“Hey, isn’t your shift over now?”

“Huh?” a girl replies, turning around from where she 's stacking CDs on the shelf to face her co-worker.

“Isn’t your shift over?” he repeats.

Hearing the question clearly this time, the girl pulls out a slightly outdated cell phone out of her pocket and checks the time. “Oh, it is,” she startes, noticing that it was 7:20, twenty minutes after her shift was supposed to end. “I’ll go after I finish stocking this self.”

The co-worker shakes his head, a faint smile on his lips. Younggam is always like this—putting others or things before herself—and he really couldn’t do anything to stop her. The male sighs and goes back to his own work only to be interrupted by a voice a moment later.

“Hi, is it okay to put this flier up?” a girl with long, dark brown hair questions while holding up a piece of paper.

Inspecting the poster, the boy notices that it's an ad looking for people to audition for a band. “Is this your group?” he asks, nodding towards the flier.

She responds with a nod of her own, tilting her head afterwards. “So can you put this up for me or not?”

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he confirms as he reaches out to grab the paper.

“Thank you,” she says to him, smiling a bit more and bowing slightly before exiting the store just as quickly as she had entered previously. Once he was sure she was gone, the co-worker calls out for Younggam. “Hey, come here!”

Since it was just Younggam and him in the store right now, it was a no brainer that his shout was directed to the short haired girl so she walks over to him, having just finished replacing a huge amount of CDs for some group named CN-something. Apparently they had just recently released a new album and copies were flying off the shelves at alarming rates that the store Younggam worked in, Seoul Tunes, had to order extra shipments.

“What is it?” she asks as she approaches the only-by-two-years older male, a curious look on her face.

“You might be interested in this,” he tells her, sliding over the poster he was given just moments ago.

Younggam takes the sheet from his hands, reading it as she notes the details. “New and upcoming all-female band, Code-Two is holding auditions this Saturday starting at 12pm… looking for a drummer, a keyboardist, and two guitarists… no experience required,” she reads aloud as her eyes trail down the paper. “Is this for real?” she questions the only other person in the store at the time, even raising an eyebrow.

He shrugs. “I guess so. The girl who just came in asking for the poster to be put up is the leder of the group, I think."

“Oh,” Younggam replies, looking down at the sheet again.

Thinking her short answered and quietness was hesitation and skepticism, the co-worker nudges her. “You should give it a shot,” he suggests, giving her an encouragining grin. “You can pay the guitar, can’t you?”

“I can,” she confirms, a smile breaking out on her lips.

He beams. “Then there you go! The least you can do is just go and check it out because you’ll never know what’ll happen if you don’t.”

“When did you get so wise?” the female jokes. “Anyways, I guess we’ll see if I do audition or not… but for now, I’m going home since I finished stocking. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

He nods again, waving a hand at her. “Get home safely,” he says as Younggam grabs her bag from behind the counter.

“I always do,” she fires back. “Bye!”

“See ya,” he responds one last time, watching the girl exit the shop before going back to his work again.




“I’m home!” Younggam calls out after unlocking the entrance to her house. Walking in, she shuts the door behind her after and puts the latch on.

“You’re home late,” her grandma comments as she comes out from the kitchen, the closest room to the front door.

“Yeah, I forgot when my shift finished and ended up working for an extra half hour, and then you know it takes me half an hour to get home so that’s why,” she explains without looking up as she removes her shoes and hangs up her jacket.

Letting out a sigh, her grandmother looks over with worry and Younggam recognizes it to be one signalling that a lecture will be coming her way soon. However, before she can even have a chance to stop her, she's already being given an earful.

Kim Eunjo, Kim Younggam’s grandma, loved her grandchildren dearly but it was for that same precise reason that she never hesitated to give them a lecture or a stern talking to when she felt it was needed.

 

The one delivered to Younggam tonight was one that the younger had heard many times before; one that was always about how she worked too much and should settle down to study more. If she could have it her way, Younggam would love to go to school but considering the financial situation they were in, working was her only choice at the moment and her grandma knew that.

Still, it made Eunjo feel just a bit better that she was at least able to tell her granddaughter her true wishes even though she knew it was unlikely that it’d ever happen anytime soon in the near future.

Ten minutes later, Younggam’s grandma finally finished her rant, much to Younggam’s relief. She loved her grandma—really, she did—and would do anything and everything for her but the same speech was really getting old.

“At least Youngnam is still in school, right? Isn’t he good enough, eonni?” Younggam asks, bringing her little brother into the conversation and even using the nickname she often called her grandma as a joke to lighten the mood.

Letting out a chuckle, the older Kim nods, giving in to her granddaughter. “Yes, that’s true... anyways, your share of tonight's dinner is on the kitchen table so help yourself since Youngnam and I already ate.”

Younggam grins. “Got it! Thanks for the food as always, eonni~”

“Ah, that kid....” Eunjo says to herself a moment later as she watches Younggam speed into the kitchen, a fond smile on her face and a chuckle escpaing her lips as she makes her way down the hallway to the living room.

“Alright, class. You’re dismissed!”

The scrapes of chairs being pushed back against the floor, the noise level increasing with each new person who started talking, the sound of books being shoved into bags— all could be heard in one specific lecture hall that Ryom Yuna was currently in.

Having just finished a class, the 167 centimetre tall girl follows suit with the rest of her class that was leaving and pulls out her phone, immediately checking Twitter to see if she had missed anything during the span of her lecture. Tapping the app to open it and scrolling down, she notices a tweet made by one of her friends.
 

After reading it, she bites on her lower lip in an attempt to not burst out laughing in the middle of a crowd of people and risk being looked at weirdly. Shifting her books to slide underneath her arm, she uses both hands to type a quick reply to her friend.

 

Satisfied with her reply, she nods to herself once, exits out of the app and checks the time. Seeing that she had an houre to spare before going to the cafe for her work shift, she locks her phone and slips it into the back pocket of her denim jeans.

As she contemplates what to do with her free time, she feels her phone vibrate, signalling a new text. She groans as she takes her phone out again because she had just put the device away and slides a finger across the screen before pulling up her inbox.
 

Yuna breaks out into a sudden smile as she reads the message, long forgetting the brief annoyance she felt a few seconds ago. Thanks to Victoria, she now had plans to kill time before she'd have to go to work.
 

 
 

Sending off a short text saying nothing but an “okay” after reading the last message, Yuna starts walking to the cafe that was not only close to the university campus but also the same one she worked at. Even if she and Victoria ended up hanging out for longer than planned, at least Yuna wouldn’t really be considered “late” since she was there the entire time.

Once she arrives, the student catches sight of a piece of paper stuck to the window right next to the cafe’s entrance. Curious as to what it is, she stops in her steps just as she's about to open the door and inspects the poster for a few moments instead.

“An audition for a new girl band, huh?” Yuna had mumbles to herself, quickly taking note of the audition date and time on her phone. She didn’t know if she would go or not but at least having the information would be helpful if she did decide to.

When she was done, she slides the phone into her bag and enters the shop. Seeing that a table near the large window was free, she decides to claim it as her own so Victoria could easily spot her.

It's when she's settling down in her seat that she hears the familiar chime go off throughout the cafe, announcing to the shop that a new customer had arrived. Yuna looks towards the door to see a very familiar Chinese face walking through them and she doesn't even need to wave before the new arrival sees her and hurries over.

“Yuna!” the female known as Victoria Song calls out. The dark-hued mahogany haired girl smiles widely as she slides into her seat.

“Hi, Victoria,” the younger responds with a smile of her own.

Yuna considered the older Chinese female to be someone she was close to, someone she could depend on. Victoria was like a surrogate mother of sorts for Yuna, and she often went to the elder for advice or just a shoulder to lean on.

“How’s it going?” Victoria asks, pulling a menu out from the plastic holder that was positioned on each table, and looking through it to see what she wanted.

Yuna shrugs, resting her right cheek in the palm of her hand in response. “I’m doing good. Nothing too exciting going on, really.”

“Is that so...” Victoria's eyes are still focused on the menu in front of her but Yuna know she's still listening regardless. “That’s good, then," she says after a brief silence, closing the menu with a snap and looking up at the other afterwords, another smile lighting up her face.

She doesn't say anything else, too busy placing her order with the waitress Yuna recognizes to be her fellow coworker, Sami, who arrives at their table just then. When Sami is gone, Victoria turns her attention back to Yuna and fixes a look on the other. "Did you see the poster up front?”

Yuna raises a brow, head still propped on her hand. “What poster? The one about the girl band auditions?”

Victoria nods. “That’s the one!”

“Oh, then yeah, I have. I don’t know if I’ll do it or not, though,” Yuna tells the other as she shrugs again.

The older female's eyes widen. “What? You definitely should!” she encourages. “Not only can you play the bass, you can also play the piano so you could easily play the keyboards, and your singing has been praised multiple times before. Why wouldn’t you try out?”

‘She does have some valid points,’ Yuna thinks to herself, biting the inside of her cheek as she mulls the other's words in her head. There wasn’t really much to lose from auditioning, Yuna concludes, and she couldn’t see a reason against not trying out to she sighs. “Ah, fine. I’ll do it. Happy now?”

Smiling widely, Victoria beams, visibly excited. “Very! Knock them dead, Yuna.”

---

↷cassidy speaks.