The Loft

2 - REASONS

      It had been almost a week since we moved in the condo and Abby and I had enough time to realize it was the best decision we made since we came in Seoul. Honestly, we couldn't have dreamed of a better situation to live than this one.

      Abby had enough time and space to work in the best condition. She was working as a professional illustrator in Comics and Manga, for 3 months now. This was her dream and it came true when, just after graduation of her bachelor in fine arts, she was approached by one of the head directors of the Arts Department to illustrate a comic book.       She didn't really know that this man was Choi Jong-hi, the part-time director of one of the most famous publishing company in Seoul. So after she illustrated the comic book, he offered her a permanent job to work for all the books of the author he was starting to work with. She needed space and some calm to do her job properly. This was one of the reasons she was so glad of this arrangement.

      For me, it was for the same reason of calm and space. After graduating of my bachelor in literature and languages, I became a part-time translator for books and my other job is being a writer. I've published already a book and it became quite famous so a publishing house came to sign me in their company. I would like to do only writing for a living but I'm not that known to have a guaranteed salary so I continue to do my translating part in that company for books they want me to translate in French and English.

      Abby and I had only been the two of us in Korea. We wanted to dedicate all of our time to our studies and that is why we had graduated in 2 years rather than in 4. It's quite special and quite rare but if you do a lot of extra classes and improve considerably your Korean, as a foreigner student, you can graduate faster. Since we were motivated enough, we did all the holiday classes, we nearly went out and we were helping each other to study.

      We authorized ourselves to go out just after our first semester in 1st year and that is how I met Jay. We started to go to a Coffee Shop and It was just after their first comeback so he was not that known compared to nowadays. He and Jake went to that place every week and we started to notice each other. Abby and I were kpop stans so we knew about ENHYPEN and were already fans at the time so we decided to make the first move by just talking to them. They saw we weren't crazy fans so they started to let their guards down and that is how we became friends. I was closer to Jay and Abby to Jake so we started to go out just by two rather than four. There was nothing going on between all of us, they were just really happy to meet « normal » persons and since they both were fluent in English, contact was easy.

      After a few months, they started to introduce us to the band so we met the others and it went really smoothly. And all went super fast. They had become close to a few groups and this how we met Straykids. Straykids were becoming close to Ateez because of Kingdom so we were introduced to all of them. Since we were really unproblematic persons, they all immediately saw that we weren't there to meet « idols » but just to be friends with them because they were cool. For us, it was fantastic. We met our favorites groups and they turned to be great people. For them, they were friends with normal people who helped them staying humble and down to earth.

      The meeting with BTS was easier than we actually thought. Since we were close friends at that point with ENHA, HYBE knew us and we started being able to enter HYBE to help them with advices. We were objective in our visions and we were fans too so it would help them to understand the point of view from the outside of the label. We had already signed Confidentiality Agreement to be able to know that kind of informations and during a meeting with some managers and the boys, Namjoon came in the room to ask something to one of the directors that were there. We were really impressed by his natural charisma. He was as impressive in real life as he seemed on screen. He asked us what we were doing here, since he knew we weren't part of the staff, and when a manager explained, he seemed really interested. He left the room but at the end of the meeting, he was waiting for us. He told us that he had talked to Bang Si-hyuk about us and our potential utility to BTS too so he offered us the opportunity to do our 'counselling' for Enhypen and BTS. We both immediately agreed, no need to debate. By a lucky coincidence, they were all in the building on that day so we met them an hour later and it was an out-of-time moment.