FOLDER

if yulhee’s good at anything, it’s remembering names. this one is heejin, the company is… yeah, and the drink she had this morning was, regrettably, purmil brand “ghana” chocolate milk (though the brand has nothing to do with it). having the credentials for a management gig isn’t an impossible feat either, meanwhile, but who’s to say she was the desperate one during the interview? beats her. she recalls the opportunity starting as quick as it had come, “don’t be like this, this, and this” the one thing to really stick.

she’s hoping the building tour doesn’t last past noon. there’s still a matter of meeting the girls, imagining how quickly they’ll drop the formalities behind closed doors. it’d be a testament to how thirty is just a continuation… that’s it, that’s the sentiment. “self-introduction,” yulhee subconsciously repeats, knowingly pointing to herself and bowing her head against the glass door. “ah…”

the bump feels massive, her cheeks red as her palm instinctively soothes the pain away. how useless, heejin being curt through and through. “i’m yulhee.” she recalculates where, who she needs to look at. “let’s work well.” if he cares enough about what her business is around here, he’ll probably ask assuming heejin doesn’t scurry her off to the next room in the hall. but something tells her it’s dangerous to give ms. shin the benefit of doubt. must be that wince yul didn’t plan for.

first day nerves? she wouldn’t be the first one he’s seen (or experienced firsthand, for that matter). “yo,” he says, elbow propped against the desk table and palm propelling like a catapult.  “yulhee...?” no last name? “hwang sangho.” he gives a little nod to his monitor, awash in a spectrum of colors from top to bottom. 

“i do tracks. teach some of the kids here how to run around the track, putting it another way.” sangho smiles and leans back, the chair responding in kind with a tired squeak. especially knowing how oppressive heejin can get (given the opportunity), it’s an earnest little attempt to lighten the mood: “guess that makes me a kinda p.e. teacher?”

his head is a fog of superlatives:

too much bureaucracy, too many unread messages, too many consecutive hangovers, too many unplanned family reunions, too many brand drops and sneaker releases to possibly wrap the whole of his head around.

it’s also a tuesday. ergo, he’s not only required to slash through the fog, but his presence is also requested at the other office across town and he has to account for yet another superlative: too many kids.

his morning at yhy starts favorably enough: office hours are empty thanks to a last minute schedule change and the brew here is a dark roast that gets his fingers tapping a million mouse clicks a minute. he zones out in his search for the correct “HEY” to punctuate this pre-chorus. if nothing else, he can dip out at noon.

his trained ear tells him the sharp knock at the door belongs to none other than HR’s witch-bitch, shin heejin. “come in,” he says, rolling back his chair.

kino begrudgingly looked on as his superior questioned him and the rest of his four members, suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. even though he knew the scolding was directed to the whole of their group, kino couldn’t help but feel targeted. he knew his mentor was right. they did sound off… but it wasn’t all of them.

typically, kino only smoked on occasion. for celebrations, to stave off hunger, etcetera. but lately (lately being.. the past few months) it had become a habit without reason. a habit that gnawed at him even as he was being reprimanded for the affects his actions were having on his vocal abilities.

he wanted to get out of this booth for just a few minutes to recoup. his hands wandered to the inside of his jacket where his pack of cigarettes were expertly concealed.

“can we just take ten?” he started making his way to the exit immediately.

“we’re working on a tight schedule, bud.” sangho returns, ironically languid in his delivery. his lower lips quirks downward as he gives a cursory scroll through empty tracks in the session file.

“water break? can you make it five? or i’ll just take in the next guy while you take care of...” sangho trails off, hand gesturing in a small circular motion. he fails to pick up on kino’s guarded slip of the hand, a little flabbergasted by the sheer fact he’s already headed for the door.

“if i’m remembering this correctly... i asked you all to show up drunk.” he says, pulling up the ktt message in question and pressing his phone against the glass beside his squinting face.

drunk in the figurative sense, obviously. but now he’s starting to think that the literal wouldn’t have been such a bad alternative to the donkey mewling he’s been getting instead.

(...)

the first notes play, and well…

colour her surprised.

the audience has fallen silent, as has the panel of judges beside her. there’s relative silence in the studio, everyone a mix of contrition and astonishment. that is, until little go yuna begins strutting around like she owns the place, crooning about how she won’t be pushed aside. (oddly fitting.)

a gradually increasing buzz from the audience reaches a crescendo of cheers as the kid belts the finishing note, and she bows. more out of necessity than anything, if the expression on her face is anything to go by. 

luna’s the first to pick her mic up, and yuna fixes her with a look. there’s a rebellious spark in her eye, as if daring her to not sing her praises to the high heavens. “that was… wow, yuna.” hyun chimes in with his own praise, lauding her like he hadn’t been laughing behind his cue sheet earlier on.

she’s in it for the kill. his eyebrows leap to meet his hairline and stay there for the three minutes she devours the stage whole.

all right, so scratch the shade. whatever reservations he has for this show—dashed. even junyeop has something good to say and this is someone who can’t look at a baby without mention of a demon. they might have had a real discussion but someone in the restaurant switches the channel before judging begins and so the three of them return their full attention to the barbecue date at hand.

sangho tunes in every week, every other week if work gets the better of him and he forgets. two favorites quickly emerge: a teen rapper with poetry in his blood, and pork belly on pipes. not the most flattering nickname he could have come up with, but sangho is a simpleton and a sentimentalist, and only one netizen in a sea of naysayers who seem to have every bone to pick with go yuna.

her attitude, her tone, her height, her looks—the ugly’s there, all right—and it doesn’t take long for sangho to opt of the forums after a scan through rows of slander. really? she’s like, twelve, or something?

he leaves his first and only comment:

yuna’d expected this. known she would be asked about it, so why, why, why was her brain blanking out on her right now? still, her near-decade of training kicks in (thank god her teenage years hadn’t been robbed for nothing!) and yuna manages a facsimile of a laugh. “wow, my experience on idol youth? the show was… what, like 10 years ago…?”

the host seems to sense her distress, and they react with an anecdote about their age. where appropriate, yuna reacts with a nod or chuckle, unable to do much more with her brain in overdrive trying desperately to fish memories of idol youth from the murky depths of her brain. she takes an unusually long sip from her bottled water as the host wraps up their little story, feeling like they’ve given yuna enough time to formulate a response.

a beat passes.

“right! yeah, wow. i can’t believe it’s really been that long– seems like just yesterday i was auditioning for the show!” the host nods and gestures for her to elaborate, and yuna’s smile freezes on her face.

ah, fuck.

well. nothing to do but keep going and pray she remembers as she goes. “it technically wasn’t my first audition– of course there were all those preliminaries, but those were all private. it’s pretty funny, actually, looking back– my parents hadn’t ever heard me sing before that televised audition.” the host interrupts with a really? your parents must really have believed in you! and cracks up. yuna laughs along even though she doesn’t think it’s all that funny. all for good radio, she supposes. 

“yeah! so that was the first time they’d ever heard me sing seriously. i did beyoncé’s listen– the audience was ooh-ing and aah-ing when i announced my song of choice, and even laughed at me when i told them to shush so i could start singing.” a little kid with a voice bigger than themselves is such an overplayed trope, c’mon. “i got nervous when they started laughing, and i dropped my mic, which, i’ll tell you this, is not a good way to start an audition.” well, what people didn’t need to know was that it was a plot to get the audience’s attention, and hey, it’d worked, so. 

for @pgsangho, who’s been yuna’s #1 supporter since day one.

“so fuckin’ good,”

“out of this world,”

“grade a. korea’s best.”

the television sizzles on, flickers of faces young, younger, and younger still, teetering the line between fetal and tween. there’s the odd snippet of applause cut too short, a last-minute edit amidst countless others, likely outsourced too late in the night to be ethically sound.

it’s all part of the job—fortunately, not sangho’s. here he is, reveling in his saturday night encircled by the same chorus of idiots who are as convincing as they are shitfaced. minho juts his chopsticks inches away from sangho’s nose, impatient. "hey. you listening?”

sangho blinks back to awareness, leveling his own chopsticks against the waxed table before grabbing for a chunk of underdone pork belly.

“not to you,” sangho retorts with a snort. can’t tell if he’s directing the snort to minho or the entitled pipsqueak on the screen telling everyone to pipe the fuck down. sangho gnaws down on his chopsticks, never mind the sauce dish minho slips in front of him a second too late, never mind the unpleasant, fleshy gush in his mouth and the jeweled piece on the grill taunting him in its medium-well rendered glory.

“figures,” junyeop chides, folding a lettuce wrap for himself. “it’s another one of those shows. didn’t you just finish one last month?”

sangho spits out the leftover gristle into a napkin. he unconsciously derails. “this one’s a bootleg as far as i can tell.” minho throws a properly cooked piece of pork onto his plate (“you're welcome,”) just as sangho whips his head back guffawing. 

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