The Redo

JYP successfully kills me

"Hey El! How's your family doing?" At Vi's question, everyone else looked up in curiosity. And before I get to how I answered that, Let me tell you what's been rollin recently. Malcolm and co. went back to good ol' Texas. They were only here to -apparently- help me get situated in this busy life of living in the city. We've explored almost every inch of Seoul, and can confidently navigate it, gotten kinda used to being a trainee at JYP, and I started living with Uncle Iroh. He knows I have family but offered to be sorta my guardian while I'm here. It's not like my entire family can move up to Korea just because I started acting like I'm in a musical. I am almost entirely fluent in Korean and Iroh has been teaching me a few things in Chinese. There's only a few not so common phrases and words I haven't heard that I don't understand but I write them down and Uncle Iroh is kind enough to explain when I get back to the teashop. I have met Iroh's nephew and he's surprisingly ok with me living here, I didn't hear correctly when I first heard about Wang Lei and it turns out he's a CEO of some very big company. As long as I help with the bills, rent, medication for Uncle, and chores, I'm free to stay. But back to the situation at hand. Our squad's in a break room, just chilling and scrolling on our time traveling phones.

"Oh, they're doing great! Mom and Dad are great like always, Ashley's almost got her business degree, Malcolm is in his 3rd year of college, Garret, Tyler, Coby, Cody, and Cory still got their sports thing going on, the other quadruplets are still as chaotic as ever, Mia's in 8th grade, and Hyunmin is just as baby as ever." I list off all my family members,using the trusty finger counting system, slowly but surely running out of breath.

A knock on the door caught us off guard and I swore I saw San jump like, 3 feet in the air. Being the curious little gremlins we are, we turn our heads towards the door as we see (A/N: does JYP even have a secretary? Whatever, this is how it's going and I'm sorry in advance if I get it wrong) JYP's private secretary open the door. "JYP would like to see all 4 of you in meeting room A108. It's regarding your ladies' debut." We all comply and grab our stuff to follow the lady wearing very impressive heels. After about 10 minutes of navigating the enormous IKEA-like building, we reach A108 and prep ourselves while Ms. Secretary notifies JYP of our arrival. "JYP will see you now. Good luck girls." She gives us a wink then goes back to -what we assume- is the direction of her office or workstation. Even though we memorized all of Seoul, we still don't know JYP well enough except for were we're supposed to be.

Steeling ourselves, we put on our professional masks and enter single file. Bowing, we all use formal speech as he tells us if he's able to get us to debut together. We've already had this meeting in the past but he won't tell me why I wouldn't be debuting with my friends... maybe he'll come up with- a decent excuse- ahem, the answer this time. "As you girls know, only 3 of you will be debuting in a month. This meeting will be for you to tell me your finalized group name and what you've come up with for your stage names." Glancing at me, he adds, "Ms. Parker, we will talk about your situation in the near future but now is not the time."

Well, this is it. I've always had reasons why I'm left out of a group. It's usually that there aren't enough seats, or that someone else wants the opportunity more than I do. I've always put my friends before myself, so why is it that I always get negative consequences in return? I don't regret ever giving up my seat for an eager child's first time on an amusement ride, or a returning military personnel tired from a long day and needing to rest their joints. But can't I just be able to have what I want to do this time? Just this once? Oh who am I kidding, that's never gonna happen. I already know that. But seeing my friends' faces lit up like Christmas lights when they heard they were gonna be official? That's why I'm going to make sure it becomes a reality for them. Even if I'm not there to celebrate it with them. I still remember when we had asked if I could join, "It's either those 3 debut or all 4 of you get out."

Seeing as they're wrapped up and getting up out of the chairs, I started to join them when JYP said to stay behind. "I said we'll talk about your situation later. It's later." I settled back down and had the biggest shock of my life. "The reason you're not debuting with your friends is because you'll easily outshine them." I frown at that and try to tell him the opposite but he doesn't give me the chance. "Elizabeth, you can do all the things any idol can do really well and, given practice, master any choreography. So I'm giving you two options: either you go solo and possibly become one of my most famous employees here, or you can join a more... challenging group." It was another countless moment in my life where I had on the surprised pikachu face.

Quickly collecting myself, I was curious about what the more challenging group meant. I didn't really like the way he worded it so... suggestively. "What do you mean by challenging sir?"

"Ahh, so you chose the second option. I had a feeling you'd do that." Trying to get a word in I wanted to tell him I just wanted clarification on why he said it so strangely. "So that is why I took the liberty of giving you the opportunity to meet your new group. Here they come in now, actually on time for once."

Incredibly confused I just went with the flow and turned to see who my new members are. To say I had a heart attack would be an understatement. This is the band... without one member already, that got me into kpop. This was the band that had written my first kpop song, the band that I had liked from both of our beginnings. The band I would be joining would be

Stray Kids.