“Oh my gosh, you should have seen it,” Ari gushes as we pull on black-and-white racing suits for a car commercial. “Strawberry milk everywhere. I’ve never seen Lizzie laugh so hard.”

“They were totally cuddling!” Sunhee whispers as a makeup artist on the Coca-Cola shoot touches up our bold red lips. “Seriously, it was adorable. Jiyoon was the little spoon. But don’t tell Mina I told you.”

When I come home late from a long day of Girls Forever commitments, Umma is right there to greet me with a cup of barley tea and a warmed-up plate. I eat star-shaped omelettes with Appa on the weekends, and help Leah memorize the Mandarin lyrics for SayGO’s first Chinese album. And when I’m not promoting with Girls Forever or spending time with my family, I’m glued to the bamboo desk in my new room, working on design sketches for my line of bags.

When I first learned about Lane Crawford’s stipulation that I needed to have a second season’s worth of designs ready to go by launch, I honestly thought there was no freaking way. But amazingly, as June comes to a close, I find that I’m already halfway through designing the required eighteen bags. I don’t know if it’s the distance from the tension at the villa, the comfort of being surrounded by family, or this perfect setup Umma created for me with the bamboo desk and light box, but it’s like moving home has opened up a floodgate of creativity. Ideas are pouring out of me so fast, my pencil struggles to keep up. The brand launch is fast approaching, and it’s probably still going to come down to the wire, but for the first time, I feel like I might actually pull this off.

“Ooh, that looks cool,” Leah says, peering over my shoulder one evening in early July. “Which one is that?”

I’m working on a series of bags inspired by our move to Korea after I was recruited by DB, and the trainee years that followed. They’re sleek, rectangular mini bags with removable straps, allowing them to function as both a crossbody and a clutch. They’ll come in different colors with different strap styles, so you can mix and match. I changed so much in those seven trainee years, I wanted these bags to reflect that sense of growth, of evolution.

“Oh, I get it,” Leah says after I explain the inspiration behind the crossbody-to-clutch concept. “It transitions from day to night, just like you transformed from normal girl into K-pop superstar.”

“Yeah, exactly,” I laugh.