A little over a week after their recording in Tokyo, the ladies are back in the same studios, recording some more songs. Today it is just Hannah, Maria and Emelia in the studio. Julia has been in northern Japan for a few days, skiing with some of the crew from their world tour last year. She and Carolina are coming to the studio tomorrow.

While Emelia is recording her parts of the song, Hannah and Maria are sitting in another room with Manager Kawayama helping them to practice the lyrics, to pronounce the words correctly. The songs they are recording lately seem to be difficult, very Japanese but difficult for the foreigners to adjust to. They do their best practicing the lyrics to when they will have to sing it with the producer’s directives. Manager Kawayama is there for Maria in the studio, translating some of the words but ending up just sitting in the back as Maria’s Japanese is good enough.

Hannah is sitting in the back too, practicing while listening to Maria record. Emelia is sitting there too, though she is done with her recording she will leave with the other two when they are done later so until then, she has nothing else to do. Emelia is busy practicing for her concert these days, every day she has been in the practice-room. It’s only five days left now. Though the ladies are happy for her, Emelia got so mad when finding out that only Julia will show up at her Seoul concert. The other three are going to be in New York for Fashion Week. Hannah had said she wants to go to Emelia’s concert more than see models on the catwalk, but this time she had no say in it. While Carolina and Maria are scheduled to be in New York for a week, Hannah will only be there from Friday to Sunday because Hannah has started to officially train for The Visitor.

A few days ago, she attended the first read-through with the producers, director, writer and other actors for the movie. It was the worst yet the best first day to meet. Hannah was dreadfully nervous sitting around the table with everyone, hearing people one by one introduce themselves with real name, occupation, previous work and their character in the movie. Hannah stood up with papers in hand, too nervous to stand without holding anything, she mentioned quickly after introducing herself as a member of 5 Pieces that she doesn’t have much experience in acting but she has a lot of passion for it and looks forward to work with everyone. Kyungho was adorable, receiving love from everyone simply by being the youngest and he cutely said he will do his best to be his character. Meeting everyone for the first time, they had to read their lines. Hannah and Kyungho had practiced, as most of the movie is about the two of them. Since Hannah wasn’t the first one to read her lines, she felt encouraged seeing how the others were doing.

“Ya,” Maria nudges Hannah on the side when they are done in the studio, the leader giving the youngest a nod, “Emelia said we can buy chicken nuggets on the way back. What do you want? Cheeseburger?”

A long and slim finger points out at Hannah, Maria looking like she is craving for McDonald’s.

“Unnie agreed on it?” Hannah whispers.

“Ya!” Maria bursts out and the finger becomes a palm hitting Hannah on the arm. “Manager Kawayama is a wonderful woman who knows that after spending six hours in the studio, you need food to survive for day two. She and Emelia basically suggested it together. Chicken nuggets and three cheeseburgers for me. What do you want?”

It would be delicious to have a cheeseburger, Hannah admits to that, but it is late and she must get in shape. Shaking her head, Hannah says she doesn’t want anything.

“You sure?” Maria asks and Hannah nods, saying she is sure. “Okay. Unnie!”

Hannah pouts when Maria leaves her side to go tell their manager what she wants. For Hannah, rather than thinking how much she should lose weight, she just wants to look like an assassin for the movie. How does an assassin look like? That is a difficult question because the internet has different opinions and trainers have different opinions as well. She has looked up things to eat and how to train, determined even more after the read-through. Eat alright and train more. There will be combat training two times a week for her, but Hannah will try to go to the gym beyond that. The trouble is that she will travel quite a lot this month, so she hopes she will have time to go to the hotel gym.

When the van starts smelling like food, Hannah almost asks to smell the bag. It smells delicious. Food is never as tempting as when you have decided to get in shape. That is what Hannah thinks. So, when reaching the dorm, she doesn’t even step inside the living-room where the others sits down, instead she washes up and heads straight to bed. She is lying in bed with phone in hand, chatting with Jonghyun.

An hour after she has gone to bed, Julia comes to the dorm. Her voice is loud and cheery when entering the dorm and she loudly starts telling those in the living-room what they missed and saying the weather was great, sharing a story of getting lost when trying a different slope. For Hannah who did not eat anything from McDonald’s and who did not go with Julia to the ski resort, she gets extremely annoyed hearing all about it through the wall.

The new dorm in Japan is a three-bedroom apartment. It is quite big compared to how the ladies are used to living with its own small balcony, on the fifth floor in the building. Two bedrooms share a bathroom; the kitchen and living-room are in the same room while the third bedroom is at the other end with a bathroom and closet blocking it from the rest of the place. Carolina is sharing the lonely room with Manager Kawayama during their stay in Japan, though she isn’t here at the moment, so their manager gets the room for herself. they decided for that to let their 43-years-old manager not have to share a bathroom with three ladies but instead with just one. And the ladies drew lots who would get which room. Hannah shares room with Maria, leaving Julia and Emelia in one room.

The bedroom has two single beds in their own corners while one wall is where the closet is. Maria has filled it with clothes already, while Hannah’s half is pretty much empty because she has her things in her bag on the floor. Though there is a closed door out to the living-room, Hannah stays awake because of the noise they are making. Talking and talking. Manager Kawayama speaks both Korean and Japanese so it is not difficult for them to be talking freely.

Just as Hannah thinks the sound of their voices turns into a lullaby for her to fall asleep, the door is opened and Maria comes inside. Though she had forgotten Hannah was in there, seeing Hannah facing the wall trying to sleep, the leader starts moving around while trying to not make too much sound.

“Maria,” Julia shows up by the door, her voice not low at all and she gives out a low sound. “Oh, is she sleeping?”

Hannah turns her head to hide her face in the pillow, wanting to say it is impossible to sleep with them talking loudly, but she stays quiet.

“What is it?” Maria whispers and follows Julia out the room, carefully shutting the door. Hannah can still hear them talk outside the room, someone using the bathroom in the other room.

“Does Hannah know?” Julia wonders. “About the thing you told me the other day.”

“About what?”

“That you’re depressed. Emelia said Hannah thinks it’s her fault we aren’t having a comeback,” Julia mentions, standing right outside the door and not even keeping her voice down.

Maria, on the other hand, whispers enough that all Hannah can hear is mumbling. Julia answers with ‘aah’ and comments that it is just Carolina who doesn’t know about it. The way Julia and Carolina have been after Manager Lim wanting to make their comeback this year, Maria found it necessary to let them know she hasn’t been feeling well since the tour ended. It is just one excuse, but since it is one of many, Maria wants them to know it. Julia had reacted surprisingly neutral, but saying that Carolina’s reaction will be the worst. She will get all screaming and ask if there is anything she can do, what she did wrong, and so on. Maria thinks it is good letting her know last, as the other three ladies are a warm-up.

Hannah is still awake when Maria has washed up and goes to lie in bed, turning off the lamp but her cellphone shines up a bit in the room. Not that the soft light annoys Hannah, she has waited three hours for the dorm to quiet down that she finally thinks she can fall asleep. She is hungry though.

“You’re all sleeping a lot, aren’t you?” Manager Kawayama’s voice wakes Hannah up in the morning. “It’s almost ten in the morning, time to wake up.”

Hannah rolls around in bed to search for her phone on the bedside table, barely opening her eyes but still managing to see their manager sit on Maria’s bed to wake her up. When their manager leaves the room, Hannah rolls out of bed, still unable to open her eyes but continuing to press her phone. The screen is completely black and it takes a few minutes of pressing it before she realises she has run out of battery.

In a zombie mood, Hannah connects her charger to the phone that she leaves on the bed and goes to the bathroom. She touches the doorknob, just about to open when hearing noises at the other side so she stops herself to lean against the wall and wait for the person inside to get done. Closing her eyes again she feels like she is standing up and sleeping. She has slept enough yet she is tired.

Emelia comes out from the bedroom behind her, almost bumping into Hannah who is leaning against the wall between their two rooms.

“Woa,” Emelia lowly gives out a surprised sound. “What are you doing?”

“Busy,” Hannah answers and points at the bathroom.

Emelia lowers her head to look at Hannah whose eyes are still closed. “Are you sleepwalking? There is no one in the bathroom, stupid.”

“There is.”

“Not,” Emelia adds and shakes her head when stepping past Hannah to open the bathroom’s door. “No one is here.”

Hannah is frowning when forcing her eyes open to see the bathroom is empty. “It was locked a minute ago.”

“Stupid,” Emelia chuckles and walks out to the kitchen, asking Julia what she has made for breakfast. Hannah yawns loudly when stepping inside the bathroom, certain it was someone in here a minute ago. That she hadn’t even tried opening the door but just touched it is nothing she remembers.

She heads back to the bedroom after being in the bathroom, lying down in bed tiredly to turn on her phone.

“I think I need twelve hours of sleep in the winter,” Maria mumbles from her bed. After waking up she has spent the past minutes with her phone in hand. “I’m always tired.”

“Mm.”

They are the tired room. Hannah might get dressed and walk around but her face and mind are still drowsy from sleeping in at least an hour, and Maria is in bed for an hour before going up to get ready. The other room, woke up before nine. Julia even made everyone breakfast.

It is the second and last day in Tokyo for three of the ladies. Carolina is on her way from Seoul, going to stay until tomorrow to record the same songs with Julia that the other ladies did yesterday.

Hannah and Maria are still taking turns yawning in the backseat when heading to the studio. Hannah blames Maria for being tired; whenever Maria yawns, Hannah follows. Though Maria had breakfast half an hour ago, she is quick to join the topic about what lunch to eat.

“Ya,” Maria starts to say, her leg leans over the seat between them for her to almost poke Hannah on the leg. “Ya, Hannah.”

“What?” Hannah mumbles.

“Did Anna contact you?”

“No. Why?”

Maria smiles and proudly takes back her leg. “She wrote to me this morning. She came back from the Philippines yesterday and had wanted to call me but because I am far away here in Tokyo, it’s too expensive. Anyway… what was it… right, she asked if I want to appear on her show.”

“Her concert?”

“No, the program she is doing. Unnies, Season 2,” Maria says and charmingly holds up two fingers to Hannah. “You know she’s filming it, right?”

“Mm,” Hannah nods. Ana mentioned it a few weeks ago, joining female comedians, actresses and idols for the second season of Unnie’s Slam Dunk. Like always, Hannah had commented that it would be fun but troubled because Ana has a lot on her schedule already. Still a fun thing to do.

“I’ll ask Appa when we come home if he can talk to KBS about it,” Maria continues, “Because Ana had told the Unnies that a friend of hers knows all about how to improve your voice; which is something they need.”

“She can’t possibly mean you then,” Emelia jokes from the seat in front of Maria.

“Ya. I’ll go on that show and compare myself with the comedians and say I was just the same nine years ago.”

“Please don’t,” Emelia shakes her head. Hannah smiles at it, knowing Emelia is just being her typical self.

“I will. And I will impress with my technique that will help improve their voices,” Maria says, overfilled with confidence that she will change the whole program with her technique. Hannah isn’t even certain that Maria has a technique; they just pushed over the edge during their audition time and before debut to not sound like seagulls.

The reason Maria brought it up in first place was to boast that Ana had called her and no one else to appear on the show. What she doesn’t know is that Jonghyun had declined; both due to schedule conflicts and because he isn’t much to appear on TV like that.

“I should come up with something good to say,” Maria talks out loud to herself. “Ya, do you have any embarrassing stories I can share of her? I’ve got some embarrassing stories but not the kinds she’ll want people to hear about.”

Hannah shakes her head, not wanting to embarrass their friend. Maria doesn’t believe her for a second, saying she will ask around for stories she will tell on the show about Ana.

The second day in the studio is a lot more waiting than recording, mostly because there is more members to record. The ladies don’t seem to mind. It is fascinating to see when Carolina arrives, all bright and energetic, bringing energy to the rest of the ladies so they spend the waiting time in the studio to talk. They talk nonstop about all kind of things. They talk about music, even inspiring to write some lyrics and Emelia takes out an app on her tablet to start working on some music, they talk about travelling, that Julia will become M Countdown’s new host and so on.

At the end of the day, Hannah is sitting in the sofa in the waiting room. Carolina has been sitting next to her for a while, leaning more and more towards Hannah’s arm. Hannah has been sinking down in the seat too, getting more and more comfortable, and with Hannah sinking, Carolina has followed. At the moment, it looks like they both are going to fall asleep in their cosy position, Carolina’s head resting on Hannah’s arm while Hannah is tilting against the armrest. Everyone in the room busy talking, Hannah and Carolina have been talking a lot too but with Carolina quieting down, Hannah slowly adapts to not move her body too much for Carolina to stay comfortable.

Emelia comes inside the room after finishing in the studio, stretching her hands up in the air and giving out a loud sound that says she is finally done. Maria is sitting around the table with Manager Lim as Manager Kawayama is in the studio with Julia. The leader and manager are currently playing a game of cards.

“Ts, what are they doing?” Emelia scoffs when seeing Hannah and Carolina.

Hannah’s head is leaning down on the side, finally having fallen asleep from waiting and mostly because Carolina fell asleep resting on her. While sleeping, Hannah had slightly woken up when Carolina’s arm was put around her, and for once not removing the hand resting by her stomach but instead she went back to sleep.

“Don’t wake them up,” Manager Lim kindly whispers. Maria looks over her shoulder to see what they are talking about, seeing Emelia holding up her phone to take a picture of the sleeping duo.

“Yeah, let them sleep,” Maria says in her normal tone. “Let Hannah miss the flight and panic when realising we left her behind.”

At Maria’s words, Hannah’s face starts frowning. Asleep, awake, she is somewhere in between, hearing what they are saying but only now reacting as she does not want to miss their flight. She has her first combat training tomorrow; it is starting, two times a week she will have it. Emelia scoffs again, starting to upload the picture on 5 Pieces’ personal blog, where they every week share a link to their YouTube channel for the updates. ‘A sleeping duo is what I share with Puzzle today. It looks like they have done a lot, but they really haven’t’.

The trio that were recording the day before wraps up their time in the studio first today to go back to Korea. Which was why Emelia looked so pleased coming inside the waiting room, as she was last of the trio.

Hannah and Carolina are both woken up soon enough, Hannah pouting because it is surprisingly comfortable resting in the sofa and Carolina grimacing because her pillow is leaving. Manager Lim had come with Carolina in the morning and is leaving with the trio in the late evening.

Heading to the airport, the friends are talking about these up-coming days, among other things, Emelia once again sharing the disappointment that some of them are going to New York instead of going to her concert. Hannah is going to perform with Emelia at some of the concerts in Japan later this month but even when mentioning that, Emelia says the opening weekend is the most important. Only Julia will go that weekend.

The best part about only being the four of them; the trio and their manager, is when arriving at the airport it becomes a family trip. Maria walks while holding on to Manager Lim’s hand, like father and daughter with different origins. When Emelia from behind says it looks like a family trip, Hannah hurries over to hold on to their manager’s jacket sleeve (she isn’t much for holding hands) for Emelia to take a picture of the family. Manager Lim is smiling widely, hugging Maria’s hand and looking down to see how Hannah is holding his sleeve.

“Hannah, can’t you hold his hand instead? It looks awkward,” Emelia complains behind them.

Hannah turns her wrist around his to hold his sleeve at the other end but making it look like she is kind of hugging on to his arm. Emelia doesn’t comment on it and takes the picture, not saying when she is done so Hannah turns around after walking a few meters, just to see Emelia do something else. Letting go of Manager Lim’s arm, Hannah leans forward to say Emelia has taken the picture. Maria still holds on to their manager’s hand, as she wasn’t holding it in first place for a picture.

“Don’t you hold your husband’s hand?” Manager Lim asks Hannah and holds up his hand, looking like his is looking for hers.

“I don’t like holding hands,” Hannah answers with a grimace. Seeing that he is actually aiming to take her hand, Hannah gives out a whine and hugs on to his arm instead. “Appa, don’t.”

“You should be touchy like Maria sometimes,” he fatherly tells Hannah as advice, satisfied that she hugs his arm at least.

The airport is calm at this hour, making it easy for them to go to the gate. Manager Lim can’t stop smiling because of the ladies, saying he can’t remember the last time Maria held his hand like this. During 5 Pieces’ first year in Korea (eight years ago), Maria had taken his hand for the first time when leaving a broadcasting station. He can remember it clearly, a hand seeking for help because there were more antis than fans waiting for 5 Pieces at that time. Having her hold his hand today, it is for comfort and to feel safe. Manager Lim is, after all, 5 Pieces’ father.

“Emelia?” Manager Lim turns around when they are about to board. Maria is standing next to him, Hannah just left his side and Emelia is somewhere. “Emelia?”

A hand is raised far away and he tells her in a calm voice that they are about to board. Emelia comes walking over in a pace saying she is in no hurry, patting Hannah on the head when walking past her two meters away from the others and Hannah follows the rapper. Manager Lim checks to make sure they have their passports before they board.

On the flight the ladies talk about filming in New York. Since Emelia won’t go, she is telling Hannah and Maria to film with their phones or bring cameras to film, whether it is at the hotel or if they go have fun between the fashion shows.