When we were all dressed and hurried in the car, I saw a glimpse of a young man, standing at the end of our street. He didn’t seem like he belonged here. I was curious, why would such a young man, he looked like a student, be on the street this early. It was not even 7 o’clock yet. I was still looking at him when I realized he was holding a camera. I could not do anything or say anything to the members because I was pushed in the van by manager Kim.

“Manager-shi…” I started hesitantly, “Why was that man holding a camera?” The other members seemed confused as well. Yumiko started “We have not yet debuted, why would they make pictures? I don’t think they would know us only from one variety. Right?” Manager Kim sighed, “You all have to understand what situation you are in.” She looked back at the road, “First of all, you have not yet officially been announced, but there have been rumors. Second, you are going to debut under SM entertainment. We have made the greatest stars so they are really curious what SM has ‘produced’  now” I frowned at the word ‘produced’, we were no machines, we were humans, SM did not ‘produce us.’ I kept silent, but was not really happy with her choice of words.

“And lastly, EXO introduced you. Their debut has been very successful, so they have great expectations of you as well.” She snickered, “that reporter probably wants to say he made your first pictures if you become a hit.” We all chuckled. We all felt very pleased and excited with this turn of events. The rest of the ride we joked a bit more, about our grand future, and our aspirations to kick the girl group queens of their thrones. I had become a bit more awake, and felt my excitement rise. I couldn’t wait for our evaluation!

That morning we practiced our asses off. We did 4 different routines about 3 times each. When we took a little break we left the music on. I had put a BAP CD in there and we had just started learning their dance. I was so excited about learning the same dance as BAP I didn’t notice how tired I had become. We all rested on the benches on the side of the room, while we drank our water. I was gazing off when I heard a bit of commotion from the other members. *What’s wrong?* I thought. I lifted myself from the bench and walked over to them. They were discussing something, I could not really follow them.

Sujin, “I don’t know. We didn’t buy these ourselves you know?” She pointed down at our similar shoes. She was right, we had all gotten a white pair of sneakers from SM when we were formed as HANA. Nana whined again, “But we won’t be able to tell them apart. I am not saying we should paint them or something, just pimp them up a bit. White is so boring!” I finally understood what they were talking about. “Why not paint them?” All of them looked at me. “We got them, they can’t use them anymore anyway.” Nana smiled at me widely. “I have an idea,” I beamed, “why don’t we paint them all in different colors, like B.A.P.” They all heavily sighed. “What?!” I yelled in surprise. “Does everything in your brain link to Bang Yongguk?” Jinea asked. “I just thought it was cool,” I pouted. Nana looked at my face, “it might work.” I looked up at her face too, happy to have found an ally. “Come on, think about it,” she explained, “Different shoes, will help the viewers of our dance practice video, in the future, distinguee between us. It is also very creative and shows our respect to our Sunbea’s B.A.P” There was a silence, while the other members thought about it. “Please?” I asked with my best aigoo. “Fine” Sujin agreed with a smile about my aigoo. “Have it your way, my little cute dongseng.”

“Yeay, let me gather the stuff.” I rushed to another room. We had a lot of practice rooms, not only for singing, dancing and composing, but also for other artistic talents. We were all expected to practice in at least one extra skill next to our main skills on stage. You can compare it with Henry’s violin or IU her drawing. I really liked drawing and painting too. So it was no problem for me to find the paint and brushes, and old newspapers for on the ground. While I hurried back to the other members I felt happy to do something like this together. I was never really close to others except my family. I was hoping to change this, and to come to see my members as my family too.

We were having a lot of fun painting the shoes. We had agreed no one would paint their own shoes. I would be painting those of Jinea, Jinea those of Sujin, Sujin those of Nana, Nana those of Yumi, and Yumi would be painting mine. We were not allowed to paint a picture, only paint spatters. We would try to express the character of the member in our work. And we were only allowed to use one color. It was hard and we had a lot of fun doing this. While arguing with each other about our characters and occasionally throwing paint at one another. When we were done we all stood back and looked at the results. It worked out pretty well. They were all in sync, yet they were individual and different. We beamed at each other. Suddenly Sujin looked at her watch. She shouted, “OMG the evaluation is in 5 minutes!” We rushed in our shoes, and hurried to the evaluation room.