welcome.

1999. the day is turning long and all he wants is to go home and sleep. ‘just one more scene, nori. you can do it, right?’ his mother asks the makeup ladies crowd in to fix the minimal makeup that they’ve put on him. nori frowns at his own reflection, anger and frustration turning to hot tears. he did what the director asked but the director keeps asking him to do the same things so nori must’ve done it wrong beforehand. he doesn’t quite understand what he did wrong. eventually the tears spill over and his mother sighs going over to talk with the director about going home early.

2002. nori doesn’t particularly like acting. it’s something he’s realized slowly. but his mother smiles so widely when he does well that nori doesn’t want to tell her. so he suffers through the takes as best he can. all it leads to is more cameras. more lights. more days that are too long for his young body to handle properly but he continues because it makes his mother happy. she’s happy so rarely nowadays. nori thinks it might have to do with the way that she’s always fighting with his father now. he never knows exactly what happens but he knows they’re fighting over him.

2007. his mother tries to talk him out of it – ‘just take a break, nori. don’t quit all together. you love acting don’t you?’ his only answer is that he wants to focus on his schooling. what he doesn’t mention is that with only himself and her in the house now he feels like he’s suffocating. what he doesn’t mention is that acting was never his dream it was always hers. what he doesn’t mention is that he’d rather be an idol. his mother will surely disapprove of that. so he sticks to his lie.

2010. his mother thinks that he auditioned to be an actor, she thinks he wanted to pick up the burgeoning career that he left behind. he didn’t tell her that the company was a korean company. nor did he tell her that he has no plans of acting in the future. but there’s no avoiding it. he can’t keep up the charade anymore because he needs her permission to join the company and move all the way to seoul. as expected she’s not at all thrilled with the revelation. idols aren’t worth much according to her, and worth even less in south korea. eventually though she relents and lets him go.

2012. the training is more difficult than he’d thought it would be. he struggles to pick up korean, he struggles to remember why he’d even wanted this in the first place. he spends most of his time in the vocal practice rooms trying to wrap his tongue around foreign words. when he calls home he pretends not to notice how his mother seems pleased with his suffering. he won’t give in. he can’t give in.

2015. when they put the group together originally he wasn’t in the lineup. they’d wanted a rap-based group and nori had always been a vocalist. however, eventually they stick nori into the lineup because they need a stronger vocalist than what they have. that’s all that nori really expects, until they shuffle lineup one last time and push the previous leader out. the title then falls on nori’s shoulders because he’s one of the oldest and he’s one of the ones who’s been training the longest. nori pretends he’s not panicking. when they debut later in the year his mother is no where to be found. and nori pretends once again, though this time he’s pretending not to be hurt by it – he has the feeling he’s going to be doing a lot of that.