We finish the interviews for Monday and while I just want to go home and cuddle with our pets, I am instead going to the last thing for the day; the release party of my album. It’s not anything big, just the crew and some friends gathering. I don’t even change clothes from the day’s promotions to go to the party, but my mood is definitely good once we arrive because there is a cake and food and everyone is gathered to start cheering on my album release. I smile widely and raise my hands as if I have won something, randomly cheering “yaaaaaaaay” for everyone. The music is turned up with my arrival and I start to sing along right away to my own music while greeting everyone, hugging and smiling. The dancers, the band, producers, teachers, my members, Jen, Julia’s mother is here, Manager Lim’s wife is here too, but I start screaming when I see SNSD’s Taeyeon and f(x)’s Amber – two extremely busy friends who have both texted me during the day. I find myself hugging them both tightly. I think I am in a rush to greet everyone as fast as possible, but once I have done that I think I can start have fun and just chat with people. I get to sign my album for those there, have a quick speech that is taken over by Maria like usually, the dancers are even teaching Amber and some others the choreography for [NEW ME] and the highlight is probably the game room with pool and table tennis. Mostly everyone is playing games, including me. “Hannah and me against you,” Amber points at Maria and Myung at the table tennis. I raise my hand up from the side as I tried to sneak in some snacks in my mouth, but hearing my name I raise my hand to show I am in on the game. “Bring it on, b*ches!” Maria excitedly takes a racket and starts bouncing while Myung leans over the table at the fighting spirit of our captain. Amber hands me a racket when I come over to them and we are like the sober side; Maria and Myung both finish their glass before the game begins while neither Amber nor I drink alcohol. While we are playing the game, both sides surprisingly good, Taeyeon comes to cheer us all on and she starts giving shots to Maria and Myung which is hilarious because each time they receive a point they take a shot to celebrate that simple five points later they are just screaming in excitement to the music and hitting each other when missing the ball. There is no question that Amber and I win, and for the next game we decide to make anyone facing us take shots and get drunk so we will continue winning. Taeyeon help us out with that, and within half an hour half of the dancing crew is drunk and have only lost one or two games on table tennis. The beauty with the game is when FT Island’s Honggi decides to face us, and he thinks I’m the drunken one because I get all jumpy and screaming as I putting my arms around him. “I didn’t know you were here!” I find myself shouting in his ear as the music is too loud. Honggi laughs loudly back at me, patting my back friendly. “I’m here for your album, what else? I wouldn’t miss this.” “Are we playing or not?” Amber asks behind me. I get out of the hug and hits Honggi on the chest, friendly. “Let’s play!” “Where is my shot?” he asks and searches around to see where Taeyeon went, but Taeyeon has left us and we have no one here to hand out the shots. I nod and say I’ll go get some shots for the loser team. “I’ll come along.” Honggi goes with me while Amber continues to play solo against a member from the band. Honggi is warmly dressed, and when heading to the bar he tells me he has caught a cold, and also that he came back from his tour yesterday – FT Island has been touring outside Asia during January, and I want to hear all of it. Honggi handles the ordering while I simply orders one sour drink, and he starts talking about his tour, which is captivating because FT Island has such a cool style. Though it is so much fun to chat with Honggi, we go back to play round tennis and we are so loud and it is so much fun – I even drink a shot at the end of the game to not have to do push-ups, only because Honggi makes me choose between those two – and Amber keeps giving me high-fives as we look around asking who dares to face us. We have decided that we are the unbeatable team at the table, but for the next round I play with Honggi against Amber and guitarist Kim Jundong. It wasn’t a big question who the star was in our team, Amber is unbeatable, and I am pretty good usually but Honggi keeps pushing my arm and he makes me miss constantly over and over again. Out of frustration I pushes him whenever he does something, I stomp my feet in frustration too while they laugh at me. Honggi suddenly leans over the table, laughing against it and I lean over him laughing too. We are a mess. He is tired and drunk while I am happy and tired. It continues for a few hours, chatting and playing, people get drunk and tired and before midnight I have a whole room dancing along to [NEW ME]. I am happy doing this after spending the day doing interviews, I almost forget that my sister is there but whenever I see her she looks to be having fun and she plays a round of table tennis too. I have a long chat with Sunny too, who came after her radio and with her we talk about work mostly, she asks me to visit her Roommate show and we talk about me visiting her radio too, we talk a lot about her radio. After one in the morning I go with some of the girls to the bathroom, and I check my phone. A sudden adrenaline kicks me when I see the time on my phone. Jonghyun’s radio is airing live right now and as soon as I come to think of it the adrenaline from celebrating my album release makes me look through my phone contacts until I am texting a staff member at MBC who I am pretty certain works tonight. I am polite when asking how the radio is going, if they have played my song tonight and a reminder that my album came out and your typical politeness. After eleven minutes of chatting I am sitting on the toilet seat with the phone held up as the signal goes through. I wished I could listen to the radio, to hear Jonghyun’s voice and hear what he is talking about. Right now he is receiving phone calls from listeners who are sending in song requests, which was why I contacted the staff member – in the adrenaline I want to call in and promote my album a bit. I have talked my way in to promote my album and to talk to Jonghyun – and he doesn’t know it. The call is directed to the live radio and I am silently laughing in happiness when Jonghyun’s voice is heard on my phone as he answers the call in his sweet radio tone. “Hello!” I happily says in a slight change of my tone and I realise it is pretty much the opposite tone from the one Jonghyun uses, maybe too loud too for his radio but I use the loud music at the party I have been at as an excuse. You obviously can’t hear it in here. “Ah, hello, a woman is it?” “Yes,” I answer in the same tone but I try to say it a bit lower, smiling widely as I have really no idea what I am doing but I find it hilarious sitting on the toilet all by myself and talking to Jonghyun who doesn’t even know it is me. “I always listen to Blue Night when I am in the car; it is really soothing listening to Jjong-D’s voice.” “Oh, thank you,” Jonghyun sweetly laughs on the phone, “But … this voice…? Where are you from?” No way, he can’t possibly hear it is me… right? “I am living in Seoul right now,” I answer. “Aah, are you a student?” “No, I am working these days,” I answer and I know I should have said a name when he asked where I’m from but I just can’t come up with a fake name – should I have come up with a Korean or foreign name? So I skip it. “Aah, okay. What kind of work do you do then?” He is saying so polite, making me about to burst out in laughter. “Um… I work in a store,” I say, imagining taking my sister’s place. A sudden chuckle comes out from Jonghyun and I cover my mouth with my hand to muffle my laughter. This is hilarious. I don’t know at all what to do or where to go from here. “Oh, I see,” Jonghyun says in an understanding tone but I think he has kind of figured something out – I’m not sure he can do that. “I am certain I have heard your voice before… It is very familiar somehow…” “Is it?” I ask. I am about to burst. And I am about to burst thinking he knows it’s me, but I hold on to the act; “I hear that all the time. When I sing, people say I sound just like an idol.” I wanted to say I sound like 5 Pieces, but that could be too much of a hint; though he starts laughing anyway at my answer and while thinking he knows who I am without revealing it, instead he asks if they can hear some of my singing and I make up this sound to clear my throat and get ready while I’m in fact is trying to not laugh. I start singing [New Me], not hesitating to sound as good as possible and though it is a short part I sing, Jonghyun starts applauding. “Yeeeeeeeeah!” he cheers on the radio while clapping his hand, containing his low sweet voice. “Could you please greet the members of the Blue Night family?” I laugh as he knows who I am. “Hello everyone, I am 5 Pieces’ Hannah who just released my solo album [NEW ME]!” I politely greet over the phone and I even lower my head to greet the toilet out of habit. “Woah,” Jonghyun is laughing, surprised. “I thought I recognized your voice. It’s a surprise call by Hannah! Ha-ha, I really didn’t know about this but it looks like the staff knew about it… Ha-ha. You can’t hide that you are a foreigner, Hannah, you need to work on your accent a bit more.” “I will do that,” I happily say. “I am very surprised here because I really didn’t know you were calling, but I recognized your voice. But … you are calling in to Blue Night all of a sudden, is there a reason?” Jonghyun asks and I imagine him read what his writers are sending him as he had no idea I was calling. He does seem surprised, and something warms me that he recognized my voice without problem. “My album came out,” I inform him, my cheeks hurting from smiling too much and I know I sound a bit proud saying this. “I wanted to promote my album a bit since Blue Night is such a popular program and to request that you play my song.” “Aaah… Hannah’s first solo album [NEW ME] was released,” Jonghyun sweetly says, continuing with his polite and professional behaviour, and he starts applauding lightly in the background. “Congratulations, Hannah. The album is doing really well already.” “Is it? I keep having people tell me that, it is sold out in stores too,” I am saying, “So I need to beg MBC family to play my music often for people to hear my songs.” He laughs and agrees that it is a smart idea. “Hannah, your album just came out… What are you doing at this time?” “Right now?” I ask, glancing around in the bathroom. “I’m on my way home soon, to get some sleep and play with our pets.” “Hannah, thank you for calling in to tell our listeners about your album. Which song do you request us to play?” “[New Me], please,” I answer with a cute voice. “Of course, the title track. It is a really good song, perfect for the weekend or when hanging out with friends while… now it is Tuesday morning. We will make it work, Blue Night listeners are sending in a lot of congratulations on the release of your album, Hannah. With the album out you are having your comeback on the music stations this week, isn’t that right?” He is really good. “Yes, I am having my comeback stage this weekend so I am very nervous and I will be practicing a lot to give a good stage,” I answer. I want to say that he will be promoting his solo too, but I am reminded that for the public we are still together so I don’t want to make it too obvious that we will be promoting alongside each other. “Now when you are calling we have listeners requesting you to come visit the radio again. Last month, you came with Carolina to promote [Bittersweet]…” “Yes, I remember.” “So listeners are asking you to come again,” he charmingly says and I giggle. “I will come visit Blue Night soon again,” I promise. After the call I head back out to the party, just to see Honggi sit on the floor by the wall crying to Myung. They both have their own bottle of beer in hand and Myung looks like he is crying too, sitting next to each other and looking miserable. I take a walk around the place to see who are left, chatting a bit and taking a shot that Maria wants to cheer with, but eventually I find my way back to Honggi and Myung. “What are you two doing?” I ask and squat down by Honggi’s legs. He is sitting with his legs stretched out, the bottle held between his legs and when I squat down in front of him I keep my legs together because of my clothes, the lack of pants. “Hannah,” Myung cries out and slaps his hand on Honggi’s leg. “We are two really handsome men, are we not?” Are they talking about girls? Are the two of them crying because of girls? “Yes, yes, you are,” I nod, agreeing with them because they are drunk and crying. “Isn’t it pitiful that we don’t have ourselves a girlfriend?” Myung whimper and Honggi nods in agreement. “Cheers for that,” Honggi sighs and raises his bottle for Myung. I do not say anything as I grimace watching them drink their beer. “Oh,” Myung says, lowering his bottle to nudge Honggi on the side. “This one is single too. We are a trio.” His bottle points at me and at first I am all nodding along to agree but his words then hits me and it’s like a knife cut though my heart. I am single. I keep forgetting that, and I sigh thinking that I just talked to Jonghyun through his radi