AKA

Chapter Five

A whole year has passed since Jer got the call that he would be in A-List Record's new boyband, and he couldn't believe all the amazing things that's happened since that exciting day. AKA debuted in the beginning of August after two intense months of training, recording five songs for their first album, and choreography practice for the two feature songs on the album. Though Jer liked the fast-paced nature of the AKA's two training months, he had to admit that he thought President Hyong was crazy for making AKA learn three Trio songs and choreographies for an short and exclusive pre-debut showcase tour at the same time that they had to learn their own new songs and choreos.

"It's like he's trying to kill us!" Jer—who decided his stage name would be JP—exclaimed after their late-July showcase in Los Angeles.

Samuel—who changed his stage name from New Shot to Veteran—gave one of his rare laughs. "I see you're finally getting the feel of being in a band."

All the hard work and traveling all over California for the showcases were worth it in the end though, Jer would admit. Because when AKA dropped their first music video, it received the most views in twenty-four hours of any music video ever. It also eventually broke the record of most viewed debut music video ever. A week later, AKA dropped their second music video, which also received millions upon millions of views.

AKA quickly booked and were invited to premiere morning shows, premiere nighttime talk shows, top radio shows, award shows, and America's number one music festival. The whole time, AKA performed their two feature songs and sometimes also performed their other three songs. After a while, Jer thought he could perform all five songs in his sleep.

At the end of August, AKA did it all over again. They recorded three new songs while Brandon and DJ Kai T worked on remixing their two hit songs from AKA's first album. In late October, AKA's first comeback happened. AKA did more performances and went on many more radio and TV shows. AKA's fan base was already really strong, but it was clear to everyone involved with AKA that their fan base and popularity grew exceptionally more each day. At the end of December, TopLists (the music chart giant and host of the yearly TopLists Awards show in June) came out with their annual end-of-the-year artist popularity list. Of course, the British superstar group JKLMN held its number one spot for the fourth year in a row. However, everyone in New Seoul seemed to happily scream in unison when TopLists announced that AKA got the number two spot. This meant that AKA—though they were still merely a rookie group—was the second biggest boyband in the world. More so, they were officially the biggest boy band in America.

"I told you, Jer!" Jess exclaimed during the Park family's New Year's Eve family night, right after the exciting news just dropped on Twitter. "I told you AKA would be the biggest boy band in all of America! I told you! Remember how I said that the day you found out you would be in A-List's new band? See! I freaking told you!"

"You did Jess," Jer laughed. "You definitely called it."

A month before AKA's brief, week-long Christmas/New Year's break, they started working hard on a full-length album that AKA hoped could be released in early March. The album would contain seven brand-new songs, signifying the seven band members. Two of the new songs would include sub-units. One song would feature the vocal sub-unit of Jer, Min-joon, Taiyang, and Jimmy while the other song would feature the rap sub-unit of Yohee, Samuel, Brandon, plus a mix of singing and rapping in the chorus from sub-rapper Jer. Jer felt like those three months were the intense training period of their pre-debut months all over again. But AKA did it. In early March, the seven-song album and a new music video came out. To the surprise of everyone at A-List, the new music video's twenty-four hour-views beat the record of the first music video's views. However, that was not the only exciting thing that happened to AKA in March. About a week before the new album and music video came out, A-List Records announced that AKA would go on their first worldwide tour starting in early June.