Behind The Scenes ༻ Park Jisung

༻ 8

The dialling sound of her phone made Arunas heart race.

She was feeling hopeful, wondering if she finally proved herself worthy enough to her parents. She was going to debut after all- and all she needed was to hear an "I'm proud of you."

It was four words that even the thought of it made her heart happy.

But the longer the phone dialled, the more her happiness diminished.

Then the voice she was so familiar with- even more than her own parents- told her to speak after the beep.

Aruna thought that they must've been busy with whatever jobs they had. She wasn't really up to date with their lives.

"Hey mom and dad," she cleared her throat and spoke into the phone. "I don't know if you guys already saw but I'm debuting soon. I just- I haven't gotten any messages from you or mom so I thought I would tell you myself. Anyways, that's it I guess. I love you both."

And she hung up.

It was kind of sad how little connection she had with them but still found space in her heart to love them. Why did she still love them?

Aruna was just too blinded by hope that she hadn't realized the little amount of effort put to her future.

Actually, there was no effort. They hadn't called once- only to ask her when she would pick up her clothes. That was six years ago.

She was 14, now turning 20.

Instead of dwelling over the unfortunate relationship between her family, Aruna grabbed her notebook and flipped through its pages. She liked to write when she felt so overpowered by emotions. It was her catharsis.

Her recent works were all so depressing that even thinking about her thought process when writing them down made her feel negative. Pre-debut days were hard.

Scribbling a bunch of words on the lines of her paper, she finally set it down when it was time to go to practice. It wasn't that Aruna could perfect a song at once but she kept the main ideas there and fixed it up later.

Aster was probably still not ready to leave so Aruna would need to urge her to be quicker, a usual routine for the two.

"You have five minutes!" she yelled over the music coming from the elders room. Receiving no response, she sighed and picked her heavy legs up to walk. "Bitna says if we're late again she's going to make us clean the practice room," it was a threat their manager used to make sure they were on time.

"Mhm just one sec," Aster finally replied, pausing her music so the other could hear her better. Aruna peeked her head inside her room to see what was taking so long, seeing the elder contemplate whether to put her hair up in a ponytail or braid it.

"Ponytails will hurt your head but braids get loser more quickly with the amount of times we move our heads," she said, laying her body on Asters freshly done blankets.
"Not if you do them they won't..."
Her head peeked up. "When did I become your personal hairstylist?"
"Since day one."

Even though she complained, Aruna undid the previous hairstyles on Aster and instead continuously folded three hair pieces over another, creating tight braids. She was pretty good when it came to these things- makeup, hair, helping out with things.

"Done," she said as soon as she tied it with a pink elastic band, matching with Asters pink top and shoes. "Now let's go or Eliana will actually drag us by our ears."
"Oh my gosh remember that time when she had to hold our belts the whole day because we kept running away," Aster chuckled at the memory of their leader having to search for them every other minute because they kept disappearing.