On my way to stardom

5. Day 1

I open my eyes from my third hour of sleep. Someone's just broken into my apartment.

Thanks to my father, I have developed this sixth sense that, whenever someone comes into the house, I will know it. Just in case if another drunk guy comes into the house and beat me up, you know?

Oh my god, I've been studying til 4am last night, barely got any sleep. I feel somewhat dizzy when I sit up on the bed, but I have to go check out who the intruder is.

'Oh, you wake up,' Mr Park says. 'We leave in 30 minutes.'

Oh yeah, I almost forgot my manager has a key to my apartment. That means it's only 6:30am. Starting the day early, love it.

I've always been a night person, even my part time jobs didn't need me to work in the morning. Ugh, I just hate mornings.

I only have to brush my teeth and do my normal skincare routine. After brushing my hair and changing into a t shirt and shorts, I'm ready to go.

When I walk out to Mr Park, he is typing on his phone. He only looks up to me when he hands me a bag of what I believe is breakfast, but the face he gives me is full of disgust. If it isn't aimed at me, I'd actually find it quite funny. As he looks at me from head to toe, he mumbles something in Korean before telling me to follow him. Do I look that bad?

Two and a half hours of sleep doesn't exactly recharge me, ok? Plus, I don't wear makeup. Maybe that's why.

'Are we going to see Mr Bang now?' I ask my manager as we got on the van.

'Bang PD nim? No, too early,' he says. I check my phone to see it's literally only 7:05am. Then why would he tell me to get up at the break of dawn? FML.

'Then where are we going?' I ask.

'Health club,' he answers. What the hell is a health club? I don't have any special diet to share with people though.

The van stops right in front of a building that has a huge poster of an advertisement of a gym. So health club means gym, huh? Isn't it a bit too early to workout? Ugh, I hate exercising.

Instead of heading straight to the machines, I'm taken to another room to see a dietician, where she takes my body fat percentage, weight, measurements and height.

Mr Park and the dietician are now conversing in Korean, but obviously they're talking about me! They seem like they're in an argument because he keeps shaking his head at whatever she's saying. After 5 minutes, they seem to have come to a mutual agreement and Mr Park leaves the room for a phone call.

The dietician starts explaining my torturous diet plan.

'So you weigh 54kg now, height is 168cm. And you are going to lose 8kg in 3 months,' she says.

What? Losing 8 kg? That makes me 46kg! That's so underweight! I don't wanna be like one of the skinny Kpop girls!

But I'm becoming one of the Kpop girls.

Decided that it's best to follow orders, I only nod. The menu she gives me involves barely any food. I'm only allowed sweet potatoes, asparagus, and corn, basically. And I have to go to the stupid-ass health club every single day at 7am, so that I can get my daily weight training and cardio out of the way. The rest of the day can be used for other trainings. How productive.

The trainer is one of the most muscular men I have ever met in my life. That green vein that's popping out his neck is intimidating enough, but the way he yells at me to keep running will always top the charts. By the end of the training session, I'm sweating like a dog. I've been working out for an hour and half straight!

Mr Park is already standing at the entrance of the gym. He chucks me a towel and gestures for me to go. I say,'can I shower first at least?'

He shakes his head and says, 'wait. BigHit first.'

Ugh, fine.

There is only one changing room on the seventh floor, but it's got a male sign on it. I look at my manager but he shrugs, 'no one will come in. I'm here.'

I go into the changing room and make sure there's nobody else. Then I lock the door of the changing room. Right, I have 10 minutes before I get shouted at.

It's been less than 24 hours and everything is already so tough. I can't believe I have to do that for the rest of my...career, if I'm even gonna have one.

I can feel my tears are threatening to roll out, but I swallow them back in. I vow to never cry during this journey, it's just another new chapter of my life, which I have no idea where it'll head towards. But I will never cry.

Because there are people that rely on me back home, I need to be a strong girl now.

After a hot shower, my muscles seem to have relaxed a bit. I walk out to see Mr Park is nowhere to be seen, but a lady with circular metal-framed glasses is standing by the door, smiling at me.

'Hello, Shannon, I'm Yoon Hye Ji, I will be your Korean language tutor, let's work hard together!' She smiles sweetly at me.

Honestly, I really wanna smile back at her. So far she's the only Korean that has been nice to me, except for Bang PD, or that's how everyone calls him here. But after working out so intensively first thing in the morning, I have no energy left whatsoever to be all friendly and sociable.

'Nice to meet you,' is all I managed to say.

We are sitting in another conference room as she explains how Korean words are formed and pronounced, which I've learned last night from reading the online korean crash course.

As the lesson is coming to an end, she takes out a bunch of notes and a few exercise books. She hands me a post-it note and says, 'so for homework today, I want you to finish what I wrote on there.'

I look at the piece of yellow paper and see that there's at least 10 pages worth of homework! What am I now? I just graduated high school! Why do I have to go back to doing copy books and shit?

Ugh, her smile is so fake, I don't like her already.

Stop being a brat, Shannon.

As I'm about to stand up and ask for a reduction in homework, Mr Park comes into the room.

'Time for singing lesson now,' he drags me out of the classroom and reassures me everything will be packed.

We take the elevator to the second floor, which has the same layout of the previous floor. I enter a room that looks like the kind of recording studio that you see in music videos or movies, which has a giant glass wall with numerous recording keyboards on one side, and a mic on the other side.

There's a middle aged woman sitting in front of the upright piano on the side of the room with the mic. She's playing random tunes of I suspect is another song of the company's beloved BTS.

Here we go again...