WHAT?” everyone else shouted.

“Omo, I really don’t believe this!” she continued to squealed.

TOP tried to snatch the letter away from her but she hid it under her leg and opened the brown envelope. Again, her eyes lit up when she read the letter, squealing even louder than before. “Omo, this can’t be happening!”

“What is going on?” Tae Yang demanded to know.

“Lia, can you just tell us?” Dae Sung asked the girl.

But she shook her head, leaving everyone in total suspense. She opened the third letter. With fast reflexes, Ji Yong snatched it away from her before she even had a chance to read it. “Hey!” she pouted. “That’s mine!”

Ji Yong read the letter. “Are you serious?!” he exclaimed. He looked at Lia. “What about the other letters? Who are they from?”

Her eyes went wide. “Omo, seriously?” she gasped. “I didn’t think that would be possible at all!”

“WHAT?” the others shouted. They did not like being kept in the dark. “Lia, what’s going on? Who are the letters from? Omo, can you guys, like, just tell us?”

Soo-Jin, who was sitting next to Ji Yong, took the letter. She squealed when she read the letter. “Omo, Lia, congratulations!”

Lia beamed, bouncing up and down like an excited puppy despite her bulging belly. “I can’t believe this, Unnie! This is like a dream come true!”

“What is like a dream come true?” TOP demanded to know.

Ji Yong was still staring at Lia. She giggled. “Okay, okay,” she relented after awhile. “It’s BEAST and MBLAQ. I’m guessing that the one you’re holding is SHINee?”

He nodded, still staring at her in disbelief. Soo-Jin gasped when she realized what they were saying. “Omo, are you serious, Lia?” she asked, looking back and forth between Ji Yong and Lia.

They nodded.

She squealed. “Aaahh, I don’t believe this!” she cried out.

“UGH! Can someone please stop keeping us in the dark and frickin’ tell us what happened already?” Seung Ri cried out in frustration. He was beginning to tear his hair out.

Lia and Soo-Jin were too busy shrieking with total happiness so Ji Yong decided to put them out of their misery at last. “Lia won an interview with those three K-pop bands,” he managed to choke out. “All three of them. She won an interview with MBLAQ, SHINee and BEAST through that online competition.”

“What?!” they all screeched.

Lia looked at them. “Is the word ‘what’ the only word in your vocabulary?” she asked in a joking manner.

TOP glowered at her. “That wasn’t funny. If you weren’t pregnant I would have shook you so hard until you told me right from the start.”

Tae Yang, however, was very happy for her. “Wow, that’s awesome!”

“Lia, you entered the competition to win interviews with those three bands and you didn’t tell us? Why didn’t you tell us?” Dae Sung demanded to know an explanation.

But Lia just shrugged. “Honestly, I didn’t think much of it,” she confessed. “I happened to surfing the net one day when I came across the website that says what we must to do to win an interview with the K-Pop bands that we love.” She smiled at them. “Obviously, since I already know Big Bang and 2NE1, I decided to join in for my other three favorite bands. I really didn’t expect to win all.”

“What must you do to win?” Soo-Jin asked since she knew nothing about the competition until a few minutes ago.

“‘Finish this question: To me, whichever-band-you’re-competing-for-an-interview is . . . ’” Seung Ri answered. “All answers would be sent to the companies of the bands and then they would decide for themselves. Whoever has the best answers obviously wins.”

“Wow, that’s an interesting yet common thing,” Soo-Jin laughed and Lia agreed. “You have to be really creative in order for them to pick you.”

“So, what did you write to make each of the companies choose you?” Ji Yong asked Lia. He was curious.

She giggled and took out a piece of paper. “Here you go,” she said, passing it to TOP. “I wrote it down before I typed it and sent it.”

Everyone eagerly leaned over to see what she wrote.

“Aish, Dae Sung, don’t push people when they are trying to read,” Tae Yang complained as he pushed him aside until he stumbled to the ground.

“Yah! You pushed me!”

“Stop whining.”

Lia snatched the paper away from them and was met by a lot of protests. “Why don’t I read it out loud to you?” she suggested.

“Seems fair,” Tae Yang said before they all got into another heated argument.

Lia shook her head and began to read it out loud to them:

“To me, SHINee is . . .

eh

Hawt

Incredible

Nice

Enchanting and

Ever ready to appear in my dreams

That’s why they are SHINee.

“To me, MBLAQ is . . . My Best Love Addiction, times it by a Quadruple.

“To me, BEAST is . . . Beastly Exciting and i So Truly Love You.”

She looked up from the paper. “So, how was it? What do you guys think?” she asked her friends.

Big Bang and Soo-Jin facepalmed. It was so lame, yet this was all it took for Lia to win the competition. But then again, this is Lia. She is really creative. And the others who entered the competition might have just stated that they are their number one biggest fan. Trust Lia to do something out of the box.

“I can’t believe you won just by saying all of this,” TOP muttered.

“Your lameness must have rubbed off on her, Dae Sung,” Ji Yong sighed.

“Yeah, because Dae Sung Oppa is a joke, right?” Lia said. She looked at Soo-Jin and the two girls burst out laughing.

The boys were confused at their inside joke. “Aish, girls,” Seung Ri sighed. “I will never understand them.”

Ji Yong was actually feeling really happy to see them get along so well. He was scared that Lia will hate her and what not. So it was really a huge relief to see them laughing together. He got really scared when he had to wait inside for so long. He thought they would -fight or something.

But he does feel a little pang of sadness that Lia didn’t overreact when she saw him with Soo-Jin. Does this mean she is over him? Even though he may be with Soo-Jin now, he knows he still have strong feelings for Lia

Soo-Jin knows about his feelings and she is okay with it, as long as Ji Yong at least likes her, and he does. Soo-Jin knows that she can never replace Lia.

Lia noticed that Ji Yong suddenly went too quiet. “Hmm, penny for your thoughts, Yongie Oppa?” she teased.

“Yongie?” the other boys repeated.

Soo-Jin and Lia laughed again as Ji Yong scowled darkly — now the boys will never live it down! “Don’t mind them,” he replied. “And I was just thinking how lucky you are to have won all three of them. It’s very rare.”

“You know, it is one thing to win at least one of the competition,” Dae Sung spoke up, “but it’s a completely different thing if you win all of them!”

“ of luck, I guess,” Lia said. But then she gasped. “I can’t go interview them looking like this!” She gestured to her pregnancy look. “It’ll be mortifying!”

“Hey, how dare you say that about our kid,” Seung Ri frowned. He didn’t find his kids so mortifying.

Lia looked at him. “I wasn’t implying that, dear,” she replied. “But seriously, what am I going to do?”

TOP took each letter from her and smiled. “Chill, they mentioned the date which you can go to the buildings for the interviews,” he said. “It’s not going to happen until next year late January. By then you would have given birth. Wait, no. You would have JUST given birth.” He shook his head. “No, you are going to need a lot of rest and everything.”

“Miscalculated,” Tae Yang spoke up. “She is on her first week of the eighth month. Now is only November. She’ll be giving birth next month. The interview is not until late January, right? It would have been almost two months after she gave birth.”

“Smarty pants,” Lia muttered.

“At least it saves your interview,” he shot back.

“True,” she admitted.

“That means we have to take extra care of you,” TOP told her. “You are at a very fragile state. If you have any accidents, it’s going to be bad for you and your kid.”

Lia sighed. “How many times will you get it through your thick head that you are being overly protective?”

“But what he says is true,” Dae Sung told her. “You need to be carefully watched at all times. If anything happens, Seunghyun Hyung and Maknae will find someone to blame.” That earned him a punch from each of them. “Ow! It’s true!” he protested.

Soo-Jin smiled sympathetically at her. “Lia, don’t worry. Now that you’ve got me, I’ll love to help you out. That is, if you want me to.”

Lia nodded. “I’ve been cooped up in here forever. I’ll definitely love some company.”

“Are you sure?” Ji Yong asked her.

Soo-Jin nodded. “Absolutely,” she replied firmly. “I’m not doing anything these days and it’ll give me time to bond with my new little sister.” She smiled warmly at Lia who smiled back at her.

“Well, that settles it, then,” Tae Yang said. “Lia, you’re going to be baby-sat.”

She grimaced. She didn’t like that term. But once Big Bang set their mind to something, they stick with it. She sighed.

Ji Yong laughed, ruffling her hair playfully. “Awww, one would have thought you’d get used to it by now,” he joked.

She glared at him. “Not funny, Oppa,” she mumbled. “Help me up, please. I need to go to the toilet.”

He helped her up and Soo-Jin helped her walk slowly to the toilet.

Big Bang watched in amusement as the two girls joked about on their way there. Ji Yong was dead chuffed, seeing his two favorite girls hanging around with each other like best friends already.

Things seemed to be turning out all right.