“3 weeks!”

A girl younger than Choa with longer blonde hair and chubbier cheeks smacked the whiteboard with “3 WEEKS!” aptly written in bold, black writing. She had a pair of drum sticks in one hand and fistful of markers in the other. Her expression was one of fierce determination, her eyes fiery with an undying rage that endlessly pursued her one dream: to be a rockstar. But to do that she needed a band, and since most of them deserted…

The band leader, Youkyung, looked at the replacements with Mina standing beside her with arms crossed. She had already decided they were better than nothing and took them in with a quick audition, but she needed to know that she can trust them before she could perform with them. She scanned the three new members again: Yuna, who was standing with her hands behind her back and giving off a cool smile, Jimin, who was looking disinterested, and Choa, whose hands were shaking within the sleeves of the creme sweater they hid in. However, they all had a certain tension in their limbs that was caused by a certain fear from the fiery drummer.

“We have 3 weeks before the semi-finals for this band,” she briefed the new members. “We barely got by the last few rounds, but now we need to get serious!”

“Youkyung,” Mina interrupted. “The other bands from the rounds barely had any skill in performing like us.”

“We still need to get serious!” Youkyung quickly returned to the whiteboard and flipped it, dropping the markers in the process while she gripped the whiteboard. On the other side of the whiteboard was a list of names underneath a title, “STRONG COMPETITION”. Youkyung was passionate for her dream to be a world-wide famous performer, especially since the competition gave her a chance to do so with the winner gaining studio time at a top record company and free exposure. Mina can’t help but be amused for her crush (as it was one of the reasons she liked the drummer), but she noticed how her fiery attitude was slightly scaring the new members, who all had decided to close the store early at 5:30pm a day after they accepted the offer to join the rehearsal in Youkyung’s studio in her parent’s house, which was outfitted with basic recording equipment, with amplifiers, microphones, and cables running all over the room. They were all quickly beginning to regret doing so and felt intimidated by the way everything looked so professional, but Mina did her best to reassure them and hopefully make the rehearsals easier on them. They only had one night to look through the song list that they will perform for, and though the chords and melodies were easy, the lyrics took a bit more work to remember. 

“3 of those bands on the list literally can’t play instruments at all,” Mina said matter-of-factly. “They only passed by the judges’ co-“

“No excuses!” Youkyung waved off Mina’s explanations. “It’s sudden death now! We got lucky the last few rounds, but with brand new recruits we really need to work hard.”

“Yuna-unnie literally had a scholarship to Berklee College of Music before deciding to study economics,” Mina explained, to which the long-haired brunette waved off humbly and a small giggle. “Choa-unnie graduated with a music degree, and Jimin-unnie…”

Mina gave a look at the short brunette with uncertainty, which was returned with a glare from the mentioned brunette.

“She can rap,” Mina finished with a sheepish smile. 

“I can also play guitar, y’know!” Jimin was slowly getting impatient, but tried not to show too much for fear of incurring a wrath from a more violent blonde with drumsticks. However, she was left ignored.

“But we need them to perform,” Youkyung rebutted, crossing her arms with a raised eyebrow. “They can do fancy music stuff and read theory, which is cool on them. But can they play?”

Youkyung added the last with emphasis, slightly elongating the word whilst leaning in to Mina, who blushed harder the closer she got. When Mina didn’t answer, Youkyung merely went to her seat behind the drum set as she took it as a sign that she won the argument. Mina sighed and walked to her bass, which was leaning on her amplifier. Everyone else took this as a cue to get to their positions with their respective instruments, Yuna on keyboards, and Choa and Jimin on electric guitars. Everyone had a vocal part to do so they were all also outfitted with microphones on respective stands beside them. 

“Prove me wrong,” Youkyung said quietly into her microphone beside her seat, set almost behind her to avoid the sound of the drums from coming into its vicinity. Her voice reverberated into the audio monitoring amps within the room. “We have around 6 songs to go through. Let’s start with ‘Like A Cat’.” 

With that simple statement, she tapped the cymbals four times to cue in Yuna to start the song. Choa gripped her guitar tightly, looking at Jimin who gave her a reassuring smile like she always did when they were both in high school. The younger brunette gave her a pat on the shoulder before they both played their respective parts. 

It’s going to be a laborious night, Choa thought. But for the handsome man, Seunghyun…

Choa shivered at the thought seeing that man again. Ever since the day they made contact, memories of their proximity leaked into her dreams, where she could intimately feel his body without the restriction of clothes. Her mind wandered to last night’s dream, where he tripped, but caught her in a hug to steady himself. The image was stuck in her head, where she didn’t notice the other members had stopped playing to stare at her worriedly. She blushed hard, and cowered beneath Youkyung’s indifferent gaze. Mina wasn’t too worried, since she only saw Choa blank out at the 4th song, so she figured that the drummer might forgive her. 

“Choa-unnie,” She said softly into the microphone. “You only played one chord throughout Jimin-unnie’s verse. Anything on your mind?”

Her voice wasn’t hostile, but it wasn’t gentle either. Her eyes were the same. Choa fidgeted a bit and gripped the neck of her white guitar. She breathed in deeply to rid herself of thoughts of the man, but she only saw more of him. Instead, she set thoughts of him aside like pinning them on a wall. Instead of dominating her mind, his image would only be a motivation for her to perform. With this, Choa steeled herself and hardened her eyes at Youkyung. She smiled at the edge, while also surprising the other members. Even Jimin, who always thought of Choa as an innocent old lady (due to her being the oldest in their group of friends), was impressed at her new striking gaze.

“Nothing,” Choa said coolly. “Let’s just start the song over.”

She will meet the man again.

No, She corrected. I will meet Seunghyun again.

And next time, she’ll impress him. Her newfound resolve raised the moral for the rest of the members, and they all slowly, but surely, got better at playing the songs. They even learned stopped in between playing to decide on how they’re going to interact with the audience, with the band deciding that Choa and Jimin would take turns being the front(wo)men of the band. They all looked at Youkyung, who could only look at them with an approving smile. Just looking at the smile was enough of a response for Yuna, who made the decision. She cheered excitedly, which was outside of her usual mature characteristic. The random outburst was enough to make all the members laugh, even Youkyung who was stoic before. After that, they didn’t practice long before they had to go home. Each of their apartments were pretty far from Youkyung’s house, so they all had to share Jimin’s car (“Why my car again?” Jimin asked, only for Mina to reply, “Because Choa’s too old to drive, Yuna doesn’t have a car, and I’m too poor to buy one.”). It was a tiring, but comfortable silence. For a first rehearsal (and impromptu audition), it was productive to the point that Youkyung decided that a rehearsal every night was not necessary (much to the relief of the cafe employees). It was half past 10 in the evening when they left, and thus Mina and Yuna were slowly dozing off in the back seat. Choa squealed silently when she looked back as they both rested their heads in each other’s direction.

“Do you think Mina would be better with Yuna or Youkyung?” Choa asked. She had an avid obsession with pairing two people together if they looked cute with other. Jimin, who particularly didn’t care and was really tired from the practice, merely grunted as she kept driving. 

“Why not all three?” Jimin asked, almost drunk from her exhaustion, which caused Choa to sputter. “Besides, Mina is already rock solid on Youkyung, so why bother considering?”

“I don’t know,” Choa said quietly, becoming more bubbly the longer she stared at the two sleeping forms. She was waiting for the point where one of them would lean in closer to the other. 

“Speaking of pairings,” Jimin said, interrupting Choa from her reverie as she felt dread from within her. “I pair you with that guy from the cafe.”

Choa sputtered again, causing Jimin to laugh tiredly. The brunette had a grin on her face as she looked at the blonde blush, even in the dark. 

“Yuna’s right,” Jimin noted. “He is the man of your dreams, which was why you got stuck on my verses, huh?”

Jimin’s questioned was answered by the way Choa looked away from her boss and long time best friend. She was a bit speechless, as images of her fantasies creeped into her mind, almost putting her into a conscious, albeit catatonic state. Jimin only laughed again.

“Just don’t drool on my seat,” she said. “At least it’s nice you found someone after all these years.”

Choa felt a slight bitterness in Jimin’s voice, but thought that maybe she was just really tired and was just hearing things. She looked back at her best friend, who was smiling tiredly as she looked ahead.

“What do you mean?” Choa asked, as Jimin made the last turn to Choa’s apartment. Choa looked quickly at her phone for the time. The phone glowed with a background of a kitten, with the time: “11:17”. 

“You might have the found the one, you know?” Jimin gave a smirk to Choa and huffed in amusement. “As your best friend, I just want to say good on you after all that tragic in high school.”

As Jimin slowed down in front of the apartment building, she gave the blonde a punch to the shoulder. They both smiled at each and laughed from the fatigue of the night. They then looked into each other’s eyes, as they both reminisce on their days in high school where, Choa used to drag Jimin everywhere to find cute boys. Jimin would have luck with actually engaging and getting boys’ attention, but Choa would only stumble. She would say the weirdest things when speaking to them, which turned them away from her, always leaving her slightly heartbroken. She’s glad that Jimin was there, giving occasional pats on the back and fists to the shoulder, else her days might been a bit more miserable.

“I’m glad,” Choa said, before giving her friend a long hug. Everyone was tired. Mina and Yuna were sleeping in the back seat with their heads leaning on each other. Choa almost squealed at the sight, but was shoved out of the car before she could do so. 

“Not in my car,” Jimin hissed. “Now get back to your room!”