November 2014

The finishing touches were being made on the mini album and Gayoon was finding herself feeling more and more relieved the closer the date of the last recording session came. She was sure that the others were still feeling the pressure, but once the songs were all finished, all they had to do was practice them and finish the dances, as far as their performance schedules went. A little closer to the comeback date, they would record the music video and teaser as well as being styled ready for their photoshoots. It was a busy time, arguably even busier than when they debuted, but the main vocalist was almost happy, becasue at least she knew what was coming with the other schedules.

The song that had been stressing the second oldest out the most was in a completely different language - if it had been in Japanese, they all would have been a least a little comfortable with it, as they had been taught some Japanese before the final lineups for POLARIS and SIGMA had been decided. But fate had to play a cruel trick on Gayoon, as the song that they were set to record today was in English. 

It was fine for Eunjung and Chaerin, as they both had English as their mother tongue; even Seohyeon could struggle through her parts. Subin, Jimin and Gayoon, however, had been struggling and the trainers weren't the most patient people. Jimin was the type to complain loudly when she couldn't get something right, but Subin and Gayoon would just keep quiet. Needless to say, the two had been almost silent for the entire day.

"Gayoon-ah, you're up next," Chaerin called brightly from the door of the practice room. The main vocalist stiffled a sigh and slowly stood from her place in the corner of the room, taking her heavilly highlighted and annotated lyrics with her.

"Hey," Chaerin stopped her. "Are you okay? You seem pretty quiet. More quiet than usual," she clarified when she got a blank look in return.

"I'm okay," Gayoon replied heavilly. "It's just... It's in English, you know? I can't get the hang of it. I have a verse and a couple of other lines that I can't get the hang of."

Chaerin nodded in understanding, remembering how hard it had been for her to learn Korean when she had first arrived in the country eight years previously. "Well if you want I can come in with you and give you some tips? Seeing as I'm the resident English expert, and all."

Gayoon smiled slightly. "I thought that was Eunjung?"

"Shut up," Chaerin advised, throwing her arm around the vocalist's shoulders. "While she's not around to contradict me, I'm the best at English. While we take a slow walk to the booth, how about you point out the parts that you don't get?" Gayoon noticed that the lead vocalist had stressed the word 'slow', which probably meant that the American member was going to drag her off to another room and talk with her until she felt better. As annoying as she was most of the time with her incessant talking and harsh sense of humour, Kwon Chaerin could sometimes be quite caring and helpful. 

It turned out that Gayoon was right - there was a small, narrow vocal room a little down the corridor from the recording booth that Chaerin dragged her into (hastilly, before the staff saw them) and more or less threw her into a seat.

"Now," the lead vocalist began firmly, taking a seat herself and shuffling through her omnipresent lyrics booklet to the English song that they were recording. Where Gayoon's sheet was littered with cramped hangul notes and highlighting of every colour, Chaerin's was only highlighted in patches of blue - the parts that she had to sing. Of course, the older girl thought bitterly, Chaerin's first language was English, so she wouldn't have to annotate anything. "What parts are you worried about, exactly?"

"Well..." She trailed off, scanning the page in front of her. "Pretty much my whole verse and the chorus. The adlibs I can do okay, it's just the rest."

"Right! Pass me a sheet of blank paper from behind you and I'll write down some tips for the studio," Chaerin requested, pen at the ready. "And I'll go through the proper pronunciation. Sing your verse,"

"What, here? Now?"

Chaerin was the type of person who quickly grew impatient if you questioned her, which Gayoon already knew from observing the other members - it was never something that was her, as she rarely had a lot to contribute to the conversations that usually took place in the dorm. "Yes, now! What are you, deaf? I need to hear what's wrong to help you idiot. Now sing or I'll just go and eat like I was intending on doing before-"

"Okay, okay!" Gayoon interrupted hastilly. "I'll sing it!"

While the main vocalist kept her eyes glued to the lyrics underneath her nose and struggled through the unfamiliar words, Chaerin tapped the cap of the pen against her lips in thought. When the last line trailed off, Chaerin smiled kindly. 

"You're not as bad as you think, Yoon-ah. It's all in your head, that you're not doing it properly! Just... Don't pronounce your 'th's like 'd's and make sure to see the difference between 'l's and 'r's, that's pretty much all that's wrong. Oh, and don't turn things into plurals. You're doing that a lot."

"How do I not do that?" Gayoon asked desperately, watching the younger singer write everything down in neat handwriting on the blank paper.

"Just stop putting 's' at the end of every word," was the sly reply that she got and she grimaced in response to the words.

"There you go," Chaerin said, holding out the tips. "You'd better get down the hallway and in front of the microphone now, or else the staff will think I've either kidnapped you or not told you. Both would get me into unecessary trouble."

"Okay." Gayoon replied and stood, taking her things with her. She got to the door before turning back. "Thank you," 

The words were unexpectedly sincere and Chaerin was a little taken aback, but smiled. 

"It's no problem. You can come to me any time you need English lessons, Yoon-ah."

The main vocalist nodded and all but ran into the recording room. She uttered an excuse to the staff as to why it had taken her so long to get there and slid into the booth, her lyrics booklet and tip sheet on the paper stand in front of her. Once the headphones were covering her ears, the music started and Gayoon sang the words carefully, trying to keep in mind all of the things that Chaerin had told her. She successfully made it through her verse and halfway through the chorus before she was stopped.

"Good pronunciation, Gayoon," the producer praised. "Just re-do that chorus line, you can make the note more stable that that."

All in all, it was the shortest amount of time that Gayoon had ever spent in the booth and even though she was proud of how her English sounded, she was filled to the brim with overwhelming relief that the whole ordeal was over.

Ah, Gayoon! She's so hard to write for, I feel like I don't know her very well :( I keep waiting for her to come out of her shell but she doesn't? I think I need to shove her into an interview before she actually says anything xD OH, GAYOON! On the upside, the next chapter is Chaerin! I think it's the first Chaerin chapter, correct me if I'm wrong (I probably am jfc and I even wrote this whole story). I'm really looking forward to write for her because to be honest, she has the personality that Gayoon was meant to have when I first started planning out POLARIS (the three original characters were Eunjung, Gayoon and Jimin and they were called NYX oops, big changes have happened). I'm rambling again so I'll leave you guys and go prepare my next chapter because man, I'm really loving writing this story! I love my characters so much :'3

-Xenexian