March 2009

For a recording studio, the lounge room chairs weren’t that comfortable. I was sitting there scribbling some notes on my rap lines while Doojoon was in the recording room doing his stanzas.

Writing rap wasn’t as hard as people made it out to be. Once you get the rhythm, and the number of bars per beat then you’re pretty much set. The only other problems were writing it about something that related to the song and that it made sense.

“Something is wrong,” Doojoon told me as he came out of the booth to let Kikwang go in for however longed it would take for his vocals. “Part of this doesn’t work.” I held out a hand in which he put the piece of paper in. I quickly scanned over his part.

“You mean here where you say, ‘man, love do it to get her back’?” I had to pause and read it over again. English was not one of my strong points but I could see why he was puzzled. “I think it should be,” I scribbled next to it:

‘Do it for love to get her back.’

“Yeah that makes sense,” Doojoon nodded. “Thanks,” he went off to show the producer who gave thumbs up of approval.

“What happens after this?”

“AJ we’re still in the process of recording!” The music engineer called as Kikwang poked his large lipped face out of the booth. He even had the headphones on. AJ was supposed to stand for ‘Ace Junior.’ He had yet to really show that he was that.

“Oh sorry,” his bow almost threw the headphones off and the engineer sighed.

“He’s still so very much a kid,” he murmured as I sat down in a spare seat next to the genius behind the sound system desk.

“Alright let’s try that again.” He pressed play, slowly pushed the levers up which started the music. The sound bars appeared on the computer. There was just music at first which would have Doojoon’s introduction put into that spot.

***

“I’m so tired,” Kikwang told us as we drove back to the dorms in his manager’s car. He and Doojoon goofed off while I sat with my phone reading a message from my brother. I had to smirk; he was being a smartarse for once.

“Why are you smiling?” I dropped my expression as I turned my head to Doojoon.

“It is nothing.”

“Oh, do you have a girlfriend?” Doojoon asked.

“Yeah, what’s she like?”

“I don’t have one.”

“How can you not have a secret one?” Kikwang jeered playfully as he nudged me in the arm. “As long as the company doesn’t know then it’s fine right?”

“And so it’s fine if your girl calls you hyung?” That shut them up. They were quiet from the confusion.

“It’s my brother,” I showed them the text. “He sent me a message.”

“Wow are you guys close?” I had to think.

“I guess we are.”

“I don’t know if you know this but I have a younger brother too,” Kikwang grinned. “He has inherited his hyungs’ good looks.”

“Pfft,” Doojoon tried not to laugh while Kikwang glared at him.

“You’re just jealous that you don’t have a younger brother.”

“Hey I have nothing against noona.”

“Noona, so you have an older sister?” Doojoon nodded to me.

“Yeah, she’s a little overbearing sometimes. But I have to thank her I guess because that’s how I help look after my younger friends.” I could see what he meant. It explained the older brother feel he seemed to give during the practices when the choreographer or our vocal teachers were away. If we misbehaved then he would set us straight.

“Maybe you will be a leader of the boy group President hyung is thinking of debuting.”

So we’re getting warmer to Beast’s actual debut once AJ has debuted and some other bits and pieces I can’t share yet.