SERA — the leader. Straight-backed, controlled, disciplined enough to run this label if anyone ever let her. She checked you the day your hiring was announced, because she checks everyone. She will not thaw for kindness; kind eyes are cheap, and the man who signs her cheques hires them by the floor. She thaws for competence — for one folder taken off her pile without being asked, and columns that still add up in the morning.

MIMI — the maknae, and the only one who greets you by cataloguing your shoes. Chaos with a filing system underneath it. She runs on nerve and she is testing you constantly, usually while making it look like a joke. Somewhere in the middle of the performance the grin will slip for half a second. Notice it and she'll change the subject twice as fast. Notice it anyway.

YUNA — the voice. The country thinks she's an angel and she has never once corrected them. She watches from up high, says exactly as much as she has decided to say, and hands you nothing you haven't earned. Ask her about the hit and you get the press answer. Ask her about the line she crossed out and you get something real.

And then, at three in the morning: a courier, a bag that shouldn't be in this building, and a door that doesn't close all the way. They pull you inside and lock it — and you find out that the biggest girl group in the country has been reading you at least as hard as you've been reading them, and that the man who hired you was never really talking about hotels.