Ready for the World : VCHA added member [ON HIATUS]

Chapter 08: All The Korea Boot Camp Preparations

Naomi POV:

April 2023

Today was the day that we were all traveling to South Korea. We were going to be landing in Seoul from Los Angeles. As we were at the airport together Gina, Kaylee and I were having a conversation in Korean to try and see if we all had different dialects or not dialects at all to pass time. The others were all trying to learn as much Korean as they could, I'm not going to lie once I learned I was going to Korea I immediately went to my parents, relatives and my trusty language learning apps to try and make sure I didn't forget any Korean for the time being. 

As we got onto the airplane, I was sat between KG and Yuna. We talked a bit before we started doing our own things and eventually falling asleep. The flight was about 13 hours long and I ended up sleeping for majority of the time, so hopefully when we start filming in Korea my eyebags will go "Bye Bye!".

As we landed the plane, gathered our luggage, and left the airport, we ended up exploring parts of South Korea. We ate lots of Korean food and went shopping. We couldn't do a whole lot since we had under 24 hours to do it before we would start filming.

Today was the day that we were going to be visiting the JYP building, the JYP training center, the place where all of the famous JYP artists practice and train. We walked up some stairs and ended up getting into a bus/van-type vehicle. We were given cameras to record ourselves in the vehicle. I was sat next to Kendall and Gina. (we're going to pretend there was a seat there, there's like no other place for Naomi to sit otherwise :')) We were supposed to be in Korea for the next 3 months. We've waiting 6 months to be able to come to Korea, and now we were here. As we got closer to our destination, Yuna pointed out something and we were freaking out. Yuna pointed towards the JYP building in the distance. 

Once we were in front of the JYP building, Gina followed after the staff first and we all kind of just went behind her. Gina has been to this building before and trained here for a while, so I felt more confident with her in front of us all. Our first destination in the building was the basement floor, where the artists and idols practice. The staff lead us to a very familiar looking hallway and then to a room, not just any room but the room where the JYP idols like TWICE, STRAY KIDS, ITZY and NMIXX practice and film in. Our next stop was the recording studio where the idols record in. Just from walking into the room and looking around in-person made you feel motivated and ambitious to work harder so that you could be an idol, here in this very building. 

Our last stop for the tour was the 'Colosseum', a room which you could recognize as a fan of JYP groups. Some record their M/V reactions in this exact room..We sat down and patiently wait for further instructions. JYP then opened the door and walked into the room, surprising us. JYP went on to ask what we did with our first 24 hours in Korea as a group. He then shared with us  that Melissa was not joining us due to personal reasons. We had received a video message from Melissa a while back. We were still a little bummed but as long as Melissa was fine, we'd be happy for her. He shared with us that over the next 3 months, we would have 3 evaluations and we would get ranks after each evaluation. However, if someone finishes last for 2 of the evaluations they'd get eliminated. We were also getting a new addition to our necklace. It attached to our current necklace and gave us 4 more empty slots. JYP then shared some tips with us.

We were then given our first mission. It was an individual performance. For my individual performance, I chose the song More & More by TWICE since I felt like it can show my progress with stamina, dancing, singing and rapping that I worked on a lot during the 6 months. This time instead of 2 days to prepare like the group performance, we had 2 weeks to prepare. Along with 2 weeks to prepare, we also had staff and trainers to help us perfect our performance so we could show our all.

A few days later I was on my way to practice with Kaylee and Gina (Maknae line..??), we ended up running into NMIXX. You could tell they were a bit confused by who we were but seemed to hear things about us through others. They were debating between English and Korean to say hi but went with English, pushing Lily to the front to talk to us. We both laughed a bit at their shenanigan's. We did however have a short conversation in Korean now that we spoke to them in Korean but we both had to make our way to practice so we said goodbye. As we walked back to practice we were freaking out and maybe a bit too excited but it was still a really cool interaction we were able to have.

As we went to practice we slowly but surely started to calm down and started practicing. For some reason, I was not able to get this one detail down and it was starting to drive me insane because I had almost everything else down BUT this one part. It was get irritating but I knew if I didn't practice, I would not be able to perfect it. I watched the video in 0.5 speed yet again but focused on the details really closely while following along. I watched my dancing in the mirror and finally felt like I got the part right, so I decided to take a short water break. After my short break I went to practicing the dance from the top, then adding vocals on top so I could practice live vocals and then critiquing it. 

The next day 

Today I was doing 1:1 lessons with JYP's vocal and dance trainers. Vocal-Wise I just needed to work on the timing for my breathing a bit more so my voice would come out thicker and not thinner. Dance-Wise I had all the moves down, it was mainly focusing on the energy and stage presence for different parts of the song. 

"Your energy here needs to be a little more powerful and strong", the dance teacher said (in Korean) after pausing the music. I then tried that part again with more energy and stronger moves.
"Okay, that's good."

As I was about to leave both 1:1 lessons, I was given stickers for my 'Character Book' and thanked the teachers and staff before actually being able to leave.

One day before the Performance (yes, I'm skipping a lotttt of time because I feel like it...)

Today was the last day before the performance, meaning I had to make sure I had everything down  and was able to do everything properly. I felt really confident in my live singing and that I could do it with minimal voice cracks and errors. The dance was what I was most worried about, I felt like I would mess up at any time due to pressure or my brain being my brain. I had to keep asking people to help me monitor my performance when they had time, I felt bad having to ask them for help though because they could be using this time to work on their own performances if they needed too.

Soon enough, we had to go to the hotel because it was getting late. We went to the hotel and all went to bed, hoping that we would get enough energy to perform at our fullest. I just hope I do well tomorrow, I really need to be able to show my improvement..

Author's Note:
So we're at 1k reads??? I honestly thought it would be like 500 at max but we're at like 20x as many reads?? And then we have #22 in #K-pop?? AND THENNN 47 VOTES?? Thank you-? I'm very confused on why this book is doing so well..but thank you guys so much, whether you're a reader, someone who votes or even comments on this book. Feel free to comment on any part of the book too by the way, I like reading the comments when I do get them, they're fun to read and make me question how I want the plot to go lol. Also for this chapter, we have 1330+ words :D

If you couldn't tell already, I don't know much about Singing, Dancing or Rapping..💀🙃 And I'll probably edit & revise more of the A2K chapters once I finish uploading all the A2K chapters. 

Anything in bold in this chapter (and possibly in parentheses) is most likely a note from me because I was bored while writing by the way-