2002. Chaem Choi spends monsoon season in the garden. When the flooding gets high like this, it dips into the canals that her father dug by his own hand many years ago, when he was still fit and able. There’s a small little community built around these canals, tin-roof-topped and close-knit. In one of those homes, there is a dancer.
Her name is Achara— unlike most in this little community, she’s a modern woman, rather young for to be living so independently. Not traditional dancing, no— instead, Achara moves her body with feline power and feminine confidence.
And because Chaem Choi spends monsoon season in the garden— she can spend the day watching.
2004. It was some time ago that her mother left for bigger and better ventures. Some time ago— some time before Chaem Choi started dancing, but after her father was paralyzed waist-down from a fall off the neighbor’s roof. So it’s just her and dad and the garden nowadays. Chaem Choi has exactly two pairs of pants (one after she cuts this one into shorts, and here’s hoping she doesn’t outgrow the other), one pair of shoes, and three shirts. Having learned to sew at a young age, she has to be extra careful when she dances with Achara because good thread is expensive.
2006. The best gift she’s ever received is a new-to-her pair of shoes. They’re far too big because Achara’s nearing thirty and Chaem Choi is only nine, but tying the laces tight means that they stay on well enough. Her movements when she dances become more precise; they have to be, to avoid tripping over the large sneaker tips.
2009. Chaem Choi is used to spending most of the day in the city; for the past year, she’s picked vegetables and fruit from the garden to sell, then when she finishes up, closes up her stall and walks another hour to a coffee shop for a five hour under-the-table shift. She’s not fifteen yet, but is tall for her age and the owner took pity on her. She pays him back with whatever vegetables she didn’t manage to sell.
It’s at least three hours walking commute each day, so her legs and core grow tough.
2014. She leaves before the sun rises and returns around the time it’s setting. Achara uses her lunch breaks between work to start a fire for the Pravat patriarch and breaks the neck of a couple chickens so that Chaem Choi doesn’t have to worry about that. On her way up, she picks some vegetables and fruit and gets to work on dinner. They don’t have much but each other, and love doesn’t mean a full belly— it does for her father, Nattapong Pravat, because Chaem Choi gives him the biggest portions and wraps a meal in saran wrap for his breakfast. Thus, it’s typical that she becomes skinny.
Achara usually returns from work around the time Chaem Choi is washing up their dishes. It’s a mutual understanding that because the Pravats aren’t well-off, it’s quite alright that Achara doesn’t get a plate herself. Chaem Choi hops the creek and through the leaves to Achara’s house where they dance until the moon is high.
And every day, it goes like that. She doesn’t have many goals beyond taking care of her father and the small happiness she earns from dancing. She dances in the coffee shop sometimes, when she’s cleaning and there’s no one else around. Just a hobby, of course.
2015. But maybe. . . she’s actually pretty good at this.
It’s a thought that comes when, on a day like any other, the owner hands her a card and says that a woman had given it to him.
Chaem Choi knows exactly which woman he’s talking about. She stuck out like a sore thumb, glowing like a star in a sleek pencil skirt and lovely blouse. Her features were Korean and her heels were clean, as if even the mud was afraid of her. The woman had seen her dancing and given the manager the card to give to her: Starscape Entertainment.
2016. Chaem Choi takes a deep breath that day. She had passed the global audition held in downtown Bangkok and left right in the middle of monsoon season. She would not have left if not for Achara’s reassurances that she’d take good care of her father.
Everyone in Korea, it seems, is perfect. That woman was one of many with clear skin and wavy, chocolate-brown hair. Chaem Choi is immediately self-conscious of her strong, calloused body among a sea of girls more soft and supple than she is. She keeps up easily with the dancing— surpasses expectations, in fact, and her singing isn't half-bad either. The trainee debt is daunting, and the allowance is small; still, it’s more than she used to live with.
2017. The second round of PopStar Survival, she gets the call that Achara broke her leg dancing. It’s heartbreaking but… it’s fine.
Chaem Choi returns to Thailand with two years of training under her belt and a month of Korean public eye— so it’s not like it’s a huge deal when she shows up back at Bangkok Coffee Roasters and asks for her old job back. It’s been nearly eight years she’s been working there, and the owner, with his kind eyes and kind heart and aging face, allows her to return to work. It’s not so difficult to fall back into the routine of selling vegetables and making drinks again— although it was nice while it lasted to be able to think that there might be more out there.
It was just a dream anyway.
But her biggest dream is to be able to provide for her father, and while Achara is healing, she’s the only one who can. It’s honest work and far less fanciful to actually be out there in the workforce instead of something as unstable as the idol career, she tells herself. It may not be much, but at least it keeps food on the table. It’s enough to fortify her until she gets the call from the CEO months later: perhaps she would like to return to Pop!Stars?
It’s far too good to be true, she thinks as Cho Dahye herself explains that it would be a guaranteed position in the debuting group, and that all she would have to do is finish out the last few episodes and train a little while longer, because her dance skills simply are that good. She says from the comfort of her own room that it’s just not reasonable. Dahye says from Korea to maybe think it over.
She’ll say no, of course, she fortifies herself as she removes her shoes on the way into the house. It’s too much to ask of a neighbor to care for her ailing father.
It’s what she says to Achara on the last night they dance together.
The next day, Chaem Choi returns to an empty home, because her father has moved in with Achara.
It makes sense, the two of them say, because Chaem Choi can’t remain here forever. She was destined for much better than the canals of Bangkok, Thailand. She refuses at first, and it takes an entire night to convince her to call Cho Dahye and return to Korea. Between Achara and Chaem Choi’s boss, it’ll be enough to make ends meet to care for her father. Chaem Choi won’t go without the promise that they’ll accept a check from her each month, and that’s about as good as it’ll get with her inflexible sense of duty.
So she returns and finishes out the show. She debuts as an idol. Like her meals, she saves most of her money for her father and Achara, even as her paychecks grow and grow and grow. Don’t lose sight of the money, she tells herself resolutely. Because this is all only a means to an end, and eventually, she will be with her father again with a large house and a full belly. Perhaps she will even eat an entire meal with him someday and be completely satisfied.
After all, it’s still just a dream.