Jieun was sure—positive—that she was making the right choice. Staying couldn’t possibly be the right thing to do when she felt like she was losing more of herself every single day. With resolve adding even more certainty in her steps, she slammed her fist down on the button for the elevator doors. This is the right thing to do, she reassured herself. Even if I have to busk for the rest of my life, I’d rather live in poverty than have to have my spirit to live trampled on in new ways every single day here.

But only when she got on the elevator did she realize that she didn’t know where YG’s office was. She didn’t even know which floor it was on, so she was stuck staring blankly at the elevator buttons. Shouldn’t they have covered this during the tour on my first day here? Taking down her ponytail with a frustrated sigh, she randomly selected a floor and hoped for the best. Running a hand through her hair, she assured herself that there weren’t that many floors in the YG building and she’d eventually find YG’s office by the end of the day. And we have to start somewhere, she thought, giving the lit-up floor button she’d pressed a hopeful glance. Who knows? This one may be the right one.

Only, it apparently wasn’t right because when the doors slid open, all she saw was a dimly-light hallway with a bunch of nonsensical (YG artists would call it “artistic”) foreign posters hanging on the wall. This isn’t the right place. Annoyed, she was about to jam the button to close the elevator doors again when she heard the distinct bass sound of a song she’d never heard before. It was clearly coming from around the corner of the dark hallway. Maybe there are people I can ask in there. She got off the elevator hurriedly and approached the closed door behind which she could hear the audible bickering voices of what appeared to be four boys.

She opened the door the smallest of cracks and they didn’t appear to have heard her over the noise of their music blaring through the speakers. Jieun watched quietly from the doorway, waiting for an opportunity to cut into their discussions, but all of them were so focused on working that none of them noticed nor gave her the chance to interrupt even briefly. Every time she felt like she had room to slip in a word, they began talking about possible adjustments they could make to their track to make it perfect and then proceeded to listen to how the change sounded in the given context.

“I think we should just go back to the original,” one of them commented. “The key change sounds awkward here.”

The others seemed to agree. “D’you think we could put in the key change somewhere else? During the bridge or after the second time around with the chorus?” They all voiced their agreement and went about doing as suggested.<