"You cannot! Absolutely not! No way, never! Not in this lifetime, not in another.” Yoojin oppa was shaking his head vigorously as soon as I had told him what had happened today. We were both snuggled up in the living room with cups of tea in our hands and as always having our little evening catch-up.

“This was you idea in the first place, remember?” I reminded him why I was in this situation anyways and he just let out a deep sigh.

“No, my idea was for you to become a trainee and find your brother. You did find him, sort of. You saw him, you know he is with this company. I’m sure you can find a way to meet him, find out his address through someone. Didn’t you say one of the trainees who was your age joined the group? Ask him, I’m sure he will tell you!” I could see he was getting a bit fired up.

“Yes, I know him, but I don’t have a phone here so I didn’t take his number. And I doubt there will be any chance for me to see him anytime soon. I’m leaving in less than two weeks, remember? I have no time left. This way I would move into the dorm near them and would be able to just… pop by!” I insisted. In my mind this was not such a big deal, I wasn’t sure why oppa was so against it.

“Lee Yura, I said NO! Have you even thought about the fact you are signing a contract? Contracts can’t be broken just like that, it has to go through the court and everything. It’s not like you’ll be able to just jump on a plane whenever you want and leave. This is serious.” Yeah, he was definitely getting very winded up by now and I couldn’t help but to just sigh. If he was like this, there was no way my father would agree to this. Not even in a million years.

We wished each other ‘goodnight’ and that was the end of the conversation. There was no point dragging it out. Yoojin oppa might be at times a bit timid, a bit quiet, but he was stubborn like a mule. I had to let him calm down a bit first, before I could talk to him rationally again. But I had to admit, I was not that sure what I was going to get myself into. To me it was nothing serious, just another quick yes-yes-yes then disappear plan. I guess this time it would not work.

As I was staring blankly at the contract, there were plenty of things going through my mind. What if I just fake his signature? Then again, they needed a stamp of his fingerprint. I could maybe send it over to him and just fake the documents, but then again I had no idea how to do something like that. No matter how I thought about this, to me there were no real options here. Well, there was one – my mother. I did not know how she would feel about signing the contract, however I was sure there might be ways to persuade her. Like giving her some of the earning if I manage to get famous. Heck, she should be happy that both or her children want to become famous. She would be living large with it. No matter how much I thought about different option, my father seemed completely out of the question, but it also made me feel a bit sad. If my mother does agree to sign the contract in the end, what will become of him? The thought of leaving him there in England by himself, just suddenly disappearing from his life, was horrible. It made my heart ache and my eyes watery. It was lonely enough when it was just the two of us, but at least we still could support each other. If I do this, then I’m betraying his trust, he might even hate me. I could even say I was an orphan then.

With thoughts like these and a very uneasy heart I felt drifting away into sleep. For me, the easiest thing to ever do was just sleep on it. A new day, a fresh start. At least that was what I was hoping for. But all night long I was suffering from nightmares about living on the streets, being chased by lawyers, everyone walking away from me, dark shadows creeping around me and laughing at me – these nightmares seemed endless. For the whole night I was tossing and turning, I found myself waking up in tears after a nasty nightmare of my father dying alone of old age in England. This was not how my body and mind normally reacted. No matter how bad of a situation I was in, I always woke up with a great solution in my mind and it always worked out good.

As morning arrived I greeted it with my hands wrapped around my knees that I had pulled up to my chest just sitting on the ground at the end of the bed. I had given up on sleeping around an hour ago and had not moved since. This whole situation was bugging me, it was making me feel physically ill. I knew that signing this contract would mean a complete change of my life. I would be alone from there – unable to see my close friends and family back in the England for God knows how long, it would mean I would be living by myself and my life being controlled by someone I ‘belonged’ to. To me, this contract meant selling my body and soul to the devil. So why did I feel so strongly about doing it? When I thought about it rationally, there were so many bad sides to it. Plus being rich and famous was not my dream, it never was. It seemed like hell to me – everyone knows you, wherever you go, you cannot have any privacy whatsoever, if you want to go anywhere you have to make sure you are wearing a disguise – was that even a life? Yes I loved singing and dancing, but it is not like I ever had thought of making money with it. For me my life had been planned already – first college, then university, then take over the family business, meet a nice guy, get married and have a nice, warm family life. Of course, I couldn’t say it was my dreams, it was not like this was my plan, it was my dads’ but because I loved him so much and this is what I thought of when I saw my future, it had become my duty and my only option.

But now… Now I had something else in front of me - something that would give my life some ‘spice’ to it. There was a choice actually given to me, I could create my own future. And I had to admit it was tempting. It was very much tempting – I had to chance to put my life into my own hands. But was it really worth it? Would it be any better? They say that our parents know what’s best for their children, I had always believed in this as my life was going nicely, I had never felt extremely sad or that something was unfair. Things just went well, calmly for me. My life was safe. But there was something weird, something in me that felt very attracted to this opportunity. Something was screaming inside me, telling me to risk it - to just jump and see what would happen. I felt excited and I felt a very weird feeling that I had never felt before and I couldn’t describe it. With these feelings within me, I got up and started getting ready for another day. I knew what I had to do and that slight bit of courage within me that led me to do it – I was just praying that it will not fade away so soon.