20 years ago

 

I arrived in front of the company ‘Uzzu Entertainment,’ with my tote bag hung over my shoulder. It was a daily routine to come to the company by commuting on the bus, then walking to the building. 

 

When I entered through the slide doors, I greeted Soobin at the reception. I collected my ID pass from her and swiped it so that I could enter the building which consisted of the cafeteria, practise rooms, the studio, and meeting rooms. 

 

I walked to room 5, where I would be practising some dances with our mentor, Seola. She was two years older than us but she was hired from the company straight away and has been in various tv shows where she judges. She is a strict mentor but I respect her a lot and want to be a great dancer like her. 

 

My first impression of her was that she’s cold and intimidating but in actual fact it was the opposite, she understood that we have other commitments and there were times when we would be too tired to dance but she does try to push us all so we can be the best version of ourselves. 

 

There was rumour spreading around that there was something going on between Soobin and Seola as they’re always together when they arrived and leave at the end of the day. 

 

As well when we ask directly to them if they were dating, they just mentioned how they had dinner the day before and they would compliment each other all the time. One of my favourite times of the day was seeing Seola hanging out at the reception just to keep Soobin company. 

 

Seola clapped to get our attention from where she was sitting in front of the wall of mirror, "Okay, okay listen up everyone, today we have a new trainee coming in and her name is Kim Jiyeon. Please make her feel welcome.” 

 

Entered in was a beautiful girl around my age who gummy smile to everyone in the room. She radiated an innocent and gentle aura, she had straight black hair with a blue cap. Her outfit was basic yet made her look very stylish at the same time. She wore a white long sleeved collared button up which she tucked one side, midway of her stomach, exposing a bit of her skin, she styled it with short blue jeans and black vans. I was in awe of her beauty. 

 

She came to the front next to Seola and was awkwardly standing there as she was facing around 15 trainees. I looked around to see some of them were intimidating this poor girl by staring her down, though I don’t blame them as she’s a very good catch. 

 

"Ahem hi everyone, as you can't tell already my name is Jiyeon, I trained for 6 years previously but I decided to change companies here. I hope you all can help me and I will try my best to train hard!" She said it with so much determination and enthusiasm, it reminded me of when I started and joined the company. I was quite shocked to hear from her that she had trained for 6 years which was a long time. I’ve only trained for 4 years so compared to her, she’s more experienced than me. 

 

I looked at her from where I was sitting on the wooden floorboard, and was doing some stretching before Jiyeon came. "Everyone please pair up with someone to do warm ups so we can start with some dances, Jiyeon you can pair up with Xuanyi, she's in the black shirt," I eagerly waved at her so she could see where I was. 

 

As she walked closer to me, I could tell I was an inch taller than her, I giggled to myself when I noticed it and smiled at her when she came towards me. We started to do warm ups together and had a small chat about our interests. 

 

She’s very bubbly and was interested in clothes and shopping like me. I asked her if she would like to go out with me after she wraps up the day here at the company and replied that she was very happy to tag along. I also mentioned if she was okay with some of my friends joining and reassured that they were very kind, she told me she didn’t mind and wanted to make some new friends. 

 

Today’s practice took a few hours before we were able to take the rest day off as it was a Saturday. Everyone was sweating as Seola was more strict than usual today, since a lot of the people weren’t able to memorise the moves quickly and so she disciplined the whole group for everyone to remember it and if there was one wrong move we had to redo it. 

 

As expected, Jiyeon memorised the moves quickly and it was very clean. She even got a compliment from our mentor which rarely happened, it meant that Seola had high expectations of her. 

 

I took a seat on the ground next to my bag and grabbed my water bottle and drank it as Jiyeon tagged along with me and did the same thing. We were done for the whole day now and I texted my friends that I was done, and they told me that they were waiting for me outside already. 

 

“Come on Jiyeon, my friends are outside. We should pack up and go.” She nodded and shyly followed behind me as I led her to the entrance of the building. 

 

I told Jiyeon to hand back her ID pass and I did mine at the same time too. I explained to her the ID passes were only for weekends as there were less people arriving the building and wanted to monitor people entering and exiting more carefully compared to weekdays and it was a key that only opened to the room that you were assigned to go on the day. 

 

The times when we entered during the week, we would use the one that the company provided us, it had all access to all rooms but there were some off limit rooms that only senior idols could access or staff. 

 

I saw my friends outside and waved to them, there was Sojung, Cheng Xiao along with my childhood friend Meiqi. I met Sojung and Cheng Xiao around when I joined the company. 

 

Xiao Xiao and I arrived at the same time and we both found ou