“Oh, I got those entries you wanted Tiff,” Sunny informed once we got back to my house.

It was almost two in the morning and I had been running around literally all day.

I had an interview in the morning, a radio show at around lunch time, a pre-recording for the music show that airs tomorrow after that, and I just got finished with a three hour joint concert with all the other artists from my company.

Talk about exhausting.

I was practically sleep walking by the time I reached my living room, but that sure woke me up… for some reason.

“Really?” She hummed.

“There were only twelve applicants with either of those names so you got lucky,” she laughed.

Wow, I really did. Out of just over a thousand people I only had to search through twelve…

Omo, I could even do that tonight.

“Give me them.”

“Now?” She looked skeptic. “It’s two in the morning Tiffany, we have to get up early again you know that right?” I nodded.

“I know, but it won’t take long Sunny, please.” She sighed.

“Suit yourself, I’m going to sleep,” she said before handing me a slick black USB drive. “All the files are in there, they have the video along with a copy of the application separated by applicant, by folder. They made it super easy for you.” I nodded.

“I’m not an idiot Sunny, I know how a computer works,” I complained.

While I appreciated the extra care, I kinda felt a little offended. Just because I’m a celebrity doesn’t mean I’m stupid…

“Oh shut up, they just wanted to be nice. When I told the Project Manager it was a favor from you he practically choked up.” I smiled.

I guess this way it was a little more organized at least...

“Well, thank him for me then.”

“I already did,” she winked. “What would you do without me?”

“Probably drive the next manager crazy until I got you back,” I laughed.

I mean it was how I got my eighteen year old best friend as my manager in the first place…

“Yeah, my uncle would not be too happy about that again,” she grinned. “Anyway, my computer is on the table in there. Hurry and do whatever you’re doing and go to sleep, okay? You’re so annoying when you’re tired.”

 “Wow~,” I held out sarcastically. “Thanks Sunkyu, love you too.” She flashed me one of her way too cute smiles along with a quick peace sign before walking off down the hall.

She wasn’t the most pleasant to deal with when she was tired either… jerk.

Whatever.

I sat down at our kitchen table and quickly turned the computer on. Plugging in the USB and hearing the ‘dun-dun’ noise it makes when you plug something in to it, I knew all I had to do now was wait.

“Assa~,” I let out about thirty seconds later. The little window popped up showing all the folders and I hurriedly clicked on the first one. “Applicant 226,” I said aloud.

The folder opened to show one file of a PDF and one video file. I hit play, but immediately closed out of the window when the person in it was a grown man.

Sorry Park Taeyeon, you are not the person I wanted you to be.

I closed out his folder and moved on to the next… and the next… and the next. The sixth person down did a really good job covering my debut song’s dance. They added even more to it and it was way better than the original for sure, but it still wasn’t the right Hyoyeon.

Sorry Ms. Oh, not this time.

“Applicant 792,” I said aloud as I opened the folder. I made the video play and momentarily thought it was frozen until a little girl walked right in front of the camera.

“Too close,” I heard faintly. I smiled, but when the girl took a step back and finally came into focus, my grin tripled.

“Finally.”

The Hyoyeon I had been looking for took her place in front of the camera and quickly bowed.

“Hello, I’m Kim Hyoyeon and I’m eleven years old. I’ll be dancing to Tiffany’s ‘Eat You Up.’”

She gave a nod to whoever was behind the camera and quickly turned around. I made the video full screen and sat back to watch. Even if she was bad I decided I was going to watch the whole thing. Maybe when I meet her again I can give her pointers or tips to help her improve.

Oh my gosh, maybe I could give her lessons or something! Then I’d get to see her all the time.

After about seven seconds into the song though, I knew that that wasn’t even going to be an option. Actually in a few years I would be the one needing lessons from her…

This girl was good, especially for being only 11.

Gah, she was popping and locking all over the place and the song hadn’t even technically started yet. When the lyrics finally came through she started following the actual choreography, but added extra little things here and there and I was seriously impressed.

She couldn’t have come up with this on her own, right?

She was hip ing, body rolling and even doing the tricky little move where I went back and forth on the heel of my sneakers for a second.

I released this only a year ago and it was still hard for me to do sometimes… I can’t even imagine doing this when I was eleven.

Gah, I don’t think I could’ve even done that when I debuted at thirteen either…

I was thoroughly impressed.

I wasn’t sure if she was picked for one of the twenty finalists that I had to choose from in a few days but she totally needed to be.

_______________________________________________________

 

“These are the top twenty we picked out Tiffany-ssi,” the Project Manager said before I sat down at the conference table. “We thought we could go through them one by one with you and you’ll pick the better of the two and it will stay up to be put against the next and so on and so forth.” I nodded.

“Yeah, that sounds fine,” I agreed. It definitely beat having to keep thinking back to the videos I’ve already watched. This way they would stay fresher in my brain too.

“Great. Give me a minute here and we’ll get started.” I nodded again. I took a look at the other five people across the table and surprise, surprise; they were all staring back at me too.

I grinned.

The idols and artists don’t usually come to his part of the company so I’m assuming this is the first time they’ve seen one of us this close up.

“Okay, Tiffany-ssi you’re really going to like these,” the manager smiled. 

He was right too.

It was only the first video and I was already mesmerized.

When I finally watched all twenty, I was blown away.

The skill that some of those people and groups had was ridiculous. I seriously didn’t know why they weren’t already performing somewhere, but I was also pretty glad too.

Now instead of dancing somewhere else or with someone else, they got to dance with me!

The first place winner would get to dance with me to my song ‘Only One.’ There was a part in the dance toward the end of the song where it would just be me and the winner for about thirty seconds before all the other dancers came back in and finished it out.

Apparently our company surveyed the fans and the number one thing they wanted to do with me was dance… well number one was actually go out to eat with me, but SM wouldn’t allow that one.

The second place winner also got a ‘prize’ too. They, like the first place winner, would get to be a part of my back up dancing crew for a song, but would not get a one on one dance like first place did.

I was kind of upset I didn’t see Hyoyeon make it into the top twenty, but I also could definitely understand why.

All the dancers in the top twenty were at least eighteen and had way more experience and way more power in general. Their steps were more forceful and their motions have all been perfectly fine tuned over the years they’ve been dancing. Some of them tumbled, some of them did the b-boy dances where they spun on their heads!

It was crazy.

Hyoyeon was great no doubt, but she unfortunately didn’t come close to some of the powerful performances that were shown. If this contest was in a few more years however… these guys would have a real run for their money.

After I went through all the trouble of finding her and made others go through extra effort for me though, I couldn’t just let it all go to waste… right?

I chose the winner from the two videos, it was kind of obvious anyway and then picked my second favorite straight from the lineup.

“Very well Tiffany-ssi, you made great choices. I would’ve picked the same way you did,” the Manager spoke up.

I didn’t believe him at all, but I smiled anyway.

“The two winners will be very excited to-“

“Three,” I corrected. He looked confused.

“Uhm, what,” he asked after clearing his throat.

“I want to add another winner.” His eyes might’ve well popped out of his head.

Aigo~!

“Uh, well Tiffany-ssi I don’t know if we can-“

“It’s my contest isn’t it,” I asked defensively.

“We-well yes it is b-but we didn’t advertise three winners nor we do we have another prize to-”

“Backstage passes,” I said simply. “And just tell the media or whoever questions it that I chose the third winner because I was really impressed with them even though they were very young.”

“So it’s a child,” she asked skeptically. I nodded.

“Yes. I don’t know why the children competed against grown adults anyway,” I said firmly.

That was something that had been really bothering me though. Of course no ten year old kid is going to beat out a twenty five year old man that can spin himself around on the ground solely using his arms…

What were these people thinking?

“This girl would have beaten out anyone around her age though and I think that need’s acknowledged.”

The manager looked so flustered it was kinda cute.

“Tiffany-ssi I’m still not sure if we can do this. I’ll have to-”

“You can,” I cut him off. “If the CEO has a problem with it tell him to come to me.”

Everyone in the room looked a little taken back by my tone, but I wasn’t messing around.

She really did deserve it and not to brag or anything but in the past year I singlehandedly brought in more revenue than all the other artists under SM combined, I think I could get away with something as small as giving away a few backstage passes to one concert…

“Ye-yes, very well. What is the applicant’s name?”

“Kim Hyoyeon,” I said firmly. “Applicant number 792.” I watched him scribble something down in his notes.

“Okay Tiffany-ssi. Wh-what should we call the place? Third? Honorable mention? Runner up?”

Oh crap, I didn’t think about that.

I guess she technically wasn’t third place or a runner up, but honorable mention didn’t sound too bad at all.

“Honorable mention sounds fine, don’t you think?” He hummed.

“Of course. We’ll get on it right away Tiffany-ssi.” I smiled.

“Thank you so much oppa.” I could see him turning red from here.

“No problem. I-I was going to have Moonhee-ssi call the winners this evening so I’m glad you said something.” Wah, his tone was almost enough to make me crack up. He was being such a up right now I couldn’t-

Oh.

My.

God~!

A genius idea popped in to my head.

________________________________________________________

 

“Why did you tell him you were going to call them personally if you aren’t actually going to do it Hwang Miyoung?” I shrugged.

“I don’t know Sunny, I just got caught up in the moment,” I admitted. I mean it sounded like a good idea at the time but as soon as the first guy said ‘hello’ I handed the phone off to Sunny. “Sorry~,” I apologized cutely.

I don’t know why I did it either, but I was just glad Sunny came to the rescue and told the first place winner everything he needed to know. He sounded really excited though and that made me so happy.

“Whatever. Let’s just get this over with.”

Sunny made the next call to the second place winner and she sounded like she was about to cry from the first mention of my name.

Oh god.

I wanted to tell her to stop crying, but if she cried from just hearing the news about getting to dance with me, I thought talking to me might make it even worse.

Hyoyeon wouldn’t cry, right? I think she would say nothing based on the fan signing.

“Okay read me off the number for the last one,” she said. “I still can’t believe you made them add another winner Tiff.”

“What? Why not,” I asked before giving her the number on the application. I was kinda proud of myself actually. “The contest was totally unfair to the younger kids,” I argued.

That was the story I was sticking with at least…

“Yeah, but still. I’ve never seen you get that snappy with the company employees,” she laughed. “What’s the guardian’s name?”

“Yah, I’m an adult too now. I can snap at whoever I want,” I said as I scanned the paper and- “Ah, it’s Kim Taeyeon… Wait, that can’t be right.”

I looked at the application again and under the ‘Guardian’ section for people under eighteen, it read Taeyeon’s name.

But why would it be Taeyeon? She obviously wasn’t Hyoyeon’s mom…

“Huh? Is it Taeyeon or what Tiff, it’s ringing…” I hummed.

“That’s what it says,” I responded quickly.

There wasn’t any other name on here to tell her so I guess it had to be Taeyeon for now.

I  just didn’t understand why she would be on here instead of- Omo, wait.

It was ringing?!

I quickly moved closer to Sunny in hopes I could hear the other end and-

“Yeboseyo,” Sunny said cheerfully. “I- huh?” She gave me a confused look, but then ended the call.

Holy crap!

“Sunny! You can’t just hang up on them like that!”

Oh my god… She-

“I think they were speaking Chinese Tiff…” What? Chinese? “Are you sure you read the number right?” I nodded.

“I’m totally sure, maybe you had a bad connection?” She nodded.

“Yeah maybe… I’ll try again.” I watched her hit redial and couldn’t resist.

“Put it on speaker.”

“Why,” she questioned.

“Just because Sunkyu. I-“

“Fine. There you-”

“Moshi moshi~,” a voice responded on the other end.

Huh? What the…

First Chinese and now they were speaking Japanese?

Ugh, it was a good thing I’m fluent in this one.

“Moshi moshi,” I replied back.

“Ah hai, moshi moshi,” the voice on the other end said again.

“Uh konichiwa, Kim Taeye-”

“Omo. Unnie, this person is actually Japanese,” I heard faintly in Korean before the line went dead.

Wait just a minute now… They spoke perfect Korean!

I looked at Sunny and she just laughed.

“I think we’re being pranked Tiff.”

Omo…

“You have got to be kidding me,” I said, taking a page from the girl we were trying to call in the first place.

I didn’t even know people did prank calls anymore.

Ugh.

Either way we had to talk to someone.

This was the only number they gave us so I don’t know what else to do.