Ba-boom. Ba-boom. Ba-boom. I can feel my heartbeat quicken, palms sweat, breathing stop, heart race. The floor seems to shake underneath me as I take an unsteady step towards the giant metal door.

 “Good luck!” SunHi shouts from somewhere behind me. I can only nod my head and take a shaky breath as I walk towards the door.

Breathe, I tell myself, just breathe. But I can’t. I can’t breathe. How can a person breathe when their one chance at achieving their dreams is right in front of them? What if I don’t make it? What if they say I’m not good enough? Questions race through my mind, one after the other, chasing their tails and entangling themselves in the shadowy corners of my doubts.

The woman at the door nods to me, signaling that I can enter. Her lips are pressed into a hard, thin line and upon closer inspection I notice that her bun is beginning to unravel. She must be losing her patience after calling out the names of so many girls, I think, remembering that I am nearly the last one.

I grip the door’s shiny, polished handle and remind myself one last time, breathe, before I swing open the door.

I’m all smiles as I enter the room, even though it feels fake on my lips and my head is spinning with dizziness and fear. The room is large and grey and empty with concrete floors and concrete walls. In fact, the only thing in the room at all is a panel of judges, all lined up in a row, sitting at a long table at the back of the room. They remind me of the woman taking names at the door. They all seem bored, impatient, and ready to move on with their day.

One of the judges, a middle-aged man with a sparse beard and tired eyes, drawls, “Choi YeoJin.”

“Ye,” I say, bowing to each of the judges, “That’s me.”

“What will you be showing us today?” he asks, an edge of annoyance in his voice.

“I’m going to sing,” I reply, my smile feeling more forced than ever.

“What song?”

“’I-I Need a Girl’ by TaeYang,” I say, stumbling on my words. I feel like I’m going choke.

The judge just raises his eyebrows and purses his lips. He motions for me to begin and hits a timer on the table. It starts to beep and the sound echoes around the bare room. I take a deep breath and begin…

“Saenggak eopneun maltu

Eorein aedeul malgu

Nal gamssa ana jul

Shim shim handdae gaggeum

Noneun yeoja malgu naman saranghaejul

Gamanisseodo namjanomdeul

Jeonhwagil naemiljiman

Jarangseureopgae nae sajineul

Kkeonaebo Ineun georeun boy~”

I finish the first verse and the judges sit in silence for a while, just letting the timer go off. Finally, the man with the sparse beard and tired eyes reaches over and stops the timer without ever moving his eyes away from me. I swallow nervously. The sound reverberates and I think to myself, I bet the whole room can hear me.

“More,” the man says, waving me on. I adjust my cardigan and begin again…

            “Boy, I need a boy

Mweolhaedo eeppeun

Mommaedo eepeun

Boy, I need a boy

Baby, I need you

Boy, you need me too~”

The man whispers something to a woman on his left. She nods, and the man jots down something on his note pad.

“Kamsahamnida,” he says curtly, signaling my dismissal.

I bow to each of the judges and hurry over to the door, where the woman who took my name is standing. She winks at me as I leave the concrete room. I wonder what that was all about.

I make my way back to the waiting room where I find SunHi, right where I left her, still waiting for her name to be called. I can tell that she’s anxious by the way she’s sitting—stiff like a board with one foot bobbing up and down, up and down, up and down.

“How did everything go?” she asks.

“I don’t know. It was so weird—“ I begin, but right then the woman at the door calls out, “Yoon SunHi!”

SunHi looks up at me with wide eyes, and says in a low voice, “Aigoo, Jinie! That’s me!”

I hug her tightly and say, “You’re going to do great.”

            She grins back at me, grabs her things, and then woman ushers her behind the door. I sit down rigidly on one of the couches. It’s so fluffy that I sink right down into the bottom of the soft cushion. I close my eyes and take a deep breath... It’s all over, I silently tell myself, whether I did good or bad, it’s all over anyway.

But something deep inside tells me that this isn’t the end. It’s not over. Even I know that.

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Hellooo!~ I'm back with another chapter!! ^^; I went to my Grandma's this Thanksgiving and her house is in the middle of nowhere, so I got really bored.. and this is the product of my boredom, lol.

Okay, so I know that this chapter is really short, but I didn't want to pack in a bunch of useless extra details, so I kept it short and simple. Anyway, I'm just making this whole story up as I go along, so I guess we'll see where it takes me XD Do you guys want me to tell you a secret? Hahaha, eventually it will become a G-Dragon/TOP/Seungri love triangle ^^ well....... probably. And then I'll have to squeeze 2NE1 and Daesung and TaeYang in somewhere.. Aissshhh~ This whole thing is so confusing :P

Okay, this outro thingy is getting long. Thank you for reading! Byeeee!~