At five till midnight, I check the hall of practice rooms to make sure the coast is clear. Helena’s practicing in one of them, as always, but she’s too busy practicing her expressions—winking and pouting girlishly in the mirror—to notice me creeping past. I peek behind me to make sure JiHoon isn’t lurking around like some henchman in a Mission: Impossible movie.

This is the last thing I should be doing on a night so close to the assessment. If I get caught, I’ll be finished. But for some reason, not seeing YoungBae isn’t an option for me. I hold my breath and run up the staircase that goes to the roof. My palms are sweaty as I reach into my underwear to pull out the ID—I didn’t put it in my sweatpants in case I ran into a junior manager in the hall and they made me turn out my pockets or something … which has literally never happened, but this place makes you paranoid.

I hold the ID to the scanner, still holding my breath. The door clicks open. Out in the muggy night air, I expect an alarm to alert all the security guards in the whole building, and then they’ll come after me with flashlights and tasers. But without dozens of chattering girls, the garden is eerie and almost pitch-dark—I only see shadows in the city lights from below. All I hear is the whir of traffic in the distance.

I watch the rusty metal door in the center of the concrete Gender Wall. It’s hot out, but I’m so on edge that I’m actually chilly. I could be discovered by a junior manager or security guard or janitor at any minute.

I’ve been checking the phone every night, and there’s usually been a text from YoungBae saying, “not tnite. manager is up my butt. dont respond save ur battery,” but last night, YoungBae finally texted, “ok can meet tomorrow midnite yay.”

But after twenty minutes of waiting, I figure something must have gone wrong. I turn to go back downstairs when I hear a loud click. The scanner on the Gender Wall flashes green. The door opens, and a tall shadowy silhouette walks through. I get ready to run in case it’s an adult …

“Dude, you made it,” says the shadow in English.

“YoungBae?” I whisper.

“I was worried you’d chicken out.”

YoungBae steps into a pocket of orange light, which glints off his swoopy hair and illuminates his sharp jawline. I can feel sweat break through my forehead as my heart revs up.

“I’m the one who was waiting around for you,” I whisper. “This is totally nuts.”

“Sorry about the delay. I’m in a lot of trouble with my manager right now, which is why we’re up here. I got written up again.”

He unwinds a hose hidden behind a bonsai planter.

“What do you mean?”

“When I get written up before lunch, I get put on bathroom-cleaning duty, which is the worst. When I get written up after lunch, I get put on roof-garden-watering duty.” He holds up his own ID badge. “Mr. Jeon, one of the janitors, lets me borrow this.”

“And mine?” I say, looking at the surly photo of DongHo.

“One of my teammates, WooChin-hyung, found it a while ago, and he passed it down to me when he got cut from the trainee program last month. It never got deactivated, I guess. These cheap old bootleg phones, WooChin smuggled them in from outside for me. You don’t want to know what I had to do for him in return …”

“Oh no,” I say. “What?”

He makes a gagging face. “I had to massage his feet every night.”

“Oh, vom!” I say, laughing. Now that I know what YoungBae’s gone through for me—trainee feet get disgusting and tore up; I mean, look at mine—I have renewed hope that I’m not being friend-zoned.

It feels unbelievably refreshing to be speaking English. I feel unburdened and light, like when I take the ankle weights off after one of the General’s drills. We talk about the crazy practices we’ve been doing before the assessment in a few days. I learn that he’s the maknae of his team, too, and his hyungs—the boy version of unnies—hazed him at first, too.

“What kind of shenanigans have your unnies been pulling?” he asks.

“Well, two of them keep throwing their garbage on my pillow every day.”

YoungBae laughs. “Oh, snap. My hyungs did that to me at first, too. It’s some weird Korean rule where the maknae is supposed to throw out the garbage for their seniors. Your pillow, though? That’s just messed up. My hyungs at least had the decency to put their trash on my dresser.”

“How did you get them to stop?”

“I won my team’s respect eventually.”

“How?”

“First, I beat my meanest hyung, YoonSoo, in an arm-wrestling match, and now we’re cool.”

“Yeah, I don’t think that’s going to work so well for me.”

“The other thing was my first monthly assessment. I pulled out some new moves, which seemed to go over pretty well. Once they knew I was taking debuting seriously and not just messing around, they stopped messing with me.”

“Ah. Well, my manager and the General told me I’m the worst dancer they’ve ever seen. They’re having me stand off to the side doing nothing while everyone else does the dance break.”

YoungBae accidentally sprays water all over his crotch. “Shoot!”

I laugh, and he sprays me for laughing. I scream and run away. “Stop it!”

“So sorry, my hand slipped,” he says, bowing deeply. Finished with the watering, he rolls the hose back up.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I say. “I really think I’m going to get kicked out after this assessment.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” says YoungBae, stroking his chin. “If you’re not the best dancer, you need to think of something else to help you stand out.”

“I think the best I can do is make the dance funny—make a lot of faces and stuff like that. But our Stages are so planned out. I don’t think the managers or the unnies will appreciate me being all extra.”

“Go ahead and be extra. Kinda like this,” he says. Without warning, he drops to the ground and does a B-boy windmill, his legs slicing through the air like propellers, his foot whooshing inches from my chin. He jumps back up like nothing happened, not even breathing hard.

I applaud, and YoungBae bows.

“Make your funny faces,” he says. “We’re trying to be K-pop idols, not, like, lawyers or whatever. Everyone expects you to be extra anyway, being American and all.”

I make a mental note to myself: BE EXTRA.

I stop and look at him. “Why are you standing like that?”

Now that he’s done watering, YoungBae is standing with his arms crossed and his long legs spread wide apart, as if he’s airing out his wet crotch.

“I learned this in my Behavior and Manners class. This is called Manner Legs.”

He tells me that since he’s so tall, his Behavior and Manners teacher—who, lucky for him, isn’t Madame Jung—tells him it’s good manners when he’s talking to a lady to stand like this so he’s not towering over her like some creeper-giant. Manner Legs.

Honestly, I’m way into it. He’s still towering over me, but it’s adorable that he’s trying. With his wide shoulders, he looks like a giant X.

“He also taught me something called Manner Hands.”

“Oh, I know all about Manner Hands,” I say.

I’ve seen photos of male idols posing with female fans at Fansign events. They’ll put their arm around the girl but not actually make physical contact—their hand will just hover six inches over her shoulder, or her back if they’re “hugging.”

“Isn’t that almost ruder than just touching someone?” I say. “It’s like you think girls are radioactive or something.”

“Yeah, there’s a lot I don’t really get about Korean manners,” says YoungBae. He spreads his legs wider, his Manner Legs getting even more manner-like, so we’re almost eye to eye. As I look at his face head-on, I must be hooked by a gravitational pull coming from his lips or something, because I stumble forward—I swear, it’s completely by accident. Before my lips can land on his, he catches me and laughs. “You okay there?”

“Yeah,” I say, feeling my head. I’m a little dizzy. “I think I’m just hungry.”

He’s still standing with Manner Legs. He has one arm around my back, one hand on my shoulder. My hand is on his chest; he hasn’t budged at all from me falling onto him—completely sturdy. It feels so good.

He smiles and we make eye contact for a long second. His eyes are turning into those adorable straight lines. But then he suddenly props me back up to a standing position and lifts his palms in the air. “Oh, I forgot my Manner Hands. Manner Hands!”

We laugh, but inwardly, I’m thinking that I’ll be fine if he decides to use Rude Hands next time. Or Rude Lips.

Or maybe it’s on me to forget my manners first.