Author's Note: I know you're here for an elusive dose of SinRin, haha! So feel free to jump to Chapter 6 and you can just backread later on. Enjoy!

As the exhaustion grew evident in their posture, their manager signaled the leader as if informing her to remind her members to exit the venue gracefully. Fans crowded outside in obvious excited anticipation. It is not uncommon for artists like them to be criticized by both fans and antis for their lack of enthusiasm during parting greetings, if such demeanor ever appeared. Even for those few seconds spent exiting through the event hall doors to reaching their van’s door, they are under keen surveillance of the hawk-eyed. Many will understand how energy-draining it is for these humans to be performing event after event, but many will choose to not recognize this vulnerability in the assumption that being ripped off of this human nature is an automatic part of their job.

I was sitting at the middle seat of the farthest row as this has long ago been decided. Not that I had the luxury of choosing a comfortable spot, but this was the only vacant seat that could welcome me. During the first ride with them, the two ladies with the same birth name were polite enough to inquire if I preferred the accommodations of the window-side. I figured that the order in which they are situated in the van is medically strategic rather than age- or preference-related. The Eunbis can tolerate the wiggly end of the vehicle better than the rest of them. This tolerance was showcased countless times during shows that required them to try more extreme activities. It is not unconventional to torture artists like them through physically taxing challenges masked as ‘variety shows.’ On the other hand, Yerin, the second oldest, tolerated motion the least.

Knowing that they can use the window corners as fortress if and when they fall asleep.  Although that’s a rather dangerous improvisation.  I declined the kind offer so nonchalantly that I was convinced myself that I favored the space at the middle like I already truly belonged there. A total lie. The rear end makes me nauseated to my core.  I’ve always believed nausea was a useless physiologic reaction.

"Yah! Eonnie!" She called out the moment she set foot on the rubber interior as she darted her way towards the end of the van.  Calling me eonnie yet preceded by yah, it's classic for this one Eunbi to be politely impolite.

"Call me out with a ‘yah’ and ‘eonnie’ a second after?" I said while giving her a look of mixed disappointment and sarcasm. She initially answered with a sly grin.

"Because you're weird! I cannot make myself decide which one fits." She answered in mixed Korean and broken English, obviously unsurprised of my presence in the car. "Why do you always have to go ahead and not walk with us? Fans know by now that you are a staff anyway." She continued with careless curiosity but with more Korean words injected.

"Nae!" The other Eunbi agreed as she sat sloppily on my left before struggling to remove her knee-length jacket. I shook my head slightly, intentionally too discreet for her to notice.  You have to remember to take it off first so you don't get to sit on it. But she's obviously too tired to think about that right now.  "Do we have to hide that we've been practicing to converse in English?" She continued briskly with correct pronunciation and intonation, and minimal word confusion.

"Ani-yo..” I tried to sound more foreign. “Not necessarily. Nothing was specified pertaining to the secrecy of your English exercise as far as I know." I absent-mindedly responded while looking at Yerin waving at the fans outside while situating herself on her seat until Sowon blocked her view as she pushed the door to a close. I cannot help but notice her personal, but also peculiar, choice to always keep her nails short.

There was no follow-up question.  But that’s unusual.  Until I realized that I spoke in English too fast causing both my seatmates to stare at me with an embarrassed questioning look. Apologizing, I repeated my response in a much slower rate. Yewon, who was looking for her fleece blanket, gave out a faint chuckle while listening to their seemingly directionless interrogation of me.

“Then you can just walk with us!” The girl on left insisted, finally able to pull the jacket away from her body only to use it again to cover herself.

“Maybe eonnie does not like the attention!” The girl on my right, who did not care to remove her jacket, interjected in a teasing tone, but every word in Korean. She was obviously not directing the response to me but to the other Eunbi. “But you’re too good-looking to be shy.” That was Sowon who muttered under her breath, also all words in Korean. The assertion was for me, but was not directed to me. Through the distant rearview mirror, I saw Yerin lowered her head struggling to control her smile.  This is an example of a time I wish I didn’t actually understand Korean, so my body, at least my cheeks, could not react.

I removed the titanium ring I kept around my left forefinger to wear it around my middle finger. Instantaneously, all my senses were heightened. One may recklessly assume that I wore a ring that gave me unearthly powers. But no. It is not the placement of the ring that caused the physiologic overdrive but its removal from my left second finger. I learned this by accident when I was 9 years old when my brother held the same finger tightly as he tugged me out of our burning home. And for the first time since my existence, albeit in a very chaotic situation, I felt the volume of the world normalize. I thought it was a quirky way to control my hypersensitivity to the environment, but it was the most effective in making me feel an ounce less abnormal.

Click!  One.  “I go ahead so someone can welcome you...” Click!  Two.  “…when you enter the car.” I explained so confidently trying to regain control of the situation... and my body.

“You can leave the welcoming to manager!” Eunbi on my right was quick to respond.

Click!  Three.  “And so your water bottles are ready when you get in.” Click!  Four.  I added before any of the Eunbis can rebuttal, hoping to put an end to the cross-examination.

Click! Five.  C’mon. One more. Who else?

The persistent girl was about to open again. “Yah! No more questions! Seatbelt on!” I told her even though I saw from my periphery that her seatbelt already held her captive. I said it slightly louder making sure the last person would hear.

“Already did!” Her eyebrows furrowed. Click!  Six. There.  As I saw Yerin’s right shoulder rise and fall. She is usually the first one to secure herself on her seat. But tonight, I’m guessing she was a little distracted.

“This Eonnie is weird.” She continued with frustration on her face while tapping Yuna who was seated in front as if asking to sympathize with her. “So.. Weiiiird..” The other Eunbi added in agreement with her now iconic ‘So sad’ tone that made even the sick Yuna burst in a brief laughter.

“But not as weird as our Yuju, Yuna, Yeojelyi, Yujuku, Yujurgini….” Said Sowon, who sounded defensive of me, breaking our vicious and senseless exchange while scanning her phone for the first time. Laughter erupted as she struggled to convey her thoughts in English and recite the tongue-twisting roster of Yuna’s pseudo-names.

“Wae? Wae?” Trying to keep her composure amidst the embarrassment while side-eyeing the giggling members. She threw imaginary punches to every soul who laughed. And with that they forgot about the ultimate cause of the commotion that originated from the back.

Yuna, who felt unwell the whole day, tapped the seat in front of her as her only sign of protest. She has been trying to recover from a bad cold for two days now. In the front row, I can hear Yerin scouring the sides of her seat in search of the water bottle. I can sense she was smiling but did not join the bandwagon.

“Kamsahamnida, Eonnie.” Feebly holding the water bottle to her lips before she poured a mouthful. Yewon’s words were the last I heard as the 6 girls drifted to slumber one by one. I’ve seen them gracefully attend shows one after another with unwavering energy, but today, the exhaustion expectedly and inevitably took its toll. 

I don’t expect the interrogation earlier to be the last. Soon, I will have to change the order of my routine to evade the growing curiosity of the younger girls.  It is half an hour after 2am and I am certain that everyone, except manager and I, are asleep.  My calculation is we will reach the outskirts of Seoul in more or less three hours from Daegu if we can maintain this speed.  I crossed my arms against my chest as my eyes darted incessantly on all the motionless passengers and on the vehicles outside that shared the road.  Ahhh they’re all too tired to even make a sound.

“Annyeong Buddydeul!” Yuna uttered in her sleep.  Okay, I take it back.  It was loud enough for the driving manager-oppa to hear but none of the girls seemed to notice.

For a quarter and an hour, I sat still in the same position keeping my eyes and ears peeled for every imaginable sensation while we travelled. Sensing light, movement, velocity, sound, odor, and temperature changes altogether comes oddly natural to me. I am capable of sensing danger even in my sleep. I was born with it and so this clearly is not the burdensome part of the job. It is trying to talk to the girls all day in conversational English which is more tiring. More so, having to pretend not to understand them when they talk to me or among themselves in their native language. The latter requires me to become cautious not only of my responses and reactions, but most especially, cautious of the information I should project to remember or I apparently supposed to not know. I am not particularly good at pretending to be ignorant but playing dumb is a valuable skill if I wanted to continue this job.

Something is not right.  Without moving my head, my eyes moved repeatedly back and forth to the side and rearview mirrors. The light from another vehicle flickered in a disordered manner. It went on. I was convinced it was not any kind of road courtesy signal.

Neither is the light pattern consistent with the cars’ movement through the unevenness of the road. Something is not adding up.  The light’s reflection on the mirrors did not seem to distract our driver. But it ultimately troubled me.

I quickly turned my head. A raging cargo truck is behind us and has seemingly lost control. At its speed, it will hit the van’s right rear in 7 seconds with an impact strong enough to not only throw us out of the road but to render our vehicle wrecked including everyone inside it. I cursed under my breath and I felt the panic rush to all my cells. Sure enough this was not a good day for these girls. I exhaled heavily as I prepared myself for the inevitable. My vision did not fail me in seeing the truck driver swaying back and forth on his seat.  He is accelerating too fast. He did not just lose the brakes. He’s not honking. Wait. Is he... Is he ing asleep?! 6 seconds.

I glanced at Sinb who was sound asleep, her face was tired but serenely angelic. It will be impossible for her nor Yuna to survive the crash.  Sinb will be hit first.

Escaping from the momentary depressive trance, I fixed my attention on the truck’s empty passenger seat.  I need to remember the details. Size, color, depth and as much sensory information from the adjacent structures inside that confined space. C’mon! Focus! Damn it! Focus! Sh*t.

5 seconds. I tightly closed my eyes and forced myself to concentrate. All I could feel was my heart bursting out of my rib cage.