Stages of Us

chapter 1

When Cho So-Young was ten years old, she didn't understand the weight of the decision she was making. All she knew was that music felt like breathing, and that the small audition stage in Sydney felt like the biggest spotlight in the world. She sang her heart out, never noticing the lanky thirteen-year-old boy waiting for his turn only a few feet away.

That boy was Christopher Bahng Chan but So-Young wouldn't know his name for another four years.

When the acceptance email came, her parents stared at it for a long, silent moment. Their only daughter... flying to a foreign country... to become a trainee?

Her mother cried.

Her father paced.

But in the end, they said yes only after JYP promised she would continue school, be supervised, and never be alone in a dorm full of strangers. So-Young didn't care about the details; she was too busy imagining stages and microphones.

Life as a trainee was nothing like she imagined.

It was harder.

Lonelier.

But she pushed through, one year at a time.

By her fourth year, she had become known as the cheerful Aussie girl with sharp dance lines and an even sharper accent. The sunniest trainee in the building... and yet she had never crossed paths with the boy she unknowingly auditioned beside.

Not until that one night.

Training had run late, and So-Young slipped out of the practice room to refill her water bottle. The hallway was dim, quiet the kind of quiet that felt heavy. She rounded the corner too fast and collided with someone solid.

"Ah! I'm so sorry!" she blurted, stumbling back.

The boy slowly lifted his head, shadows under his eyes, shoulders slumped like he was carrying years of weight all on his own. But when she spoke, he froze.

"...You're... from Australia?" he asked, voice rough.

She blinked. "Yeah. Brisbane. Are you?"

"Sydney," he said, a tiny spark lighting in his tired eyes. "I... I heard your accent."

They stared at each other for a moment two Australians who had never met in their own country, but somehow found each other in a hallway thousands of kilometers from home.

So-Young smiled first. "I'm So-Young."

"Chan," he replied softly, brushing his hair back. "Cho So-Young... how long have you been here?"

"Four years."

He swallowed. "Me too."

But unlike her, he hadn't survived those years intact. She didn't know his story yet the teammates who left him one by one, the near-debut that shattered, the depression that settled in the empty spaces they left behind.

All she saw was someone hurting.

And all he saw... was a little sister he needed to protect.

In that moment, something unspoken formed between them a connection built on shared loneliness, shared country, shared dreams. Chan didn't yet know he would choose her as the first member of a group that didn't exist yet. He didn't know she would become the ninth star of a family he'd fight to build.

But he knew one thing:

She wouldn't go through this alone.

Not anymore.