One month later, I found myself sitting in the back of a taxi, my bags crowded in the seat next to me.  I was on my way to the dorm building where I would be residing for who knew how long.

I had passed.

I didn’t know how it had happened, but I had actually passed.

Three days ago, my parents and I had gone to the SM headquarters to sign the trainee contract.  I had had a choice between living at home and living at the dorms, but I chose the latter because it would be much more convenient for me.

When he had found out I passed, Sungmin had been happy, but b with jealousy at the same time.  Right before I had left, he had promised me that he would soon be joining me at SM so that we could both practice together and eventually debut in our own groups.  He had babbled on and on about how much he wanted to debut and how lucky I was.  I had smiled at him, unsure of what to say.  Sungmin could do anything if he put his mind to it, but it would take a miracle for him to pull his grades up so my parents would agree to let him audition.  Still, anything could happen.

As the taxi pulled up to what was supposedly the dorm building, I got out, dragging my bags with me, thanked and paid the driver, and walked through the glass doors for the first time, entering the lobby.

I took the elevator up to the fifth floor and started down the hallway to find my room.  The entire building was quiet, even though it was a late Friday afternoon.  Where was everyone?  Surely there would be some sounds coming from the other dorm rooms: after all, there were supposedly many other trainees staying in the same building.  As my feet echoed in the fluorescent-lit hallway, I pulled out my schedule from my bag, the one that the company had given me earlier.

Lee Seoyoon

Saturday, February 26, 2000

7:30 am - 8:00am  Company meeting

8:15 am - 10:00 am  Vocal warmup and coaching

10:30 am - 12:00  Vocal practice

1:00 pm - 4:00 pm  Dance lesson

4:30 pm - 6:00 pm  Workout

7 pm - 11 pm  Free  practice

That was for tomorrow.  I made a face at the piece of paper.  7:30 in the morning to 11:00 at night was going to be a long day.  It was a good thing that this was going to be on a Saturday, but would weekdays be this busy too?  Would all days be this busy?  I shrugged it off.  If practicing like this meant I would be able to debut, then I was willing to go through with it.

As I turned the corner, I saw a girl approaching from the opposite end of the hallway.  She was carrying a duffle bag and had a bag slung across one shoulder like I did.

I looked away from her and counted silently in my head.  My room was bound to be here somewhere.

521… 522… 523… There it was.

I glanced to my left and saw the girl standing next to me.  She was tall and had long black hair and bangs.  She glanced at the number on the door and looked back down at the piece of paper in her hand.

“Uh, excuse me?”  I said, tilting my head up to look at her.  She looked slightly familiar.  “Are you a new trainee too?”

“Yeah.  Do you know if we’re gonna be in the same dorm room or something?”

“523, right?”  I asked.  “I guess so.”

She peered down at me and bit her lip.  Suddenly, she jerked her head up in surprise.

“Wait a minute, aren’t you that girl who was standing next to me during auditions?”

I nodded, a grin spreading across my face as I realized who she was.

“Oh right!  That’s where I saw you!  I kept thinking you looked familiar.”  Then I remembered my manners and dipped my head to her slightly.  “I’m Lee Seoyoon, by the way.  And I thought you sang really well during auditions.”

She smiled, her eyes crinkling at the edges.

“Thanks.  I’m Na Jiyeong.  And your dancing skills were amazing, oh my God, I’ve never seen anyone dance like that before.”

I glanced down at my shoes in embarrassment.

“Well, uh, yeah, it was nothing,” I said sheepishly.

“It was definitely something,” she laughed.  “A lot better than what I could do, that’s for sure.”

“Your vocal performance was a lot better than mine though, that’s for sure,” I said, laughing.  “Anyways, do you wanna ring the doorbell now?  We should probably go in at this point.”

“Yeah, sure.”  She rang the doorbell and after a few seconds, I heard the sound of footsteps.  I took a deep breath, straightening myself and smoothing down my clothes.

A tall girl with loose brown curls opened the door, her clear gaze sweeping over Jiyeong first, and then me.

“Are you the new trainees?”  She asked.

“Yeah.” Jiyeong and I spoke at exactly the same time.  Her face broke into a smile.

“Hi, it’s nice to meet you.  I’m Lee Yaewon.  Come on in.”

We stepped into a small living room and I glanced around, taking in every detail of my surroundings.  There was a small TV, a few couches lining the wall, and a wooden coffee table in the middle of the room.  As I glanced to the left, I could see the entrance to a miniature kitchen.

“So there’s gonna be a total of five people living here now.  Me, you two, and two other girls named Kwon Boa and Park Haneul.  Your names are Na Jiyeong and Lee Seoyoon, right?  Ages fourteen and twelve?”  She looked at both of us in turn, and we nodded.

“Boa and Haneul aren’t back yet because of practice, but they already know you’re moving in.  This dorm’s pretty small, so there’s only two bedrooms, one bathroom, that kitchen over there, this living room, and that’s pretty much all there is.  Right now, Haneul and I share a room and Boa has a room to herself.  You two can move into Boa’s room.  She already said she was fine with it.  Come on, I’ll take both of you there.”

We followed Yaewon down the hall and past the tiny bathroom, stopping in front of two doors, side by side.

“The one on the right is the room I share with Haneul,” she said, opening the door and gesturing to the inside.  “You two are gonna be in the one on the left.”  She opened that door as well and nodded her head towards it.  JIyeong and I both peered inside.

It was tiny.  There were two small twin-sized beds on opposite sides of the bedroom, two small desks, and a compact closet located near the window.  I hesitated before looking up at Yaewon.

“But Yaewon sunbaenim, there’s only two beds in here,” I said slowly.  “And there’s gonna be three of us.”

Yaewon smirked and let out a small chuckle.

“Okay, first of all, you don’t have to call me ‘sunbaenim’.  We’re gonna be living together from now on, so drop the formalities.  You can just call Boa and I ‘unni’, and you can use informal speech with us.  Second of all, I know there’s only two of everything, but that’s just the way the entire dorm is set up,” she said apologetically.  “Besides, three beds would never fit in here, and none of us have enough money to buy another one anyways.  One of you can sleep on the floor in that spot in the middle.  It’s not too small and we have extra blankets and stuff so you won’t be cold at night.  Or you can always sleep on the couch if you don’t want to do that.”

There was a moment of silence as Jiyeong and I stared at each other.  Then I shrugged.  Why not?

“I can sleep on the floor if you want, Jiyeong,” I volunteered.

“Okay, then.”  She glanced around the room and looked at Yaewon.  “So can we put our stuff down, or should we wait until Boa gets back?  Would she mind?”

Yaewon shook her head.

“Don’t think so.  You two can go ahead and start getting settled.  I’m gonna start making dinner.  Which is just ramyun, actually, since we don’t have anything else at the moment.   Boa’s supposed to go shopping for more tomorrow afternoon.  There’s a chore chart on the fridge, which you can check out later.  Call me if you need anything!”  Yaewon smiled at us and then left the room.

Jiyeong and I spent the next ten minutes unpacking.  I hadn’t brought much, but I stacked some of my clothes onto an empty shelf in the closet and hung up the rest using a few hangers.  I left everything else in my duffle bag because there was nowhere else to put them.  I saw Jiyeong rearranging the blankets on her bed and frowned slightly.  I didn't have a bed of my own so there was nothing more I could do at the moment.  Heading out the room, I found Yaewon in the kitchen, heating up a pot of water.

"Hey," she greeted me.  "What do you like on your ramyun?"

I shrugged.

"Anything's fine,, I guess."

"Cheese and onions and eggs?  That's all we have at the moment, unfortunately."

"Yeah, that's fine, unni."

She put several packages of ramyun into the pot and I watched as she added three eggs.

"You know how to cook ramyun and make simple meals, right?"  She suddenly asked.  I was slightly taken aback by the question and I shrugged.

"I think I know how, but I never actually tried cooking by myself.  Why do you ask?"

“Haneul used to be the maknae of this dorm, and the maknae’s usually the one who cooks.  But you’re the youngest now, so you’re getting her job.”  She motioned to the fridge with her chin and I looked over, catching sight of the chore chart she had been talking about, which was on a small magnetic whiteboard and written in neat script.  “Could you please change that up for me?  Write your name and Jiyeong’s name somewhere.  From now on, you’re gonna be in charge of cooking and the dishes, and Jiyeong’s gonna be in charge of laundry.  And put ‘sweeping and dusting’ under Haneul’s name, will you?  Everything else will stay the way it is.”

I did as I was told and clipped the dry erase marker back to the whiteboard.

“But Yaewon unni, I never really cooked before.  Should I ask Haneul unni for help or something?”

Yaewon tensed up at those words and turned away from the pot of ramen.

“Okay, first of all, there’s a few things you need to know about Park Haneul.  Don’t ever call her ‘unni’.  Just don’t.”  Her tone had turned serious.

“Why?  Isn’t she older than me?  Shouldn’t I call her unni because she’s older?”

“Yeah, she’s older, but just don’t call her ‘unni’ unless you’re looking to piss her off.  She doesn’t like anyone calling her that.”

I bit my lip nervously.

“What should I call her then?  Sunbaenim?  Or just Haneul?”

“Just Haneul, I guess.  That’s what everyone calls her.”  Yaewon placed a few slices of cheese on top of the ramyun.

“Truth is, Haneul’s younger than all of us except for you.  But she’s been here the longest: almost four years now  And the way she sees it, the longer someone’s been here, the more respect they deserve.  So we all use formal speech when talking to her.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“But why does she want us to do that?  She sounds really strict,” I said, already a bit nervous.

“No idea.  She’s just like that.  All she cares about is training and the kpop industry itself.  She’s got her heart set on debuting.  She has her mood swings, but she’s alright I guess.”

“Oh,” I said quietly, unsure of how to respond.

“But Haneul was never a great cook anyways,” Yaewon continued in a more light-hearted tone, changing the topic.  “I can teach you if you want.  Well, okay, you don’t really need to be taught.  Most of cooking is just intuition and common sense.  As long as the food doesn’t taste like complete crap and you don’t burn down the kitchen, you should be fine.  If you do somehow manage to botch the food to the point where it’s inedible, we can just go out and get takeout or street food or something.”

“Oh.  Okay, then.  What do you guys usually eat?”

“Well, what do you know how to make?”  She turned off the stove and began to divide the large pot of ramyun into five bowls.

“I’ve helped my mom make fried rice and sandwiches before.  And I think I could cook ramyun if I tried.”

Yaewon nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, that’s great then!  We don’t eat much besides what we can get at convenience stores and street stalls and what we can make by ourselves.  Which really isn’t that much.  We eat way too much ramyun and fried rice for our own good,” she chuckled.   “But there’s always the cafeteria at SM if we get that desperate.

I smiled at her and she smiled back, taking off her plaid apron and hanging it on a hook on the wall.

“I’m gonna call Jiyeong for dinner now.  You can go ahead and eat if you’re hungry,” she said, starting down the hallway.

I looked around and saw a jar of chopsticks next to the sink.  I grabbed five pairs and set them on the counter.

“Where do we usually eat?”

She poked her head back in and shrugged.

“Anywhere’s fine.  Just don’t make a mess and remember to clean up after yourself.”

A minute later, Yaewon came back, Jiyeong trailing behind her.  Before either of them could say anything, I suddenly heard a key in the front door.  A girl about my height entered the living room and kicked off her shoes, sighing softly as she closed the door.  Her hair was up in a messy ponytail and she had a backpack slung over her shoulder.  She turned around and caught our eyes.  For a minute, she looked confused, but then her eyes brightened and she looked at Yaewon.

“Hey, Yaewon-ah, are these the new trainees?”

All three of us nodded, and the girl’s tired face broke into a smile.

“Hey!”  She said in a cheerful voice.  “I’m Kwon Boa.  You two must be Jiyeong and Seoyoon, right?  It’s good having you here.”

“Thank you.  It’s nice to meet you,” the two of us chorused.  Boa smiled again and turned back to Yaewon.

“So what’s for dinner?  Ramyun again?”

“Mhmm.”

“Do we happen to have anything else?  Fruit maybe?  I know we don’t have much right now and I promise I’ll go shopping tomorrow, but is there anything else besides ramyun?”

Yaewon opened the fridge and rummaged in the cabinets for a while.

“Well, we have rice, but if you wanna eat that, it’s gonna take at least half an hour for me to prepare.  Why do you ask?”

“I had another meeting today and they told me to be extra careful about my weight.  A thousand and two hundred calories a day,” she scoffed as she headed into the room she now shared with Jiyeong and I.  “If they keep starving me like this, I’m gonna stay this short forever.  Honestly, don’t they know that I need more food to grow and get taller?”  She reappeared from the room, rolling her eyes.

Jiyeong and I looked on curiously and Boa turned back to look at the two of us.

“Don’t worry, you two can still eat whatever you want.  It’s just me that’s on a diet because SM’s been telling me that I might debut as a part of a duo soon.”

My mouth dropped open.

“What?  Really?”

“Well, nothing’s certain,” she shrugged.  “Their plans could change.  It’s a possibility though.”

“How long have you been a trainee?”  Jiyeong stole the words from my mouth.

“About a year and a half.  I’m thirteen now.”  Pondering whether or not to eat, she hesitated before taking a pair of chopsticks and her bowl of ramyun and seating herself on one of the couches in the living room.

My eyebrows shot up and I was in shock for a few seconds before I recovered enough to get my bowl and slide next to her on the couch.

“What’s it like being a trainee?  And what do you have to do to make sure you debut?  Or at least increase your chances of debuting?”

Yaewon tilted her head to the side upon hearing my stream of questions and sat down with Jiyeong on another couch.  She tucked her curls behind her ear and shoved a few bites of ramyun noodles in before looking up again.

“Tiring.  Very tiring.  It’s pretty stressful, trying to balance school and training at the same time.  Well, I guess it’s slightly easier because the school I used to go to was really rigorous, academic-wise.  But most trainees transfer to schools that specialize in the arts.  I’m assuming that’s what you two did?”

We both nodded.

“Schools like that are easier, in a sense.  But it’s still stressful.  As for debuting--”

“You never really know,” Boa cut in, mixing the noodles around in the bowl.  “The competition here is intense.  Really, really intense, I mean.  There’s hundreds of people living in our dorm right now, but most of them aren’t here at this hour because they’re practicing at SM.  If you’re gonna have a chance of debuting, you need to work your off and make drastic improvement for them to even consider you.”

“And just because SM tells you you’re going to debut, that doesn’t necessarily mean that’s gonna happen,” Yaewon said.  “You might end up in a project group that’s gonna end up getting scrapped.  Or they might just forget about your debut altogether.”

“You need to stand out.  In a good way, of course.  You need to make them remember you so that when it comes for them to debut a new group or a new artist, you have a chance of getting picked.”

I nodded thoughtfully, my mind already spinning with the newly acquired information.  I took a bite of ramyun and listened as the others talked about dorm life and how their day went.  I answered the questions they asked me and paid a bit of attention to their conversation, but my mind was somewhere else.  I was thinking about what I could do to make me stand out from the other trainees.  What Boa said made sense.  I couldn’t just be one of them.  I had to make them remember me.

Later that night, I was lying on my spot on the floor.  Haneul wasn’t back yet.  She had texted Yaewon saying that she would be running pretty late.  Boa and Jiyeong were asleep already, and Yaewon was showering.  I would have to get up at around 5:45 the next day to make breakfast for everyone.  It was already past 11:00, and although I didn’t want to sleep, I closed my eyes and made an effort.  I would need all my energy tomorrow, and I needed rest.

Nevertheless, I couldn’t fall asleep.  It wasn’t just because I was in an entirely new environment and I had two other people next to me, both of whom were snoring.  It was because I was too nervous for tomorrow's training.  I was afraid of what would happen if I messed up or gave them the wrong impression.  One mistake could mean the end of my dream.  

Eventually, I stopped trying.  There was no point in sleeping if I couldn’t, so I climbed out of my blankets and carefully made my way out of the dorm.

It was 5:30 in the morning, fifteen minutes before I was supposed to wake up.

Oh, well.  That means you’ll have more time to prepare, right?  You've never cooked by yourself before so now that you're up early, you have more time to figure it out yourself.

But when I entered the kitchen, I caught sight of someone I didn’t recognize.  She was perched on a stool, her head resting against one hand as she wrote something down on a piece of paper.  The only sound in the room was the sound of pencil on paper.  The girl’s back was to me, but I could see a pile of schoolbooks spread out on the kitchen counter.  For a while, I stood there, uncertain of what to do.  Was that Haneul?  I remembered what Yaewon had said about her and I shifted my feet nervously.

Suddenly, she turned around and her dark eyes widened as she saw me standing there.

“Wait, who are you?”  She said, the surprise evident in her sharp voice.

I was about to reply, but then I remembered something else that Yaewon had told me.

"Hi, I'm Lee Seoyoon," I said in honorifics.  "I just moved in last night with Na Jiyeong.  Are you Haneul?"

She stared at me for a few seconds, but slowly nodded at me.  One side of curved into a faint smile.

"Yeah, I'm Haneul.  Nice to meet you, I guess."

"You too," I said, feeling rather awkward.  I studied her some more as she turned her head back to her books.  She didn't look that much older than me, and she had long black hair.  Her large eyes had even larger bags underneath them.

"Haneul, have you slept yet?  I don't think I heard you go into Yaewon's room."

"No, I'm not done with my homework yet.  Still half an hour to go."

My eyes grew huge with shock.  Were all trainees as busy as she was?

"How much homework do you have?  Yaewon told me that you're only a year older than I am."

She shrugged.

"Not that much actually.  It's just that I only got back from practice two or three hours ago."

"Oh."

There was a long silence and Haneul bent over her homework again as if I didn't exist.  I shifted my feet again.  She didn't seem like that bad of a person, but there was something about her that made me uncomfortable.  I didn't know what it was.  Then I remembered that I was standing here for a reason.

"Uh, do you mind moving to the couch or something?"  I asked somewhat nervously.  "I need to use the counter to make breakfast."

Haneul glanced sharply at the clock on the wall.

“I’m not done with my homework yet and I need to use the counter.  There's still about half an hour until you should start.  It shouldn't take an hour for you to make breakfast."

"But I've never tried making breakfast before and it might take a while for me to finish," I protested, feeling a bit bad for Haneul.  But I knew that if I didn’t prepare an adequate breakfast on time, no matter how Yaewon much said otherwise, it would inconvenience all of them.

She raised an eyebrow and narrowed her eyes slightly.

"Even so, it shouldn't take you twice as long as it usually does."

"Uh…” I wasn't sure how to respond.  I knew I wouldn't be able to make breakfast in only half an hour.  I had never cooked by myself, and I had to allow extra time for myself just in case I messed up or I took too long.

Haneul was waiting for a response, but I had none.  She narrowed her eyes and bit her bottom lip, tapping her pencil against a notebook.  For what seemed like the longest time, we just stared into each other’s eyes.  It made me very uneasy.  But I couldn’t look away, even though I wanted to.  Her eyes clung to mine and was set in a tight line.  It was scary, her staring at me like that.

Right as I was about to relent and tell her I would make breakfast later, Haneul sighed and looked away.

“Alright, alright,” she muttered, getting up from her stool and grabbing the piles of books.  She made her way to the living room.  “Have it your way.”

I stood there for a solid thirty seconds, wondering what I had done that was so wrong.  Then I rummaged through the cupboard to see if we had coffee or tea.  I had never had any coffee before, but I couldn’t afford to fall asleep during training.

My eyebrows furrowed as I thought about what Haneul had said.  Yes, I understood that she needed to finish her homework and she needed room to do it, but there was plenty of room in the living room as well.

What was with her?

I shrugged and shook my head to clear it.

Just ignore her, Seoyoon.  Her opinion won’t affect your training.  That’s what you need to focus on right now, not what others think of you.