Finding the Right Words

Chapter 10- Since You're My Roommate

Min Hee sat down on her bed and regarded me. "So, Melissa, why were you out in the hallway with Super Junior M's Henry?"

"Oh, come on, don't even start to think like that. I got here yesterday. I asked SM to give me an English-speaking guide. They gave me Henry." 

She seemed genuinely surprised. "Chincha?"

"Yup. Don't try it yourself, though. He gets distracted really easily."

"Oh... arresseo."

She spoke English for the most part, I noticed, but she had a tendency to slip into Korean. It was the majority of her accent, but there was something else in there, too..."

"Let's start this over, since we're going to have to be together in this room for a while," I began, "I'm Melissa, but you can call me Mel. I'm seventeen, and come from Wisconsin, U.S.A. You?"

"My name is Min Hee. I'm almost eighteen, and come from England, but I've only lived there five years."

"Oh, so you're British! I knew you had an accent! I mean no insult there, I was just trying to figure it out."

"So, how'd you get here, Mel?"

"I auditioned. I know it's a long way from Wisconsin to California, but circumstances were in my favor."

"What did you get in for, I mean?"

"Um... songwriting?"

She seemed absolutely confused by this. "You mean you didn't get in for your singing? Or dancing?"

"Well, I wouldn't say that my singing voice is all that bad, but I'm a fairly horrible dancer. Just to be honest. I'd say that I probably got in because I said I would fix their Engrish problem. Just at a guess."

"You're not here to be a serious artist?" She stood up, seeming a bit upset. 

"What? What did I do?"

"How do they accept people like you?! You think you can just waltz in here, get all of the SM resources, and just 'songwrite?!' Are you here just to play!?"

Woah, this girl was getting mad! I wasn't really sure what to do. As usual, I had said the exact and obvious truth as I saw it. Usually people didn't start yelling at me when I did that. Although there had always been exceptions.

"Woah, Min Hee, calm down! I'm not here just to play! I seriously came to be a songwriter for SM!"

"And how much did you work for that? I've been training to become a musician my entire life. Since I was five. Piano lessons, singing lessons, dance classes- all for the sake of becoming an artist someday. It's my dream. And then somehow people like you get accepted, and don't even try! You probably auditioned for SM just because you couldn't get into any American companies!"

She was getting close to tears right about then, and I had absolutely no idea what to do. If it were one of my friends I would just appease them with chocolate, because that always works, but this was a girl I had literally just met a few minutes ago that was now screaming at me. So, as usually happens when I don't know what to do in a situation... I lost my head. Blew my cool. 

"And what do you expect me to do about it?! Do you think I went to that audition believing that I'd get in? No! Just like you said, it hadn't been my dream, I hadn't been working towards it my entire life. I didn't expect to get in. I just wanted to try! But now that I'm here, I realize that the one thing I want to do in life is the one thing that SM needs! Too many people have been turned away from Kpop because of the laughable Engrish. Too many people have lost the chance to listen to incredible music because they couldn't get past the ridiculous English words. That made me feel horrible! They were ridiculing artists that I loved! And I realized that I can fix that! So you say that your dream is to become a Kpop artist. My dream is to get those artists listened to."