Shine
“It’s fine. I’m not trying to have a pity party!” She smiles, quickly changing the subject. “It’s just one night. This is your career we’re talking about.”
“I gotta agree with Akari on this,” Hyeri says, capping her water bottle. “You want this more than anything, don’t you? If a late-night practice at the trainee house is going to set you up for success, you have to take it.”
I sneak a glance at Appa. He’s all the way across the gym, practically demolishing a bag, sweat flying everywhere. He’s in the zone. “I don’t know,” I say. “My mum would freak.”
Juhyun tilts her head to the side. “Is it worth it?”
I wipe the sweat from my face. Is it worth it? That’s a question I ask myself every day. All the training, the lost weekends, the family sacrifices. The constant feeling of never quite belonging somewhere you desperately want to be. All to fulfil my dream of becoming a K-pop star. I think of eleven-year-old Rachel. The little girl who used to be chronically late because she couldn’t stop watching K-pop music videos in the bathroom between classes. In some ways, not a lot has changed. In other ways, everything has.
“It’s everything to me.”
“There you go,” Akari says.
Juhyun’s eyes glint underneath the gym’s fluorescent lighting. “Mina underestimates you, Princess Rachel.” She pulls off her boxing gloves and unravels her hand wraps, revealing intricately manicured pale-pink and navy-blue floral nails underneath. “Now go show that bitch who’s boss.”
I punch the elevator button for the eighteenth floor, antsy to get home and shower after Appa goaded me and Akari into going thirty minutes in the ring with him.
The first thing I hear when I enter our apartment is the sound of K-pop music, followed by Leah’s laughter and a group of giggling girls. I slide into my slippers and walk towards the living room, where Leah is sprawled on the floor with four other girls from her class, watching the newest Electric Flower music video on their phones. I recognize it immediately – the legendary Kang Jina along with the rest of the group, all dancing in glowing orange jumpsuits against a pure black soundstage. It’s the quickest viral video in DB history, getting over thirty-six million hits in only twenty-four hours. Leah stands, holding a hairbrush to her mouth like a microphone, and belts out the lyrics, matching Jina’s powerful soprano note by note. I can’t help but smile. The girl’s got talent.
Seeing me, one of her friends, a girl with a heart-shaped face and diamond-encrusted Hello Kitty earrings, nudges Leah in the toe. “Your unni’s home,” she says, nodding in my direction.
Leah spins around and holds the hairbrush out to me. “Take it away, Unni!”
I make a half-hearted motion to grab the brush, but the song is already fading to an end, leaving the room in an awkward silence.
“Too bad,” Heart Face says. “We could have had a performance from a real K-pop trainee.”
Another girl in a striped shirt arches an eyebrow at me, taking in my matted, greasy hair and drooping sweatpants. “Um, are you sure she’s the K-pop trainee? Maybe Leah was talking about another sister.”
Leah laughs awkwardly, plopping back on to the floor and setting down her hairbrush. “Nope . . . that’s her. I only have one unni.”
“The one and only,” I say.
Stripes looks stunned. “Are you serious?”
Damn, Mina and the others are no match for these vicious preteens.
Leah chokes out another laugh, her cheeks turning pink. “Come on, guys. Trust me. Remember those ninth-grade girls from school who followed her on the bus all the way to DB headquarters just to see if she was really a trainee? Don’t be dumb like them.”
“If you’re a real trainee, what can you tell us about DB?” one of the other girls asks. She leans forward, her eyes wide. “Do you ever see Jason Lee?”
“I heard he has a secret girlfriend that he only sees during the full moon,” the fourth girl says. “Is that true?”
“That’s so romantic.” Heart Face sighs. “Is it true that he picks a superfan off social media to surprise and spend the day with? He’s just the best!”
I laugh to myself. Even outside of DB, gossip can’t touch Jason “Angel Boy” Lee’s pristine reputation. “Um. Right . . . well, the thing is, I don’t really see him around.” It’s the truth, but I can tell that’s not the answer they were hoping for.
“Well, what about Electric Flower? Do they all get along? I bet Mr Noh favours Kang Jina. She’s obviously the prettiest.”
“I don’t . . . know?” My body is really feeling that thirty-minute spar, and I can barely keep up with their questions.
Stripes lets out an exasperated sigh, blowing her fringe out of her face. “How . . . interesting.” She tiptoes around my sweat-soaked sweatshirt that I threw on the floor. “I guess being a trainee isn’t as fun or . . . glamorous . . . as we thought it would be. Our bad . . . Come on, girls. Let’s go shopping at CoEx.” She nods at the other three but doesn’t make eye contact with Leah. They all get up and quickly walk single file past me, putting on their shoes.
“Um, but . . . wait! I love shopping!” Leah stumbles to her feet, watching as the girls leave. Her shoulders slump as Heart Face slams the door behind them. Ouch.
“I’m sorry, Le—” Before I can finish, she whirls around to me, her face flushed with anger. “Unni! Would it kill you to at least pretend to be a cool trainee?”
Stung, I draw back. “What? Don’t try to make this about me! Every week you have some new group of girls over here – why don’t you try making some friends that like you for you for once, instead of for the gossip they think you can deliver?”
“Well . . . maybe they would have liked me eventually! You know, if you hadn’t scared them away with your ahjussi sweatpants and gross hair,” she claps back. “I know there’s a women’s locker room at Appa’s gym. Stop being so lazy.”
I sigh. I know those girls aren’t real friends, but I also know that Leah is upset. Just like Appa, she never asked to leave New York and the life our family had there and move across the world so I could pursue my dream, and yet she’s supported me every step of the way. She was too young before, but I think there’s a part of her that wishes she could audition for the DB training program now. But everything I’ve gone through, though, Umma would never allow it and Leah knows it. So I probably could have put on a little show for her friends. What would have been the harm in it?
But it’s too late now.
I think of a way to cheer her up instead.
“Well, maybe the real reason I didn’t want to tell your friends about what’s happening at DB is because I wanted you to hear it first.” I plop down on the couch, patting the seat next to me. “Sisters get the inside scoop before anyone else.”
Tentatively, Leah sits down next to me. She makes a big show of not sitting too close. She isn’t ready to not be mad at me yet, but she’s too curious to resist. I ham it up, telling her all about my showdown with Mina in media training, Mina’s loaded invitation to the trainee house, and Mr Noh’s proclamation about how my future at DB depends on showing up tonight. She leans in closer and closer as I talk, her eyes widening with every word until she’s practically sitting in my lap.
“Unni,” she screams, shaking my shoulders. “A night at the trainee house! That sounds like a dream come true.”
I laugh, letting her jiggle me around like a bobblehead. “Don’t get too excited, little sis. You know there’s no way Umma will let me go.”
“Oh, you’re right,” Leah says, putting her face in her hands.
I think back to my conversation with Juhyun. “Of course,” I say determinedly, “I could always sneak out . . . ?”
Leah squeals. “I’ll help you with an escape plan! I already have one in mind!”
I narrow my eyes. “I hope it doesn’t involve climbing out the window of our eighteenth-floor apartment.” My younger sister is well-known in our family for her obsession with The Rock.
“Okay, so I’ll come up with a plan B.” Her eyes gleam. “As long as you get me Jason Lee’s autograph. You know he’s my ultimate bias!”
“Who should I get him to make it out to? Leah Kim, My Darling Future Wife?”
She screams again, falling back on the couch and kicking her legs up in the air in delight. “I’d die! No, first I’d frame it. Then I’d die.” She sits up, grabbing my hands. “Promise you’ll bury it with me.”
I laugh.
We hear the front door open and Umma’s voice calling out for us. Leah and I exchange glances. We lock pinkies, each of us leaning forward to kiss our fists and bump our cheeks together, our special Kim sister pinkie promise we created years ago.
Umma enters the living room, carrying a bag full of takeout from Two Two Fried Chicken. Dinner. Umma is a linguistics professor at Ewha Women’s University, and with her tenure review coming up, she’s usually too tired to come home and cook. Not that we complain. Umma’s idea of a home-cooked meal is cracking an egg over a pot of Shin Ramyun and topping it off with a slice of American cheese—delicious but not easy on the stomach. Plus, I feel like she feeds me noodles on purpose to make me bloated when I go into training the next day. Like some kind of subconscious, calorie-based sabotage.
“Hungry?” she asks, holding up the bag.
We dig in, pulling out boxes of steaming fried chicken and an array of banchan, including daikon kimchi and crisp salad smothered in what tastes like Big Mac sauce. It’s chilly for April, so the heated floor underneath our kitchen table is on, making it nice and toasty as I sit down and reach for a piece of yangnyeom chicken, the sweet and spicy sauce already sticking to my fingers, while Umma sets aside a few pieces of the green-onion chicken, Appa’s favourite. He’s at the gym late tonight, giving the punching bags their weekly scrub down (which is really code for his class in Intellectual Property Law), so it’s just the three of us for dinner.
“So how was your day, Leah?” Umma asks.
Leah chatters away about Kang Jina in Electric Flower (“She’s so pretty”), Jason Lee (“I heard he’s starting a charity to bring music therapy to young kids in Korea. Isn’t he just the sweetest?!”), and the latest K-drama on Netflix (“If Park Dohee on Oh My Dreams doesn’t get her memory back soon, I swear I’m going to stop watching”). Umma nods along, smiling distractedly as she picks at her salad. I carefully peel the skin off my chicken and wait for her to ask me how my day was. It’s Saturday, so she knows I’ve been at DB.
Finally, Leah’s chatter slows down and I mentally prepare, dreaming that, this time, Umma will ask me how my day at DB was and be sympathetic and understanding as I tell her about Mina and Mr Noh and give me her blessing to go to the trainee house tonight. But when she finally turns me, she says, “Did you finish your homework, Rachel? And the chores I asked you to do?” She shoots a pointed look at the sink full of unwashed dishes.
Poof. Dream gone.
My jaw tightens as I clench my teeth. “My day was great. Thanks so much for asking. I was training all day, and then I went to see Appa at the gym.” I pause. “Sorry about the chores,” I add, choking the words out like a chicken bone stuck in my throat. Not that I’m sorry for focusing on training, but her eyes are narrowing at me in that “I will make you regret the day you were born” way that she used to get whenever Leah or I were misbehaving on the subway during rush hour in New York.
She sighs, reaching into her tote bag on the table. “Always training. Why don’t you try something different? It’s not healthy being so obsessed with one thing.” She pulls out a huge stack of papers and hands them to me. I glance down and see universal college application stamped across the top. I feel dizzy with panic as my mum claps her hands, a huge smile on her face. “Rachel! I brought these home for you – tomorrow at Ewha there’s an educational seminar! It’s meant to prepare high school students for the college-application process. Why don’t you go? They can help you start to fill these out, and maybe I can even show you around the campus after.”
My chest fills with heat as I raise my hand to push away the stack of applications. But then I see Umma’s face – lips smiling, eyes hopeful – and a wave of guilt washes over me. We’ve been here for six years and I’ve still never seen the campus where she works – a far cry from the hours I used to spend reading books under her desk while she held office sessions. I pull the applications towards me with a sigh. “Umma,” I say carefully, “you know I would love to see Ewha, but I just . . . can’t. Tomorrow is Sunday.”
“We’re talking about the rest of your life, Rach, not just one day,” Umma says lightly.
“Sure. But . . . training is the rest of my life. Isn’t it? I mean, isn’t that why we came here?”
Leah puts down her chicken, her eyes moving between us worriedly. She’s used to me and Umma tiptoeing into these arguments.
Umma looks down at her plate and sighs. “There are . . . a lot of reasons why we came to Korea.” She opens her mouth like she’s about to say something more, but then she shakes her head slightly. She turns to me, and when she does, I can almost see tears in her eyes, but her voice is even and clear. “You know I used to be a volleyball player.” I resist the urge to roll my eyes – is Umma really going to compare her high school volleyball days to my K-pop training? “But where would I be now – where would our family be – if I had given up everything for that dream?”
“But that’s exactly what you’re asking me to do – to give up everything I’ve been working for just for some college seminar.” I shove a piece of chicken in my mouth, skin and all. To hell with the extra calories.
Umma shrugs, looking sad but determined. “I’m just suggesting that maybe you should keep your options open.” She picks at a piece of seasoned watercress on her plate. “You never know what the future might hold, Rachel. And if things don’t work out with your training . . . I just don’t want you to feel surprised.”
My eyes fill with tears, and I blink hard, unwilling to let them spill on to my face. Even after six years, my mum’s attitude towards my training still gets to me. Sometimes I wonder if she regrets moving to Seoul – if she wishes she had just sold Halmoni’s apartment and washed her hands of the whole thing. Or if she even believes in my talent. I bite my lip, about to excuse myself from dinner, when Leah jumps in, pushing herself on to her knees as she turns to face Umma.
“Actually, funny you should mention that seminar, Umma,” she says. “The Cho twins are having a weekend-long study session to prep for college. They’re even hiring a private tutor and studying late into the night. A study slumber party, I think they called it. Right, Unni?” She smiles innocently up at our mum.
I straighten up. It’s now or never, Rachel. “Right,” I say slowly.
“How did you know about that?” Umma asks Leah, raising her eyebrows.
“I overheard Rachel talking to Hyeri on KakaoTalk.” Leah lies easily.
I focus on chewing my chicken, trying to keep my face neutral. My sister, ladies and gentlemen, the future Oscar winner.
Umma’s gaze turns to me. “Why didn’t you mention this, Rachel? This is just what you need to get you on the right track.”
I nod, swallowing down a fresh surge of frustration along with my chicken. “I just . . . didn’t want to spend the night away when I haven’t even got to my chores yet.” I glance towards the full sink. “Sorry,” I add again for good measure.
“Oh,” Umma says. “Well, those dishes won’t take too long. Why don’t you finish up and head over to the Cho house? Knowing their parents, they’ll have hired the best tutor in Seoul. I’ll pack some leftover chicken for you to take.”
“Really?” I feel guilty for lying, but it’s quickly replaced by a buzzing energy that spreads across my body. My first night at the trainee house! One step closer to my dream. “Thanks, Umma.”
She smiles and begins to clear her plate away, packing a few pieces of chicken into a small bright-green Tupperware container. When her back is turned, Leah gives me a big thumbs-up. I wink at her and mouth, Thank you.
As soon as I’m done with the dishes, I hurl myself into the shower and quickly twist my wet hair into tight Dutch braids. I slip into a pair of black leggings and a creamy, cosy oversize off-the-shoulder sweater top that is the perfect amount of slouch. I throw on my comfiest pair of pyjamas—the cartoon Snoopy ones I bought at Namdaemun last spring—over the whole ensemble so Umma won’t get suspicious seeing me all dressed up. With one last glance in the mirror, I grab my bag, quickly scooping up Umma’s Tupperware, and head out for my first night at the trainee house.
Umma’s words are ringing in my ears as I walk to the bus stop. If things don’t work out . . . I just don’t want you to feel surprised. Of course I’ve always known that being a K-pop star is not a guarantee, but I’ve wanted this dream for so long, I’m not sure I even know what the alternative looks like.
It all started when I was six years old. There was one other Asian girl in my class, Eugenia Li. Even though she was Chinese, everyone was always asking us if we were cousins or twin sisters. I didn’t think much of it until one day when I got stung by a bee during recess. I was sitting in the nurse’s office, waiting for Umma to come and take me home, when Mrs Li walked through the door. The nurse didn’t realize she had done anything wrong and instead was all smiles as she told me that my mum was there to get me. For the first time, I realized the world didn’t see me the way I saw me, or the way my family saw me. All they saw was my face; the shape of my eyes and my nose; my thick, straight black hair – and it made me interchangeable with girls like Eugenia, even though we looked nothing alike. When my mum finally picked me up at school, I couldn’t stop crying. The bee sting was still burning on my skin, but when Umma asked me what was wrong, all I could think about was Mrs Li. “I wish I wasn’t Korean,” I remember sobbing into her shirt. So she scooped me up and carried me home, and when we got there, she tucked me into bed and grabbed her laptop. That was the first time I saw a K-pop music video. We watched them for hours, and I marvelled at the singers – all so unique and beautiful and talented.
I was hooked. I watched K-pop music videos constantly, memorizing the lyrics to my favourite ones and putting on little shows for Leah at the weekends. The music made me feel proud to be Korean.
I wish I could say that time with Mrs Li and the school nurse was the only time I ever felt rejected by the world, but it wasn’t. There were the kids who made fun of the kimchi Umma packed me for lunch; the woman who once came up to me in our corner bodega, screaming at me that I should “go home” (even though I lived around the block, I got the feeling that wasn’t what she meant); there was the time I dressed like Hermione Granger for Halloween and everyone insisted that I was Cho Chang. Through it all, there was K-pop. It made me feel understood, like there was a place in the world where I belonged, where people would see me for me.
I’m thinking about all this as I walk to the bus stop. The spring Seoul air is breezy and crisp, sidewalks littered with so many fallen cherry blossoms that they stick to the bottom of your shoes, turning the whole city into a haze of pearly pink petals. I walk to the corner, popping into the Buy the Way for a Pocari Sweat, and then hop on the bus to the trainee house, a few blocks down from DB headquarters. The seats are filled with young couples in matching sweatshirts sharing earbuds, businessmen and -women watching old episodes of Running Man on their phones as they head home from work, and halmonis clutching canvas granny carts stuffed to the brim with groceries and empty bottles. I plop down on a seat and tip the last of my drink into my mouth as the breeze from the open window whips back my braids. The old lady next to me pokes me in the side, gesturing to my empty can. “Dah mashussuh?”
“Neh, Halmoni,” I say, handing it over.
“Komawoh,” she replies, pinching my cheek. “Ayy ipuda, ipuda!”
I bow my head. “Kamsahamnida.”
The bus careens down the street, barely skidding to a stop when people want to get on or off. In New York, I was never allowed on public transportation by myself, so getting used to it when we moved was a big learning curve. Luckily, just like the rest of Seoul, the buses and subway system are fast, super clean, and easy to use. But the best part of life in this city? There is free wi-fi literally everywhere you go.
I pull out my phone and send a quick text to Hyeri: If my mum asks, I was at your house tonight.
She immediately texts back: Sure,
I laugh but shove my phone back in my pocket without replying. The less they know, the less likely it is that they’ll slip up if interrogated. I’m so buzzed from the adrenaline of lying to Umma and going to the trainee house that I get off one stop early and walk the rest of the way. I need to get some of this energy out before I face Mina and the others.
I’m about half a block away when I realize I still need to change out of my pyjamas.
I duck behind a particularly large bush lining the sidewalk and unbutton my pyjama top, stuffing it into my tote before pulling my sweater on over my head. I’m watching the street, making sure that no one is approaching as I wiggle out of my pyjama pants. They catch on my ankles and my fingers fumble, but I can’t stop myself in time. I trip over the pyjama’s pretzel twist around my legs, spinning and falling face first in the dirt.
I groan, sitting up slowly and brushing the dirt off my sweater. Thank god no one saw that.
“Wow . . . that looked like it hurt.”
Everything in my body freezes. I turn my head and see two brand-new white-and-black Puma sneakers standing on the sidewalk. My gaze drifts upwards, taking in a pair of perfectly tailored Ader Error track pants and a Burberry sweater that I’m sure cost more than my entire wardrobe, all worn by a boy with silvery highlights in his hair, sparkling brown eyes, and cheekbones that could probably cut glass.
Not just a boy. The boy. Jason Lee.
Holy shit.
“You okay?” he asks, a concerned smile on his face. “Here, let me help you.” He holds out his hand.
“You’re . . . Jason . . . Lee,” I stammer, my face on fire. Even before shooting to stardom with DB, Jason was famous for his YouTube K-pop covers. After one of his videos went viral, Mr Noh himself flew to Toronto and convinced Jason to move to Seoul, where he quickly became Korea’s most beloved pop star. Being half White, half Korean actually works for him here, with everyone from preteens to stalker fans to ahjummas praising him for his big, double-lidded eyes and olive complexion, as if he handpicked his genes himself. Somehow his foreigner status gets him voted “Korea’s Sexiest K-pop Star”, while mine gets me mandatory Korean culture lessons.
“Oh, so you’ve heard of me?” He arches an eyebrow, his smile widening. He’s definitely got the smile-like-the-world-is-your-friend thing down – for him, the world probably is. “What kind of things?”
“Well, my sister Leah told me about your musical therapy chari—”
“Voice of an angel? Smile of the devil? Body of a god?”
“Uh . . . what?”
“You know, most girls faint when they see me. But I guess you did fall, so that’s something,” he says, almost to himself. “So, tell me, what are they saying these days?” He beams down at me, his mouth open in a ridiculously cute smile.