We have been told to approach the camera and talk in English a lot as it is an international single we are making, but since the staff is Korean we have let our English-speaking manager – Manager Park – to hold the behind-the-scenes camera to film us ladies. I have seen him during the day and we have even all stood together in front of the camera to introduce what we are doing today. Several of times have I heard Maria repeat in front of the camera what single we are making, confused over how many singles we have released and messing up but having Emelia pass by and correct her and simply said it has just been 5 Pieces being 5 Pieces. Dressed in a black crinkled gauzy shapeless dress with a cold shoulder and tie accents on the sleeves, a pair of colourful sneakers and for accessories there is only a long necklace, I am walking around on the set for our music video filming of [Dear Diary] with my kitten Tiger wrapped in a blanket in my arms. All day I have stopped by every mirror I’ve seen to look at my long chestnut hair that is styled for the video in long light locks and with hair extensions the hair falls all the way down my back. I love the new colour so much and everyone I meet on set has said it looks natural. Manager Park says my name when I walk back on set after walking around a bit, he is standing still to keep the camera steady and I walk up to him without being in a hurry. “Who is that?” Manager Park asks in English and I can see how he focuses the camera on my arms. I lift up my arms a bit for Tiger to appear underneath my face and I turn her to face the camera with me. “This is Tiger, my kitten who isn’t even a year old yet. She is here to learn about … the making of a video with 5 Pieces and to play with me.” “I heard she has her video debut today,” Manager Park comments and I give him a proud smile. “She is playing with me in the video,” I answer and glance behind me a bit to see if the camera captures the set behind me. “Over there later, I will sit down and write in my diary when this cutie will come. It was actually the director who came up with the idea, because our pets have a natural appearance in front of the cameras.” Manager Park turns his camera a bit on the side and I automatically look on my left side, smiling the brightest when seeing Julia stand there. Julia puts a hand on Tiger to pat her head and I am just looking at Julia’s head. Yesterday they went to the saloon, and no one said what Julia was doing. Julia has had a pixie cut for a long time, growing it longer and longer but not she has freshened it in black to about the tip of her ear or a bit longer – on one side. The other side is half shaved. I can’t melt it. “From this side you look like usual,” I comment in English to her before looking at the camera and I point at my friend. “When I met her this morning I practically stumbled down the stairs seeing that she shaved this side here.” Julia happily turns her face towards me to show the shaved part on her left side, her hair styled to show it off and I know she has been boasting all day about how tough she look in it. We have helped the stylist to shape our individual styles and images for our international promotions coming next year and Julia knows what the fans in Asia sees in her, what most of her fans sees in her, and she knows her own personality and style that she had her whole style and image already prepared to the meetings. She is the boy in our group now, or the pretty girl who can easily dress up like a man and become handsome. The hair does half the job already. She is now wearing a ribbed v-neck tee with rolled short sleeves in a blood orange colour and a pair of dark blue jeans rolled up to her calves with a bit ripped parts on her legs, and for the shooting she is barefoot but now she is walking around in slippers. She looks both cool and pretty with rings as accessories. “Hannah loves it,” Julia says and I nod in agreement. “Earlier she walked up to me without saying a word and just touched this part.” She touches her shaved side and once again I nod in agreement, looking at my friend with admiration. “Julia, you look beautiful,” I tell her. “WHAT?” Tiger gives a frightened jump in my arms at the loud voice and we all know who can give out that kind of tone. Turning around, Maria walks up to us, standing between me and Julia and she looks from me to Julia to Tiger and to the camera before looking back at me. “Are you saying pretty things to Julia?” Maria asks. She is overreacting and there is no question that she is doing it because of the camera. Don’t mistake; Maria overreacts often but about these kinds of things, she is doing it for the fans. Coupling up the members is probably the most favourite hobby of many fans. “Don’t I look beautiful, Hannah?” I blink a few times, hugging on to Tiger and then smiles because I always think Maria is beautiful – I’m not a liar. “Of course you are, like always,” I say and Maria turns right away to Manager Park. “I know I’m beautiful,” she says, winks and walks away. Julia and I start laughing though so she shouts back at us to not laugh over the truth but even the camera catches Maria laughing after saying it. Maria know she is pretty and she has no problem saying it, and she likes to throw around her long bob hairstyle since she cut it as she is used to have long beautiful hair. The ash blonde colour has softened up her but she is still using red lipstick to be as flawless as always, and the red against the ash blonde is a perfect contrast. My friends have such a good style, I keep admiring them all. If Julia is the one dressing like a boy in our group, Maria is the one dressing like a fashionista, always having something that stands out and with her model-like body and height it is like anything she wears stands out. I’m the one always wearing simple things like leggings and a long shirt, which is a style I like both when working and when in private. Though lately when working they have given me long shirts but no leggings – pretty much like today. I am the youngest in the group and though for other parts of the world it’s no big deal at all, it has been my image here in Korea and in Asia and the agency will stick to it for a bit longer. [Dear Diary] is a pretty ballad, completely different from our previous English songs. We talked about it, us ladies, how people might view us when this song comes out. Our fans who listen to K-Pop will know a lot about our music but for the international fans that only know us from a few songs we have released it is something new with a ballad that shows our vocals instead of our synched performance. Will they like the song, our voices in a ballad, will they be disappointed or will they be impressed? We have had a lot of opinions on how people might react but for now we just have fun making it happen. I sit down on the floor against the wall to film my solo part. The set is prepared to look like a large living-room, the location is pretty chilly so I put Tiger’s blanket over my legs in the wait to start filming, listening to the director sitting in front of me as he explains how we will film and what I should do. He hands me a book, a diary in purple where is says at the front ‘Dear Diary’, which has been prepared for our single: all five of us have gotten our own diary for the video. I put up my legs a bit so I can place the diary there and pretend to write when we’re filming while for now under the blanket I make sure my clothes are covering enough. They will be filming from the side, along the wall and out a few meters so my stylist even comes up to make sure I am not revealing anything as I’m not wearing pants – I wear short shorts, like safety pants – and my stylists lays my hair down right too and checks my simple makeup. “Is she good at instructions?” the director asks with a smile and points at Tiger who is running around us in excitement as I’m not holding on to her. “Instructions?” I laugh. “Yes, instructions,” he laughs with me. “If we hold her over with the camera, can you make her come without doing anything?” They want Tiger to run out next to the camera and run over to me and interrupt my diary writing and their question is if I can focus on being in filming character without doing anything with my hands or a sound that will bring her over. Of course I can do that. “Give me a little candy,” I ask my stylist. “Let’s do it on the first try, okay?” the director jokes again as he walks over to hide behind the camera. I get the candy from my stylist who also takes the blanket and a staff has to chase after Tiger before they walk behind the camera so we can begin. I put the candy on my right side where the camera can’t see it, three tiny pieces of candy. I can see Tiger struggling to get out of the staff’s arms, like always not liking to being hugged by anyone else than me. I feel bad for her, my kitten, for struggling to be with me. I feel a bit bad for the staff member who has to hold her too but Tiger is tiny so it isn’t much to hold either. The music begins to play and the video director cues for filming. Holding the pen in my left hand I pretend to write on a page in the diary, the director is talking, telling me what to do; in a low voice he tells me to write, to be focused on my writing but look neutral, I hear him say Tiger will be coming now and from the corner of my eye I can see Tiger come running over the floor on unsteady legs in her hurry to come to me and she hurries up in my lap completely unaware of the candy and the director tells me to give attention to the kitten who interrupts my diary writing. I smiled the second she got up in my lap, happy she runs to me. “CUT!” the director dramatically stops and my legs relax against the floor. I look up at the director, curious of his thoughts, and he smiles at me. “Perfect. Let’s do it again.” The second time, Tiger runs straight to me again, but for the third time she stops halfway to smell the air and then run to me and the forth time she runs straight around me for the candy she saw the third time form my lap. We end up having only one candy when filming the fifth and sixth time. She is doing surprisingly great, and she runs around for the next part until she finds the untied laces for my shoes and we all start laughing at her playing with them no matter what we try. In the end we have Maria come and get her so I can finish my filming. Lip-synching in English is much more awkward than doing it in Korean and when we look through what I just filmed I look at the director hoping he will tell me to do it again. The whole day on Saturday we are filming the music video and taking pictures for the single, until morning to the next day’s early morning. I have to text Jonghyun after midnight to say we won’t finish in a few hours and at that time it will be time to go to the next schedule for us. Seven in the morning on Sunday we are at a photo shoot for K-Wave Magazine. We wrapped up the filming for the music video as fast as possible, a simple but pretty music video, and after wrapping up the filming we went to the saloon to wash up and head to the next thing. The photo shoot goes fast. We start off with group shooting to then take individual shoots. The concept is weird but Carolina loves it; pink ladies. That’s the concept. Each member gets her own look for it. I watch Emelia do her solo shoot, she is wearing a dotted pink sort of dress of different layers. It is short like a shirt, and she is wearing fitting flower printed high-waist shorts and cropped top to it as the dress is ed at the front to her navel. She wears a lot of bracelets in silver, gold and black while around her neck is a pearl necklace. Her eyebrows are dark while her hair in light blonde has been put up in a vintage style so I first thought it was a wig. The makeup is soft, her lips matches her skin and she looks like a beautiful model. Emelia looks more feminine in blonde, not having a contrast with dark hair and light skin. she is beautiful and I end up watching her whole shoot. Maria got to lie down on a pink quilt, wearing a see-through black outfit with pink details to it, her lips pink and a light smoky makeup around her eyes. Maria always looks good. For me, I made Carolina jealous and Emelia stand on the side saying joke after joke as I sat down surrounded by pink cotton. I’m in a v-neck dress in a light pink colour but it won’t be visible below my waist as the staff covers me in cotton. A little bit of my leg is visible. My makeup is in pink colours to match my skin tone, my hair has been styled and I am the only one not wearing any accessories. At first I have no idea what I’m supposed to do even if the ladies have given my advice, so I actually have Emelia staying during my shoot to help me out a bit. Pink is not my colour though it looks good on me; I liked pink in kindergarten for a moment, I think so, but it is not really close to a favourite colour since. With the help of the photographer and Emelia we get some nice pictures and as soon as my part is done I more than gladly go to change clothes. “Remember that time in LA,” Maria is laughing, hitting me hard on the arm a few times. I wait for her to continue but she starts laughing anew and hits me again before turning around and she hits our manager on the arm laughing. “Do you remember, do you remember?” “What happened in LA?” Julia asks, coming up to us and takes a seat on the table in front of me. “I don’t know…” I mumble, looking over at Maria next to me. She is sitting on her knees in her chair, still laughing and bending over the backrest that I worry she might fall off. “She’s just laughing…” We are waiting for Carolina to finish her shooting so we can leave for practice. But I have no idea what happened to Maria, we were just talking when she started to laugh mentioning LA and she is not stopping to laugh. What happened in LA? When was the last time we even were in LA? Maria continues to laugh, leaning her back against the table and she probably sees the clueless expression I have. “Ya.” She nudges me on the arm, her laugh gone. “You don’t remember that?” “Remember what?” Julia smiles, “You haven’t said anything.” “I did. That time in LA, you know.” “Maria, you didn’t say anything more than that,” I giggle. Our leader can be pretty clueless. “Which time in LA?” “Oh…” Maria starts to realise she was laughing over something in her head, and she realises that’s why she is the only one laughing. “Oooh! Sorry for that, but it’s really super fun. You know, that time at the airport, when Hannah had lost and, and she was wearing Lina’s pink clothes.” Julia gives out such a loud laugh that I give a jump in surprise, staring at my two friends who starts laughing loudly and saying “you remember?” to each other, their laughter is very loud. I have a wage memory of having to dress up in pink at the airport, I was so embarrassed and the ladies laughed at me all the way from that airport to the next – I can’t remember which year it was, I’m not certain it was even in LA, but I do remember that it has happened. Was it not three or four years ago? I can smile now, but I don’t laugh like the two of them. “We should do it again,” I suggest, “When going to Hong Kong tomorrow.” I want another lady to feel that embarrassment I felt when they dressed me up in pink. “OOOOOOOOOOOH!” Maria seems to find it as a good idea, hitting her hands together and she laughs anew while waving her arms, trying to come up with something. “We can … let the loser walk around with shoes on the wrong foot, or with two left.” “And have a t-shirt I got from a fan,” Julia adds. Maria gives her a weird look. “Why…?” she asks. “It reads ‘I dedicate my soul to the sweetheart Julia’,” Julia says and points over her chest. I laugh with Maria at that. Julia must have the weirdest fans in our group,