Chapter Text
Sophie
When I first got my university scholarship, I knew I would be set for life.
Uni would breeze past and I’d graduate, knowing my time “studying” was actually spent going to clubs, partying and meeting boys. Music degrees are easy enough and with money from the scholarship I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.
Then why am I currently functioning on 2 hours of sleep, walking from my job as a cleaning lady to my unpaid internship?
As it turns out, that university scholarship pays for my course and then… about one fried chicken family box… a semester. I might be thin and if I were smart enough I might just be able to ration the fried chicken over a term, but I’ve seen my four-year-old neighbour eat 2 family boxes in one sitting.
University is not what I thought it would be, if you couldn’t tell. It was already bad enough, but now I have an added mandatory internship thing I have to do, since Professor Nickels continues to be overly adamant about how “to be a real musician, one has to be around real musicians.” I attempted to stop my internship from going ahead at ALL costs, with obviously no results. I even tried telling Professor Nickels that he was “the realest musician I knew” and that “I wouldn’t need to do an internship placement if I already see a super real musician every day.” Those pleas ended up getting me nowhere, except for having the course guidelines shoved into my face by an extremely giddy Professor Nickels with a stroked ego.
I take my airpods out of my ears as I look up at the huge building, a building of what I can only assume must be filled with lots of super real musicians. I sigh, rubbing my eyes as I enter the glass doors at the front. As I walk into the empty reception, I check my hand, forcing my eyes to focus on the room number I scribbled down earlier.
“Recording Room 12B,” I read, quickly deciding my best bet is to ask the front desk lady where to go. I head towards a stern-looking woman, who is wearing perhaps the most pristine, un-crinkled suit I’ve ever seen in my life, her hair neatly tucked into a pinned-down bun. Even as I come closer to her, she doesn’t make eye contact with me, continuing to type as I stand there in awkward silence.
“Yes?” The lady grumbles, still looking down at her computer.
“Oh, um,” I stumble nervously. “So, I’m an intern here-”
“Mhmm?” She looks up, finally making eye contact with me, making me feel suddenly very self-conscious about the Spongebob sweater I decided to throw over my work clothes on the way here.
“Recording Room 12B,” I quickly add, noticing the woman’s irritability.
“Take the elevator, 12th floor, turn left,” she points behind her before tilting her head down at the desk, searching the surface. She hands me a blue lanyard and after taking it, I leave her with a soft bow, making my way towards the elevator. The elevator door opens, without me even needing to press a button, or wait at all.
I stare into the lift, it’s one of those fancy ones. You know, the lifts with mirrors on all sides and polished granite as handlebars, in case… I don’t know… you need to hold on because the elevator is going up too fast?
I chuckle to myself at the thought of people holding onto the hand rails as the elevator speeds up the shaft at top speeds.
“Door. Closing.” The elevator announces loudly, bringing me back to reality. I stand awkwardly in the lift for a few seconds, looking around wondering why I’m not going anywhere. I chuckle lightly at myself, noticing the floor buttons are flashing, practically begging for me to press one.
“Level. Twelve. Please scan. Your key card.” The elevator explains to me as I take my finger off of the ‘12’ button. I stare down at the lanyard, now crushed up in my hand, looking for a barcode to scan.
“Intern Sofie,” I snort at the spelling mistake on the card. The least that front lady chick could do was spell my name right.
I find the barcode right underneath my misspelt name, pushing it against the little scanner thingy and without any prompting, the lift begins to go up at an unusual speed. Damn, I know why they installed those handlebars.
After maybe the most traumatic elevator experience I have EVER had in my life, I stumble out of the lift, turning left down the corporate hallway. I only take a few steps before seeing the first door, the sign over it reading ‘Recording Room 12B’. I turn to face the door, nervously bringing my hand up to give it a knock. I wasn’t nervous before, I don’t even feel nervous now. I have no idea why right now, the second before I have to meet… whoever I have to meet… my hands start aggressively shaking.
As I take a deep breath in, I give the door a light knock. To my surprise, before I could even manage to take a step back, the door bursts open, nearly whacking me straight in the face. I let out a light gasp, halting it before the girl from behind the door could notice my reaction.
“Sophie?” The girl asks. She looks about my age, except probably a foot shorter than me, putting me in direct eyeline with her hair, which is an obnoxious green colour, giving her an overall resemblance of a stubby highlighter.
“Yes,” I nod, flashing ‘highlighter girl’ a small smile as she walks around me, prompting me to face the other side of the hall.
“Good, I’m Lin.”
Thank god, she has a name.
“Lin?” I ask.
“Yeah, short for Linda,” she adds, shoving a clipboard into my hands.
“Better than being nicknamed ‘Da’ I guess,” I chuckle awkwardly as she returns the same awkward laugh. Ok, what the actual fuck was that.
“Ok, you ready?”
“I guess,” I mutter and she nods in response, putting her hands on my shoulders and spinning me around towards the shut door, the clipboard still plastered to my chest.
“Just… what am I meant to be doing?” I quickly turn my head around, looking back at Lin over my shoulder.
“Oh… Just, sit there, watch them, write some useless shit down in your notebook.”
“Will I need to help them with anything though?” I ask in response, looking down at Lin’s previous notes on the clipboard.
“Not really. There’s coffee, drinks, collecting something from the printer on occasion, but otherwise not really.”
By the time I look up from my clipboard, Lin is halfway down the hall, practically sprinting for the lift. Great. I open the door, slowly stepping into the room, noticing three guys sitting at a desk up against the glass recording studio.
The guy closest to me looks up at me with wide eyes, pushing hair that was currently stuck in between his eyes and his glasses back into the corner of his cap. He gives me a light smile as I bow towards them. The second guy was big, his hair covering his face as he lightly bowed down in my direction. He gave me a smile as he went back into his neutral seating position, revealing his warm face. The last guy however, could barely get his face out of his laptop, continuing to spam his mouse around his screen. I decide to ignore him, he’s probably busy doing super real musician stuff anyway.
Still standing by the door awkwardly, I look around the room, noticing disks and photos plastered onto the walls. My eyes finally glance at the black couch near the back of the room, behind the trio’s desk.
“Yeah, uh just sit there,” The first guy clears his throat, flicking his head over in the general direction of the sofa. I sit down awkwardly, interlocking my hands, resting them on my knees.
“So, you can just call me Han,” he breaks the silence, nudging the second guy to introduce himself.
“I’m Changbin,” he spins his chair around, directing himself at me. Han and Changbin both look over at the last guy, waiting for him to acknowledge my arrival, Changbin poking his elbow into him. The guy, with no hesitation, spins his chair all the way around, facing directly towards me, allowing me to see him for the first time.
He’s wearing a black beanie, covering most of his curly hair, except for some stray pieces that reach his eyebrows. He’s wearing all black… a black shirt, pants, shoes… everything is black.
“Bangchan,” he smiles lightly, putting his hand out, ready to shake mine, snapping me back into reality. I tilt my head slightly, shocked at his sudden sincerity, just staring at his hand for a second. My hand finally meets his and he gives it a singular, stern shake before turning back around and continuing whatever he was doing before.
To be honest, this experience isn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, watching these three musicians do their thing is actually kind of… a little interesting? Although I hate to admit it, I continuously find myself trying to lean further and further over Bangchan’s shoulder, just trying to get a better view of what they’re doing. We haven’t said anything to each other since the less than ideal first introductions, but the notes in my book are looking great, like I actually have the energy or inspiration to write helpful notes for myself, instead of stealing them off some smart person who happens to be in the same lecture hall as me. Suddenly a wave of exhaustion hits me, my notes becoming less and less detailed by the minute.
I mean, I knew the exhaustion was going to bite me in the ass at some point, considering the less than ideal 2 hours of sleep I got, but why now? Why does coffee have to die down so soon?
My eyes slowly begin to shut, and the last thing I hear is the rapid clicking of Bangchan’s mouse. I need to sleep, but fuck, on my first day of this internship?