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I have lost my friends. I have lost the people I admire. I have lost my brothers.
But I will not lose this game.
I didn't choose to be part of it. The game chose me. All along I have been controlled like a puppet, the pages of my book written by the fingers of another hand. I have been muted, beaten down, oppressed in silent screams.
I will be mute no longer.
They have taken everything away from me.
And now all I have to lose . . . are my chains.
This is the truth. This is my story.
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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT WITH MISS CHEAH MING YEN
[ I conducted the interview with Miss Cheah Ming Yen over the telephone. She is one of the fifteen participants that took part in an online multiplayer game known as 'Sogaeting 소개팅'. In the game, she went by the name of itookjiminsjams ]
I - I didn't do anything wrong. You know that, right? I just played it . . . I - I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't mean -
It's okay. Answer the question.
Right. The question. Um. Well I first saw it on my Facebook feed, though I've had friends who said they saw it on Twitter, Insta, Whatsapp, Kakao . . . basically every social platform you can think of. It was just a simple Google Form link, but the caption was definitely eye-catching, especially if you were an ARMY. The header too, was interesting. The title of the Google Form, I mean.
It was called 'Sogaeting 소개팅 : Bangtan Style'.
And the caption?
One sentence. Do you have what it takes to be their wife?
Well when you put the words 'Bangtan' and 'wife' so close together it's practically clickbait and no BTS trash would just look past it without clicking on it once. So I clicked on it, and it introduced itself as some sort of a game. It said it was looking for fifteen contestants, and anyone could apply. All you had to do was fill in the form and complete a BTS quiz.
Why did you decide to join?
Because of the prize, of course. The winner of the game gets married to BTS.
Now I know that was ridiculous, and totally stupid, but the thing is - it made me curious. I figured I would just check out the form, and if I felt something was off all I had to do was exit my browser, right? Plus it was just a game.
Well the quiz was easy, since I'd practically been there since Kookie was five, and got everything right - you can see your score at the end. Then I had to fill in my personal details like name, phone number and email. I also had to write an essay to show why I considered myself the best ARMY - and when I say show, I really mean show. Whatever I wrote in that essay I had to show evidence; photographs of all the thirteen BTS albums, for example, their season packages and books and badges and stickers and of course my bedroom wall, which was plastered all over with their stuff . . . it took me 2 hours to upload all the photos. Then I hit 'submit', and they said thank you and we wish you good luck! Now all I had to do was wait for the email to notify me if I had gotten it.
It came about half a month later. I was washing my dog when I heard my phone went ping! A Golden Retriever. The dog, I mean. Oh yea, I snapped a photo of her too. Since I called her Mint Holly, after Suga's dog, so it's like evidence how BTS has utterly infiltrated my life. She's been there since I was seven, when my mum got a miscarriage and couldn't give me a baby sister. I guess to other people a baby sibling is a headache, but to me I had been looking forward forever to it, since I was home-schooled and hardly had any friends. I was bawling for hours when my mum said the baby sister wasn't coming. I guess my dad thought a dog would cheer both my mum and me up, 'cos the next day he came back with this cutest, fluffiest little thing, her front paws scrabbling everywhere as she tried to get out of that cardboard box -
What did the email say?
The email? Oh right, the email. Well it just said that I was selected, and there were fourteen other people as well. It also included a link to the server that we were gonna use to play the game. All the rules and stuff would be explained when we started playing the game on 7th September. Basically we were going by a point-scoring system, and the results of each round will be made public on their website. There was only going to be one winner, and that winner would be married to BTS.
I guessed what they meant was that in the game we were going to be married to BTS. I tried to clarify with them, you know, asking them if I was supposed to start learning up about polygamy - I mean, married to BTS. What - like seven of them? Or just one? Could you pick? Were they for real? Not that I have a bias . . . they didn't reply, just said that all would be made clear when the game started.
Did any of the fifteen participants rejected the acceptance email?
No. None of us rejected it.
But we sure as hell wished we did.
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