Operation 01 - Join the Fan club.

Geumji clicks on the enter button and closes her laptop. She smiles at herself, thinking that her k-music lover friends will get jealous. ‘The tickets were weird but the trip is totally worth it.’ She walks to the door, reaches her hat that is sitting on the mattress and turning the door knob. She hears some voices down the hall and then, she waited for a while before opening the door. She tends to sneak to other places and not telling her Mom about going out.

“Nuna, are you going out?”  Geumji freezes while eating some cold noodles, which she got from the fridge. Geumji shakes her head as the young boy walks behind her, taking something from a cabinet.

 “Use this.” Sae-ryun hands her a fork. Seeing her struggling with the chopsticks makes him laugh, ‘Living without a father, must've been hard huh?’ he thought.

Geumji's face is down while she slowly eats. “Auntie went out to buy some things, she'll be back later,” Sae-ryun whispers as he walks by her again, continuing to the hallway where their rooms are a lined.

Putting on her shoes, she takes one hand to put on her headphone. ‘I think the Fan club cafe is near.’

She grabs a sling of her backpack and walks, listening to Exo's Lucky, the song she likes the most in Miracles in December Album, even though the song wasn’t meant to be a Christmas song; for her opinion, the song is more like an original soundtrack of a drama.

Geumji takes out her phone, opens it and clicks on an application, ‘okay... so where is the fan café....’ The application on her phone finished loading and it shows a map, then she quickly searches for the map of Seoul. Until she is familiar with the roads, she will use her phone map to avoid being lost at any circumstances that may result humiliation and embarrassment and trigger her phobia of people.

She looks at her phone again and with the map loaded completely. Luckily, there’s a pop-out, saying the group’s fan café. She smiles and quickly waits for a cab.

She notices that she didn’t have any Korean won with her except some dollar bills she inserted yesterday. Seeing many taxis around, she waves her hand to hopefully get the attention of a driver. An average-looking taxi stops in front of her, unloading a bunch of costumers. The driver looks at her and bows lightly, “Where are you going to, miss?” the driver asks her, Geumji feels weird after hearing a Korean speak English. It is not like she’s being a racist or anything, she just find it weird, maybe because of their funny accent and using phonetic intonation while speaking the western language.

“Can you please take me to this address?” She shows the driver the address and the driver nodded, “Please, come in.”

The driver looks at front-view mirror, taking a glimpse of Geumji doing something on her phone, “So, Have you been here in Korea for a while now? Or do you live here?” the driver finally broke the silence. Geumji looks back at the driver and shakes her head, ‘I wish he understands me....’ she says in her mind. The driver nodded and sits straight, taking a tight grip on the steering wheel.

‘How can I pay for my fare when my money in my pocket is US dollar bills?’ Geumji looks anxious as the driver pulls the taxi into a stop, “2000 won...” the driver mumbles as he looks at the machine. Geumji inserts a hand in one of her pocket and takes some bills and quarters.

 “I’m sorry but I don’t have Korean won with me right now. Can I pay with dollars?” Geumji shows the driver her money as she speaks. The driver thinks for a moment, “Are you sure it’s not fake?” the driver takes a dollar from her palm and examines it. “I know my Mom won’t give me fake money, wouldn’t she?”

Geumji steps out of the car after the driver accepted the dollar bills. She looks up and saw a sign that shows what she’s looking for: ‘Exo’s Fan café.’

As soon as she opens the door, a mob of fan girls is all that she can see. They are lining-up for something. Most of them have Exo printed shirts on, like ‘Wolf 88’ and some stuff like headbands and even bags.

She is about to close the door when someone grabs it by force and this makes her to jump a bit. “Oh... I’m sorry...” the girl bows. The girl quickly goes to the end of the line and she has Geumji to follow her. Geumji just find her interesting and the girl’s aura is like a magnet that you can’t avoid.

“What are we lining-up for?” Geumji whispers to the girl, “It’s to join Exo’s official fan group. The group that is allowed to give gifts to Exo, to help them with fan meets, concerts and stuff, like that,” the girl emphasizes on the last part, with a hint of excitement in her voice. ‘It’s like some Fan slavery… But I call to join!'

She waits for a couple of hours, standing and enduring while lining up. Some of the fans behind her walked out due to boredom and frustration of the slow process. Few of them were cutting in lines which caused a couple of arguments.

“My name is Methicaya. I am from Thailand,” the girl introduces herself to Geumji. (A/n: she’s the same girl from before.) “Geumji,” Geumji offers a handshake which Methicaya accepted. ‘Such a heart-warming person~’ Geumji tells herself as Methicaya smiles.

It is Geumji’s turn and a staff hands her an application paper, ‘so. This made the process slow?’

She fills it up and hands it back to the staff. Geumji waits for a while, hoping that she’ll get accepted right away. But, she is shock by what the staff tells her.