinda thought it made him cute and just a little adorable. A baby trying to spread his wings.

Jung Mi was beside her taking breaths in between performances when music for a new song started up. Jung Mi started screaming and yelling and Evie, hitting her lightly on her arm.

"IT'S GD&TOP!!! IT'S THEIR SONG!!!!"

For a moment, Evie couldn't breathe and she thought her heart stopped. She was getting to see him perform live. A chance most people didn't get. Snapping out of it, she screaming her loudest. The fan chants started and the doors with the similar bunny logo of Playboy slapped on it, opened. There they were. Seunghyun on the left and G-Dragon on the right. No. This wasn't Seunghyun, this was TOP, idol star and rapper of Big Bang. 

G-Dragon started rapping first while TOP did the choreo. Then it was his turn. He walked forward with odd skipping steps, shoulders moving back and forth as he rapped. A tap on the shoulder from a dancer, turn. Another tap from the opposite side, turn. Then he faced the front, expression fierce with a cheeky smirk on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes. Evie realised she was seeing a whole different side of him. A charismatic, confident, lady-killer man, one who breathed the word y.

Suddenly, when there was a break in his rap and the music played, he looked into the crowd of VIPs waving the yellow crowns and their eyes met. She didn't think he was looking at her, she knew he was. There was a subtle change in his expression, a look of surprise with a slight widening of his eyes. Noticable enough that Jung Mi screamed at her.

"HE'S STARING AT YOU!!!"

Evie grinned at that and gave a small wave in his direction. The music transitioned into the chorus and Evie realised that TOP wasn't following the choreo until G-Dragon gave him a not-so-discreet nudge on his arm and he snapped out of it. Oops. Even as he followed the choreo again, Evie could see that he shot glances in her direction every now and then. Evie was thrilled but she knew it was just surprise on his part rather than her being oh-so-beautiful as to draw his attention.

The song ended with TOP and G-Dragon standing side by side, heads to one side and arms folded in front of them. It showed a very cocky attitude and Evie giggled because she was so not used to seeing him like that. He was just so... shy, back at uni.

As they were the closing act, the MCs came on stage together with all the other performers to announce the winner of Mutizen award. Jung Mi had told her it was a highly coveted award for Song of the Week, more so because it was Inkigayo.

"And the winner of the Inkigayo Mutizen Song this week is.... High High by GD&TOP!!"

Evie cheered and clapped with everyone else. The whole studio was thundering with the applause. Even non-VIPs looked happy. She looked on as they bowed numerous times before accepting the award and a mic each. Seungri was hopping around the both of them, happy for his hyungs. G-Dragon spoke first, thanking YG-related people and fans. Then TOP lifted his mic and thanked VIPs and...her.

"I would also like to thank my friend from university who helped me get through my time at university in the US and helped me find my passion for music again," his deep voice rumbled through the speakers while he looked away from her, not meeting her eyes.

Evie's eyes widened in surprise. Did she really help him with that? She had no idea but looking at him now, avoiding her gaze, made her smile. That seemed more like the shy, bashful Seunghyun she knew.

She cheered together with all the other VIPs, trying to look as though she knew nothing about who he was talking about. Then, they had an encore performance which was fun because they didn't really follow the choreography and fooled around on stage a little and interacted with the fans. She and Jung Mi stayed where they were while most of the VIPs pushed forward to the barrier trying to get a handshake or even a little touch from the two of them on stage. Evie got to see a little fan service as G-Dragon blew kisses to the fans and TOP winked, smirked and looked good while just standing there. TOP didn't look in her direction again so she didn't know whether he was aware of where she was. Still, she enjoyed the moment and soaked in the atmosphere.

Once they finished, they walked off stage waving goodbye to their fans. Evie plopped down in her seat and dug into her bag for a tissue to wipe her sweaty forehead. 

"What are you doing?" Jung Mi glanced down at her. "Come on! We have to go!"

"Go where?" she replied, puzzled.

"Where? Backstage of course!!"

________________

Sorry. It's a y chapter with a LOT of bias towards GD&TOP :S

Fact: They're my two favourite members of Big Bang. I became a VIP when I saw the GD&TOP promotions. I <3 them. Of course I knew Lies and Haru Haru before that but just wasn't really a fan, more neutral. Then GD&TOP birthed and I noticed their AWESOMENESS. Hehe.

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If you would like to read my other (recently) posted fic, here: http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/190410/imperfect-but-perfect-in-every-way-that-matters-bigbang-choiseunghyun-top