star shopping

 2A.M - SM entertainment building. 

After a long and tiring day at the studio, Aeri thought that she was finally going to be able to rest soon. Her mixing desk was still open with Jimin’s voice isolated in her headphones, when her phone lit up on the side of her desk. She quickled glanced at the notification and her fingers tightened around the half finished mug of coffee she was holding. 

HYBExSM Upcoming bootcamp: Mandatory attendance. 

What a way to ruin her already shitty day. 

She didn’t even have to open the email to know she wouldn’t be pleased with the content, the subject was enough to give away her future nightmare. Her phone buzzed twice more, and she guessed that it was probably from one of the members who had also been sent the email. She picked up her phone, running a hand through her hair. 

Aeri’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. She let out a humorless laugh as she sent back a middle finger to Minjeong. She pulled her headphones back in place and focused her attention back on the synth line she had been trying to build around Jimin’s vocals. 

After trying too hard for another fifteen minutes without making any progress, she saved the project and opened her Soundcloud archive. She hadn’t looked at it in months, way too busy on her main projects to have fun on her own. Her account was still the same, filled with public beats that were loved by most, but she had made sure to remove her producer tag when she had first started training and signed the contract under SM. 

She played some of them and slightly shook her head, in part admiration for the person she used to be, and part mortification for how shitty of a producer she once had been. She scrolled past her own stuff to the collaborations. There weren’t many of them, she had had trouble with some users before, so she had avoided pairing up with others for collabs. 

There was a remix with some guy who had later gone on to produce for YG, that now acted as if he didn’t know her, one with a scumbag that now worked for a smaller company, and another one that immediately caught her eyes. 

Aeri clicked on it and sucked in a sharp breath. The sloppy guitar strumming hit her ears first, she remembered vividly how Yunjin had been sitting on the couch behind her, humming vaguely as she played with the strings of her guitar. They had quickly recorded it, and Aeri had written down anything that came to mind. The beat in itself was simple, they had settled on adding a simple kick + snare and light hi-hats  to highlight the guitar and vocals. Aeri had attenuated the highs and played with the reverb settings to make it more distant. They had shared the mic to record rough vocals they had blended later on. 

All that within a night, and to this day, it was still the song Aeri liked most. She could still remember Yunjin’s eyes on her as they listened to the mix for the first time, could still feel her lips on hers when she kissed her in a club’s bathroom in Itaewon two weeks later. 

The song had been the trigger to whatever she had been feeling afterwards. But that also happened to be six years ago, long before their names began to be mentioned in the same sentence with the aim of comparing them. She leaned back in her chair and bit down her lower lip, if only things had played out differently. 

She shut down her computer and quickly grabbed her bag to head back home. On the way there, she thought about how she imagined the boot camp’s schedule would be like. It was four days long, she would most likely be assigned a work partner and they would probably be given instructions to work on something together. Deep inside, she knew that partners wouldn’t be random and that her lovely company would probably fuck up her mental health further, as if she didn’t have enough to think about for the upcoming aespa comeback. The only positive point was that she didn’t have to pack much when it came to bootcamps. 

Jimin and Yizhuo showed up at the studio with takeout the night before her flight. One thing she adored about working with the aespa members was that they were all close. Having trained together before their debut, they had become friends and now spent most of their time hanging out together, even when their schedules didn’t require them to do so. And Aeri knew she could always count on them to be there when she needed them. Which was exactly why, without even asking, two of them were now keeping her company before the departure. 

Jimin set down the bags on the coffee table and went straight to the aux cord to keep Aeri from looping any more sad beats. 

“You’ll be fine,” Jimin sat down on the couch, tucking her legs under her. “It’s only four days long.” 

Aeri shot her a glare and rubbed her temples. “Four days with Yunjin.” 

Yizhuo looked up from her phone with an arched brow. “Is this really a problem or are you just playing along to whatever the companies have been pushing at this point?”

Aeri’s jaw dropped. “You can’t be for real.” 

“I’m just saying,” Yizhuo held her hands up. “You’ve been doing this rival producer thing for the past three years and I’ve never actually heard you say her music is bad.” 

“Well yes, her music isn’t bad. If anything, it's great.” Aeri looked at her confusingly. 

“There, you got it,” Yizhuo shrugged and picked up chopsticks. 

Aeri could feel Jimin’s eyes on her. They had been working together for long enough for Aeri to know that she desperately wanted to say something. “What?” Aeri fiddled with the armrest of her chair mindlessly. 

“Nothing,” Jimin reached over to steal a piece of chicken from her plate. “Just that you’re going to LA with like ten other producers yet you’re only stressed about one of them. That’s it.” 

Aeri caught the way Yizhuo nearly choked on her drink and rolled her eyes, purposefully avoiding Jimin’s. “I’m not stressed.”