By June, I was placed into an idol group makeup team. It seemed that with makeup teams like this are usually more tiring and physically draining with travelling. This seem like a decision to keep me as far away as possible from the hair salon. I was happy to leave the hair salon as scissors and hair dyes did not excite me anyway. I wanted to be brushing art onto someone’s face, styling their hair into beautiful forms and coordinating outfits.

“Attention, we have a new addition to our makeup team. Please introduce yourself!” Mr Han, the head makeup announced in the waiting room. “Hello, my name is Rhiannon, if it is hard for you to pronounce, you can call be Ri An instead. Nice to meet you all.” I gave a small smile and bowed. “2, 3, Bangtan, Hello we are bangtan boys!” I did not realise until later that they are known as BTS. I had no idea who they are or what they do. I think I might need to do some research!

They introduced themselves one by one. Rapmon, the leader and rapper of the group, spoke fast and confidently; Jin, a vocalist who smiled at me while his eyes blinked a lot. Suga, another rapper who spoke softly without making any eye contact; Jhope, another rapper who spoke excitedly with hand gestures, giving me a big wave. Jimin, smiling with his eye smile who is lead vocalist and lastly, Jungkook, main vocalist who is shy and nervous looking kid. I will have a hard time remembering their names along with the makeup team and coordination team. Oh, also, they had a few managers too.

Apparently the group that I am assigned to is a rookie group and it was second year of their debut. Right after I entered, they were debuting in Japan with their first single and was doing many promotions in Japan. I took that as lucky as I have never been to Japan and that exposed me to a brand new world. The month passed by quickly as I was constantly travelling, to Tokyo, Osaka, Russia and back to Korea.

One of the highlight must be photoshoot for their 1^st Anniversary Festa. We chose navy suit and black tie for their part one and casual denim shirt and white shirt for part two. From working with them over the past weeks, I realised the whole team works well together. Even if there are some conflicts or disputes, it is resolved calmly and there are no hard feelings. While I am still struggling to converse fluently in Korean, my team members are kind and understanding, with use of some hand gestures and my body language, they were able to understand me properly.

One time, I was trying to say casual clothes, I struggled on the spot as I was thinking out loud, “What’s the Korean word for casual?” “캐주얼 의류” a voice said. “Uh?” I turned around to see that the voice belonged to Rapmon. “It means casual clothes,” he explained to me in English. “Oh right, thanks!” I raised an eyebrow, impressed by the fact that this guy can speak English. Later on, whenever I struggled to translate a word, I will ask Rapmon. I got myself a translator!

“Hey Rapmon, where did you learn English from?” I asked curiously, out of the blue when I was doing his makeup. “I learnt it by myself and since I studied in New Zealand before so that helped,” he said nonchalantly in Korean. “Oh wow, I never knew that. That’s interesting.” “Well, that’s a lot of things you don’t know about me,” he said in English as he gave me a smirk. What was that? Why is he being like that? Is he implying that I am not trying hard enough to get to know the team? Brushing that aside, I continued doing his makeup. Ever since then, whenever it is the two of us, we will converse in English, talking about anything, promotions, events, life and more.

“Noona, what you eat?” V asked me one time in English when I was applying foundation on his face. “Stay-ker?” “Oh steak? I don’t eat steak.” I replied. “Quak-shun. Ask me quak-shuns.” He smiled brightly. “Why are you suddenly speaking in English?” I asked him in Korean. “Oh you know, you talkeu Rapmon engrish so I talkeu you engrish.” He said, with a proud grin. I started laughing at his attempt at English which is so endearing. “Why…uh…hahaha?” He tilted his head to the right as he asked me in English. “Because you are so cute!” I said to him in English as I pat him on his shoulders. “당신은 너무 귀여워,” I added in Korean. Again, proud of his attempt, he was grinning from ear to ear. It made me think that I should try to converse properly in Korean instead of always conversing in English just with Rapmon. Maybe they wanted me to open up to them more?