Chapter 13

A phone started ringing in Seventeen’s dorm. The members had just finished that day’s schedule, but some of them had already gone outside after changing clothes. Seok-min ran towards his phone that was attached to a charger in the living room. He looked at his screen to see who was calling and quickly picked up the phone. "Hello? Chan?"

Ji-soo, who was also in the living room, inadvertently started to listen in on the conversation. On the other side of the line, their youngest member answered in a slow manner, sounding slightly confused. "Hyung... Soon-young hyung isn’t in the dorm, right?"

Seok-min quickly looked around to check if the older member hadn’t returned already. He noticed Ji-soo’s attentive gaze and the speaker on his phone before he replied. "He isn’t. He went out a few minutes ago."

"I think I saw him walk into a hotel..." Chan said slowly, still confused. "He was wearing the cap that we bought together last week."

"A hotel? Where are you?" Seok-min asked while frowning.

"Near the dorm. I went to the mart to buy ramyeon and saw him on my way back. Do you know what’s going on? Why would he go to a hotel?"

Seok-min thought about it. A day earlier, before practice, Soon-young had told him about his childhood friend who was staying in Seoul. Perhaps she was staying in that hotel? "Aigoo uri maknae*," Seok-min laughed. "Don’t worry, it’s only 3 p.m., he probably just has an appointment with someone."

"Are you talking about Soon-young?" Ji-soo asked suddenly. Seok-min nodded. "If it’s a big hotel, there’ll be many people too... I hope he’s careful." Ji-soo continued.

Seung-kwan, who had heard everything from his room – which was right next to the place where Seok-min sat because he still had to charge his phone – suddenly turned his head around the corner of the living room and shouted to the phone, thereby scaring the wits out of Seok-min, who hadn’t noticed the younger member. "Chan! Can you see the lobby from there? Since he’s not a guest at the hotel, he probably can’t go past the lobby. He should still be there."

Chan eyed the building in front of him.

It was a hotel of average size, but wasn’t a very common type of hotel. It was an aparthotel, so although it had special facilities – such as a gym and swimming pool – just like most hotels do, the rooms were quite different compared to those of most hotels. Instead of normal hotel rooms, every family or other groups of guests could stay in cosy apartments. Ji-tae and Ji-yeon were staying on the second floor, in an apartment with two bedrooms, a bathroom and a living room with a kitchen. The special facilities were on the first floor and in the basement. They could be accessed through the lobby or through the elevator or stairs connected to the other floors. For both, a hotel guest card was needed.

The owner of the hotel, one of Ji-tae’s friends, had told Ji-tae about the dance room in the hotel. The room was usually rented by a dance hakwon**, but during the school vacations, it could be rented by hotel guests. What Seung-kwan of course couldn’t have known was that Ji-tae had already asked his friend for permission to give Soon-young access to the special facilities of the hotel by giving him one of their guest cards.

"I– I can’t see it well." Chan answered while he tried to look through the windows to find Soon-young.

"We can just call him and ask if something’s going on." Ji-soo suggested.

Seok-min just became more and more curious about Soon-young’s friend Ji-yeon. His hyung hadn’t spoken much about friends from the period before they became trainees, especially not about female friends. After their schedule today, most of the members were quite tired and decided to sleep or just relax in the dorm, but Soon-young almost straight away left the dorm to visit this friend. Seok-min wondered exactly how close they were.

"Let’s do it this way." he grinned while he started to explain his plan.

☆☆☆☆☆

Soon-young and Ji-yeon sat on the floor in the dance room. Ji-yeon was still a little surprised, but also curious about her friend’s career. She asked him about his position in the group and Soon-young explained that there were three units: a hip-hop, performance and vocal unit. He was part of the performance unit and also a choreographer for the group.

"So you choreographed the dance in that music video too?" Ji-yeon asked, referring to the video of Adore U that they had just watched.

Soon-young nodded. "But not alone. I worked together with another choreographer."

"It was a really fun dance!" Ji-yeon said enthusiastically. "It looked like you guys were having a great time filming it. But it must be hard to choreograph a dance with so many members."

Soon-young nodded. It sure wasn’t easy, but he was really happy with the result.

"How many members are there actually? Seventeen?"

Soon-young shook his head. "Thirteen."

Ji-yeon suddenly remembered something that had puzzled her before. "Those two friends that called you yesterday... are they also members of your group? Is that why they were talking about a manager?"

Soon-young smiled again, happy that he could just tell Ji-yeon everything now. "Yes, they’re Ji-hoon and Seok-min. Ji-hoon is the one who writes and creates the music for most of our songs. Well, other members write some of the lyrics too. He’s really hardworking, so he currently spends most of his time either working on our next album or sleeping. I was actually surprised he called me yesterday. And Seok-min... well, Seok-min is just Seok-min. He’s really fun to hang out with. Oh, and he’s a great singer."

Ji-yeon was amazed. "And they’re younger than you?"

"Ji-hoon and I are from the same year, Seok-min is from the same year as you."

"You guys are really talented..." Ji-yeon really meant what she said, but Soon-young noticed the sad undertone.

"So are you," he said while he stood up and extended his hand to help her up. "And it’s time to show that. To other people, but especially to yourself."

* I thought this sentence might not really make sense if I wrote it entirely in English. Perhaps most readers know what it means, but here’s the explanation anyway:
aigoo: [how to explain this…] People say this when they’re tired, scared, surprised, and in other situations as well. In this case, Seok-min kind of treats Chan like child by saying this. He said it because he thought Chan was cute. (아이구 – actually 아이고 but many people say 아이구).
uri maknae: ‘our youngest member’. A maknae is the youngest person in a family/group. (우리 막내)
Fun fact: if you’re not so familiar with Korean pronunciation rules, you’re probably pronouncing this word with a ‘k’ sound, but it’s actually pronounced as mang-nae (망내).

** A hakwon (학원) is an institute/academy where students can learn things like math, English, taekwondo, how to play piano, etc. 

Warning: long author’s note
Hi everyone~
It’s been almost four years since I uploaded chapter 12, so I want to begin this author’s note with an apology to the people who had to wait and perhaps never get to read the ending (because at least some of you will have stopped using AFF). Sorry for making you all wait so long. In 2016, I tried writing chapter 13 a few times but it didn’t really work out and although I eventually had written something, I wasn’t really satisfied with it. Then, as time went by I was still planning on continuing this story one day, but I wasn’t sure who I’d be writing it for. The people who subscribed to this story in 2015 would have probably forgotten it already and I actually didn’t like my writing that much. So I have to admit that I wasn’t completely sure if I wanted to continue writing this story again. But the story received much more love than I had expected and I had promised some people that I’d finish it someday, so this summer I decided to finally start working on it again. I was glad to see that AFF still exists and that it still looks like the site that I remember from three years ago. Unfortunately most of the people I used to talk to aren’t active anymore. So… if you’re an old subscriber and you’re still reading this story, please let me know! I’d be really glad if some of you are still using this site and still willing to read this story.
Then some news about the future of this story. It’s going to be a longer story than I had originally thought. I expected to be done after writing a few more chapters, but when I started working on this again, I soon realised that it’s going to be longer than that. For now I estimate that it’ll have between 30 and 40 chapters. I’m planning on uploading one chapter a week and see how long I can keep up.
I actually started to like this story more now that I’m working on it again and I’m trying to pay more attention to certain things that I didn’t do when I first wrote this story, so hopefully there are still people interested! Please feel free to share your thoughts on Fulfilling A Dream or anything that you’d like to see happen in a future chapter in the comments, those kind of comments can definitely help me to continue writing and I love to read them <3
Lastly, I want to thank all my old subscribers, people who upvoted this story and the people who commented. I’m uploading this again thanks to you guys!