“She's been like that since she got here,” a makeup artist gossiped behind her.

“Must be nice to be an idol,” the other one whispered back, “All they have to do is sit around and wait while the rest of us go on a wild goose chase! We probably sweat more here, pampering them, than they do on stage dancing.” They both laughed.

The shared-dressing room was still full of commotion, especially since the other group was called up at the last minute as a stand-in. Talking professionally as workers, chatting casually as friends, brushes brushing hair, blow dryers running, powder smacking, towels drying, leather stretching, skidding, snipping, tapping, thudding, muffling – chaos. The music program's 5-hour-long special made even the most listless and passive people into well-oiled noisy machines. All but Krystal Jung, Jessica's younger sister.

She had remained silent with a air of stoicism throughout the day's convulsion. At the moment, she had already been styled and was simply waiting for her band's turn to perform. She sat by the far wall, reading the time away with a daily newspaper. Krystal thought it was only reasonable to be informed about the world around her and its happenings. She didn't want her brain to rot. She thought being ignorant was worse than being stupid. Like her sister, she seemed stern. Unlike her sister, Krystal was what she seemed to be – a sweet child who could be even more mordacious than Jessica.

She wanted to retaliate to the gossip behind her. She wanted to tell them that reading helped calm her down, get her mind off of the pressure from performing on stage and from the hyperactivity backstage. If the two girls were doing their job appropriately, they would being doing their job at all; instead of talking about sweaty armpits. All talk and no action was hateful, shallow, and practically sanctimonious! And distracting. Krystal couldn't read the paper properly. She looked at her watch and concluded that she had about 20 more minutes until her next performance. She decided that it would be best spent in the silence of her sister's empty dressing room.

She slapped the paper shut but whatever ruffling noise it might have made had been drowned by the noise of the place. With it still in her hands, she gestured to Amber, in which her bandmate nodded in understanding. She got up and left the sad excuse for a circus.

Krystal walked down the calmer – though still quite active – hallway, politely greeting a few people as they passed by. She could finally hear herself think and that alone had cooled her head significantly. But before she could turn the knob on Girls' Generation's dressing room door, she noticed something odd. The room was supposed to be empty. Her sister and the other 8 were supposed to be performing any minute now, but why could she hear voices inside? The deafening noise from earlier had definitely affected her hearing, because she couldn't make out what the voices were saying no matter how close her head was to the door. Talking? Yelling? What's going on? After hearing a loud thump she decided to peer into the room as inconspicuously as possible. She made sure the hinges made no squeak as she pulled it open enough for her right eye to look through.

It was Taeyeon-unnie and her sister's old boyfriend, with the latter pinning Taeyeon down on the ground! Taeyeon exclaimed, "You idiot!" Krystal's eyes widened and she quickly shut the door and ran away, back to her circus.

Everyone was too distracted to notice her return. She was exasperated from running so quickly and from utter shock of seeing Taeyeon and Jessica's former lover together like that. She didn't know what to think. Is that why he broke up with her?! No! I'm sure Taeyeon-unnie isn't like that. She forbid herself from making assumptions. That was what ignorant people do. Thinking rationally was always the best thing to go about things. But she couldn't get the image out of her head. Their faces were blurred from her panic but... It would he haunting her for the rest of the week; much more distracting than the two  gossiping airheads.

She looked down and realized that she had dropped the newspaper in her escape. So much for calming down...