“Haneul noona!” Haneul heard Dongho’s voice along with the swinging open of her door. She groaned.

“What?” She croaked out sleepily. She had stayed up late the night before, continuing to investigate more into the K-Pop industry and on boy groups.

“Haneul noona! This is bad!” She heard panic in Dongho’s voice, “Get up quickly!” Haneul groaned but got up wordlessly. She followed Dongho out of her room into the living room while rubbing her eyes.

“This had better be good.” She threatened the whole lot of them and then noticed they were gathered around Eli’s laptop. She sensed something wasn’t right from their faces. “What’s wrong ?”

“Haneul-ah… A picture of you has surfaced onto the internet.” Hye Su said with concerned tones evident in her voice.

“What?” Haneul said surprised.

“Look.” Soo Jin snapped and brought the laptop up to eye level with Haneul’s face.

Haneul looked at the screen and noticed it was on a webpage named ‘Daum’. A very good webpage for data collecting, Haneul had gathered from her few months of data collecting. She read the article name out loud. “Kevin Woo of U-Kiss in secret relationship?!” Haneul blinked a few times then stared at Kevin who was frowning at the table. “Sunghyun, you’re in a secret relationship? How did none of us know?”

“It’s you, you idiot.” Soo Jin snapped and pressed the down key to scroll down. Haneul saw a picture of Haneul’s left hand on Kevin’s shoulder while she tapped his nose with her right. Her memory flashed back to the day before and she frowned slightly. Soo Jin then scrolled down more and she saw herself and Kevin both laughing together, with Kevin openly laughing and easily recognisable face and Haneul’s left hand still on Kevin’s shoulder with her right covering and her eyes closed in laughter. The angle the pictures were taken from were slightly suspicious. According to Haneul’s memory of the layout of the gym, the only way the pictures could’ve been taken from that angle is if someone was actually inside the gym with them and she remembered very well that section of the gym where the camera must have been placed to get a photo like that was empty. Haneul’s alarm bells began ringing.

“We’re not in a secret relationship though.” Haneul said and shook her head with her eyes innocently wide open.

“Haneul, we all know you are.” Jaeseop said and shook his head, “There’s no need to deny it to us.”

“We really aren’t though.” Haneul profusely shook her head, “I don’t know why you would think we’re dating jut because I wiped his sweat o-…”

“You wiped his sweat?” Kiseop said with an equally confused look on his face as Haneul’s.

“Well, yes. He was sweaty, therefore I wiped his sweat?” Haneul confusedly said, “I don’t even see how that would equate to the two of us going out though.”

“Haneul…” Hwayoung quietly spoke up. All ears and eyes opened to turn to her, waiting for an explanation from who they thought of as the ‘Haneul expert’ to give her verdict on Haneul’s strange thinking patterns. She suddenly started talking in her accented, but still completely grammatically correct Chinese. “The world doesn’t quite work the way you think it has always been. We’ve grown up different, after all. But you’ve lived this lifestyle for longer than I have, hell, your whole life! So I can understand that you don’t understand how things are as well as I do.” She paused, waiting for Haneul to get the message.

“What are noonas talking about?” Dongho asked, clearly confused. “Why are you two speaking in Chinese?”

Hwayoung ignored Dongho’s enquiries but switched back to Korean. “Haneul. I want you to realise that here in this ‘normal world’ people think that anything that intimate would show two people have romantic interests in each other. Especially the media who always just want a new story to publish, something new to scandalise upon and point fingers at people, accusing them of things that they shouldn’t be accused of. It’s the way this world works, Haneul. Not your world.”

“I know very well that ‘this’ world is different to ‘my’ world.” Haneul sharply replied half in Japanese, half in her terrible French. Everyone in the room looked more confused than ever, “I don’t need reminders from you, the child who at least got to experience 13 years of normalcy, to tell me things like that. I don’t need such stark reminders every so often that I’m not what this world calls ‘normal’, okay? So stop it.” Haneul’s face darkened considerably.

“Haneul, I’m just concerned for you.” Hwayoung softly replied in Korean again.

That seemed to have blown a fuse somewhere in Haneul’s brain. “Yeah? Yeah? You’re concerned about me?” She shouted at Hwayoung, returning the conversation to Korean while she shoved the laptop back into Soo Jin’s arms. Soo Jin’s surprised expression could not be hidden. What the heck exactly was wrong with this girl and having people concerned over her anyway!? “Concerned, are we? Why the is everyone so concerned about me? I can take care of myself well enough.”

“Haneul!” Hwayoung hissed out warningly. “Watch your words.”

“I don’t care.” She said and stormed back towards her room. She was 2 metres away from her room when she felt a familiar hand grab her arm. She guessed it was Kevin, being extremely cross at her again or something, but when she turned around she was surprised to see a foreign emotion she could not comprehend on his face. Haneul couldn’t comprehend it. And she didn’t like it when she couldn’t comprehend things.

“Jang Haneul, apologise to Hwayoung. Now.” Haneul stared at him strangely, as if questioning who he was to give her commands. And she voiced her thoughts exactly the way they were.

“Who are you to give me commands?” She frowned at him.

“I’m your sunbae and your senior. So I demand you apologise to Hwayoung.” Haneul looked over at Hwayoung who seemed slightly annoyed at Haneul’s behaviour.

“No can do.” Haneul said as she shook Kevin’s hand off her arm.

“Jang Haneul,” Hwayoung began again, “if you don’t listen, I’m afraid I’m going to have to tell Miyoung about your little outburst.”

Haneul snorted. “Rattle to songsaengnim about me?” She laughed which caused everyone in the room to shake. “Rattle to songsaengnim about me?” She repeated again with a look of mockery on her face. “I don’t care if you’re older, but I think we all know whose side songsaengnim would take if were ever going to go down.” And with that, Haneul made her way quickly to her door, yanked it open and slammed it shut again when she was inside.

After Kevin knew Haneul definitely couldn’t hear him, he rolled his eyes and said, “Teenage mood swings.”

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A/N

Sorryyyyyyyyy… Short chappie :(
But I didn’t want to end it at the next point which would make the chapter ridiculously long again… The next chapter’s going to be another flashback type thing so it’ll be quite long…

And I think lately I’m aiming for shorter chapters (which are still long in comparison to most fanfictions’ chapter lengths) but more updates for all of my lovely readers :D

But if this doesn't satisfy you, don't worry!! I'm on the next chapter already and I'll probably do a double update today! :D