7 Calm Before the Storm

A yawn escaped Iris's mouth as she stretched and woke up. It was Saturday. 1:24 PM. Since it was the weekend, she was able to sleep in for once and catch up on some much needed sleep as she had been crunching down on her work for finals.

Slapping around a lazy hand around her bedside counter, she picked up her phone that was on do not disturb. Flicking her somnolent eyes open she looked at the phone through narrowed eyes and turned off the mode to receive messages.

A few seconds later, her screen was suddenly flooded with push notifications on her various social media accounts. Puzzled by the unexpected influx, she rubbed her eyes and stared intently at the screen.

As she roved through the messages, her eyes grew larger and larger. Suddenly, she shot up in bed with the phone gripped in her hands still in front of her face.

Iris blinked hard. She furrowed her brows and quickly tapped a few keys to enter her Soundcloud account. Sure enough, the listens on her song 'Neverland' had skyrocketed by the thousands and she even got hundreds of downloads.

"This…" She murmured breathily. 'No way. NO WAY.' She leapt out of bed and raced down the stairs. Her startled parents jumped and were about to greet her and ask why the rush. But their daughter just flew out of the door still in pajamas with disheveled hair.

"CINDYYYYYY!!"

Iris whipped around the fence which separated their houses and stormed up to the porch. Since Cindy's family kept their door open during the day when they were inside, Iris just flung the door open and pounded upstairs, disregarding Cindy's shocked parents who nearly spilled their midday coffee and lunch.

Since Iris's shout had been loud enough to penetrate the walls of both houses, Cindy had already made it to the top of the stairs after leaving her bedroom.

"Iris?! What's wrong?"

"Cindy!! BT—! This—!" Iris could hardly speak, so she pointed to her phone screen.

Her cousin peered at the screen for a second, and then her jaw dropped.

"NO. WAY. Iris????" Cindy clutched her cousin's shoulder with one hand and her phone with the other. "You actually—! Rap Monster actually listened to your song!! And he even mentioned it on Twitter! DAMN. I can't believe this! Irisss~~!!!!"

Iris giggled and wildly nodded her head as she bit her lip to contain her excitement. "At first, I was so confused by all these messages about some song. Since I didn't share my song to social media, I didn't think it was me, but then as I read, they kept mentioning BTS, so I thought they dropped some new song or something by surprise. But nope! It was mine! All my online K-pop friends and groups were going crazy about my song that Rap Monster shared!"

A squeal left Cindy as she latched onto her cousin in a crushing hug.

"Ack! Not so tight! Jeez cuz, you're even more excited than I am!" Iris laughed and wrestled out of her cousin's vice grip.

"Damn it Iris! Why are you so damn calm all the time? This is HUGE! Rap Monster not only listened to your song, he promoted it! Don't you know what this means?" Cindy looked at her cousin with wide eyes.

"Um, no?" Iris honestly didn't see where Cindy was going with this. So what if Rap Monster heard and promoted her song? In a sense, it was a wasted effort on the BTS member's part. It would be one thing if she continued music and grew in popularity on Soundcloud, but Iris didn't necessarily plan to pursue music. Nothing else would happen after.

Cindy stared at Iris through lowered eyes in an "are you kidding me" look. "Well, you're not actively pursing music, but since your avatar has your freakin' face, guess what that means?" Cindy paused and watched as her cousin's eyes grow in realization.

"Yup, people are going to dig you up, and you're going to get mobbed."

"F—!!" Iris gasped and covered her mouth. It was at this point that she felt like an idiot.

Although she wasn't worried about anyone she knew finding out that IrisEverglade was actually Iris Huang, it hadn't crossed her mind that possibly some crazy or curious fans would search her up. Iris wasn't the most common name, so going by picture alone, it was possible that one out of the thousands looking would find her. And once they did.

She was so screwed.

"Argh!" Iris held her head. In the heat of the moment, she had enthusiastically mentioned her song to Rap Monster. But she hadn't thought of any repercussions at the time because she didn't think he would proclaim that he liked the song to the whole world!

'Namjoooonnn~~!!!! For 148 IQ don't you think you did something rather stupid!?!' She screamed inside and tousled her bedhead.

Cindy firmly patted her cousin. "It's okay, you didn't receive any weird messages on social about you yet, right? Just change your avatar and hope that no one took a screenshot!"

"Cinds!! What if someone DID take a screenshot? Then it'll look really bad on my part and maybe reflect poorly on Namjoon!" Some fans might go starry thinking of entering BTS's inner circle, but for practical Iris, she saw the dangers first.

"Shoot, you're right." Cindy drew up her fist to her chin and propped up her arm with the other in a thinking pose.

"Maybe we're just overreacting? Sure, some Armies are immature, but for the most part, we're pretty cool. As long as you respond back respectfully, I don't think anyone will go after you. Even if they do, I'm sure others will naturally fight back after seeing the uncalled for threats."

Iris sighed. "Yeah… Maybe, but I can't help feeling uneasy. I don't know, but I feel like something's going to happen, intuition I suppose. But maybe that's even an illusion due to being worried."

Cindy gave a comforting slap to the shoulder. "No worries. Let's just see how this plays out. If worse comes to worse... you'll be able to handle it."

"Right…"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, seven boys began gathering around a laptop.

"(Joonie, what's this post about some song you liked? The fans are super curious because the artist is really unknown on Soundcloud)." J-Hope ambled his way over to Namjoon who was sitting on the couch with his laptop in front of him.

"(Yeah, the fans are really curious on how you found the artist)," Jungkook commented as he plopped beside the group leader.

Taehyung poked his head from around the corner after hearing their conversation. Following him, Jimin walked over from behind the man to the others in order to see what Taehyung was looking at.

Namjoon motioned for everyone to come over and call the rest of the group. He had thought long and hard about this for the past week, and he decided to get everyone's opinion on it.

Initially, he wanted to give a boost to Iris in case she wanted to pursue music. But he felt really inspired by her song which had a lot of depth and significance in the lyrics. She didn't have the best musical tools to make the song, but her voice was pleasant and promising. Most importantly, she had natural emotion and believability.

"(Everyone, what do you think of this song? It's the one I posted about today. It was by that girl we met in L.A., Iris)." Namjoon navigated to Soundcloud and clicked on 'Neverland' in his favorites playlist.

"(Iris? You mean that girl that you didn't tell me was leaving, so I couldn't say goodbye?)" Taehyung playfully smacked Namjoon in irritated disappointment.

Namjoon chuckled as Jimin, Jungkook, and J-Hope followed up with their own complaints about not being able to see her off or formally meet her in Jungkook's case. The maknae was rather upset on being left out of the whole crazy incident.

"(Sorry sorry, I didn't want to raise a fuss.)" Namjoon waved his hand in apology. "(Anyway, listen to this.)"

He tapped the play button.