"Jeongwoo? Choi Jeongwoo?" The man who had previously asked us to wait in the room came to find me. We were at a major media house. We had been asked to come in for a photoshoot for one of their popular entertainment magazines. We had already finished our group photoshoot and they had begun the individual shoot with our leader Mingyu while the rest of us were asked to wait in the adjacent room after getting our outfits and make-up fixed. They had said that they would call us in one by one."Yes. Coming." I turned to Jaehyeon and handed my phone over to him. "Hold on to this for me, won't you?""Sure. Go." He took it from me.I followed the man into the studio. Yeojun had just finished. As I entered, he was leaving. "Good work.""Hyung, best luck." He patted my shoulder.They were waiting for me.I gave them my best smile and bowed. "I am Choi Jeongwoo. I look forward to working with you!""As are we." The man wearing black-framed rectangular glasses with his jacket thrown over his sho
"Ah. I feel like I was whipped around in a tornado and dropped to the ground just now." Jaehyeon let out an exhausted breath as he plopped onto his bed in the hotel room that we were sharing.I was already lying on my bed, arms outstretched, staring hard at the ceiling. Physically, I could feel the fatigue but mentally, I was wide awake. "Hyung, did you see how full the venue was?" Like recalling images from a dream, I could still see it- the dancing lights, the sea full of faces before us shouting for us, the unfamiliar stage, the noise, the adrenaline rush.Our first international live…"I saw it." He looked at me seriously. "We were sold-out, Jeongwoo."Our first international live and we were already sold-out. "'To You' is 17 on the Top 100 list. 'Yeongweonhi Norae' is 24th. 'Kkeum Eh Seo' and 'Where We Are' have also made it onto the list." I stated the facts we had been informed of immediately after day one of our concert. "Is this what a good break feels like? Ah. I can't feel
"Hyung!" Yeojun clung to my arm. "I feel so blessed!""Blessed?" I chuckled. We had just gotten into our agency's black van after coming out of the airport."Yes, blessed." He nodded. "We can't expect our families to be at the airport to welcome us but we had so many True show up today!""I had considered the possibility when we were on the plane but to have actually been received like that…" I agreed. "A blessing, huh?""You could have lowered your hoodie, Jeongwoo. They were screaming for it. It wouldn't have hurt." Hanseol said."I… could have but…""Jeongwoo was too overwhelmed by it all to even react." Jaehyeon laughed. "Am I right?"Did being roommates allow him the ability to peek into my head? "Not really…" I looked away. "The hair's just too bright so early in the morning.""Was I the only one who saw that short-haired girl in a home-made 'To You' outfit with similar blue hair holding up a board with 'Jeongwoo Oppa' on it?" Mingyu enquired."I noticed that too." She was the f
It was rare to find myself alone at the dorm. Given that we were five of us and that we weren't the kind who had much going on individually, someone or the other was always around when I was.I checked the time in between playing the soccer game on my phone. It was about 07:24 pm.I was starting to get hungry.Yeojun and Mingyu were the only other ones who had been home initially. Jaehyeon and Hanseol had gone for a guest appearance on a game show. From what I knew, they would be late in returning. Mingyu had gone to meet his sister who had suddenly called and said that she was in the area and Yeojun had run down to the convenience store after losing at Rock-Paper-Scissor against me to buy something instant to cook for dinner since neither of us was really in the mood for cooking anything extensive. Manager Park had gone with Jaehyeon and Hanseol and so it was Manager Kim who had dropped us home by around 06:40 pm.I sighed and got comfortable on the couch in the living area again. I
Surely enough, the video of the incident at the convenience store turned up on the internet the next morning. What was infuriating was how it had been cut and edited to show only the parts where Yeojun was being a little aggressive, like when he shoved the man. Moreover, the guy's face had been conveniently censored out. By the time DayBreak could do anything about it, it had done the rounds on Twitter and other SNS platforms. It was really difficult for DayBreak to contain it and they couldn't quite pin the account from which it was first shared.'S.T.A.Y Jun's real personality?''Kim Yeojun- not so sweet anymore.''Yeojun vs. Jun.''The Evil Maknae.'"This is too much!" Jaehyeon huffed as he dropped heavily into the nearby chair. We were in one of the meeting rooms in DayBreak's building. "That video is hardly anything to go by!""No one knows what happened." I frowned and leaned against the big table in the middle of the room. "We should just release a statement clarifying what had
Thailand got confirmed.2 weeks after the scary run-in that Yeojun had had, things had died down quite a bit. Comments were still doing their rounds online but I had also consciously stopped following up on what everyone was saying on Twitter and other such platforms. I read what I needed to and then backed away.However, there was one thing that popped up in between that made even me pause and falter in my resolve to stay unaffected.'S.T.A.Y's popularity seems to have more to do with 04:00 am than S.T.A.Y themselves.'That was more of a personal attack for me though, given my history with 04:00 am and its members- or rather, member. Ever since debut, we were seen as 04:00 am's Hoobaes. We were always their little brothers, especially after they became so popular.Even though the extent to which our friendship goes has not quite been made public, people knew that we were closer than other groups within DayBreak itself. That made them pitch us together often.To say that S.T.A.Y becam
"15 minutes." Mingyu said, turning his attention to the food before him. We were in the recording studio on the first floor of DayBreak Entertainment's building. We had all gathered there for lunch since the room was empty.That was when I had gotten the text message."I'll buy you ice cream. 20 minutes." I smiled as sweetly as I could have."Manager-nim wants us to be ready to leave in 15 minutes." He shook his head. "You'll get 15 minutes.""That's hardly much." I thought about it for a moment. "You had said that your headphones were not working? I'll buy you a new pair.""This is bribe. Hyung, you're bribing me. Won't work." He shook his head yet again. "15 minutes.""17 minutes.""What sort of number is that even?" He gave me a weird look."It'll take you 3 minutes to actually go there and come back." Yeojun calculated. "Mingyu Hyung, just let him have his 20 minutes.""Yeah. I mean, what kind of a leader are you if you can't even buy me five more minutes?" I clicked my tongue at
I could never get used to Thai.Given that there were a lot of Thai True, in the little time that we had, I had tried to pick up at least a little bit of the Thai language but I had failed miserably. I couldn't get past the first few words. Hanseol, on the other hand, turned out to have a hidden talent for learning foreign languages. He could make at least basic conversation. The others were doing slightly better than I was.Thankfully for us, the male anchor of the show that we had been invited to go on could speak Korean decently well, mixed in with some English. "You've been doing a lot of promotional work off-late. Thailand has just loved having you here too! How has your experience been so far?"We were all seated at a long table in an outdoor setting. It was pretty warm out and we were all dressed rather lightly. We had finished most of our live performances in Thailand. There was only one more left and that was on a show 2 days later. Our trip had been extended to 20 days to ac