Becoming Stray Kids’ Ninth

Bass trembled through one closed studio door. Somewhere farther down, sneakers squeaked against wood, followed by a sharp count and a burst of laughter. Yunseo followed the signs until she reached a door with a printed sheet taped to it.

STRAY KIDS - EVALUATION ROOM.

Her stomach folded in on itself.

Before she could knock, the door opened.

Bangchan stood there with one hand on the handle and a black hoodie pushed up at his forearms. He looked more tired than the photographs she had seen, but more alert too. His eyes moved over her face, her shoes, and finally the notes in her hand.

“You’re Yunseo.”

It was not a question.

“Yes.”

“You’re late.”

She glanced at the wall clock. “I’m seven minutes early.”

“For the building,” he said. “Not for the room.”

The corner of her notes bent beneath her fingers again. “I wasn’t sure where to go.”

“That’s why you should have asked.”

His tone was calm. That made it worse. There was no sharpness to fight, nothing she could dismiss as cruelty. Only expectation.

Bangchan stepped aside. “Come in.”

The room was larger than she had imagined, lined with mirrors and scuffed wooden floors. A speaker sat near the wall. Several chairs had been pushed back to make space, and the air held the warm, dusty scent of constant rehearsal.

The other members were there, though Yunseo knew better than to stare. They watched with varying degrees of curiosity while Bangchan crossed to the speaker.

“Your application says you sing, dance, and write.”

“I do.”

“What do you do best?”

“Write.”

His gaze returned to her. “Then why did you prepare a dance piece first?”

Yunseo’s mouth went dry. “Because I thought you’d want to see whether I could keep up.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

The room seemed to narrow around them.

“I write best,” she said. “But I don’t want to hide behind it.”

Something shifted in his expression - not approval, exactly. Attention.

“Good,” he said. “Start.”

The track began with a heavy beat. Yunseo moved before fear could catch her.

The first eight counts were clean. Her body remembered the hours she had spent repeating the choreography in a cramped apartment, using the edge of her bed as a makeshift boundary. The next section demanded more speed. Her heel slipped slightly on the polished floor.

She recovered, but Bangchan noticed.

He stopped the music.

Yunseo’s breath came unevenly. “I can do it again.”

“I know.”

“Then why stop?”

“Because you covered the mistake.”

Heat climbed her neck. “I fixed it.”

“You hid it.” He walked closer, not close enough to touch, but close enough that she could see the faint crease between his brows. “If you miss a step onstage, the audience doesn’t need to know you panicked. But your members do. We need to know whether you can recover or whether you’ll pretend nothing happened until the whole formation breaks.”

“I recovered.”

“Did you?”

The question struck deeper than it should have.

Yunseo looked at the mirrored wall. Her reflection stood with her shoulders raised and fists half-closed. “Yes.”

“Then show me without trying to look perfect.”

He restarted the track.

This time she let the mistake exist. Her heel dragged. Her balance tilted. She caught herself with a rougher movement, turned the stumble into a sharper change of direction, and finished with her breath scraping her throat.

The music cut.

No one spoke for a moment.

Bangchan’s eyes stayed on her. “Better.”

One word. It moved through her like warmth.

He picked up a water bottle from the floor and held it out. Their fingers brushed when she took it. His hand was warm from practice. Yunseo hated that she noticed.

“You’re tense,” he said.

“I’m auditioning.”

“That isn’t an excuse.”

“It’s the reason.”

A faint line appeared beside his mouth. Almost a smile, but not generous enough to become one.

“Then sing.”

She drank too quickly and nearly choked. Bangchan looked away, giving her the dignity of pretending not to notice. That small mercy unsettled her more than his criticism.

Yunseo set the bottle down and moved toward the microphone.

The song she had chosen was not the safest one. It began softly, leaving nowhere to hide if her voice shook. She had selected it because the lyrics were about standing at the edge of a place that might never make room for you.

The opening note trembled.

Bangchan’s head lifted.

Yunseo nearly stopped. His attention was direct and unblinking, not admiring, not comforting. Measuring. She forced air into her lungs and continued.

By the second verse, her voice settled. She stopped thinking about the room and imagined the moment after being told no - the walk home, the notes folded into her bag, the terrible quiet of knowing she had tried and still remained outside.

When the final note faded, the silence felt heavier than the music.

Bangchan did not clap. He looked down at the evaluation sheet in his hand.

“Why this song?”

“Because I know what it feels like to want a place that hasn’t been offered.”

His pen paused.

“And if the place is offered?” he asked.

“I’d work until I deserved it.”

“That’s a nice answer.”

“It’s the honest one.”

“No.” He set the pen down. “The honest answer is that you’re afraid you’ll get in and still be treated like a guest.”

Yunseo’s fingers tightened at her sides.

The others shifted quietly behind him. The room’s air-conditioning clicked on, sending a cold current across the sweat at her neck.

Bangchan continued, softer now. “You keep performing as if someone is waiting for proof that you don’t belong.”

“Maybe someone is.”

“Who?”

She wanted to say him. The thought arrived so quickly it frightened her.

Instead, she said, “Everyone.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the one I have.”

His jaw tightened. For the first time, his composure cracked enough for her to see frustration beneath it.

“You don’t get to join a team by surviving an interrogation,” he said. “You have to let people see what happens when you’re not in control.”

“I thought you wanted me to prove I could handle pressure.”

“I want to know whether you can trust the people beside you.”

Yunseo laughed once, without humor. “You’ve known me for twelve minutes.”

“Exactly. And you’re already trying to convince me you don’t need anyone.”

The words landed in the space between them.

She looked down at the wooden floor, at the pale scratches left by thousands of rehearsals. “Needing people makes it easier for them to decide you’re a burden.”

No one moved.

It was not what she had meant to say. The truth had slipped out before she could dress it in something more acceptable.

Bangchan’s expression changed. The sharpness remained, but it no longer felt aimed at her like a blade. He studied her as if she had handed him something breakable and he was deciding where to put it.

“Who told you that?” he asked.

Yunseo swallowed. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters if you bring it into the team.”

“I won’t.”

“You can’t promise that.”

“I can promise I’ll work.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

His voice had lowered. So had hers. The room around them seemed to recede, leaving only the distance between his shoes and hers.

Yunseo hated the concern beginning to show in his eyes. Concern was more dangerous than criticism. Criticism could be answered. Concern invited her to stay.

“I’m not asking anyone to carry me,” she said.

Bangchan’s gaze dropped briefly to her hands. “You’re holding your notes so tightly you tore them.”

She looked down.

A clean rip ran through the bottom corner.

“I can still read them.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Before she could answer, someone near the speaker cleared his throat. The spell broke. Bangchan stepped back and glanced at the evaluation sheet.

“You’ll do the writing test.”

“Now?”

“Now.”

He played an instrumental track, stripped down to percussion and a low, restless melody. Yunseo sat on the floor with a pen and a blank page. Her knees were still warm from dancing. Bangchan remained standing near the mirror, arms folded, watching her instead of the clock.

The demand was simple: write sixteen bars about a place you wanted to enter.

Her mind went blank.

The hallway outside pressed against the walls - the muffled footsteps, the distant music, the knowledge that every person in the building seemed to belong somewhere. Yunseo lowered her pen.

The beat continued.

She wrote the first line.

Then another.

By the time the track ended, she had filled the page with words about doors, borrowed names, and the fear that belonging could be revoked the moment she stopped being useful.

Bangchan held out his hand.

She hesitated before giving him the page.

His eyes moved across the lyrics. Once, he stopped. The muscles in his cheek tightened, then relaxed.

“This is good,” he said.

The praise was quiet enough to feel private.

Yunseo looked at him. “Good enough?”

“For the next evaluation.”

The words took a second to reach her.

“The next evaluation?”

Bangchan turned the page over, revealing a signature at the bottom. “You’re being pulled into the next-member evaluation.”

Her chest loosened so suddenly she had to sit back on her heels. The room sharpened around her - the white lights, the scuffed floor, the faint smell of sweat and detergent.

“I passed?”

“You advanced.”

“That sounds different.”

“It is.”

Her smile began before she could stop it. “But I’m still in.”

“For now.”

The hope in her chest collided with the warning in his voice.

Bangchan handed back the page. His fingers lingered on the edge, not touching hers this time.

When the others began gathering their things, he nodded toward the hallway. “Wait outside.”

Yunseo followed him through the door. The hallway felt colder after the heat of the room. Music pulsed behind another studio, and someone laughed at the far end. Bangchan closed the audition-room door behind them.

For a moment, neither spoke.

“You did well,” he said.

She searched his face. “That sounded almost kind.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

The answer pulled a reluctant smile from her.

His eyes dropped to it, and something unguarded flickered across his face before he looked away. The moment was brief, but Yunseo felt it settle under her skin.

Then he faced her again.

“You’re not safe from rejection.”

The smile disappeared.

“I know.”

“No, you don’t.” His voice was gentler than before, which made the warning more serious. “The next stage isn’t a reward. It’s longer hours, more evaluations, and decisions that won’t be mine alone. If you come in expecting me to protect you because I noticed you, you’ll get hurt.”

“I didn’t ask you to protect me.”

“I know.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice as a group of trainees passed behind her. “That’s what worries me.”

Yunseo held his gaze. “Why?”

Bangchan looked as though he regretted the question before answering it.

“Because you’re already looking at this place like it can decide whether you’re worth keeping.”

The hallway noise blurred around them.

“And you?” she asked. “What do you think?”

His eyes stayed on hers, steady and impossible to read.

“I think you might be exactly what the team needs,” he said. “I also think you could break yourself trying to prove it.”

The door behind him opened. Someone called his name from inside.

Bangchan stepped away first.

“Come back tomorrow at nine,” he said. “Bring new lyrics. And don’t arrive early just to stand outside and panic.”

Yunseo glanced at the torn notes in her hand. “How did you know I was panicking?”

“I could hear you from the hallway.”

He disappeared into the room before she could ask what that meant.

Yunseo remained beneath the fluorescent lights, clutching the page he had approved and the warning he had not softened. She had wanted a place inside the door.

Now she had one.

It was smaller than she imagined, temporary, and guarded by Bangchan’s watchful attention. Still, when the audition-room music started again, she did not turn toward the exit.

End of chapter one. 4 more chapters in the full book.