BTS: Beyond the Story

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Worlds Collide

But even j-hope, who had opened his own ad hoc dance school in the practice studios, had become completely exhausted six months before their debut.

He recalls:

______It was probably the beginning of January 2013. We were so tired,even when we should've been at our most motivated. There was a practice studio where they filmed our dance moves, and we basically lived in there. Which was why we would stop talking when we entered there, became really prickly about things ...

In their quest to become an "overperformance group," the members practiced their choreography and took lessons at the same time.

In the midst of it all, they also went on specific diets to be at their best possible physical state when on stage, to the point where they were obsessive about the amount of salt, they would put on the chicken breasts that they ate for protein.

But suffering and worry had more to do with their mental than their physical states.

To be affiliated with Big Hit Entertainment, which was notas well-known as SM Entertainment, invited a kind of gaze j-hope felt was overwhelming.

______When people kept asking us when we were debuting, to a trainee that's really ... That question is like a knife to the heart.

j-hope was truly desperate.

The fraught journey to his debut reads like a series of desperate moments. He recalls his life's story up to his move To Soul:

______I didn't learn a lot at the hagwon where I learned to dance, because of the tuition fees. So, for the most part during lessons, I would just sit on the hagwon sofa. Because I loved dance so much ... After the lessons, I would keep practicing on my own in the practice studios.The hyungs who taught me, especially this one dancer named Bangster, became a kind of teacher to me.8 He said to me, "Hey, do you want to come to our practice studio and practice with us?" And That's how I joined the dance team Neuron.9 That's where I first came in contact with street dancing. Later, when I signed my contract with Big Hit Entertainment as a trainee, there was no place for me to practice. That was why despite signing the contract, I stayed behind at the Gwangju hagwon where my dance training was outsourced to. And that's when the A&R team contacted me. Telling Me it was time to come up to Seoul.

j-hope, RM, and SUGA had to wait two years until their debut, and BigHit Entertainment was barely scraping by at the time due to Glam's failure.

The practice spaces were so cramped that someone's singing in one room would carry over to trainees in the room three doors down.

The Circumstances, to the seven boys who were about to debut, were a source of great anxiety.

SUGA especially had reasons to be anxious.

He was preparing for his debut despite the aftereffects of a shoulder injury incurred from a traffic accident.

He explains:

______I did all kinds of part-time jobs in 2012, right before our debut was set. My family needed money, so I would teach MIDI, work in a convenience store, and do deliveries, and it was on a delivery where I injured myself on a motorcycle.

SUGA's voice turns a shade quieter as he recounts the turmoil of those days:

______The company was in dire straits, and I was worrying my head off asto whether I could continue my life as a trainee. It was really hard for me, the act of living itself. I'd left home pinning all my hopes on debuting, I'd managed to enter this company ... I felt so desperate.