“BABY!” It is the absolutely worst shouting voice to wake up to. High and loud, Maria enters the bedroom without hesitation and it feels like she waves her arms around the room before turning on the lamp to hurt my eyes, making me give out a complaining groan as I throw the quilt over my head and I keep groaning. It feels like I just fell asleep – why is she so loud? What time is it? Maria isn’t the early riser when she has the day off. “Wake up, wake up,” Maria says in a singing tone. I can’t see her but I feel her sit down on the bed, mostly because she pats me on my before it feels like she puts down Tiger on my legs. The kitten starts walking on unsteady legs; Maria pats my again for the kitten to walk up on my body. “Maria…” I complain with my voice low and I know I can probably need a few more hours of sleep. What time is it? “Baby, baby, are you awake?” she happily sings for me. “It’s time to wake up, is it not?” “It’s not…” I whine. I can’t have been sleeping for that long, and my cell phone will wake me up with the alarm. “It sure is,” Maria continues to sing. “Ji Young Oppa is here waiting for you.” He is here already… I whine underneath my quilt, really not wanting to get up and Maria lifts the kitten up next to me. “I know, I know,” she says and pats me on the again, not sounding like she knows at all. “But it’s ten in the morning and you are attending a meeting in an hour so Ji Young asked me to wake you up.” By hearing what time it is I remove the quilt and turn around to pick up my phone. She’s right. It’s already 10:11. I have slept for six hours… It doesn’t feel like it at all. I want to sleep some more. Maria seems satisfied with me peeking out from my nest as she gives me a final pat before leaving the room. The kitten next to me who I thought was Tiger is not my kitten at all; it is Ace, our oldest pet of three years, a very adorable ragdoll cat who knows he is the boss in this family. Seeing it is not my kitten I put my hand up to caress Ace’s soft fur. “Good morning,” I whisper with a yawn. I wonder where Tiger is for letting Ace being on my pillow like this; last time Ace was on my bed, Tiger tried to challenge him as she thought this room belonged to her, ending up lying on her back and moving her paw up to Ace to treat him like the boss he knows he is. Ace has always known he is the boss, at least among the pets. In the second house, where Carolina and Julia are living, there are two dogs as well, but even the dogs know that Ace is the boss of everyone. Maria says their cat was born to rule with 5 Pieces; like master, like pet. I’m still too tired to get out of bed, so I stay there petting Ace until I can hear Manager Lee ask from the living-room if I have fallen asleep anew. With a groan I get out of bed, my body stiff from sleeping and I start to bend my body in my usual morning stretching. When bending down to touch my feet I can see where Tiger is; she has found a pair of pants under the bed that she is lying on, all messed up with the pants. I have no memory of having any pants on the floor so I wonder if she brought them there from the wardrobe. She probably did. Manager Lee is sitting in the sofa with his tablet looking through things while I get ready. He doesn’t seem to be in a hurry as he doesn’t tell me to hurry up, or maybe he knows that when I leave my room fully dress, it won’t be long until I am ready. Among the members I am one of the fastest to get ready in the morning. Newly woken I tend to be quiet, I have a bad temper in the morning though I can smile and whisper to the pets, but while I can’t stop yawning I get dressed, goes to the bathroom to brush my teeth and the usual, and when I’m done I take a drinking yogurt from the fridge to head back to my bedroom to repack my bag a little quickly. Fifteen minutes is what it takes before I stand in the hall putting on my shoes, still blinking to keep my eyes open for more than a few seconds. “Are you bringing the cat with you?” Manager Lee shortly asks when he enters the hall, seeing Tiger circulating around me and stretching her back up against my leg. She wants to come along. “Mm,” I nod. Tiger has come along to the recording studio before; she has been there in the practice-room as well so she isn’t too much of a stranger to the agency environment. I have packed her things in my bag and then has the travel crate fixed for Tiger to be in. She seems overly excited when realising she is coming along, not leaving the travel crate. Maria is in the hall too when we are preparing to leave. Her platinum blonde hair is put up in a short pony-tail and she is excitedly talking about her plans for the day; she will clean and do the laundry, she will head out on dinner with some friends and there is a possibility she will go to the cinema as well. Maria is excited to have the day off from work, wishing me a good time at the agency and like always trying to show affection to Tiger who is hiding in her travel crate. In the van I get a text message from Park Hyekyung – a genius producer and good friend. He is at the moment attending the meeting that will decide on my album’s future. I might not show any nervousness in the van because I am still waking up, but my head is fully awake by the time I receive that text message. What would they be saying? What are their opinions about the songs I decided on, will they like them or ask me to head back to the studio for new songs? Will they plan for the album release and promotions today? I have a lot of questions that I’m curious about, wondering if they will be brought up at the meeting, what they are saying and what their thoughts are. As 5 Pieces I feel confident because I have the best four members a group can have, but being solo makes me question everything. I am wearing a pair of loose jeans to an old deep v-neck shirt in purple, sneakers and a khaki green appliqué drawstring-waist jacket. I can easily dance in the loose jeans; the jacket is like an extra shirt to keep me warm in the chilly late November weather and it is my usual comfortable kind of outfit to wear. “You are going to the practice-room first,” Manager Lee tells me as we near the agency. “I will come get you when the meeting is reaching its end.” It might be a meeting about me and my album, but I am not allowed to attend it until all decisions have been made and the meeting as officially ended. Then it is another meeting where they will confirm it all with me. The meeting can go on all day depending on how quickly they make their decisions. If I was Maria, I would be waiting outside the conference-room and try to gather some information during the coffee breaks; if I was Emelia, I would get coffee to stand ready to question them at the coffee break. But I’m neither the leader nor the stubborn rapper, so what I do is going to the practice-room as told. It’s not that I’m not that curious that the ideas of how to sneak information from the meeting has gotten to me, it is more that I can spend my day practicing – which is much more needed – than just hanging around outside the conference-room making myself go crazy waiting. Outside the agency it is like always fans waiting to spot one or another idol. I know I am a little bit too conscious about the fans because you can never know whose fan they are. At times I have been cursed as they have not been fans of 5 Pieces and at other times they have run in front of me to try getting an album signed or a picture taken. The various fans outside the agency can even scare me at times. This is why I follow the routines of mostly every idol when getting out of the van and walking the few meters to the agency’s building entrance. When I arrive at the agency and get out of the van I turn my back to the few fans starting to say my name to turn to my seat where I throw the bag over my shoulder and holds the travel crate in my hand. Manager Lee is up on my side when I’m ready to leave and he holds out a protective arm behind my back as I lower my head and start to walk to the building. He closes the passenger door after me and is quickly up on my right side where a fan just stepped closer asking if it is Tiger in the travel crate. Tiger is no stranger to our fans since I introduced her on my instagram as the youngest one in our family, and ever since it feels like whenever I bring her along to the agency there are fans commenting on how cute she is, asking how old she is, asking for more updates on her and if she is getting along with our other pets. Something that our dancers had pointed out during our tour together is that if you work with 5 Pieces, fans recognize you. Our dancers have gotten their own fan-club thanks to being 5 Pieces’ dancers. Our fans recognize them at the airport at times; our crew has received a lot of praise and love. Our managers receive the same treatment; Manager Lee is said to be the handsome manager, the one always sticking next to 5 Pieces baby’s side. Everyone around us seems to be popular, no matter how big their role is; if fans know about this person, this person is popular: Including our pets. They are like celebrity children, always grabbing attention if they are spotted and that is exactly why Tiger is such an interesting subject whenever fans spot her going with me to the agency – it has happened often these past weeks in my preparations for the album. I know there will be pictures of us within the hour on 5 Pieces’ fan-club homepage, fans will write that I was spotted with Tiger going to the agency and maybe they will say I was here yesterday too. From what I have read, no one is suspicious of why I am at the agency so often though I have seen one or two comments saying I might be preparing for a solo comeback. Another one had responded that 5 Pieces will be promoting internationally in 2015 and that ended the comments about any solo comeback for 5 Pieces even if SM Entertainment has said there will be a lot more solo promotions from various SM artists next year. In the practice-room it is just me and Tiger. I run around a little with her first so she won’t interrupt my practice, but I keep thinking of that Manager Lee might have joined the meeting now. I want to know what will be said. Before leaving me, Manager Lee gave me a camera to film with. We have been filming footage for my album preparations, but I don’t know what they will use it for. I see it as footage for my fans, the only way I can actually film anything, and now too I have the camera in my hand to film Tiger running and playing in the practice-room. The jacket I wore has been placed on the sofa for now. After playing I sit down tailor on the floor over by the mirrors, smiling when putting down the camera and putting my own sneaker under it for the camera to be pointing up a bit. I make sure it can film me when I dance, but before I can get up from the floor to begin practice I have Tiger getting in front of the camera, curiously sniffing on it and I have to stop her when it looks like she will start playing with my sneakers. With a laugh I pick her up under her stomach and bring her to my face to kiss her. “Don’t touch that, Tiger,” I cutely warn her before getting up on my feet. I put Tiger down over by the travel crate I have left next to the sofa and I leave my other shoe there as well before I start warming up. I warm up to 5 Pieces’ [POWER UP]. It is definitely different dancing to the song by my self after performing it with a whole crew for so long. I look in the mirror when starting to step forward at the beginning of the song, imagining the ladies and dancers around me as I just half-heartedly dance. I am precise with the positions, moving from side to side as if there actually are members dancing there with me, while I am barely doing the choreography correctly. I don’t hold my arms up straight or lift my knees up as high as it should, but I lip-synch to most of the parts – it is after all just a warm-up. Tiger is jumping around by my feet for a few seconds then she head back to her travel crate and start pulling out her blanket on the floor but it is a bit in the back so she isn’t in the way for me. When I start practicing for [Only My (Fight)], I am well aware of that my footwork is wrong so I repeat the song until I have gotten a hang of it. Teacher Ji Hwa would scold me if I forget what we went through yesterday. The more I practice the less I see of Tiger, in the end she has lied down in her travel crate after jumping around in the sofa and making a mess with the chairs and running around by my feet. It’s easier to focus when she isn’t running around. It takes a few repeats of the song before Tiger starts running around again. I take a break from dancing to play with her, sitting on the floor and tumbling her around. She has a lot of energy, my little kitten. “Hannah,” Manager Lee enters the room. I am sitting on the floor with my hand held out for Tiger to play and I hold my tongue when all these questions wants to burst out of me. “We’re ready for you,” he says with a smirk that really doesn’t say if it is good or bad but I have been waiting here for at least two hours now and I am ready to find out the result. I am quickly up from the floor with Tiger in my arms to turn off the camera that I actually had forgotten was recording and I bring my jacket with me before getting out of the room. I get scared following my manager to the conference-room, hugging on to Tiger in my arms I imagine what will wait for me in that room, what words will be said and what decisions they have made. What if we have disagreements? For too many reasons I wish I had my ladies with me. I hate getting all the focus and getting all the information without a lady helping me out. I probably could’ve asked one of them to come along, but I wouldn’t want to make them spend the whole day at the agency just waiting for the meeting to end. Manager Lee must’ve sensed my nervousness because he puts a hand on my shoulder as we reach the conference-room’s closed door.