Butterfly Kisses

Chapter 1

Saela

       “Rise and shine!” Manager Jun opens the door to our small room, flooding the stuffy air with smells of her usual morning cooking. Jae lays motionless next to me on the mattress, blankets pulled right up to her ears. Her dark brown hair that was in a bun is now in a strange weird lump on her pillow. I blink at her back and wait for my eyes to wake up before untangling myself from the sheet wrapped around my ankles. “Time to eat!” she calls happily. For some reason, Korean always sounds so happy to me. Everything about it makes me smile. I kicked the sheets off my feet and roll off the mattress to the floor, successfully forcing myself to wake up. I jump up and look around the room covered in multicolored clothes and discarded makeup cases. It really messy, but I like it that way. It would feel weird if it was clean. Korea is not really the cleanest place on the planet, Seoul especially. Compared to the clean, wilderness-full and fresh state of Oregon in the U.S., both of Jae and my homes’, this place was a pig sty. I like it though. I smile and stretch. The change had been drastic at first, signing a contract with A Cube Entertainment in Korea, moving across the world and beginning Idol training. From the moment we were scouted in the U.S., both of our lives flipped upside down. But I love that too.

      “Jaaaeee!” I sing to her and jump onto the mattress. “Get up!” I sing in Korean, my voice involuntarily raising an octave from normal. It’s that happy language striking again. She rolls over slowly, looks at me blankly for a second and I repeat it in English. Sometimes her Korean Brain doesn’t work in the morning. She nods and weakly pushed the layered blankets off of her. “You’re lucky Unnie keeps it so cold in her house,” I remind her, pulling the blankets off, half folding them and throwing them in the corner. She likes to feel the weight of the blankets as she sleeps and luckily that was one habit she was allowed to keep when we moved here. “It’s probably already getting warm outside.” She nods and finally sits up. Jun is at the door again with her hand on her hip. She frowns prettily at Jae, an aegyo professional always manages to look cute. She’s thin and has long dark hair, damaged from her dying days. She was an Idol that never quite made it big who decided to take a risk and become managers for two American girls.

      “Jae, hurry up,” she whines in her baby voice reserved for special occasions which include coaxing Jae out of bed. Luckily, that is a phrase in Korean Jae understands even while asleep, she crawls, literally, off the bed and slips on her house slippers. She shuffles past Jun Unnie and I in to the hall toward the kitchen mumbling something about how awake she is. We follow her into the kitchen and begin our everyday routine. Jun spouts out random questions that we are likely to be asked as new idols and as we hurriedly shove food in our mouths, we attempt to respond in the best way possible. It leaves me in awe that after so many mornings, Jun Unnie still has new ones every day. The dishes are shunted to the side and we retreat back to our room to get ready.

      “The teaser photo shoot is today so you don’t need to wear anything special,” Jun Unnie reminds us through the door as we change.

      “Ye!” We call together and our eyes meet afterwards, causing a smile. We throw on our comfy clothes and head out to the car. Our fast paced mornings leave no room for drowsiness and Jae and I are alert when we duck into the van. As Jun starts to pull out while reciting our day’s events, slowly so we remember and won’t keep asking her, Jae jumps out of her seat.

      “Wait!” She yells, hitting her head on the roof. I snicker at her as she throws open the door, rubbing her head. “I’ll be right back!” Jun Unnie tells her to hurry and watch as she sprints back inside and reappears with her guitar over her head. She hops back into the car and smiles politely, telling Jun Unnie that she can drive now. She shakes her head smiling, calls us both brats (even though I didn’t do anything yet today) and resumes the schedule memorization routine. Jae plucks silently at her guitar as we drive and listen. I silently wish for probably the millionth time in my life that pianos were portable. Our van slides into a parking space outside the photographers building and we jump out, I know I feel nervous and excited. This is our first photo shoot just for us. The first time the photos are meant to advertize us. My stomach tightens and my hands feel warmer than usual, but my heart beats excitedly letting me know it’s not bad nervous.

      Inside, we are introduced and Jun Unnie takes on her role, talking about concepts, approving wardrobes and backgrounds and we are whisked away to make up. We sit obediently as the real professionals go to work. All of the women ask us questions quickly, it’s still hard to keep up with some people’s talking speed, but after a second or two I can figure it out. Jae takes a little longer to figure things out and often looks to me for a word translation. Although we started learning Korean at the same time, I spent a lot of extra time on it. I’m more confident in speaking because of my rapping training and practice so I talk the most. She doesn’t mind though, I talked more in English too.

      “Your hair is so pretty!” they say to us and I thank them. “Is it true that it’s natural?” they ask excitedly, remarking on the rarity of “blonde that’s real” while fixing the mess on top of my head, and I laugh. I explain to them that both of us are from the U.S. and that neither of us is actually Korean.  I look about as non-Korean as you can get: wide blue and green eyes, long thick blonde hair and curvy shape; not rail thin. Jae looks a little more since she’s Filipino. Although her hair is brown, it’s lighter and she’s tanner than most Korean people. Her eyes are brown too, but they’re large and round. I agree whole heartedly when the unnie’s say how pretty she is; I think it every day. The usual questions are asked, how old are you, what’s your group name, who’s the leader, and I’m happy to answer them. I hope they like us enough to listen to our debut song. They finish their work and the first outfit is given to us. We go to change quickly and as we change, Jae stops and turns to me.

      “Sarah,” she says, using my American name letting me know she’ll be speaking in English, “What is this?” She holds up a narrow circular piece of cloth up and looks frightened. “Please don’t tell me this is what they call a bra.”

      “It’s a headband,” I tell her laughing and go over to tie it correctly onto her head. “See? It’s cute!” Our stylist went with a hippie and flowery style and the headband actually looks good on Jae, framing her face. She smiles into the mirror, obviously relieved she was wrong. The rest of our first outfit is non-concerning, cute girly skirts and flowery shirts and jean vests. Add wedges for Jae and Cowboy boots for me and the look is complete. Before we leave, Jae takes her phone out of the pocket of her sweats and snaps a picture of us both flashing peace signs and posts it to Instagram; we like to update our followers back home in Oregon sometimes. We finish up and emerge from the dressing room to waiting eyes. They scan us and move us quickly to the set. The photographer tells us that our concept is flowery, mature and ready to take the music industry by storm. I giggle, wondering exactly where and how they come up with these. I give Jae a look that she gets and she shrugs. We move into place and the photographer begins, it’s all a blur of bright flashes from “those damned umbrellas” as Jae calls them, beeping and people calling out random adjectives.

      “It sounds like they’re playing Taboo or something in Korean,” Jae says under her breath as the photographer fires off five different words right after each other, two of which made me think of lettuce. We both laugh uncontrollably and the people watching begin talking excitedly. The camera flashes faster and Jae and I relax, finally knowing exactly what they want from us. I’m not sure how laughing and messing with each other portrays flowery, mature and ready, but they like it and neither of us dare to bring it up. The shoot is over after 3 hours and 5 different outfits and I feel like I just ran a marathon. My face feels confused, like I used up too many expressions without its permission and I just want to change back into my sweats. The outfits were cute and if they would let me, I’d take them home, but there’s nothing quite like a good pair of sweats. We thank everyone for their work and embarrassingly, they applaud us and congratulate us on our first shoot, saying how well we did. We bow awkwardly and Jun Unnie saves us, ushering us back out to the van.

      The streets and people slide by out the window as we sing to our favorite songs on the radio. The warm air seeps in through the open windows, smelling of my favorite place in the world. At first it was a weird smell to Jae and I, but now it’s like a drug. We’re in love with Korea as a whole and nothing could change that. Infinite’s “Come Back Again” comes on and Jae places her guitar on the floor to free her hands; we always dance when it comes on. Harmonizing and car-dancing, Jun Unnie smiles back at us as we perform for her. Our dance moves are as perfect as possible while sitting in a car because we practiced it so much before we were discovered at our performing arts school. When the song ends, we smile ecstatically at each other; this song makes us want our dream even more and it’s so close. We clasp hands and squeeze, showing our determination to each other. We will become Korean Idols, as cheesy as that sounds, it’s all we want.

      Infinite’s song stays stuck in our brains the whole day. Bouncing around inside our heads and giving us infinite energy. During a break in dance rehearsal, we both sing it to ourselves, marking out the steps in front of the mirror with our water bottles as our microphones. In Korean lessons, I can’t resist scribbling the lyrics on the edge of my notebook, wondering if I’m spelling everything write. Jae makes a little dance to remember a tricky grammar rule and I notice it’s mostly the choreography and smile knowingly at her. She winks back and we get back to work, both humming the same song. Before my piano teacher arrives in the practice room, I pluck the chords to the song, singing the melody. After our extensive lessons are finished, we’re both sufficiently drained, the song barely still lingering in our bodies. Jun Unnie drives us back home and we shuffle inside, dead tired. But when we are changed and ready to sleep, neither of us feels much like sleeping. So we sit up for a couple hours, on allkpop.com fangirling. A habit we developed in the U.S. and refused to give up. Even if we are embarrassingly obsessed with it all, that’s what got us here. We couldn’t possibly give it up. Scrolling down and stopping, we find a new article about Infinite and quickly click on it. Our heart rates rise and we become excited, reading that Infinite has a new mini album coming out. Their first performance of it will be next week on Music Core.

      “Ah!” I whisper yell, Jun Unnie would be pissed if she knew we stayed up late. She may know that we’re still fangirls at heart, but she doesn’t know we put our favorite group’s news above our own sleep. “That’s where we’re performing too!”

      “What if we get to meet them,” Jae says like she’s afraid to say it and get her hopes up, staring at the small screen of her phone where the bright white of the webpage glares at our tired eyes. She drops her phone into my lap and covers herself with the blankets, probably already feeling her hopes rise and fly out of in a giggle. I laugh at her and she peeks out at me. “What if I get to meet Sunggyu?”

      “That would be amazing,” I agree, picking up her phone, locking the screen and plugging it in behind her. I know if I was meeting my bias, I would cry so I understand her emotions. It’s hard to imagine what the person you already love will be like once you meet them.

      “I think I’d die,” she says quietly and dead seriously. I laugh, she probably would stop being able to talk. I put my arms around her in the dark and she sighs. “I want to meet him so much.” I nod enough so she knows I heard her, the darkness and exhaustion is claiming me now. Without the shining phone to stare at, my eyes close and enjoy the plain black of my eyelids. Jae starts humming one of Sunggyu’s songs, the tone letting me know she’s smiling, and I fall asleep to her soft voice.

      The next couple mornings dawn as usual. Our schedule never slows, actually it gets more hectic. Our rehearsals extend, preparing us for our first live music show performance at the end of the week and suddenly we’re practicing for 4 hours at time. We go to the stage to practice as well, and now the dance, the words and the melody is mindless. Our coaches tell us how much we’ll have to think about it while we’re on stage to show our emotions and we file it away for the night of. Even though we’re even more exhausted than ever, we still find time to check up on our favorite groups and sneak a few more songs onto our already full iPods. The songs of others let us know we’re not the only ones who went through this. Our ear buds only leave our ears when absolutely necessary, our inspiration constant and driving. It’s beyond tiring, but we know that once we debut, it will all be worth it. We’ll get to make people happy with our music and give other strength too. The thought of our own concert, fans, tours, albums and music videos makes me crazy with anticipation. I want to become someone like him. As I think of my favorite person, lying awake one night staring at the ceiling, I know I have to become good enough to meet him. And become friends with him. Wait for me, I tell him in my mind, I’ll meet you someday.