“Why did I do this?” You think as you sit amongst about 40 other people in a small waiting room. The ages of the aspiring trainees varied. Some look like they are in their twenty’s while others look as young as 11 years old, your age. Your squeeze each of your fingers and breath in and out. Your head is flooded with doubts. You wish you had never asked your Grandfather if you could audition. You never should have opened your mouth when you saw a poster of BoA. Your Grandfather told you you could do anything when you asked if you could become a Kpop idol. This is so stupid, they are probably just looking for Koreans anyway. And pretty, tall girls with sleek black hair and legs that go on for years. You felt your throat getting dry despite your efforts to soften it with throat candies. You reach to drink some water but quickly stop yourself, if you drink you’ll have to go to the bathroom and there's only eight more auditions before you. You miss your Grandfather so much you could cry, he was only on the other side of the building, but you would give anything for him to be with you right now. You close your eyes and think about your parents and your older sister back home. Your sister is nearing her final year at university in Tokyo you hope she's alright because she was stressing so much about it. The thought of their smiling faces gave you a surge of energy besides the adrenaline coursing through your body. You were then pulled into a separate waiting room with only the few next auditioners. In this room it is dead silent, while the room you were waiting in before, was full of people talking to their friends and practicing scales. You close your eyes momentarily to make them less dry but when you open them, a man is tapping you on the shoulder telling you it is your time to audition. In a frenzied panic you clear your throat and head towards the designated audition room with the man leading you. The panel of judges greet you and a women dressed sharply next to the judges tells you to introduce yourself. “Hello, my name is Yumika Hashimoto, I am 11 years old, and I am Japanese.” You say awkwardly in Korean and again in Japanese and Mandarin. The lady asks you to sing two songs. You had taught yourself hip-hop in Seoul, for it has proven to be very popular amongst older kids in South Korea. You are then asked to sing and dance at the same time. You had in no way expected this request and try your hardest to not look caught off guard and do as you are told. You attempt to read the judges faces after you are done but they show no emotion and your cheeks steadily grow red. You have a feeling you did awful and they dismiss you and ask you to wait for the next round. After you go back to the waiting room, another auditioner informs you that the next round is the modeling proportion. You want desperately to go back to Grandfather and hug him but you aren’t allowed to leave the waiting room, so you sit for another 2 hours at the least for the other round. The next audition isn’t a big deal, all you have to do stand and someone takes pictures of you from different angles. 

3 months later you find out you got into SM Entertainment’s trainee program. Your first day as a trainee was the day the instructors try to scare you into quitting. They tell you how hard you have to work and that you won't have much time for school. You only end up staying with your Grandfather for the first few months of being a trainee, then it became to hard to go in between. By the end of 2005 you quit school and become a trainee full time. You worked harder than you ever had for anything before. While all the other girl trainee weighted themselves and counted their calories, you spent your free time doing push ups to make yourself stronger. Your dancing instructor pointed out one of the first weeks of being a trainee, that your body type may make you look pretty, but it will only make you suffer when you are dancing. Dance class became very important to you because you wanted to be at least at the level of the other girls in your dance class. Unfortunately, all the other girls had been dancing for years and had been classically trained. Having none of that experience, you knew that dancing was something you would have to work the most at. Everything was much different in South Korea than in Japan. You were shocked to find out that girls here deliberately make their skin lighter. Your roommate and other girls on your floor gush about how jealous they are of your nearly white skin, when you spent your whole life loathing your milky complexion.You realized that making friends is much easier as a trainee because the other girls think you are pretty. One girl even said that you were funny. You became on of the most talked about people as a trainee. Especially around 2005 and 2006. Things really changed for you when you found your name on the list of contenders for the new girl group, the first SM girl group of the 2nd generation. New trainee’s would come up to you after your vocal lessons and tell you how much they love your voice. As the selections for the new girl group neared, every girl who was put on the list was working themselves harder than ever. One girl even fainted during dance class. Her name was Qian, you really liked her. The rotation of roommates started again after that last weeks. A lot of people went home because of health problems. Fortunately, Qian was ok, and she was roomed with you after your roommate quit. You and Qian would stay up talking and drinking tea while the other trainees were fast asleep. You were right when you thought this experience would be life changing.