At 24 years old I managed to become one of the most successful recording artists in the United States. I know, I know, it’s a cocky thing to say, but I’m trying to be honest here. I write my own music, direct and choreograph my own videos, and produce my own backing tracks. The only thing I generally don’t do on my own is write my own lyrics. Despite my creative nature, poetry was never my thing, I guess. I generally insist on having a heavy hand in deciding the direction of the lyrics, of course, but that is my only obstacle to being able to fly completely solo. Don’t get me wrong, people in the industry generally enjoy working with me. Ugh, again, I sound like an arrogant prick. Regardless, I’m well known for accepting collaborations of all genres and from all sorts of artists. My only condition being that the artist is flexible in both ability and personality to warrant working together. I thought I had pretty much covered every genre possible by the end of 2013. That is, of course, until I got a most peculiar phone call. I’ll get to that story in a little while.

I go by the mononym Mira when I’m working. I don’t really remember where it came from. I started in this industry back when I was 19 in 2009, and it sort of just stuck. I was young and just did what my label told me. My real name is Halley, like the comet. Yeah, my dad is an astrophysics major. He works at our local planetarium in my hometown outside of Seattle. I made off pretty good with my name; my little brother’s name is Sirius. You know, like the star. But I digress- my moniker Mira is also the name of a star, so it managed to stay within my name’s ‘theme’ while also sounding way more hip and rock star-like. At least my dad is still satisfied.

There isn’t that much more to say about me, personally. I’m an Irish girl through and through: red hair, green eyes, pale as hell, freckles, the works. Dad thinks it’s great, of course, as both his parents came from the homeland right before he was born, so he’s pretty proud of the whole heritage thing. Other than that, my work is my life. I’m in love with music. My label will have me stage some sort of love affair, often with my collaborators, in order to generate press and interest in a project, but I detest the idea. My greatest fear is that my partner either develops genuine interest or forgets it’s all a ruse for the publicity. Not that I particularly dislike anyone in the entertainment industry (except for that Bieber kid, talk about an ego complex, jeez), but I was never really the dating type. I spent all of my free time on my music projects, and any semblance of a relationship that I’ve attempted failed miserably. In retrospect, as I write this, it does sound rather lonely, but I can promise that I was happy the way things were.

Alright, now about that phone call. I guess I didn’t receive it per say, it was my assistant, Charlotte. She’s your typical Los Angeles posh girl, just turned eighteen back then. I didn’t want OR need an assistant, but she is one of the chairman’s daughters, so I didn’t have a choice in the matter. The girl is a talented singer, and I am glad she is making connections; I just wish she didn’t have to be MY assistant. In any case, she received a rather odd phone call near the end of 2013. We happened to be in the office that day, and when she answered the phone, she got that bewildered face that she always gets whenever anything more complicated than shampoo directions were given to her. I leaned against the doorway as I watched her scribble on her notepad before rather rudely saying goodbye and hanging up the phone. She caught my eye, and I simply raised my eyebrows, waiting for her to speak.

“Some Asian dude called for you,” she stated simply, and turned to walk away.

I shook my head briskly, trying to comprehend what she just said, “And?” I asked incredulously. ‘Some Asian dude’ could mean any number of artists, managers, producers, or whatever. If I was going to get involved in yet another collaboration, I needed some more information.

She sighed in aggravation. How dare I ask her to elaborate! She rolled her eyes before speaking, “He had a pretty thick accent. He said that some group over there wants to fly you out to work on some project.”

Her nonchalance irked me, but I tried to stay calm, “Over there? Where is over there?”

“Korea,” she said simply. “He said they already talked to Mr. Cary about it,” she shrugged and then left before I could say anything more.

“Korea?” I asked to myself, well aware that no one was around to listen to me anymore. My love for music never really went beyond the English language. Psy helped with that, I guess, but his success with a Korean language hit didn’t exactly cause a cascade of Korean music to hit American radio. I clearly was not prepared for whatever project Mr. Cary, my direct manager, had certainly agreed to already.

Several hours later and I felt like an expert on the Kpop industry. Sure, my research never strayed far from Wikipedia, but I certainly did what I could in the amount of time given before my impending meeting. What I had learned was that the industry over there was a whole different world. Artists were held in trainee status for several years if necessary before debuting as a solo artist or as a group. Companies had brutal contracts to own these artists’ lives and controlled just about every aspect of their lives. Some seemed less concentration camp-y than others, but clearly the strictest companies generally had the most successful groups. I came to the conclusion that one of the three big names, SM, JYP, or YG had to be the ones to request a collaboration with me. The smaller labels were less likely to have the resources to fly me out there and presumably house me for an indefinite time period. So that’s where my research focused. I learned the big group names (but did not dare try to learn anything about their members- some groups were as large as 13!) and tried to watch some music videos.

I was about 80% through a video for a song called “Run Devil Run” that I was particularly interested in given its ties to Ke$ha when my manager barged into my office.

As soon as he caught a glimpse of my laptop, his eyes lit up almost as bright as his bald white head. “Oh good, Charlotte told you! Studying up, I see,” he spoke happily. Despite four years together, he still treats me like a child sometimes. Not that I really minded, but for now I wasn’t in the mood to entertain him. I had too many questions.

“I don’t know Korean,” okay, it wasn’t phrased as a question, sure, but he knew what I meant.

He waved at me dismissively, “You’re a smart girl, we have you scheduled for a few months with a linguist.”

My jaw dropped, “A few months? To learn a language? Then, what, you’re just going to fly me out to Korea for god knows how long?” I couldn’t control my tone. I was clearly agitated.

Cary’s face fell, and I couldn’t help but feel a pang of guilt. “You want to turn it down?” he asked softly. Sometimes HE was the child in the relationship.

I sighed loudly, “Of course I won’t turn it down,” I droned. “Not until I get to see what talent I’m working with. I just don’t understand how this is going to work.”

“Me neither” he agreed, but he was beaming, “But it’s a great opportunity, right?”

“So what company asked for me?” I ignored his question in favor as asking more myself.

“Company?” he asked, bewildered. Clearly he had not done any research himself.

“Record label?” I rephrased, weakly hoping he might have some information for me.

He clearly didn’t, “Oh,” he stammered, “I’m not sure, but we have people working on the arrangements already. You fly out in May!”