CHAPTER 1

SEOUL

Korea's busiest crossroads is in Seoul's district of Gangnam, near Sinsa

Station. Those driving down the Hannam Bridge over the Han River into

Gangnam will pass through this crossroads before heading to different parts

of the district, like Nonhyeon, Cheongdam, or Apgujeong. When there's a

lot of traffic, drivers might be staring up at the traffic lights for tens of

minutes, waiting for their turn, which is why the subway is probably the

best way to get to Sinsa Station, if that's your destination.

But if your destination is specifically somewhere near Exit 1 of Sinsa

Station, that's a slightly different story—for example, if you happen to be

heading for the Cheonggu Building, which in 2010 housed Big Hit

Entertainment, later known as HYBE.

Seoul, Gangnam-gu, Dosandaero 16-gil 13–20. Even with the address,

it's not easy to find the Cheonggu Building if you have never been to

Gangnam or the Sinsa Station crossroads. According to the KakaoMap app,

the distance between this building and Exit 1 is 568 meters. But it's

impossible to tell from the map that the building is near the end of a steep

incline. Nor that several pivots along the way are necessary in order to

reach it. Unless you're driving there with the aid of GPS navigation, it

could be a bit of an effort and wandering around to find Cheonggu

Building.

______I was at a loss.

Such was the case for Jung Hoseok, who would debut three years later

as j-hope of BTS. After signing a trainee contract with Big Hit

Entertainment in April 2010, he was undergoing training in his native city

of Gwangju when the company ordered him to move into the Big Hit

Entertainment trainee dormitory near the Cheonggu Building in Seoul. He

arrived on December 24, 2010.

______I was so scared. It was Christmas Eve and the streets were full of

cheerful people, but I couldn't get my bearings at all.

Never had he ridden the Seoul subway or experienced Christmas Eve in

trendy Sinsa-dong. This was an area with high foot traffic, even for Seoul,

but the elusive location of the dormitory was as intimidating to j-hope as the

crowded subway or the unfamiliar vista of the Sinsa neighborhood.

______I kept saying, "This is frustrating!" and ended up calling the then

head of A&R. "So, how do I get there?"

After his call, he "kept going straight, and like, somehow and

somehow" to use his words, and finally arrived at the dorm. This was the

beginning of his dorm life, which he had been looking forward to since the

day before and which he still remembered vividly ten years later. On that

day, however, he was in for a shock.

________SUGA was there in his underwear (laughs). There were leftover

trotters in the sink, laundry strewn on the floor, and everyone

walking around in their underwear. 'I guess this is dorm life?' I

thought.

BIG HIT ENTERTAINMENT

About a month and a half before this, in the beginning of November, Min

Yoongi—who would debut as SUGA of BTS—had arrived at Sinsa Station

Exit 1, just as j-hope would, and was looking for the dorm.

________My parents dropped me off. There's a practice studio in the

basement of Yujeong Restaurant near the Cheonggu Building. I

stood there until Pdogg came out and took me inside. My parents

told me later that I looked like I was being dragged off somewhere

(laughs).

SUGA was seventeen years old at the time. He was a bit too young to

leave his hometown of Daegu to come up to Seoul just because he wanted a

career in music. But in Korea, it is difficult to grow into a mainstream artist

if one doesn't happen to be in Seoul.

______I was in a dance crew in Daegu, and there was a studio I worked in.

But the pie was just too small. We might have an event gig from

time to time? Sometimes we were paid in tickets for our

performances, not money. Not that we were doing it for the money, necessarily, but I wonder if we should've at least been paid enough

to buy a meal, and a lot of times we weren't paid even that.

By the time SUGA entered Big Hit Entertainment, he was already a

paid songwriter working in Daegu. He attended music hagwons to learn

MIDI, was introduced to composers, and went from studio to studio doing

all kinds of work. Back then, there was no arts high school that taught

mainstream music in Daegu, which was why for a time he studied classical

music with an eye on entering arts high school that way. He learned

different kinds of music from various musicians, composing everything

from school songs to trot. But for a teenager dreaming of a career as a

professional musician, especially a teenager obsessed with hip-hop, his

prospects outside of Seoul were slim

______Hip-hop wasn't very mainstream in Daegu at the time. This was

when people made fun of rappers, calling them "hip-hop warriors,"

and when the hyungs I made music with did cyphers1

in the park,

we'd get maybe twenty people as an audience. And our first one had

two people.

It was a fairly reasonable choice for SUGA to head to Seoul, in

retrospect. Indeed, SUGA and j-hope had deliberately made the decision to

enter the idol audition process before joining Big Hit Entertainment as

trainees; j-hope had undertaken auditions with other companies and already

had specific dreams of debuting as a singer by the time his dance hagwon

recommended him for an audition with Big Hit.

As Korean idol groups became explosively popular in the 2000s, not

only domestically but internationally, teenagers aspiring to stardom flocked

to famous dance hagwons that not only taught dance but also introduced

promising students to entertainment companies in Seoul. This was also how

j-hope's initial training was outsourced to Gwangju before he entered the

dorm in Seoul.

______The Big Hit A&R people came to Gwangju and sat in on the

auditions in person. I danced for them, and then did eight months of

outsourced training after I succeeded in the audition. Once a month

during this training, I made videos of myself dancing and singing to

send to the company.

Meanwhile, SUGA, who was already a professional songwriter, became

interested in a particular person at Big Hit Entertainment.

______I always liked the songwriter Bang Si-Hyuk. I really liked the T-ara

song "Like the First Time," and learned that Bang had written that

song. He wasn't on television or anything back then, but he was

already famous as a songwriter among people in the know.

For teenagers with limited insider knowledge of the entertainment

industry, trusting a company recommended by one's dance hagwon or

taking an audition because a favorite songwriter happened to work there

was the best course of action.

Even before the incredible success of today's BTS, Big Hit

Entertainment in 2010 was already a well-respected company, more than

worthy to be a young musician's dream company. Bang Si-Hyuk—the

current chair of HYBE—established Big Hit in 2005, and by the time j￾hope and SUGA had signed on, he had raised a string of successful artists

like 8Eight, J-Lim, and 2AM to stardom. 2AM's "Can't Let You Go Even if

I Die" in particular, composed by Bang, was a massive hit that rocketed the

team to supremacy. Big Hit Entertainment was hardly small fry in the

scheme of things, with a stable of successful artists and the owner and main

producer of the company well-known for his ability to consistently crank

out hits.

But the team Big Hit was trying to build at the time with trainees like

SUGA and j-hope, the team that would become BTS, was proving to be

something of a new challenge for Bang Si-Hyuk.

The making of a K-pop idol group is like the production of a Hollywood

blockbuster. Everything converges into a single effort, including capital,

planning, advertising and PR, and even the brand value of the company

itself. In spite of this, the industry was so competitive that only about five

boy groups and five girl groups in a decade could be considered successful.

Most of these popular groups came from what was known as "the big

three": SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment, and JYP Entertainment.

These companies, like Hollywood's major studios, had the lion's share of

capital and industry know-how.

Big Hit, of course, had 2AM. But co-label JYP was the one that led the

effort from training to launch. That was why for Big Hit Entertainment, the

process of casting, training, and launching was a whole new venture.

And it went without saying that this whole process was much more

difficult and costly than simply launching a balladeer. Idol groups need

simultaneous mastery of song and dance on stage, and all that singing and

dancing need to be trained into them, which means enough practice space is

needed to teach scores of trainees vocals and dance. For those, like SUGA

and j-hope, who moved away from home, as well as whoever happens to

show high potential and is therefore deemed closer to debuting, room and

board need to be provided. To prepare an idol group for their debut requires

not only offices for the company itself but literal "spaces" for all of the

above.

This was why j-hope could only be taken aback by what he saw that

Christmas Eve when he first entered the dorm. Big Hit Entertainment was a

major company in the entertainment industry, one that a budding artist like

j-hope could trust to nurture his talent. But in some ways, the company was

arguably closer to being a kind of start-up, with administrative offices and

recording studios in cramped quarters on the second floor.

Bang Si-Hyuk used one of those tiny rooms for his artistic and

administrative work, including meetings. It was so small that there was

room for no more than three people, and that third person would have to sit

on the floor. Instead of bringing all the trainees into the same building,

Bang rented practice space and accommodations around the Cheonggu

Building.

These spaces, like their offices, were only just enough for their most

basic functions, which is apparent when contrasting Jung Kook's practice

footage from February 2013a with the BTS dance footage filmed in HYBE

HQ.b In 2013, Big Hit clearly had everything they needed and more for a

company of their size. But compared to "the big three," they might as well

have had nothing.

One thing Big Hit had a disproportionate abundance of was people.

Take the trainees, for instance. There were about fifteen male trainees vying

to become BTS. At one point, there had been twenty trainees competing tojoin the girl group Glam, which debuted a year before BTS. And

importantly, Big Hit also had the producer and content creator Bang Si￾Hyuk, the producer Pdogg, and the performance director Son Sungdeuk.

But for the two teenagers who had come up to Seoul from Daegu and

Gwangju, the first thing that made a big impression, like SUGA's comment

about moving into the dorm, was the fact that there were a whole lot of

other teens their age with similar interests. SUGA remembers:

________I went to the recording studio and RM and Supreme Boi were

there, and other trainees, and we got all excited just talking about

music.

𝐑𝐀𝐏 DEN

RM,2 who would become the leader of BTS, spent his teens as Kim

Namjoon in the city of Ilsan, Gyeonggi Province. He remembers the

municipality as "a city where everything was satisfying."

______The city was so well-planned when it was built, and all the green

spaces had an emotionally calming effect.

The city was home to the Ilsan Lake Park, which was easily accessible

to anyone who lived in the vicinity. The residential areas were mostly

apartment complexes, and there were the two large commercial zones: La

Festa and Western Dom. The city was indeed planned out from its very

founding, with impeccably arranged roads and facilities. The entire city was

spacious and peaceful for most of the week, with the two commercial

districts becoming busier and more festive from Friday night through the

weekend.

______It's a place where there's a certain feeling of comfort. There's a little

of that city gray and the bored faces of pedestrians, but there are no

tall buildings or big corporate offices, which makes the sky easier to

see. It has an excellent environment for concentrating on your

studies. It's not the countryside, but it feels like that to me.

While near Seoul, Ilsan wasn't as large or bustling as the capital, which

became a factor in RM discovering hip-hop. He started going online in first

grade and learned about rap through Nas and interviews and documentaries

of hip-hop artists on YouTube, while picking up English along the way.

But offline, the life of middle-schooler Kim Namjoon was at somewhat

of a distance from hip-hop. It was about as far as the distance between Ilsan

and Seoul's Hongik University neighborhood.

______If Ilsan offered any advantage to hip-hop, it was the fact that

Sinchon and Hongdae were so close. Just a bus ride away. It was my

dream to perform in places like Drug or Geek Live House, which

don't exist anymore, and maybe in a bigger place like Rollinghall

later on.3

That place could hold 500 people.

A bus ride from Ilsan to Hongdae took a little less than an hour. But if a

weekend in Ilsan meant a family of three or four taking a stroll around the

lake in the park, a weekend in Hongdae and Sinchon meant rappers and

aspiring rappers and their audiences gathering in clubs.

When RM made the decision to audition with hip-hop label Big Deal

Records in 2009 to become a professional rapper, it didn't mean he would

simply be going back and forth on a bus between Ilsan and Hongdae. It

meant jumping into a world he had only seen online, a world completely

different from the city he had loved so much that he said, "It's a privilege to

have been born in Ilsan." Not only that, but the place where he ended up

arriving wasn't Hongdae but Gangnam.

______I made the first cut, so in my second audition I got to perform with

artists who had debuted, but I messed up the words. I thought it was

over for me.

But interestingly enough, a friend of the rapper Sleepy of the hip-hop

duo Untouchable happened to come to the afterparty for the audition, and

he mentioned that Sleepy had been interested in RM's work recently and

took his phone number.

______Sleepy said he'd seen me at an audition. He must've been impressed

because he talked about me and asked for me. So I gave my phone

number to his friend to pass on to him. That's how we wrote emails

to each other. Sleepy happened to be old friends with Pdogg. And

when Pdogg asked him, "Do you know any rappers who are

young?" he recommended me.

Then came the call featured in "A Common Trainee's Christmas"c

posted on the BTS blog4d pre-debut: "A bumpkin from Ilsan / who made the

top 1% nationwide / suddenly gets a call during midterms." Sleepy called

RM and asked, "Hey, do you know this guy named Bang Si-Hyuk?"

RM, who had made the top percentile in his national mock exams.

SUGA, who had been writing songs since he was twelve and was already a

professional musician in high school. And the other trainees in the dorm,

who had auditioned for Big Hit Entertainment as rappers and hip-hop

fanatics. For all of them, dorm life was crucial to their development in a

musical sense, especially if their music happened to be hip-hop and rap.

According to j-hope:

______It was a rap den, a den of rap.

At the time of his audition, j-hope did not know how to rap at all. He

did Yoonmirae's "Black Happiness" for the rap portion, but he felt so

dissatisfied with it that he feared he had failed his audition. To j-hope, the

happenings in the dorm must've come as quite a culture shock. He recalls:

______Wow, as soon as you walk into that dorm, the kids just started

freestyle rapping at you. I couldn't do any of that! Every weekend,

the company filmed us rapping freestyle. But then they'd come back

to the dorm and keep putting on beats and doing rap.

The dorm overflowed with hip-hop, with impromptu singalongs to

songs like Wiz Khalifa's "Black and Yellow" going on in the middle of the

night.

Those dormitory days where hip-hop was work, play, and life all rolled

into one for a bunch of teenagers would play an important part in the

formation of BTS's identity in the coming years. On hip-hop, and the

group's special bond, j-hope would say:

______You couldn't not rap in that environment. And everyone was so

encouraging to me there. I asked them all sorts of stuff about rap and

studied up on it and just learned a lot.

Although j-hope was a rap newbie, the beats-filled life at the dorm made

him quickly fall in love with hip-hop, which also allowed him to forge new

friendships with his fellow trainees. A place where rappers and this dancer

who now rapped had gathered to train as professional musicians—this was

what j-hope refers to as "Season 1" of their dorm life.

"Season 2" began with the arrival of Jung Kook.5

𝐒𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝟐

As BTS's debut began shaping up, the trainees at Big Hit Entertainment

were divided into two groups. One was the high-potential group of trainees

who seemed ready for their debut, and the other group was made up of

trainees whose debut wasn't yet confirmed. RM, SUGA, and j-hope were in

the first group.

______I thought, 'Wow, I want to be there, too.' Because I'd come here

because of Rap Monster.

Jung Kook was famously brought on by Big Hit Entertainment in 2011

at one of the auditions for Superstar K3, a TV audition program on Mnet.

But the story of how a Busan middle schooler named Jeon Jungkook

decided to come to Cheonggu Building in Seoul is a bit more complicated

than that. Jung Kook had already received business cards from seven

different entertainment companies during the Superstar K3 auditions.

______None of them really told me why they wanted to sign me. I

remember one of the companies wanted me to come to a hotel room

near the Superstar K3 audition site for an audition. They wanted to

get a video of me singing.

The first reason Big Hit managed to beat the odds and secure Jung Kook

was, oddly enough, MBC's Star Audition: The Great Birth, a direct

competitor to Superstar K. On that show, Bang Si-Hyuk was featured as a

mentor for the auditioning hopefuls. Jung Kook says:

______Bang Si-Hyuk was famous, according to my dad, and he suggested I

try going into his company.

Just as RM used the Internet to learn about rap artists, Jung Kook

searched the Internet for more information on Big Hit Entertainment and

learned of the rapper trainees there who were preparing for their debut,

including RM, whose rap videos were available on YouTube. Jung Kook

says: ______Hyung's rap was great and his English was so impressive, I said,

"This is where I'll go!"

But when he auditioned for Superstar K3, Jung Kook wasn't sure he

wanted to be a singer necessarily.

______Sports, art, music … I was pretty good at arts and sports, which

made me think, 'Maybe this is where my aptitude is.' So as I was

wondering whether to do sports or art, I thought why not try

becoming a singer. That was a job a lot of people would appreciate,

so I auditioned. It wasn't exactly a joke, but I wasn't worrying

myself going, 'What if I fail?' either.

Meeting Rap Monster, whom Jung Kook had gotten to know through an

Internet search, as well as a host of other rappers at the dorm he eventually

entered, was like seeing a new world open before him. From his first day

there in June 2011, it was like getting several older brothers all at once.

Jung Kook remembers:

______j-hope would come back to the dorm really late and take out a meal

from the fridge and eat it, while going, "Do you want some?" to me.

And the "hyungs" would take their new little brother everywhere. Jung

Kook laughs as he remembers:

______Not long after I entered the dorm, one of the hyungs played a prank

on me. He claimed anyone who just moved in had to buy everyone

bingsu. So I did, and we all ate it together.

The three hyungs who had gone to auditions to achieve their dreams.

The little brother who went to an audition program and became a trainee

after being inspired by such hyungs. This slight generational difference

foreshadowed that the world was about to change not only for Jung Kook

but for the rapper trainees as well.

This "Season 2," as referred to by j-hope, was a prelude to "Idol

Season." To the future members of BTS, idols—along with hip-hop and

their bond with each other—became another cornerstone of their identity.

Each In Their Position

V also had a less-than-smooth journey from his hometown of Daegu to the

Cheonggu Building in the fall of 2011.

______We were ripped off by the cab driver. My dad and I got on and paid

38,000 won to go from Express Bus Terminal to Sinsa Station. I

remember clearly that we passed three tunnels.6 I still remember

what the cabbie said as we got off: "Be careful, lots of people here

try to force customers into premium taxis to rip you off."

The moment V first entered the dorm was like arriving at a new and

mysterious world. V remembers:

______Jung Kook was at a lesson so he wasn't home, and j-hope, RM, and

SUGA were there.

V didn't think his expectations from before he arrived in Seoul would

change. He says:

________I figured I would not be in the same team as them. 'The three of

them love music and do hip-hop, and I guess I'm just someone

who's only living here with them.'

V, a high school fresher, had become a trainee at Big Hit only six

months after he had begun taking dance classes. Ever since he had sung

onstage at his elementary talent show, he had wanted to become a

performer, and he had played the saxophone since his first year in middle

school with the goal of entering an arts high school. But K-pop dance was

something he had learned in a hagwon over a period of six months. This

was why he'd had no intention of auditioning when the A&R team at Big

Hit had come down to Daegu to his dance hagwon to find new trainees.

______Just the fact that an entertainment company would come down from

Seoul was a novelty to me, so I went just to watch. They had

auditioned only the kids who had gone to the hagwon for two, three

years when at the end, one of the A&R people pointed at me and

said, "Can we see that kid dance, too?" and then I got in.

Around the time V entered the dorm, RM, SUGA, and j-hope were

already working at a recording studio provided by Big Hit Entertainment.

The three were already posting songs on the BTS blog before their debut,

having built up enough expertise in rap, composing, and dance to hold long

discussions on these subjects. SUGA in particular was desperate to debut:

______Father used to hate people in music. But … once I passed my

audition and began showing up on posters, he would brag about me

a lot. Which made me think I'd better debut soon. Even if I'd fail to

make a mark, I wanted to have debuted.

In contrast, Jung Kook and V only began training in vocals and dance in

earnest when they joined the dorm in 2011. To V, the trio of RM, SUGA,

and j-hope were already artists. V recalls:

______The three hyungs were so good at music, so dedicated to their work,

and they seemed like experts to me. I was just happy to be a trainee

by their side.

Having just started as a trainee, the prospect of a debut seemed very far

away to V.

But just six months later, when Jimin came up from Busan in May

2012, the others—including V—struck him as being ready to debut

immediately. Jimin recalls:

______I'm very shy and I was nervous … I was trembling. I came to the

dorm and there were so many shoes in the foyer … The shoes

overflowed into the apartment. But even that was really cool. The

hyungs came out, and they were trainees but already looked like

celebrities to me. RM in particular looked exactly as a celebrity

should. And V was such a classic idol. Really handsome and

wearing a red snapback cap.

The older boys who did hip-hop and the boy who was the same age and

looked as good as any idol. The trainees, as seen through Jimin's eyes, were

already entering their "Idol Season." Rappers who lived and died by hip￾hop, the dancer who was influenced by them to write his own rap lyrics, the

vocalist who was just learning to dance, and the youngest who showed

potential in both song and dance. Jimin found it difficult to imagine such

disparate talents ever coming together as one team.

______I was convinced the hyungs would debut first as a hip-hop group.

I figured I would not be in the same team as them. 'The three of them

love music and do hip-hop, and I guess I'm just someone who's only

living here with them.

—V

But Jimin's arrival was a preview of how the planning for their group

would go in a different direction. If they were to become an idol group

together, Jimin would join j-hope as one of the main dancers but bring a

completely different sort of flair to the team.

Before he came to Seoul, Jimin had already been spending his teenage

years in dance.

______We had an afterschool break-dance club, and I remember a bunch of

boys just got together and said, "Hey, do you want to try this?"

Which became, "Should I really?" We gathered to practice on

Saturdays when we didn't have school, and then did an actual

performance … That's when I felt it, the thrill. I completely fell for

dance.

Jimin's main criterion for choosing a high school was also "a place I can

learn dance," and, hoping to become acquainted with a larger variety of

dance, he specialized in contemporary dance at the Busan High School of

Arts. To his parents, he explained his goals of learning dance in Busan,

auditioning, and moving to Seoul. He remembers his first impressions of

the capital:

______I thought, 'Well, Seoul is the same as Busan.' Like, 'That's it?'

(laughs). I had come with my father because I was transferring

schools.

Unfortunately, Jimin, like V, also fell victim to a taxi scammer.

7

________It might take as little as fifteen minutes to get from Express Bus

Terminal to the company offices, but it took over half an hour. I'd

taken a taxi because I wasn't familiar with the subway lines, and the

fee came out very high. My father had gone down with me to Busan,

but the day I went into the dorm, I came to Seoul alone. And that's

when I first met j-hope, who had come out to get me.

________Are you Mr. Park Jimin? (laughs).

j-hope still recalls the moment he first met Jimin.

______That's how we first said hello. "Jimin? Mr. Park Jimin?" Like that.

We said hello and talked on the way up to the dorm. I asked him if he danced and he said, "Yes, I did Popping," and I said, "Hey, I did

street dancing, too." "I hope we'll be able to help each other!" That

kind of thing. It was a somewhat awkward conversation (laughs).

It's not easy to imagine a rapper from the Hongdae stage and a

contemporary dance major who started out as a break-dancer making music

in the same team. But approximately eight years later in early 2020, BTS

would combine elements of both disciplines in "Black Swan." This melding

of contrasting talents occurs sometimes in the K-pop industry, where idol

groups are normally composed of a variety of positions such as rapper,

dancer, and vocalist. And the members' even more diverse personalities and

backgrounds become a touchstone that allows their fans to emotionally

immerse themselves in their characters and music, as long as a harmonious

team was formed in the first place.

A team spearheaded by a group of underground rappers that included a

middle schooler who had just started lessons needed more than just

cohabitation to cohere into a group—they needed some form of alchemy.

Trainee Dorm Life

______I was fooled (laughs).

Jin laughs, thinking back to his casting at Big Hit Entertainment in the

spring of 2011. What the worker in charge of signing him had promised him

back then technically hasn't come to fruition. Jin continues:

______"Look at how idols these days go into acting, we'll let you become

an actor eventually." That's how they convinced me. They were very

persuasive.

Indeed, around that time, it wasn't uncommon for a member of an idol

group to also be working as an actor at the same time. While some members

specialized in singing and dancing, others were more known for appearing

in variety shows or dramas on television, pulling in audiences from outside

the idol market.

As Korea's idol market expanded with the rise of BTS's popularity and

more acts began performing overseas, fewer idols ventured into acting. Jin,

for one, became too busy doing stadium tours around the world with BTS,

which naturally made him focus on his work as a musician.

But many idols, to this day, continue to sing and act at the same time.

Jin had entered university as an acting major. His interest in idol music

sprung from his curiosity about artistic activities in general.

______I do like to try different things. I figured I'd be able to have a variety

of experiences if I were an idol and an actor at the same time.

Laughing, he adds:

______Reality had other plans.

Until he became a Big Hit Entertainment trainee, Jin had a happy, fairly

relaxed upbringing. Jin himself describes his childhood in Gwacheon,

Gyeonggi Province:

______I could just go down to the playground and my friends would be

hanging out, and if I ever wanted to talk to anyone I'd just call them

up and say, "Hello, I'm such-and-such." All the kids in the

neighborhood were friends with each other, and our parents would

befriend each other as well. Walking down the street, you'd run into

someone you'd say hello to every five or ten minutes.

Even moving from Gwacheon to Seoul didn't change his life much.

Jin's parents once suggested he go to the country and try out the farm life.

______My parents said, "Let's try different things to see what you have an

aptitude for." And that my granddad, grandma, and uncle were

farmers, so why not try farming for a bit? That's how I ended up

growing strawberries and melons for a month. I did so much

pruning for the melons that I didn't want to eat melons for a long

time after that (laughs).

Jin is the oldest member of BTS. When he signed with Big Hit

Entertainment, he was eighteen and in his first year of university, at the age

when most Korean youth begin thinking about what they want to do with

their lives. Jin says:

______Since becoming a trainee, I worked hard during practice hours. But I

didn't exactly stake my life on it, as they say.

The future he had vaguely imagined for himself was to keep training,

debut as an idol, and at some point, incorporate acting into his schedule.

And so, Jin continued to go back and forth from his home to training

sessions at Big Hit.

But in the summer of 2012 when he entered dorm life, Jin had no choice

but to change his entire lifestyle. By the time he joined the other boys at the

dorm, the lineup for BTS had been decided, and that meant the content and

quantity of Jin's training would change drastically. Jin thinks back to those

days:

______The company did not tell us we were going to debut, in so many

words. But we were almost the only trainees left at the dorm at this

point, which made me think, 'I guess it's going to happen soon.'

Jin also remembers his first impressions of the dorm.

______(Sigh) … Clothes strewn everywhere, cereal scattered on the floor,

the dishes hadn't been done …

On January 27, 2013, Jin made a posting on the BTS blog titled "How

Trainees Usually Make Tteokgguk."e His ambition had been to create a

proper meal he could share with the other members.

______For example, SUGA would basically just "eat to live." He ate

chicken breasts for protein but even eating them was too much of a

hassle for him so he would blend it with some grape juice and a

banana and gulp that down straight from the blender. I had a taste of

it and thought, 'Nope, this isn't it,' and cooked up some things that I

sprinkled with hot sauce or steak sauce.

Before staff was hired some months later to help with the cooking and

cleaning, Jin managed to coordinate the other members into taking turns

with chores. As with many other people, cooking and cleaning were key

activities for Jin in maintaining a semblance of a normal life. The problem

was, Jin himself had to admit that they were simply getting too busy for

normality.

________After about three months there … I finally realized why they had

come to live the way they did. On days when we had a lot of

rehearsals, we'd be working fourteen hours out of a twenty-four￾hour day.

School Of Hip Hop

Dewey Finn (played by Jack Black), the main character in the movie School

of Rock, is a nameless musician who under false pretenses gets a job at an

elementary school in place of a friend who is a licensed teacher. When he

realizes how talented the students are, he tries to put them together into a

rock band. The students, however, know nothing of rock music, and Dewey

ends up teaching them the history of rock-and-roll during class instead of

the usual curriculum.

If one were to switch rock music with hip-hop, this "School of Hip￾Hop" was what went on in the BTS dorm. RM created a playlist of artists

including Drake, Nas, the Notorious B.I.G., and Tupac Shakur for his

fellow members who were less familiar with the genre. RM says:

______I made a list out of about fifty acts whom we could listen to

together. We did cyphers to develop our rapping sensibilities and

deliberately watched videos together.

That RM had took it upon himself to be the Jack Black of the dorm was

because BTS was mired in a uniquely terrible situation in the world of idol

music.

Big Hit Entertainment had debuted a girl group called Glam a year

before BTS, with a docuseries of their formation shown around that time on

SBS MTV (now known as SBS M). Teaser trailers for their debut were also

released on YouTube.

But unfortunately, Glam never caught on in popularity, and Big Hit

Entertainment was saddled with a sizable financial burden. When a small￾to-medium-sized entertainment company fails at an idol project, the

consequences are more treacherous than anything that can be described in

words. As SUGA describes the mood back then:

______I thought the company was going to go under.

But to RM, the biggest problem they were facing was that their group,

which was about to debut, didn't seem to know in what direction they were

supposed to go musically. RM says:

______Bang Si-Hyuk and I would have the members listen to artists like

A$AP Rocky or Lil Wayne. But the members who joined later on

knew Big Hit as a company created by the Bang Si-Hyuk who had

made 2AM and 8Eight and had worked at JYP Entertainment. But now they were being asked to do hip-hop and rap, which must have

presented for them some confusion.

The best RM could do was to talk to the debut-imminent group about

hip-hop as much as possible. Right until their debut, RM, SUGA, and j￾hope's School of Hip-Hop was holding nonstop classes. Some nights, they

would come home after rehearsals ended at 11 P.M. and talk about music

until 6 A.M. with no sleep.

Thankfully, the students of this school were very diligent. V recalls:

______There was a time when RM, SUGA, and j-hope would sit us four

vocalists down and very seriously say, "I really think you should

listen to this song," or "Let me teach this to you." RM put so much

care into putting together the best songs in hip-hop history that I

couldn't possibly say no to him. His care was so palpable that I felt I

absolutely had to listen to these songs a lot, even if I happened to

dislike them.

The classes were slowly paying off. V says:

______Since then, I've come to a point where I'm proud of saying I listen

to music the most among all the members. Listening to all that hip￾hop back then made me fall in love with it. I would ask the hyungs

to recommend more music, and I would find my own tracks to listen

to as well.

V's response has something to do with how the classes were taught.

This is how Jimin remembers RM, SUGA, and j-hope's teaching:

______The hyungs would say things like, "Isn't this the coolest?" and show

us all the gestures the artists would make themselves as they played

us the songs. At first it was just fun and laughter, but there came a

point where I saw how it really was the coolest. I thought, 'This

music these hyungs are into, this is real music.'

Jimin adds:

________That's how we were indoctrinated into the hip-hop mindset

(laughs).

The Battle Of Razor- Sharp Dance

______Arrrrrrrgh!

When asked about BTS's training process before their debut, j-hope

playfully lets out an exaggerated groan before elaborating.

________The alarm goes off at 10 A.M. and we grab a salad, some bread,

and chicken breast and go to the practice studio. Then we practice

and review ourselves as we keep screaming "Argh!" and start all

over again and then it's "Arrrgh!" again and all of a sudden, it's 10

P.M. Then we go back to the dorm and sleep. Ad nauseum.

As previously mentioned, Big Hit Entertainment had more trainees than

one would expect from a company of their size. Any entertainment

company just starting out with thirty trainees would inevitably need to

prioritize resources. The practice studios were always crowded, and the

trainees had to take turns with lessons. Jin says:

______When I got to rehearsals after school, there would be four studios

and the boy trainees would be gathered in one studio. The other

studios were being used to prepare Glam for their debut.

But with the tepid reception of Glam by mainstream audiences, the

company reallocated their resources to BTS. Except this time, the resources

were being reallocated under a greater financial strain.

Which was why, once the BTS members were confirmed to debut, Big

Hit Entertainment was forced to release all their other trainees from their

contracts. This was how the time and space to train the seven boys who

would become BTS was procured. Their rehearsal times also increased.

Significantly.

If RM, SUGA, and j-hope were running a hip-hop school in the dorm

after hours, the practice studios were a war zone of dance. It would be fair

to say that the members had more trouble getting used to dancing than

getting used to hip-hop.

With hip-hop, the trio of RM, SUGA, and j-hope at least had similar

sensibilities, and the younger members only had to follow the example of

the older ones. But the only members back then who were used to dancing

were j-hope and Jimin. RM and SUGA hadn't even imagined they would

need to learn dance. j-hope explains:______SUGA and RM told me once that they thought we were going to

become a group like 1TYM and wouldn't have to dance at all.

1TYM was a hip-hop group that included Teddy, who had also produced

BIGBANG, 2NE1, and BLACKPINK. They became popular in the late

1990s and early 2000s during the rise of hip-hop in Korea, and it seems RM

and SUGA had assumed BTS would follow in their footsteps as a hip-hop

group with mainstream appeal.

Of course, 1TYM, like BTS, emphasized the role of vocalists as well as

rappers, and they had some choreographed movement in their acts. But

according to Jin, BTS reset their mandate to become an "overperformance

group." Of the mood in the training sessions at the time, Jin says:

______The proportion of our training taken up by dance actually wasn't

that big in the beginning. But suddenly dance became important and

our training time for it went up a lot. We trained really hard

especially in the two months before our debut, and there were days

when we would be dancing for twelve hours.

Anyone reading this book is sure to understand what "overperformance"

means. Not long after, in their performances for their debut song "No More

Dream," Jimin would execute a move where he would, with a boost from

Jung Kook, fly into the air and walk across the backs of the other members

standing in a line.

But the acrobatics was not all that made the overperformance training so

arduous. Jin adds:

______Bang Si-Hyuk asked for a little too much back then (laughs). He

would be watching playback of our performances on a PC and press

spacebar to pause. Then he would critique every angle of our bodies

and even our finger placements. He watched our dancing frame by

frame. We danced the same choreography for two months.

As Jin described, BTS practiced the choreography for "No More

Dream" to the point where they were in sync right down to every single

frame.

2AM, Glam, and the four years it took for Big Hit Entertainment to

debut BTS was basically the company catching up to the past twenty years

of the industry. It was an endeavor that required much research. The company analyzed the factors that made successful idol groups into hits,

and regularly consulted industry experts for their advice. Occasionally, Big

Hit would post a reward for anyone in the company who could come up

with the best proposal for the production of a successful artist.

What Bang Si-Hyuk learned in this process was that idols moved to a

completely different beat compared to the music industry that came before.

Idol music exploded onto the scene with the debut of Seo Taiji and Boys in

1992, and with the 1996 debut of H.O.T., an industrialized production

system was put in place. BTS debuted as the idol system approached the

twentieth year of its golden age. Its first teenage fans were now in their

thirties, and as fandom culture developed over the years, the content and

standards the fans demanded also became clearer.

Kalgunmu, or "razor-sharp group dancing," was such content. Fans

wanted their favorite groups to create awe-inspiring moments of perfect

synchronized dancing. Not only did such perfection bring a visual joy to

their fans but it also served as proof of how hard the members had worked

on their teamwork in order to achieve it. But to Bang Si-Hyuk, who was

part of Korea's first generation of hip-hop and R&B producers at JYP

Entertainment, kalgunmu was not something he was even considering. In

hip-hop, dancing was more about emphasizing the personalities of each

performer, which led to less pressure for perfectly synchronized

movements.

But in the world of idol music, kalgunmu was the law of the land. And

while there was an absolute need to follow this law, Jin remembers that

even for idol singers, BTS had ended up in the "overperformance" category

of artists.

______Sure, group dancing is essential for idols, but our dancing was more

intense than the usual.

As their mandate for reconciling the genre characteristics between hip￾hop and idol music became clearer, BTS was required to practice even

harder. At night there was the School of Hip-Hop convened by RM and

SUGA, who became students during the day at the "School of Dance"

alongside the others who were not used to dancing. j-hope was the teacher

in this latter school. He talks of those days: ______Jimin and I were the only members who had learned dance before

we entered the company. I felt like the first thing we needed to do

was to help the other members find dancing fun. Outside of our

regular training sessions, we occasionally practiced at dawn. It was

kind of like the "den of rap" where we would put on a beat and try

freestyling. Rap had become fun for me during those sessions, and I

wanted the same thing to happen with dance for the others. I'd just

put on music and go, "Now dance, just dance however way you

want," that kind of thing.

Fortunately, the members were very diligent about their studies in this

school. j-hope continues:

________We came together a lot better in training than expected. When

SUGA became obsessed with dance he would even joke, "I don't

want to rap anymore, let's dance." It's hard to believe I bet, but he

and I once went to Hongdae to learn breaking (laughs).

Worlds Collide

But even j-hope, who had opened his own ad hoc dance school in the

practice studios, had become completely exhausted six months before their

debut. He recalls:

______It was probably the beginning of January, 2013. We were so tired,

even when we should've been at our most motivated. There was a

practice studio where they filmed our dance moves, and we

basically lived in there. Which was why we would stop talking

when we entered there, became really prickly about things …

In their quest to become an "overperformance group," the members

practiced their choreography and took lessons at the same time. In the midst

of it all, they also went on specific diets to be at their best possible physical

states when on stage, to the point where they were obsessive about the

amount of salt they would put on the chicken breasts that they ate for

protein.

But suffering and worry had more to do with their mental than their

physical states. To be affiliated with Big Hit Entertainment, which was not as well-known as SM Entertainment, invited a kind of gaze j-hope felt was

overwhelming.

______When people kept asking us when we were debuting, to a trainee

that's really … That question is like a knife to the heart.

j-hope was truly desperate. The fraught journey to his debut reads like a

series of desperate moments. He recalls his life's story up to his move to

Seoul:

______I didn't learn a lot at the hagwon where I learned to dance, because

of the tuition fees. So for the most part during lessons, I would just

sit on the hagwon sofa. Because I loved dance so much … After the

lessons, I would keep practicing on my own in the practice studios.

The hyungs who taught me, especially this one dancer named

Bangster, became a kind of teacher to me.8 He said to me, "Hey, do

you want to come to our practice studio and practice with us?" And

that's how I joined the dance team Neuron.9 That's where I first

came in contact with street dancing. Later, when I signed my

contract with Big Hit Entertainment as a trainee, there was no place

for me to practice. That was why despite signing the contract, I

stayed behind at the Gwangju hagwon where my dance training was

outsourced to. And that's when the A&R team contacted me. Telling

me it was time to come up to Seoul.

j-hope, RM, and SUGA had to wait two years until their debut, and Big

Hit Entertainment was barely scraping by at the time due to Glam's failure.

The practice spaces were so cramped that someone's singing in one room

would carry over to trainees in the room three doors down. These

circumstances, to the seven boys who were about to debut, were a source of

great anxiety.

SUGA especially had reasons to be anxious. He was preparing for his

debut despite the aftereffects of a shoulder injury incurred from a traffic

accident. He explains:

______I did all kinds of part-time jobs in 2012, right before our debut was

set. My family needed money, so I would teach MIDI, work in a

convenience store, and do deliveries, and it was on a delivery where

I injured myself on a motorcycle.

SUGA's voice turns a shade quieter as he recounts the turmoil of those

days:

______The company was in dire straits, and I was worrying my head off as

to whether I could continue my life as a trainee. It was really hard

for me, the act of living itself. I'd left home pinning all my hopes on

debuting, I'd managed to enter this company … I felt so desperate.

Jimin had his own issues concerning his debut. He recalls:

______I had given up a perfectly good life learning dance in high school to

come up to Seoul, but no one cared … You could be eliminated after

any of the tests they would put us through time to time, which was

scary. I was really putting the pedal to the metal then.

As Big Hit Entertainment let go of all their trainees save the ones

earmarked for BTS, Jimin became more and more anxious that the

company could let go of him as well at any time. Unlike RM, SUGA, and j￾hope, the vocalist-position members including Jimin had no assurance they

would be allowed to debut in BTS. The lack of time for proper training and

the obligation to train even harder after his debut was decided put more

pressure on Jimin.

______I wanted desperately to find the reason why I was in this scene. That

I wasn't here only because I was forcing it or out of sheer luck.

Which was why I tried to make one more person like me, to show

one more person how much better I was doing … Maybe I was a

little impatient.

Jimin's desperation at the time resulted in the following episode, a

serious one at the time but somewhat cute looking back.

______I didn't know how to dance like a member of an idol group. I'd

never dealt with dancing like this until I became a trainee. So

whenever the movements changed, I would pause and memorize the

position. You know that Zolaman character, that stick figure with the

big head and sticks for a body? I drew every single move and

position in that character and memorized them. It made everyone

around me laugh.

Meanwhile, Jung Kook, who was still quite young, was in the process of

learning about himself while experiencing dorm life for the first time and undergoing copious amounts of training.

______My personality completely changed. Being tossed into a place full

of strangers made me very shy all of a sudden. I would try to avoid

everyone else's shower times when using the bathroom, and I slept

in the upper bunk of a bunkbed, but even as I sweated from the heat

at night, I wouldn't go down from my bed in case I woke up the

hyung sleeping in the lower bunk … I realized then, 'Ah, I'm just

very shy.'

His particular situation was a perfect storm of the combined realities of

K-pop, the upcoming debut of BTS, and Big Hit Entertainment's corporate

situation.

Korean idols normally debut in their late teens, or at the latest, their

early twenties. Many of them begin as trainees in their mid-teens under

contract with entertainment companies. Jung Kook, who would debut at the

age of fifteen, is considered a younger case in terms of both entering an

entertainment company dorm and debuting as an idol. On top of his age,

there was also the prospect of debuting with older boys like RM and

SUGA, who had already been active on the hip-hop scene and were

obsessed with that genre of music. This meant at the same time as he was

training and worrying leading up to his debut, Jung Kook had to discover

just what kind of person he was deep down. He says:

______To tell you how bad it was, you know how once you reach middle

school, you learn how to use the formal register with your

upperclassmen? I didn't even know how to do that. Informal Korean

felt natural to me, and I didn't pay much attention to the people

around me. But then I entered the dorm and saw how I was coming

off. That's when I started using formal Korean. How do I say this …

I think I was lacking in my attitude toward other people, in

understanding and deference and empathy. And then I met the other

members and thought, 'Oh I see, this is how you're supposed to act

with others' or 'I should speak like this, too' and learned how to

express my feelings by seeing how it was done.

To Jung Kook, RM was especially the reason he had decided to sign

with Big Hit Entertainment, and j-hope and SUGA were his role models Jung Kook adds:

______Those hyungs were on a higher level among the trainees, which

made me think, 'Wow, I want to be like them, too' or 'The hyungs

are dressed so cool' and I would buy the same clothes (laughs).

Back then, I think I was having these trivial thoughts more than

worrying over whether I was going to debut or not.

On the other hand, the three hyungs he looked up to were burning up

with anxiety as their debut was pushed later and later. The day they would

finally get to stand onstage seemed further away than ever, and the group

seemed to be going in a direction they hadn't expected. Amid all this, they

had to teach hip-hop to the others in the dorm and set the tone for the

younger members they were living with.

In addition to this, RM, who had become the team leader, had the task

of receiving from Bang Si-Hyuk the big picture about their group. RM

remembers:

______The company never pressured me into doing things. But they did

remind me that the smallest things could create big risks and say

things like, "You have to do well as a leader" or even, "You have to

wake up the members of your group."

This was where worlds were colliding in the dorm. To RM, SUGA, and

j-hope, debuting was an immediate problem, whereas the four vocalists who

were debuting faster than they had anticipated were still grappling with

what it meant to be put out into the world. Jin says:

______I hadn't really understood what it meant to be an idol. If I'd known

beforehand, it would have been easier to get used to that reality. But

once I'd debuted, I was just so busy, and also so happy …

Once their debut was set, Jin had to readjust to a trainee life that was

very different from the one he had been used to until then. Jin and RM went

as far as to have a serious conversation about it at one point. Jin says:

________The both of us were in agreement that the team had to go up. But

the difference between us was that I was wondering if we could

pursue our happiness a little first and then think about what was

going to happen, while he believed we had to give our all now for

the sake of later happiness.

While thinking in a slightly different direction, V says as well that he

thought differently from the three rapper hyungs.

______Most people train for years before debuting, so I hadn't even

considered that my time would come only after a few months of

training. I made sure I attended all the practices, but outside of

practice times, I hung out with my school friends a lot.

To V, debuting was still far away, and he wanted to experience being a

teenager properly as well as working as a trainee.

But V's life abruptly changed once he heard the following from the

company:

"It's time for your debut. You, you're BTS now."

And What About You Guys?

The more you look back on BTS's preparation for their debut, the more

surprising it is that none of them quit in the process, despite being seven

boys from different hometowns and with different values, musical tastes,

and time spent in training, coming together to train in less than a year for

their debut as a team.

j-hope has some candid thoughts regarding this:

______We didn't fuse together well at first. Our backgrounds were just so

different, and we wanted different things. One would go, "I want to

become a musician," and another would be like, "I just like being

onstage." It was hard to calibrate our sense of objectives toward a

single goal.

But ironically, their debut as BTS being decided also became a decisive

factor in their becoming closer to each other. V remembers:

______While I argued a lot with Jimin, who is my age, and with the other

members as well, we worked together so much and talked with each

other so much that little by little, we really did feel we were

becoming a team.

RM making his hip-hop playlists and j-hope teaching dance were acts

stemming from their desperation for their debut. Of how this goal affected

them, j-hope explains:

______The moment it was decided the seven of us would debut as a group,

that's when our concept as a group fell into place. We knew what we

needed to do, what kind of dance and songs we would do. And we

talked among ourselves a lot. "We have, I have this goal. What

about you guys? Shall we do this together?" That kind of thing.

Their cohesiveness went beyond sincere conversations, spilling over to

every aspect of their lives. V says he became closer to the other members

through commonalities in their daily lives:

______We all needed to be on diets, but me and RM weren't very good at

it. And since being of "kindred spirit" is serious business, RM and I

would often go off to eat something nice together. Or hide things to

eat and secretly share them with each other …

V's team-building methods were also handy when it came to the

younger members.

________I would sneak outside the dorm with Jimin and we'd eat together

and talk together. Or go to the jjimjilbang spa with Jung Kook or

ride sleds when it snowed. And then pretend nothing had happened

when the manager would check up on us at the dorm (laughs).

Meanwhile, Jin got closer to V by looking for things they had in

common.

______By the time V and later Jimin entered the company, all the trainees I

had been close to had left. Except for about ten who were thought to

have potential … I thought it would be too sad if more trainees left,

which made me wonder a lot if I should make the effort to get

closer. But V liked old manhwa and anime, just like me. So I would

go up to him and go, "Hey, have you seen this one?" and that's how

we became friends.

RM and SUGA taught the members hip-hop, j-hope taught dance, and

Jin used whatever ingredients available in the dorm to cook up meals for

everyone. In this process, the older members began to understand the young

members and the younger members learned from the older ones.

Jim speaks of the musical influences and encouragement he received

from the other members: ______The hyungs felt very "raw" to me. The way they were like, "I just

like listening to music," so unpretentiously. SUGA is a bit stoic and would

say things simply and firmly, but then he would also come up to me and say

things like, "I hope you work hard and do well…" I couldn't not like the

hyungs, and that's how I became interested in their music.

SUGA, on the other hand, was learning how to communicate with the

world through his conversations with the other members.

The moment it was decided the seven of us would debut as a group,

that's when our concept as a group fell into place.

And we talked among ourselves a lot.

"We have, I have this goal. What about you guys? Shall we do this

together?" That kind of thing.

—j-hope

________It was really hard to respect the fact that we were all different

people. I used to be very extreme and trapped in a black-and-white

mindset. My immature mind would think, 'Why is he thinking that

way? Shouldn't a normal human being think this way?' And

eventually I went beyond thinking, 'That guy is different from me,'

to accepting, 'That person is just being themselves.' It did take a bit

of time.

The answer to the question of why none of the members of BTS quit

during that time may be found in the words of some of the members.

Jin sums up the situation back then:

______"Adjusting" seems to be the right word. Because once I entered the

dorm, I realized, 'Ah, I guess this is how I should live from now

on.'

SUGA speaks of his pride as a musician:

______If it weren't for the music, maybe I would've quit partway through?

Or if it had been at some other company with a different culture? I

released a lot of things in me making music. I don't know how I had

so much confidence back then, making all those songs. A lot of them I get embarrassed about, listening to them now. But the people

who are obsessed with hip-hop, they have this attitude, 'I'm the best

in the world!' you know? (laughs).

And of course, we need to hear from the leader of the team:

______The members were just good people. Very good people …

RM continues:

______The only thing I know how to do is music. I came into this company

to make music, and because I believed my work was fundamentally

to make music. And because I've been here the longest, I did have

the most say in things. To be honest, this made it much easier for me

as the leader. And I received so much respect from the other

members. It makes me think they've been very good with

recognizing and accepting each other. They really treated me well.

The long time it took for them to debut was well spent in training and

building their trust in each other through much conversation and exchange.

And so, the seven members who had differed in every way began to

transform into a team, just like in the lyrics of the song "Paldo Gangsan,"

revealed four months after their debut, in the videof taken in that very

practice studio where they had sung and danced so ceaselessly.

𝘐𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘦𝘯𝘥, 𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘒𝘰𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘯

𝘓𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘷𝘦, 𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦

𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘴𝘬𝘺 𝘸𝘦 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦

𝘐𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥 𝘣𝘦 𝘢 𝘣𝘪𝘵 𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘺 , 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘸𝘦'𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘴𝘵

𝘞𝘦 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘢𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵?.