Josephine Swan never imagined that her stay in South Korea would lead her into K-Pop's glittering and challenging world. Each day, she encounters new hurdles and adventures that fate has in store for her and her four team members. Between gruelling...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
My freshly washed hair fell far over my shoulders and I felt the pleasant wetness on my forearms while the delicate scent of vanilla rose to my nose. I leaned patiently against the bare wall of the corridor in the middle of the training centre and gave a friendly nod to some of the trainees as soon as they passed me and continued on their way. Their faces were marked with effort and exhaustion from today's day and training. With trembling legs, they took the direct route to the showers.
By now, summer had replaced spring in South Korea and the days were getting warmer and wetter. By now, the rainy season had begun and I could feel the air around me getting thicker and more uncomfortable. More and more windows and doors were opened during breaks at school and training to let the accumulated heat out and fill the stuffy rooms with pleasant cold. The few fans and air conditioners came into use more and more.
Curious, I looked around, but all the other open rooms seemed empty with a few exceptions. In one of the larger dance rooms, I could see a group of seven boys still highly concentrated on their dance steps.
iKon was officially due to debut on 15 September and all preparations were already being made to avoid further postponements.
I slowly made my way back and my grey eyes tried to scan the rooms for Jinny before I finally caught sight of her on the bench with a dark-haired girl. Both were still wearing their workout clothes, mostly consisting of plain sweatpants and sleeveless tops. Their skin glistened with sweat under the artificial light.
Cautiously, I knocked on the door and the girls looked up from their conversation. I opened the door.
"Annyeonghaseyo. I didn't want to disturb you, but..." I said quietly and took a long look at Jinny, who nodded in understanding and with a glance at the girl immediately rose. With long strides, she came towards me.
"Come...I want you to meet someone." Jinny said softly and pulled me into the room, directly towards the other girl. As soon as I stepped into her field of vision, she had a wide smile on her face and her brown eyes looked at me with friendliness and curiosity at the same time. She immediately bowed to me as I came to a halt directly in front of her. Just like most of the other trainees, she was obviously from Asia.
"Annyeonghaseyo." I heard her say, surprising me with a soft voice. I did the same and bowed to her. Jinny watched us both with a smile.
"Josie...this is Kim Ji-soo. She's been with YG Entertainment for four years. We trained together before she and four other girls were chosen as the debut group." she introduced her to me and I nodded in understanding.
"It's nice to finally meet you in person, Josie-ssi. Rosè has told us a lot about you." Ji-soo said with a wide smile and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Jinny's surprised look.
"Rosè and I met by chance in one of the training rooms a few weeks ago. But unfortunately, we haven't seen much of each other since then." I explained to her quietly. We all had different training times and classes, so our contact was hardly compatible except for the monthly assessments. At times, Rosès and Ji-soo's group were under additional pressure, due to the debut that was soon to come, according to rumours within the entertainment. And also our pressure remained and hung, like a dark cloud continuously over our heads.
"I heard you did all the choreography for the group dance this time?" the dark-haired girl asked curiously and I nodded.
Although I was apprehensive about the choreography at the time, with its fast powerful elements, the other three members of my group surprisingly didn't want any changes, so we ended up leaving it until the end-of-month evaluation. Similar to the month before, Yang Hyun-suk silently nodded off the choreography.
"Josie contributed good ideas and suggestions for the dances the month before and helped us to adapt the choreography to the rhythm of the music, so we thought...to involve her more in this topic," Jinny said next to me and smiled at me.
"Your dance performance was very impressive. It was fun to watch you guys," said Ji-soo as Jinny and I started smiling broadly.
"It was also very beautiful...at least at that moment," I said softly, smiling deep in thought.
It was no longer remotely comparable to our first performance as a group, although we were still nervous and excited. My body relaxed instantly when the music started and immediately the first movements were made. I concentrated on the music alone, my legs and arms, as well as my whole body, mastered each step from memory. We changed positions fluidly and without any major stagnations or interruptions, as often happened during rehearsals.
Everyone knew how and where to be.
It was perfect, at least from our point of view.
After some discussion within the group that same evening, it was decided that I would do most of the dancing this month as well, while the others would take care of song selection, text breakdown, as well as clothing.
"You used to do rhythmic gymnastics, didn't you? Rosè mentioned it." asked Ji-soo. Before I could get a word in, however, Jinny fidgeted beside us.
"You should see her, Unnie. She showed us a video of her freestyle on her first day. Just the jumps and different movements." Jinny interrupted us excitedly and hot blood rushed to my cheeks and head in embarrassment.
"Would you like to see the video?" continued Jinny and with wide eyes, I stared at her from the side. The shade of red in my cheeks automatically increased a shade before I lightly poked Jinny in the side to silence her. Ji-soo, on the other hand, laughed out loud.
"I'd like to watch it...if you're okay with it, of course," said Ji-soo in my direction and after a long hesitation, I finally nodded. Still red-cheeked, I took my phone out of my pocket and searched through my folders for the right video.
With a glance at the bench, I sat down and held the phone horizontally so that the other two girls next to me had a good view of the screen.
