When I Found Myself

Good Opportunities, Better Outcomes

This Haven is actually your other "get out of jail free card" (even if she gets you into most of the trouble). She's also basically your free therapist at this point judging from all your talks about your feelings and other sloppy, shitty stuff like that. Your emotional bond with her is definitely the deepest and you feel like Haven truly understands you. She made it on the trip by barely scraping fifth place by a singular tenth of a point higher of a GPA.

The youngest, Sophia, is definitely the comic relief of the group. You obviously love her to bits, and that's not the only reason you're friends with her, but her jokes are always perfectly timed to bring anyone out of a downwards spiral. Soph's also the one to fall head over heels in love with a guy she barely caught a glimpse of, and she's very excited to be in Seoul. She's still a junior so she got invited by Elana.

Speaking of Elana, she is your closest friend. You two have gotten to a point where you could just waltz through her front door, and no one would bat an eye. Her family has become your family, and because of that you call her parents mum and dad ironically. Whenever shit gets rough for you, your escape is always to her, whether over FaceTime or heading to her place for the night. Nobody was surprised when Elana had the highest GPA in the class, and she invited Soph.

Then there's Lexie. She was the first one to walk up to you at that private school in Britain. The two of your were only in ssecond grade then, and you've been best mates ever since. After you moved from Australia, you had no one, but Lexie was the one to change that for you. She brought you out of your shell and opened you up to this great group of girls you have now. She was invited by her boyfriend, who scored number three.

Lexie also happens to be the most excited to be in Seoul (you could tell because she spent the whole flight muttering about how excited she is). Both of you have become huge STAYs, and the one thing she's hoping to accomplish on this trip is catch a glance of a Stray Kids member.

As if in sync with your thoughts, the bouncy, blonde haired girl walks up behind you and sighs, "oh, I just want to see them. That'd be enough."

"God, Lexie. We get it." That'd be Lauren. She's walking up on your right, rolling her eyes.

As the two of them start arguing about the hotness of Korean men, the rest of your party joins you. Sophia predictably joins in on their conversation as Mrs. Potter leads the way to where the ten of you will be staying. The other three people along for the ride are Josh, Lexie's boyfriend, Jake (a really hot hockey guy, who placed fourth), and Caleb (another hot hockey guy, who Jake invited.

Sunday, July 21st, 2019, 5:15 AM

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 After probably ten minutes of arguing with Haven about whether or not you're going on a walk, you finally got out of the cramped hotel. The streets of Seoul are surprisingly quiet, only a couple of people are up this early on the weekends, so you had some room to think.

Using the amazing thing known as Google Maps, you find your way to a nearby park. The walk from the hotel is a mile and a half, but you still enjoy it. There's just the outside air, the blinking yet soft lights, and no one here to judge you. After you arrive and walk around for a bit, you sit down on a park bench and open up your notebook you always carry with you.

There's been a melody in your head during your time outside, and you want to put words to it. After you label the top of the page with the date you open your phone up to the app that holds all of your voice recordings of pieces of songs. These recordings are very special to you, it's almost as if they each hold a little piece of you. You press the button to create a new folder and label it the same way you did in your notebook. Then, after humming the melody a couple times to really get what you want it to sound like, you record and your sweet voice fills the air and travels into your microphone to be saved forever in the folder.

You spend a good half hour working out lyrics in both Spanish (your father is Korean-Venezuelan, so he taught you) and English. Your in a good mood, so you sing of the good times with your friends and how they made your story a happier one. After your both satisfied with how it turned out and uncomfortable or sitting that on on a chair with no back, you get back up to walk around a bit more.

Taking your earbuds out of your pocket, and looking for a suitable playlist to listen to, you start wandering around the small park. Eventually, you decide to play your playlist with all of your favorite songs by Stray Kids, and you're dancing a little to the impossibly good music 3Racha inhumanly produced.

Once a couple songs go by, you decide to begin the mile and a half walk back to where you're staying. When you turn around to figure out the right way to get to the hotel, you notice a man standing in a nearby storefront, and it looks as if he's looking right at you. He's dressed in a red hoodie with black sweats and white running shoes. The hood is pulled over his head so you can't see what he looks like at all, you're assuming it's a man by his bulky figure. You just brush it off as a man with a staring problem though, and start walking home.

If he starts following me, I'll just walk in circles, and call the cops on him if I need to. But why the fuck would he follow me, anyway?

You'd be lying, however, if you said you weren't at least a little freaked out by guys with staring problems.

Once again following the magic of Google Maps, you decide to take a different rout back, even if it is a little bit longer. You just want to take in as much as you can of the city, this very well may be the only time you get to lay eyes on this place, so you want to make it last. It's not long after you start walking again that the sun starts to light up the morning sky. You smile to yourself, enjoying the beauty of the city with the orange, now slowly fading into pink, sky as a backdrop. Your mind is completely taken off the mysterious man as more people start filling the streets. None of them even glance your way as they go about their daily business, and that makes you happy. There is no one here against you, there's no one here you'd even know, and you're content with that.

It probably would've been best if you remembered the man in the storefront during that return home, but maybe not. He did open the one door that changed your life, even if a few others closed behind you in the process.

The same man in the red hoodie some how managed to catch up with you, and he meets you on an intersection between two busy roads and wordlessly hands a slip of paper to you. You try in vain to get his attention and ask him what this's all about, but your lack of knowledge in the Korean language disables you from succeeding in that.

With a little hesitation, you look at what he handed you. It's a business card... for JYP.

It contains what you guess is a phone number, and nothing else you can understand except for the JYP logo. With barely muted excitement, you store the card in your jacket pocket and double up your speed in getting home.

This'll be a nice surprise for the girls.

You decide not to tell them right away, but think a little more into it. It'd be best to try and figure out what the card says before telling anyone about it; don't want to get any hopes up for nothing.

So, when you get home at seven o'clock, you don't tell anyone about the little slip of paper - one that may well change your future - that is now hidden in a small, secret pocket in your travel bag.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

First Chapter! This one's actually released on December 23rd, so chapters around "wrong place, wrong time" will mention the release of deleted chapters, this is the first of those deleted chapters, all of these up until "the bad parts" are deleted chapters.

Feel free to check out my OneShot book!

Have a great life,

~outSTAYing