My Summer in Seoul

Chapter Four

Blood Type

Grace

There wasn't enough coffee in the world for what I was trying to accomplish—I was instantly brought back to finals week where I had been so worried I would fail my Econ class that I stayed up until four a.m. studying and almost missed the entire final.

I got a B.

I still blame lack of sleep.

It wasn't just the exhaustion that was kicking in, it was the fact that this group, SWT, wasn't anything like I'd ever seen in the US and I'd been a One Direction fangirl.

I was adult enough to admit to screaming at one of their concerts when I was fifteen and crying when they broke up the following year, so I thought I understood what true fandom was.

I was wrong.

So very, laughably wrong.

KPOP fandoms brought fangirling to a whole different level. Idols didn't just write and record albums and go on tour. Nope, they had their own merchandise, their name was on every piece of candy, every soda, friggin' ramen noodles, socks... People consumed it, they branded it and the fandoms consumed it.

Furthermore, they didn't just have group fans but individual fans that made groupies look tame. They even had leaders of the fan clubs and if you did something wrong? Those leaders would gather up everyone in the fan club and get them to cancel the KPOP group. Basically, the fans held a huge amount of power. Even worse? Those were the fans that just liked them—the other fans? The Sasaeng went to crazy depths—even dangerous ones—to get the idols' (see, I'm learning!) attention, from stalking them outside their apartments to actually breaking into their apartments; their only hobby in life was the KPOP group, which just brought the insanity to a whole other level.

I wasn't trying to judge; I just couldn't comprehend that level of obsession—I tried to compare it to some of my celebrity crushes and realized I didn't even know where most of them lived. LA? A few lived in Sun Valley, Idaho, but I would never be so bold to send something to their house...on the other more positive side, some of the fans would get together to honor their favorite celeb on their birthday which was actually really cool, and I could totally see myself participating in something like that.

It was just so foreign to me, and I felt stupid that I knew nothing, not when I looked like I should on the outside. Would that be a problem? Who was I kidding? It already was a problem.

I looked kind of Korean—at least according to everyone in middle school who used to make fun of me.

And I knew how to say hi.

Fantastic.

With a sigh, I grabbed my phone again and brought up YouTube.

I saw one whole video on an idol who was sent a dead pigeon because the girl thought he was dating some actress he'd worked with. This girl also broke into his apartment, stole one of his shirts, sent another dead pigeon, and honestly it just got weirder by the second.

Thankfully, Solia had given me pages and pages of what to watch out for, especially when it came to taking the guys to and from rehearsals. I assumed they had bodyguards, but I quickly learned that these obsessive fans weren't deterred by much of anything which made it even that much more complicated—and scary.

I might be curvy, but I had about zero muscle, so if someone came at us, all I could do was chuck my cell phone and say a prayer.

I wondered if that was what had happened to Lucas. A superfan attacked him, and now he was to blame for a scandal that wasn't even his fault?