“Hongbin-hyung?” A short kid, with shoulder length fluffy hair approached me. His voice was shaking and he was almost physically vibrating, clearly jittering from meeting me for the first time. Must be a new intern… God I wonder what horrific stories these kids are telling now.. I’m not even that mean. What rumors could they possibly be spreading?

“Yes, uh…” I responded, looking for the kid’s name somewhere on his lanyard.

“Donghyun, sir,” the boy spoke up, finishing my sentence for me.

I cleared my throat, “What can I help you with, Donghyun?”

“Your manager asked me to come get you… It’s time for your first live mic rehearsal,” He spoke calmly at first, but his voice slowly began to rise in pitch. “You’ve got less than a week until your first solo concert in Seoul!” He squeaked. Oh god… he’s one of those interns.

“Donghyun… I need you to listen to me because this is the first and last time I’m going to tell you this, if you’re going to act like one of those insane fan girls, you can pack your bags and head home now, if you want to stay, you’re going to have to act professional, and if by some miracle we get close, then you may act weird and drop the professional act, but until then, professional game face only, you understand?” I spoke harshly, but only so he would get the point. I’ve had countless of these so-called “interns” who were nothing but a bag full of cats, just trying to get me to fall for them even though they knew I wasn’t the one for them.

“I understand, sir,” Donghyun voiced quietly.

“Now where am I off to again?” I asked, returning to my normal, more upbeat voice.

“You need to head to LG to practice live with the microphones and background orchestra.” Donghyun talked excitedly. I assumed that excited was his default voice and I couldn’t count that against the kid. I had learned in my short years that some people are naturally more excited than others, even though it’s obnoxious at times, they couldn’t help that. My younger brother was actually was like that, so I could sympathize with the kid.

I followed Donghyun to the elevator and all the way to my van in silence. However, when we reached my van, it was everything but silence.

“Yes, yes I know. I will let him know. No, no, he doesn’t have time for that. Yes. Yes, okay. Good bye.” My manager paced next to the van, pulling his cell away from his ear, looking overwhelmed.

“Took you two long enough, where you guys making out or something?” He sarcastically snapped.

Donghyun and I looked at each other and aggressively shook our heads.

“No sir. Sorry we were late,” Donghyun spoke for us both.

As soon as we arrived at the LG Art Center, I was half surprised to find a small group of fans waiting to greet me.

I’m not going to lie, I was genuinely terrified. In a little less than six days I was going to be standing in front of over 3,000 fans, mainly screaming girls. They would all be there for me, staring at me. I knew that this would be part of the deal, but the thought was terrifying. What was even more terrifying was the fact that I was set to meet my soul mate that day. I calculated the time to run out during my fan meet that morning. I was just afraid of it being some crazy fan that knew more about me than I did…

Although the more I thought about it, I wondered why I had so many fans. My “targeted audience” wasn’t screaming teenage girls. I liked my life to be more on the mellow side of things…  Just like my music. However these fans were close to being the stalker-types, which absolutely petrified me… My CEO warned me that this would be a possibility… to have stalkers… however with my selected genre it should be less common compared to the massively popular boy-bands that seemed to be rising from every corner of Korea these days.