Beep. Beep. Beep. I fumble for the sleep button on my alarm clock without ever opening my eyes. “Ughh,” I mumble, finally hitting the right button and settling back down into my warm bed. Why can’t I sleep forever? I think as I pull the blankets over my head.

Right as I’m beginning to drift off, I hear the soft pitter-patter of footsteps in the hallway outside my door. “Noona!” yells my younger brother as he impatiently pounds on my door, “Noona, it’s important!”

“Leave me alone!” I mumble, “I’m trying to sleep!”

“Noona! I told you, it’s important! Let me in!”

“No!” I whine, rubbing my eyes.

I can hear my brother sigh deeply from behind the closed door. “Fine then,” he says, “I guess you won’t get your letter.”

“What? What letter?”

“The letter that came today!”

“A letter for me?”

“Ne!”

“Who’s it from?”

“YG Entertainment!”

Just like in a cartoon, my eyes are immediately open and I let out an audible gasp. I fling back the blankets on my bed, rush across my room, and throw open the door.

“Where is it?!” I ask him, hardly able to contain my excitement.

“Downstairs. Mom and Dad have it in the—“ His words are cut off as I race down the stairs of our small three bedroom apartment and barrel into the kitchen.

My mother is standing over the stove, her hair hanging loose around her face. She’s wearing modest pajamas; a long white robe and some slippers my brother and I gave her for Christmas a few years ago. I’ve been told many times that I look just like her. We have the same nose, the same thick hair, the same bags under our eyes, and even the same posture and way of speaking. She doesn’t bother to look around as I enter the room, but stays focused on her cooking.

“Umma!” I say, trying to keep myself calm, “Where’s the letter?”

“What letter?” she asks, stirring a pot on the stove. My father is seated at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. He looks up over his glasses at me.

“The letter from YG Entertainment!” I say anxiously.

“Ask your father.”

I look over at him expectantly and he doesn’t say a word, but just smiles and points a finger at a single, white envelope lying on the table before him. I pick it up and turn it over in my trembling hands. It says on the front in big, bold letters: MISS CHOI YEOJIN.

“Open it!” My brother says, poking me in the back.

“Okay, okay,” I say as I break through the seal and tear open the envelope. Inside is just one piece of paper. I open it carefully and read its contents aloud:

Miss Choi YeoJin,

Congratulations! You have been accepted as a new trainee at YG Entertainment! You and 40 other young women have been chosen out of more than 5,000 people from our local 2011 auditions in Seoul. As a part of our new program, you will begin training on March 5, 2011. Each month, the CEO of YG Entertainment, Mr. Yang HyunSuk, will personally select trainees he deems fit to continue training with YG Entertainment. Eventually, the 40 trainees will be narrowed down to a number that is suitable for YG Entertainment’s upcoming project. Thank you for your cooperation and welcome to YG Entertainment!

Sincerely,

YG Entertainment

Yang HyunSuk, CEO

Everyone is quiet. I feel a mixture of excitement, nervousness, happiness, and panic all inside of me at once. I don’t know what I expected, but this… this is…

I clutch the envelope tightly and say, “Isn’t this great?”

Silence.

“What happened to being a doctor?” My mother says, without ever looking up from stirring the same pot on the stove, “Your cousin is a doctor... a very good doctor. Why don’t you do something productive instead of wasting your time on silly dreams?”

There’s a sinking feeling in my chest. “But Umma,” I say, gripping the letter so tightly that I’m about to tear it in half, “I don’t want to be a doctor. I want to sing.”

My father puts down his newspaper and takes off his reading glasses. “Yeobo,” he says to my mother, surprising me, “Let our YeoJin be happy. If she wants to sing, let her.”

My mother doesn’t say anything else for a while. She just stirs the pot on the stove for a long, long time until she finally says, “We’ll see.”

As my father looks over at me, I send him a silent thank you. He winks at my brother and I and says, “Go get ready for school, you two.” Then he picks up his newspaper and continues reading.

As weird as the morning’s been, I can’t help but smile as I change into my school uniform and get ready for the day. I’m one step closer to living my dreams, I think excitedly as I throw my book bag over my shoulder and rush out the front door to catch the next bus.

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I'm sorry that it's been so long since I've updated! ;~; I've been really busy, you know! I mean, I've been doing super important stuff!! Like.. like.. sleeping. And eating. And more sleeping. lol

Anyway, this chapter took me forever to finish~ I've rewritten it so many times, but I didn't want to write something I wasn't proud of, so I spent a long time trying to make it better. It's still not perfect, but I hope that you like it!! ^^ I also have a lot of new ideas for this story that I'm really excited about!! I hope that you'll keep reading~ thank you so much XD

Any suggestions, comments, or criticism is greatly appreciated!