Dreams are dreams because they are not supposed to come true. At least, that’s what my English teacher back in the States always told me. Now that I’m here in Seoul, staring at my computer screen, while being confronted with one of my greatest dreams ever coming true, I kind of doubt his statement.
This was absolutely unbelievable. Last night I had this crazy idea of sending the company of my favorite kpop group an email with a proposal that was so radical and stupid that I never expected a reply. But here it was, I got a reply. And some reply it was.

Dear Sky Ford,

We have read your idea on how we could promote our male group HALO in a way that the whole world will come to know about them, and we have to say that we are rather interested. Some things about your plan aren’t very clear to us though, so that is why we would like to invite you for an appointment with HALO’s main manager and the leader of the group, Park Jung Su. We are not telling you that we will give you the job you suggested to take, but we want to hear more about it at least. Please give us a call as soon as possible.

With kind regards,

Han Chang Ryul
Chief of the marketing and promotional department
Music From Korea
Tel: 010-4321-9876

They actually took my idea serious. My heart was pounding like crazy and for a brief while I sincerely believed I was sitting in an overheated room or something. HALO’s leader, Park Jung Su, wanted to meet me?! Okay, maybe he wasn’t my bias but still. THE LEADER OF HALO WANTED TO MEET ME AND TALK TO ME.
There was no way this could be true. Maybe my roommate was playing a trick with me. Was this Han Chang Ryul really an employee at MFK? Was this email address really the right one?
There was only one way to find out. I had to give them a call.
In the past I had moments in my life where I couldn’t decide if they were the worst or the best thing that ever happened to me, but it was never as bad as it was now. I hated calling people, especially strangers. It was like a little phobia. But I had never been as scared to call someone as I was now.
I postponed the moment for a bit by looking at the poster of HALO on my wall. Eight extremely perfect and wonderful Asian young men stared at me with their intense glares, y grins and messy hairstyles. I had memorized their names right after the first day I watched them perform live on Music Bank. Tabi, Donghae, Shinwoo, Jungsu, Minho, Hyukjae, Taekyu and Youngmin. My bias, Minho, was the most fabulous, as always. He had the best voice, the best looks and the best personality, which was evil in a playful way. The mere idea of the minor possibility that I would get to meet him before I had to return to New York nearly made me faint.
, I really needed to make that call.
With shivering fingers I grabbed my cell phone and dialed the number that was given on the bottom of the email. I waited and waited, until I heard a voice that wasn’t familiar to me at all. So this was not a trick my roommate played on me. This was really a man who was interested in my plan to show HALO to the world.
‘This is Han Chang Ryul, who is calling?’
I kept quiet for a while. I didn’t know what to say. It was only after the man repeated his name that I came to my senses and started to talk.
‘Ah! I’m sorry, my name is Sky Ford. I’m calling because of an email I send you…’
He immediately recognized my name.
‘Ah Sky Ford! How nice that you called me. I have to say, I was quite dumbfounded by your email. No fan ever had the guts to send me something like that. But you know what, your idea isn’t such a bad idea at all! So that’s why I decided to reply to you. I want to know more about it, and more about you. You say that you are a student at Kyung Hee University, is that right? Did you know that three out of our eight HALO members also went to Kyung Hee before they debuted?’
Of course I knew that. I knew everything about HALO. I could still remember that night that I cried because I didn’t go to Korea one year earlier, when Minho was still in university and when there would have been a chance to be in the same class as him.
‘It is a great university,’ I replied politely, not really knowing what else I could say.
‘It is indeed. But what I really wanted to ask you is if you are able to meet tomorrow. We are kind of in a hurry you see, so we don’t want to waste any time. You can come over and we’ll give you the chance to pitch your plan on promoting HALO internationally. I mean, a real-life blog about the group, why hasn’t anyone thought of that before? It sounds great!’
I laughed. Yeah, if he said it like that it sounded great. But didn’t he read the part where I suggested to live in the dormitory to be able to follow them around? I mean, this was the biggest flaw in my whole plan. My idea to write a daily blog about the daily lives of the HALO members was awesome, but there was a counterpart. To be able to write an exclusive blog that would actually draw readers to it, I would have to move in with the group to be able to blog about stuff no one else could blog about. Their private lives, their secrets. Would they really agree to that? And on top of it, a girl living in a house with eight guys would immediately cause an enormous scandal. Maybe back in the States there wouldn’t be that many people worrying about something like that, but here in Korea it was a pretty immoral thing to do.
But this is where my radical plan came in. The scandal was in my opinion not only the biggest risk, it was also the factor that would lead to HALO’s success. Especially because in the Western world this whole living together plan wouldn’t be such a big deal. It would cause a cultural clash between the two continents and that would lead to some extreme free international publicity for HALO. After the Korean press calmed down and the international press casted the whole idea in a positive light, everyone would know about HALO and the blog, and everyone would be curious about them.
Sure, there was no guaranteed success that everything would turn out this way and this was exactly why I never expected MFK to reply to my email. But apparently, they had some kind of faith in it because Chang Ryul sounded like he took it all pretty seriously.
I decided that it wouldn’t make sense if I declined this insane offer.
‘Sure, at what time can we meet?’

The MFK main building wasn’t as big and impressive as that of the bigger companies like Korea Entertainment, but it was still enough to make me whisper ‘woah…’ while I was standing in front of it. I was really here, and this time not as some stupid fan that was hoping to catch a glimp of a HALO member. I had an appointment, with Jungsu no less.
It took me a while before I had the courage to go inside. When I finally entered the small hallway I felt like seaweed. Secretly I wondered if people noticed that I was shaking like crazy. Not that there were many people that could notice. Only a middle aged lady that was sitting behind the counter of the reception. She was looking at me, so I waved an awkward wave. ‘Hi…’ I whispered. She smiled politely. I walked to her and bit my lip while I looked at her curious face. ‘I’m here for a meeting with Park Jung Su…’
Oh my god I couldn’t believe I just said that. This had to be a dream. There was no way this could ever happen in reality.
‘May I ask your name?’
‘Sky, Sky Ford.’
The lady looked at me as if I had the strangest name in the world. What? It was not like I looked Korean. My hair was painted red and my eyes were bright green. Did she really expect that I would have a normal Korean name or something?
I wanted to slap myself. I was being way too nervous and it made me think stupid stuff. I felt like an alien.
‘I will give Jungsu a call to tell him that you’re here. Would you be so kind to wait over there please?’
She pointed at a few chairs in the corner of the small hallway. I nodded and took a seat.
Meeting the leader of the band I loved so much… I felt like throwing up.
‘He will be here in a minute,’ the lady said. I nodded again. Words were nowhere to be found. There was no way I would get the job if I kept acting like this. But I couldn’t help myself. I was just a stupid fangirl after all, not some professional journalist. It was only my third year as a journalism student and I didn’t even do an internship yet. The most important person I ever interviewed was the mayor of some village that had 300 residents.
I could have continued messing up my mind and self conscience for another century if it wasn’t for Jungsu and his manager to appear in the hallway.
Up until this moment I had never met any member of HALO outside of concert venues. I had never been more than a red light stick within a sea of Asian girls. Not that HALO had many fans, but they had more than enough to fill up small venues that could fit five hundred to thousand fans. More than enough to make me invisible, even if I was standing front row. No member ever pulled me on stage, shook my hand or smiled at me.
But that was all in the past now.
Jungsu was standing right in front of me. He smiled at me, grabbed my shivering hand and shook it. ‘Nice to meet you, Sky Ford,’ he said with his smooth voice.
I felt like crying. I felt like the happiest fangirl in the entire world.
‘H-hello,’ I said with a husky voice, not knowing why my voice became like that.
‘Let’s go upstairs, shall we? I believe we have a lot to discuss.’
It was right at this moment, that I somehow knew my life would never be the same again.