A K-Pop Utopia (A Black Kitty Series, Book 2)

Chapter 34: The Power of Music

We hadn't worked for more than thirty minutes when Zoey said:

"I feel brain dead."

I looked at her and noticed her rubbing both sides of her temples with her eyes closed. This thing was really getting to her, and a lot faster than I thought. I had a feeling it was going to get to a whole lot of us too.

"Should I get you some water?" Jongup asked.

"Ya, I really need it," said Zoey as she dropped her hands.

"Stop getting so stressed out, Zoey," said Christine as Jongup got up from the floor and headed for the door. "We're all here to help each other out, you know."

"No, I think it must be the chocolate dip doughnuts," Zoey gave an embarrassing smile. "I must have had too many of them."

"Well, who loves doughnuts now?" Christine asked with her eyes fixed on me.

"You do," Daniel and I said at the same time. The two of us looked at each other and smiled.

Christine looked downcast and said nothing more.

"I thought you were getting stressed out for sure, Zoey," said Yong-guk.

"Nothing stresses me out that easily," said Zoey with so much enthusiasm.

"Really?" Himchan asked, looking up at Zoey from the paper he was holding in his hands.

"I wouldn't believe her so easily if I were you," said Mike.

Zoey threw Mike a look. Uh-oh. Now isn't the time to start arguing. It would just eat up time. I had to do something before Zoey utters a single word.

"Zoey, calm yourself," said Yong-nam, seated beside me, beating me to it. "Just ignore him."

"Ya, whatever," said Zoey, this time, calmly as she averted her eyes away from Mike. But I could still see that look. This was far from over.

I turned to look at Yong-nam and wondered how he was able to calm Zoey with only a few words. Zoey isn't an easy person to deal with. Even I've difficulty with her sometimes.

Yong-nam must have noticed my eyes on him because he quickly turned to look at me and I quickly looked at the paper in my hands, pretending to be going through B.A.P's lyrics.

Even though B.A.P's song is in Korean, Yong-guk and Young-jae helped translate it to English. And so far, the lyrics were well and good. But just like us, they were struggling to come up with more. This is why we were all here together to work it out.

A pencil lay in front of me on the table, and I took it, twisting and turning it around as I thought. Their song is an inspirational one, the kind that lifts people's spirits up and encourage them to move on in life no matter what they're going through. I had to admit, I hadn't written such in a long time. Coming up with these lyrics may seem easy, but it's actually a whole lot difficult.

"Any ideas, sis?" Daniel asked.

I looked at him and wondered why he said that. "Huh?"

He pointed at the pencil in my hand and I hadn't noticed that I was still turning it around with my index and middle fingers. I stopped and shrugged at him, still not getting what he meant.

"Whenever you do that, then some kind of idea is brewing in that head of yours," he said.

"Not quite," I said. "I just realised that I haven't written this kind of song in a long time."

"Well, that head of yours better be working," said Zoey with her eyebrow raised at me. "You don't want to go back to the hotel without any progress. Lee won't give us our reward."