I can't believe that right now I'm standing in FYE at the Eaton Center looking for Nine Knots albums.

Well, I'm not, not me. Dorothy is. She looks like a mad woman.

"Oh, here they are, ma babies," Dot croons as she pulls an album from the rack and gives it to me.

The album is titled Roped Into. Yeah, this really feels quite fitting.

"This is their first album, the were more into the whole rope and knot theme back then," my cousin explains.

"Kinky," I say with a grin, reading the title of the songs. I've heard a couple, I think, Failed Fairytale for sure.

"No. No, no. Not kinky. Thematic."

"They like to be tied up, I get it," I say, shrugging and Dot looks like she's about to slug me. That just fuels me. "Isn't one of their popular songs called All Tied Up? Kinky bastards."

My cousin glares at me. "I'm not rewarding these comments. You know what you're saying and you know it's shit."

"Nooo, I think I'm witty. I think I'm fabulous. And your living god Jae-sang must think so too since," and then I lean down to her ear to whisper the rest, "he kissed me."

She gasps at me, pushing my arm. "You're joking about this? You think you can joke about this?"

"I have to joke about it, otherwise I might cry," I tell her, leaning my head against her shoulder and fake sob.

I'm joking, but I'm also not.

I have children calling me a fat whore on Instagram because I kissed a boy they never met. Humans should be exterminated.

"You're not getting out of buying their albums by acting like this," Dot warns me.

"I'm not?"

"No. Look, okay, I get it, this is probably not the most common way to be introduced to a band, but I swear, you have to give them a chance. You'll love them! They're so talented and their songs are so good. I personally think their most popular ones are not necessarily their best ones. Look, just give them a chance and indulge me, okay? No one in our family understand this."

She looks at me with pleading eyes. She looks like a kid when she does that, even though we're the same age.

"I still don't understand it, but I'll humor you."

"Thanks!" Dot says, looking all happy again and gives me another album, Tied Notes. "Now, let's look if we can't find Jae's version of The Charm."

I frown. "What?"

"All the guys have a version. So like nine albums. They're all fun and you can really get to know their personalities with them," Dot explains quickly like that makes sense.

Also. The way she's talking... she couldn't have, could she?

"Wait? Did you... did you buy all nine versions?" I ask, worried.

"Why are you asking me that question like the answer should be anything but of course?"

Unbelievable. "How much are each album?"

"About twenty dollars?" Dot answers with a forced grin.

I blink. Nooooo. "Nine times twenty dollars?"

"Yeaaaaah..." she replies sheepishly.

I run a hand over my face. "Please Dorothy, don't tell me that with taxes you spent more then two hundred dollars on one album?"

"You don't understand!" she exclaims.

People look our way. She covers her mouth.

"Ohmygod," I breathe.

"I needed all of them! The backs have their faces!" she explains in panic. "You get a postcard with their own little messages for each of their versions. I wanted all the versions!"

"I'm not even going to say anything, you're hearing yourself, you don't need me to remind you of your shame."

"Thank you very much," she replies sarcastically, and starts checking the albums again. "Of course, no more Jae. I'm not surprised. Well, there's a Xufeng's version here. Take this one. He's funny. And he's your direct competition, so it's good to know the enemy," Dot says.

I must look at her funny because she says defensively, "What? Everyone ships him with Jae. Basically, everyone says that Luan is Jae's bias and Xufeng is his bias wrecker."

"Are you speaking English? Is it because I've lived in Cameroon for too long?"

She waves the matter away. "It's fandom stuff. Bias is like your favourite member. Bias wrecker is the one that can make you rethink about who's really your favourite one."

"I think I'm gonna have a headache."

"You're just being pissy. It all makes sense. Stop being a drama queen," she tells me.

I sigh. "It doesn't make sense. And why are you all shipping them together? I never got this."

The fact that boys can't smile at each other without having people assume it means they want to bone each other really irks me. It's totally unfair for them. It's probably one of the reasons why so many boys are problematic. They're touch starved because they're not allowed to hug their friends without being branded something they're not.

"It's because you've never seen them together," Dot replies.

"Okay, so guys that are friendly together must definitely want to fuck each other?"

"No, but look, okay," she sighs, runs a hand in her black hair with pink ombré, "Jae-sang is probably not in love with Luan or Xufeng, but Matias and Aleksey are definitely in love with each other. My gay heart knows."

I don't know these boys, so I'm going to try to not pass judgement on my cousin, but I still think it's wrong.

"I don't even know who all these people are. Why are they nine?" I ask. "Nine people is too many people for a group!"

How can they even all sing the same song? Songs aren't that long.

"It's not, it's really not," Dot says, shaking her head categorically. She picks one of the albums and turns to a shot at the back of the whole group. She points to the only black guy. "Luan is the oldest one of the group. He's their leader really. He's from South Africa," she points another one, "Xufeng is from China and he's mostly a rapper and a dancer. Anytime you hear a OW in their songs, it's him," she points another, "Matias is from Colombia and he's the one with a sleeve tattoo and he's the main dancer. He's in charge of most of the choreographies," and then another, "And Aleksey is the Russian all rounder. He used to do ballet and like classical music when he was younger so he's really talented, but he also started to go rap in the underground scene. He produces their songs with Luan usually. If you want to spot Aleksey, find the guy pulling at Matias' pinkie during any interview or show, when he's getting anxious."

I want to say thanks for the info dumping, but also, I don't want to hurt her. She's really enthusiastic about this... and... Jesus, I can't believe I'm about to say this, but Jae-sang said you shouldn't judge someone's enthusiasm, and he was right.

I feel weird thinking about something this guy said, this guy that's not just the stranger I kissed, but thousand of people's idols.

"I'll try to remember this."

"And then you also need to meet the rest of the boys." She picks up an album with a curly tan boy on top of it. "That's Ibrahim. He's from Egypt. All the guys are really close with his family because they all stayed in Egypt with him at his parents' house for a month when they started out."

She picks up another album. "That's Kiaan. He's from India. He's the shortest, so the guys act like he's their baby," she picks up another album with a blond dude in the front, "this is Scotty, you saw him at the game, he's from the United States," she picks another album with another blond dude, thought his one is more dirty blond, "and that's Thomas. He's from Belgium."

"I hope there won't be a quiz at the end of this to know if I remember it all," I joke.

I'm kind of being honest though. How am I supposed to remember the name of these eight random guys? I'll remember Jae-sang, I kissed him, but I don't know about the others.

Dot drops her shoulders and stares at ceiling, being all dramatic. "You're really hopeless."

"Thank you." I grin. "And I still think nine guys in one group is too much. It could be two boybands. And it's not like they're playing instruments or doing anything important. They're just standing there. Nine is too much," I repeat.

"It really, really isn't. And they actually do play instruments. Once you know them, you'll see. The group wouldn't be the same without one of them. They need to be together. No one is allowed to separate them."

She's cute, saying once you know them, like I'm actually going to do anything more than buy these albums just to humor her.

I honestly don't exactly feel like encouraging the band that's made me unable to check my Instagram in peace.

"Bands break up all the time. And when there are nine guys, that just give them more reason to argue together. They can't all be getting along," I continue, clearly antagonizing her.

"You're only saying this because you don't have friends."

I blink. "Ouch."

"Sorry, but you're being bitchy and you know I'm right."

I sigh and open and close one of my hands in front of me. "Whatever, just give me the albums so you can stop psycho-analysing me."

She does and follows behind me as I make my way to the cash register. "It would be really easy to fix, the no friends deal. All you gotta do is pick up your phone and call me."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I reply, taking out my wallet from my pocket.

"I'm only one call away," she starts singing, "I'll be there to saaaave the daaaay, Superman got noooothing on meeee."

I snort. "Careful, that's not a Nine Knots song. How will your favourite band react if they know you're cheating?"

"They won't hold it against me, they're super understanding," she replies, chuckling.

"Right, right, right," I say shaking my head.

After I've spent a ridiculous amount of money on albums I will probably just let sit in the corner of my room to gather dust, I head out with my cousin.

She goes her way and I go mine, back home.

I can almost convince myself that nothing happened, that yesterday was just some kind of fluke, and it isn't actually going to have any effect on my life.

I went out shopping and no one threw eggs at me.

I do have a couple of magazines with my face on them, but that's just a detail, one that can easily be ignored.

I listen to Degenerates by A Day to Remember on the tram, living in denial.

My parents are waiting for me when I get home.

"Hey guuuuys," I greet them, a little confused. They look like they're waiting for me to start an intervention.

Wait. No.

"Naree, care to explain to us what this means?" my mother asks, showing me on her iPad a picture of me and Jae-sang kissing.

Fuck. It's reached the adults now.

I play dumb. "Huh?"

"Some reporters were asking for you at the conciergerie. We turned them down... but... what happened?"

Wait, what? Reporters? How the fuck did they find me? Is this serious?

"This is all Miller's fault!" I exclaim, pointing at my brother.

"What?" he says, raising his hands defensively.

"If only he could have kept his enthusiasm in check I wouldn't have had to talk with a stranger, and we wouldn't have been put in a kiss cam together and this never would have happened," I whine.

"So, he's not your boyfriend?" my mother presses.

I sigh. I want to let myself fall on the ground on my ass. Or go hide in my room under my cover. I don't want to have to deal with this anymore. I've talked enough about this boy I've interacted with for just a few moments. In the grand scheme of things, he should not be having such an effect on my life. "Mother dearest, when would I have met this boy? We barely just got back to Toronto. I didn't even know who he was."

"So our daughter kisses strangers..." my father says, nodding his head, like this is new knowledge he needs to process.

Mom pats him on the back. "One problem at a time darling."

"I didn't mean for this to happen, okay?" I tell them. I actually feel like crying.

Now that they know... it feels more real. All of it. I hate it.

I feel sick inside.

"It's fine honey, it'll all blow over. If it's not true, people won't care," Mom says, hugging me.

I hope my mother is right. But I have very little faith in humanity, so I'm definitely not convinced.

___________________

Hello again! :D

So, I tried to introduce the guys a tiny bit more with this chapter, and you also get more Dot. And some of Naree cynicism.

I'll be making actual character presentation pages and I'll share them on my instagram (at kaygiard but also at nineknots_official) I should start putting little snippets of songs soon too. :D

Alright, I should go now. Thanks for your comments and for taking the time to read this story. I LOVE YOU GUYS! <3