Chanhee and Yurin had been whisked away in a van with tinted windows, to a charming house that served as both an office and living quarters. They were seated on a beautiful white chair where two pens and two contracts had immediately been placed on the coffee table in front of them.

“Here you go,” the dark-haired woman outlined the dotted line on both contracts with her hand. “You have to sign here.”

Everything was coming together for Chanhee and Yurin. The two girls who had gone to collectively eighty-eight auditions were finally seeing the fruits of their labours. Their eagerness to achieve their dreams was no excuse, however, for them not reading the contracts as they have a happy affirmative and signed away.

“Here!” they both handed the contract back to the dark-haired woman who gave them a pleased smile as the contracts were placed in her hands.

“Congratulations. From now on, the both of you are members of the SM Entertainment family. I’m one of the talent scouts and managers, Vice-president Lim Saeko.” The dark haired woman finally had a name. Motioning the wimpy boy beside her, Saeko continued speaking. “This is my secretary-”

“Annyeong! Alex imnida!” the man seemed to bounce on his place as he bowed bubbly.

“Annyeonghaseyo!” Chanhee and Yurin both stood up and bowed super politely retreated into the prescribed formalities assigned to them by their society. They were just so excited! And Yurin, hyperactive with happiness turned to Chanhee and grasped the other girl’s hand.

“Finally, we can be idols now!” she was jumping up and down in excitement and Chanhee joined in with her, close to tears.

“Finally, our dreams have been fulfilled!”

While they were squealing excitedly, Alex had leaned in to look them over with fascination. “The both of you are exactly what the president was looking for to fit the prince image!”

“Jinjja?” Yurin was ecstatic that they fit the mould the president of SM Ent. was looking for! “Exactly like a prince…EH?”

Both Chanhee and Yurin’s excitement was put on hold by their confusion. Prince? As in the male version of a good-looking idol? Was there some mistake?

“Prince?”

Saeko smirked and brandished the contracts that they had signed so the two girls could read the script they had ignored before.

“Debuting as a…” both girls read the line out loud. “Male idol?!”

“What is this?” Yurin demanded. Saeko just threw back her head and laughed a truly evil kind of laughter that made both girls shiver. Saeko passed the contracts to her secretary and rounded on the two newly made idols.

“This is my bet on a wild ambitious new start!” she raised her hand in the air, full of confidence.

“Manager, you’re wonderful!” Alex cooed at his beloved vice-president with adoring eyes. The fear from early had turned in utter admiration.

“My ambition is to introduce the most prince-like idols to the public, and thus, raise the entertainment world to a whole new level as we were planning to do so with artists such as TVXQ and Super Junior!” Saeko explained, going from the slightly frenzied to drastically calm in the next sentence. “However, we haven’t found any suitable males who matched my requirements for the past few years, Changmin and Yunho embody a god, Super Junior the ultimate chic-doll, SHINee are the sassy guys, EXO the mysterious inter-continental idols but nowhere near the prince-doll that this world needs!”

The level of excitement raised again as Saeko focused on Chanhee and Yurin. “When I first saw the two of you-” she mimed being shot. “It was like being shot. If males are no good, then we’ll use females, females disguised as males, to unify the entertainment industry!”

The same sentence was running through Chanhee and Yurin’s head at this point; she’s crazy.

“Why do I have to become a guy?” Yurin argued, still not quite believing that this was happening to her.

“That’s right,” Chanhee frowned. “I want to be a normal idol!”

“Ordinary,” she said in a bored voice.

“Ordinary?”

“I dare and am quite positive to say that the two of you are absolutely ordinary,” Saeko deadpanned. Alex gave a little giggle at that pronouncement. “People like the two of you have only one route in the entertainment industry...” she paused while the girls leaned in, eager to learn what route this was. “… And that is to become men. If the two of you, who are VERY ordinary girls, become men, then the two of you will become the very best!” She reached up and pulled a rope attached to the ceiling.

Immediately, a white screen with two head shaped holes hurdled down from the ceiling right in front of the startled girls. Well, white sheet from the girl’s point of view. As they poked their heads out of the holes, they realized it was a drawing of two men’s bodies in suits, with the face part cut out so when Chanhee and Yurin looked through the holes they looked like they had men’s bodies.

“I can see it!” Saeko came forwards and gleamed. “The light of the future! From now on, you will be Riku,” Saeko pointed at Chanhee, then at Yurin. “- and Dae! Your group name will be Persona! The meaning will literally mean that the sky is wearing a mask!”

“Persona? Mask?” Chanhee frowned.

“Females disguising themselves in the masks of men!” Saeko continued, undisturbed by their lack of enthusiasm. She pranced over to a mannequin she had in the corner and removed the mask it had been wearing, placing it over her own face. “I’m such a genius!”

“You have gotta be kidding me!” Yurin growled angrily as she moved away from the cut out. “Regarding all this… We will definitely-”

“Do it!” Chanhee was at her side in a second and interrupted her.

“That’s right! We’ll definitely do it!” Yurin said angrily. It took a second to sink in what Chanhee had said. “Eh?”

“Please, you’ve got to let me do it!” Chanhee continued, a little bit of desperation creeping in to her voice.

Alex and the president exchanged a glance and Saeko murmured to her secretary, “Surprisingly, this is going smoother than I expected.”

Alex took everything in stride though. He knew his president could do it! Saeko was incredibly resourceful when she wanted to be, just one of the many things that Alex admired about the woman. One of the MANY things.

“Well then, let me give you a tour of the house!” Alex bounced over to the office. “This is the office,” he skipped back out. “We’re in the living room right now…” the two girls followed him to a door next to the door to the office. “The kitchen, the closet, the washroom, the front foyer! Now let’s go upstairs!”

Yurin was swept up in the whirlwind known as Alex, unable to get a word in edge-wise. Soon, they were pushed into a relatively large room that seemed a bit crowded because of the furniture in the room. It was comfortable though and brightly lit.

“This will be your room!” he flung his arms out proudly. He had decorated the room himself! Two mattresses and bed sets on the floor told the girls where they were expected to sleep. It was all a little too much for Yurin. “Even though you two are woman, no-one will know! From now on, the two of you will be living here!”

“Don’t worry,” Saeko said soothingly to the two girls. “I’ll contact both of your parents. I’ll say, for the sake of learning the arts, both of you are studying abroad in Las Vegas!”

“Like our parents would believe that…” Yurin growled as Saeko swept out the room.

“Unless they’re very stupid parents,” Chanhee commented thinking of her own parents. Yurin realized that her own parents would probably fit under that description too. Mama and Papa Kyu also had a large brood of children, of which Yurin was one of them, so it was hard to keep track of everyone. They would be happy that someone had taken their most energetic child under their wing.

“The basic things you need have been prepared, feel free to use them!” Alex poked them in the middle of their foreheads, and then bounced out of the room giddily, happy that they had finally found people to fit the bill and be signed as a new group for SM Entertainment.

“I hope that here aren’t any problems with this agency,” Yurin spoke her fears aloud, never one to keep quiet when things bothered her, regardless of the fact that what she said could offend people or make them unhappy. “I wonder if we even ever get to meet our so-called sunbae groups… And now, it’s like there’s only the two of us since we don’t even get to live in an idol dorm like them!” she shivered and raised her hands up in the air in anguish. “On top of that, the president is a dominatrix  and that Alex is the most likely the ultimate slave and we have to debut disguised as men…”

The energetic girl fell hopelessly to one of the mattresses on the floor, sprawling face-down on the sheets, exhausted by the day’s events.

“Debuting disguised as men, huh?” Chanhee rolled the idea round in her head. For some odd reason she didn’t have as much of a problem with it as Yurin seemed to.

“Ah yes,” Yurin suddenly perked up, lifting her face. “I almost forgot, we haven’t called the police yet about that weird guy!”

The pursuit by the men in suits came back to Chanhee. The long-haired girl took out the phone strap from her bag and wondered why grown men were willing to shoot at girls just to get a phone strap. The sound of Yurin dialling the number for the police pulled Chanhee out of her thoughts and she dived for Yurin’s phone, closing the flip-phone and ending the call.

“Don’t call the police!” Chanhee could hear Saeko’s voice in her head, telling them that the only route the two of them could take to become idols was to disguise themselves as men.

“Wae?” she tried to grab her phone back. “We could be in danger!”

“In the future, we’ll be performing in our disguises,” Chanhee explained. “So we shouldn’t get involved in this.”

“But those guys have guns!” Yurin protested. Guns! And Yurin had stuck her finger in the muzzle thinking it was a camera!

“Don’t do it if you’re just going to stir up trouble!” Chanhee was close to snapping at the other girl. “I’m betting on this chance. I’m already nineteen years old; this could be my last shot at becoming an idol!”

Yurin, for once, kept silent, waiting for Chanhee to finish what she wanted to say.

“Besides that,” Chanhee suddenly looked troubled. “Haven’t we suffered enough from continuously auditioning? Having erted old men trying to do things with us, being thrown around like trash… plus being told very… upsetting things.”

The two of them had had all of these things happen to them and had suffered through it bravely, hoping that one day their sacrifices would pay off. Today, for Chanhee, it seemed that this was the pay-off, that this was her chance to be an idol. Despite the pretending-to-be-a-man part, this was the opportunity she had been so desperately waiting for.

“I want to be MNET’s number 1 top idol and flaunt it in their faces,” Chanhee remembered all the disgust she felt when she was awed by the erted producer-types. Remembering how each and every time she had to put her best foot forward and was shot down. Remembered the comments of being too fat, too skinny, too long, too short, not y enough, not chic enough… she didn’t want to audition anymore. And she wanted to show all those people who made her feel like nothing that she was something. That she could make it and she would shine. “Becoming a guy… I don’t care how difficult it is; I’m definitely not going to let them see me fail!”

Yurin looked up at Chanhee and gave the girl a wry smile, the expression on her face one of resignation and wary hope, maybe with this girl, together, they could go places.

Getting up off the floor, Yurin tilted her head upwards lightly, nodding at Chanhee. “I’m Yurin, and you?”

Chanhee smiled at Yurin, her new partner-in-manhood. “I’m Chanhee.”

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Do you guys think it was a good idea of them to sign the contract without reading the small print first? And what about this Saeko person, is she crazy with this plan? And why did those strange guys want the phone strap anyway? Please leave a comment and subscribe if you liked what you read. I'll try and stray a bit from the original series in upcoming chapters!