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Park-Miya Izumi was aware of the fact, that a dream, could only become a goal when action was taken towards its achievement. She knew she could achieve anything in life, if she only worked hard enough. She was only twenty-one years old but had the drive to work as hard as possible for her dreams to become reality.
Izumi started loving musical theatre when she was only four years old. Her mother Miya Shinobu had cleaned their house, her musical playlist on full blast, when little Izumi came running into the living room—a headless barbie doll in her hands—and big tears streaming down her face.
"Okaa-san!", little Izumi had cried, holding her doll and its head in her clammy hands. Shinobu had turned around, mop in her hands, and looked at Izumi with widened eyes. "Izumi-chan! What happened?" Izumi wanted to explain how she tried to comb her dolls hair, when she acknowledged the loud music, that was blasting through the living room.
Her whole body stiffened and her expression went blank. No tears were dripping down her chubby cheeks and her brown eyes looked distant. Shinobu tilted her head, worrying her daughter was hurt all of a sudden, when Izumi dropped the doll and dashed towards the CD-player in the corner of the living room.
"Okaa-san! Okaa-san!", she spoke hectically, her little heart beating fast. "What is this?" Her question made Shinobu smile. She gently put the mop aside and walked over to Izumi. "This, Izu-chan" she made a dramatic pause—the big eyes of her little daughter scanning every little feature on Shinobu's pretty face. "This is called musical theatre, and the musical we're just listening to is The Phantom of the Opera."
It was, as Shinobu had opened the door to a forbidden kingdom. From this day on, Izumi had always sat on the couch of the living room, when her mother was cleaning the house—always listening to the different musicals her mother had in her mixtape.
Izumi was in third grade, when she first sang The Music of the Night in her music class. She had practiced day and night for this performance—even if it was only for her class and her teacher. She was only nine years old. She had sat down in front of their families piano and had practiced the rather difficult song with a determination no one of her parents had ever seen.
Shinobu had looked at her husband, Park Yunseong, and had told him, that she thought Izumi had finally found her place in the world. She had found her drive—her dream. And Shinobu had been right.
Once Izumi had started middle school, she joined the drama club. And in her third year in middle school, fifteen year old Izumi played her first main role. They had performed Dr. Dolittle and Izumi had felt like she just fulfilled her biggest dream.
Izumi continued her musical theatre journey in high school. In her senior year, she auditioned for a main role in her schools performance of Into The Woods but only got a minor role. Her heart broke and she cried day and night because it had been the first time she lost an audition. "I wanted to play the Baker's Wife," she had cried in her mothers arms—crumbling the script in her hands. "But all I got was Dancer 3."
