Chapter 2 – a day in the life of…

HER

“Good morning miss Cheon!”

A group of girls gave me bright smiles and waved at me as I passed through the school gates.

“Good morning miss Cheon!”

“Good morning miss!”

“Good morning!”

All the way into the teachers’ room. I smiled. Would I ever get tired of this?

I sat down at my desk and put my bag in a drawer. I started to look through various books and files and made sure I had everything I needed for today’s lessons, then I grabbed the call book and headed to my classroom.

I have a homeroom this year. I’m the homeroom teacher for the girls of class 2-1. It’s a lot more work than just teaching one subject, but I enjoy it. And this school is quite high level, so there aren’t really too many problems to deal with. Students are usually respectful and listen to the teachers… I can honestly say that I really love my job.

I didn’t always want to be a teacher, though. When I graduated high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just wanted to study abroad and experience different things; but if we were talking long-term, all I wanted was a simple life; I didn’t really care what I did.

I decided I wanted to be a teacher while I was in England. For extra money, I’d signed up to help some Korean high school students who’d come to London on a one-month study trip, and it turned out that I had a knack for the job. After that I switched my major and the rest is history.

I walked into the classroom and one student called:

“Stand up!”

“Bow to the teacher!”

“Sit down!”

I greeted my class and took attendances. It was Monday so of course, most of them were still half-asleep. We spent the short period discussing who would join the committee for the sports festival, which was coming up, and before I knew it the bell was ringing and it was time to go.

Just as I’d stepped into the hallway, one student nearly slammed into me.

“Ahh!! I’m sorry miss Cheon!” she exclaimed, bowing at 90-degree angle, and popping right back up, which made me chuckle.

The girl who had nearly toppled me over was Cha Do-Hee, a cheerful 14y.o. girl who always wore her hair in a high ponytail, and track pants under her skirt.

“Why are you late, Do-Hee?” I asked her.

“I’m sorry, teacher, I couldn’t wake up on time” she said sheepishly, before giving me a huge eye-smile. Honestly, how was I supposed to stay mad at that kid?

“Alright, well hurry up and take your seat” I said, trying to sound stern.

She gave me a little salute and scampered off into the classroom to meet the rest of her little gang.

I know you’re not supposed to have favorites as a teacher, but these girls were especially loveable, and for some reason I couldn’t fathom, they seemed to really idolize me, haha… There were 3 of them: Cha Do-Hee, the unspoken leader, with her bubbly personality and not-so-ladylike ways, who always managed to charm herself out of any situation her inattention led her into. Then there was Kwon Reika, who was half-Japanese, with her short black hair that she always wore in pigtails and a smattering of freckles on her nose. She seemed shy at first glance, but she was actually a little chatterbox, prone to constant fits of giggles, which had a tendency to be rather distracting when they occurred in the middle of a lesson. The last one of the three was Nam Mi-ran. She was taller than both, and with her long straight hair and quiet demeanor, she acted as a calming force between the other two. All 3 of them were in the cheer club, and because of that, and because of their names, people had nicknamed them “Do-Re-Mi”. I thought it was kinda cute.

I corrected the attendance book and made my way down to the teachers room to get my things for the first lesson. I barely had 5 minutes to myself before the next bell rang and then, off to work…

It wasn’t a bad life, being a teacher. Sure, on most days I stayed at school grading papers and planning lessons ‘til 7pm or later, but I enjoyed it. And yeah, students weren’t always on their best behavior in class… chatting or passing notes, falling asleep in the middle of the lesson or failing to produce their homework, but they were good girls. And no matter how sleepy they got, as soon as the bell indicating the end of class rang, without fail, they would be full of energy again, and run off with their friends for their 10 minutes of freedom.

Sometimes at lunch, some students would ask me to go sit outside with them. Sometimes I would; and other times, I thought that 5 hours a day teaching those energizer bunnies was quite enough and I just wanted to sit at my desk for 30 minutes and bury my nose in a book while I ate. Today was one of the latter.

One lesson followed the other and the day ended up passing by rather quickly. Soon it was time to go home, so I packed up my things and left. It felt rather strange to say “home” at this point, since my new place was still all so foreign to me, but it was home now.

As I walked out of the train station into my new neighborhood, I remembered that I didn’t even have anything to cook with back at my apartment, so I stopped by a little restaurant that I found near my house to have some dinner. It was a shabby little place, owned by a chubby little lady with curly hair old enough to be someone’s grandma, but the noodles were delicious. She chatted my ear off the whole time – wanting to know where I was from, what I was doing here, and how come I wasn’t married – but she was sweet so I indulged her. I paid, promising her I’d be back and then walked back home, to look at furniture on the internet.

Yup, my life was full of excitement. *laugh*

HIM

I woke up groggily to Lay shaking me.

“Finally!” he exclaimed, after I groaned that I was up, “We gotta leave in 5 minutes,” he told me before walking out the door.

I had the urge to let my head fall back on the pillow, but I knew better and rubbed my eyes, stifling a yawn. I grabbed my phone and saw that I had 3 missed text messages from ReAh.

17:04 [welcome back!!]
18:38 [I missed you!]

20:12 [I wanna see you! Can we have dinner?]

I sighed. ReAh was my girlfriend. We’d only be dating a few months but she was so clingy. I’m not quite sure how we’d ended up dating… She wasn’t the type of girl I usually went for. But she was gorgeous, and had pursued me rather aggressively in the beginning. I think part of it is that I was really flattered. I’m not the best-looking guy in the group so, for a girl like that to choose me instead of them, well… yeah, I guess I was flattered. Plus all of the other guys thought she was super hot and were definitely jealous. Eheh. I felt a little guilty for ignoring her, but I literally had no time now so I tossed the phone aside and got up.

I made my way to the bathroom to splash some water on my face and then moved to the closet where I picked up some jeans, a t-shirt and a hoodie. Barely seconds after I’d gotten dressed, Chen’s head popped into the room telling me it was time to go. I grabbed my phone before turning to leave and saw that there was now another new message from ReAh, which read [is everything ok? Mail me when you get this.]  I shoved my phone into my pocket and followed my members out of the dorm.

We all sleepily filed into the van, to be delivered at a studio 30 minutes later. Where? Somewhere in Seoul. I had no idea. I never did. We walked into a building and then into a room, that looked just like countless other rooms which I had been in over the past 3 years. Our waiting room. It was filled with staff, people I knew better than my own family by now, who were all running around with a purpose like busy little bees.

Someone gave me coffee, then someone dressed me up and someone put make-up on my face. At the end of the process, I was reasonably awake.

I noticed my phone was buzzing and pulled it out of my pocket. The screen flashed ReAh’s name. [yah! Are you ignoring me??]

[sorry baby, I only got your texts this morning. I was dead yesterday and crashed as soon as we got home. We got schedules all day today so I’ll be busy]

She sent me back a message with a picture of her pouting. I chuckled. ReAh was really y, but she couldn’t do aegyo at all. I took a selca of myself blowing her a kiss and hit send. Tao came over to talk and I put the phone away. We took some dorky selfies on his phone and uploaded them online. Shortly afterwards, we were all ushered on set.

As far as photo shoots went, this one was pretty unexciting. The set was really plain with only a white sheet as background and some white furniture. We were also all dressed completely in white. This appointment was a photo shoot for a magazine that was doing a spread on EXO because of our comeback. They took pictures of each one of us individually, then pair shots, then finally group ones with all of us together. When it wasn’t our turn to be photographed, we would just plop down on whatever chair was available and play with our phones, chat amongst ourselves, or sleep. We were so used to it by now that it had become second nature.

By 2pm, the shoot had ended and we were on our way to a radio station for an interview at 3pm. I’d eaten nothing since the in-flight meal the day before and was now starving, but there was no time for food. After the recording, there were some fans waiting outside the radio station, so we got slightly delayed. I tried to say hi and wave to as many as I could, but our managers were pushing us along and there was nothing to do. I feel sorry that they had to wait so long to be rewarded with almost nothing. It was 5pm by the time we got into the van again.

Our manager was busy telling us about the next schedule – a variety show that came on at 9pm, but someone interrupted him, screaming “FOOD!” That was Chanyeol.

We all laughed and he raised his hands over his head in mock compliance. “Ok, ok… I guess we have time…”

The van dropped us off at the SM headquarters and we had dinner in the large cafeteria there. It was actually a really nice place to eat because the food was really good, and you knew that you could just chat and relax, and do whatever you wanted without having to worry about people staring at you or taking your picture. One short hour later, it was back into the van to the TV station, and again, the same ritual of clothes, cat-naps and makeup.

We had a rehearsal interview on set, before the actual program, which was live. Then back in the van at 11pm to get to the dorm and sleep a few hours. Tomorrow would be more of the same.

Just another day in the life of an idol.