CHO SUNYI “SUNNY”
age: 00 liner company: higher records position: rejectz’s maknae/visual/vocalist/lyricist traits: (+) Sedulous, Empathetic, Loyal (-) Timid, Insecure, played by: rose
About:
Sunyi may not have always been the youngest growing up, but she was the most timid. She was the first daughter born after her mother remarried following the loss of her first husband, and she she got older, Sunyi seemed to stay the quietest.
She was only nine when Hasik got discovered by Spotlight Productions, and though she missed her older half-brother, Sunyi did her best to lead a normal life. She went to school and kept her head down for the most part, though that wasn’t entirely by choice. She was so shy that she could only squeak out a response if any of her classmates ever spoke to her and just pray that the conversation would end without her somehow embarrassing herself completely. Even when she succeeded, Sunyi was still bullied constantly by her peers.
But while Sunyi never fit in well with most of her classmates, she always had music. She first started learn to play the tuba when she was still in elementary school, she liked how big and loud it could be–which was the exact opposite of her–and if she was being honest, she thought it was a little funny too.
The tiny girl with her giant tuba was always in band from that point forward, laughing and joking with other bands kids easily, unlike how hard it was for her during the rest of the day. As she grew older, she decided to pick up another instrument as well, learning the string bass and joining her school’s orchestra as well as the band.
Four years after her half-brother joined Spotlight, the company took interest in her as well. Thought a scout noticing Sunyi lugging her bass behind her as she went to visit her brother when she was fourteen wasn’t the same as being recruited at age twelve by the CEO like Hasik had experienced, it still made Sunyi consider if the company could be a home for her brother, it could be a home for her too. Sunyi already loved music, that was undeniable, and it was through music that she managed to not just hide away from the rest of the world as much as she could.
But she knew she couldn’t show up with a tuba and hope everything would work out. Sunyi would have to not just talk to other people, but actually sing. She always liked singing, but that was to herself when she was alone, never anytime someone might overhear her. To this day Sunyi is unsure of how she passed her audition given how visibly nervous she had been, but after she was accepted, for the first time she felt hope that this was where she belonged.
As her brother got engulfed in what felt like a scandal that had no end in sight, Sunyi was instilled with a new fear that if she failed, she would somehow make things worse for him. Everyday that drew closer to her debut as the maknae of Iris, and the more people who payed attention to her and the other trainees, so did her brother’s notoriety in the public eye and she couldn’t seem to wrap her head around it.
Sunyi promised herself that once Iris debuted, the attention from being Hasik’s half-sister would give her the opportunity to show that he wasn’t malicious like media outlets insisted he was. But at the last moment, Iris debuted without her and all of the other members that she had grown so close to since she was barely fourteen.
When Sunyi found out that she was cut from the lineup, she was devastated. Sunyi could come up with a million reasons why Spotlight could have changed their mind seemingly without a second thought for why she didn’t deserve to debut. But she couldn’t figure out why they had done so with her friends, who felt like her sisters and were supposed to have been her groupmates.
It was their idea to leave once they had all been cut, and Sunyi knows she probably never have had the guts to stand up to Spotlight had it not been for the other girls encouraging her as they did the same. She was always too scared of failing, of making things worse for Hasik, and once she already failed to debut, she didn’t want to fail Hasik as well. She doesn’t know what possessed her at the time they left, but looking back Sunyi is thankful that she found the strength to tell the executives that cut them that they deserved to be treated better, Hasik deserved to be treated better, and she deserved better too.
Sunyi trained for barely a year before she debuted with Rejectz only a few months before her seventeenth birthday. Though she had done all of it before, the training and nerves and gearing up to debut, Sunyi felt like she was freezing up more than ever. She was terrified of failing all over again and not being able to prove Spotlight wrong about her and the other members and not being able to prove to her family that they could bounce back from anything.
Thankfully the other members knew Sunyi almost better than she knew herself by that point. Sunyi excelled at writing her own lyrics, and helping the other members with theirs whenever they wanted her to chime in, but suddenly whenever she went to sing in front of anyone that wasn’t the other girls, she almost couldn’t move at all. So the other girls came up with the solution: give her a fraction of the lines that she normally would get, and Sunyi wouldn’t have to worry about anything else.
In spite of Sunyi’s nerves, Rejectz’s debut did anything but fail. All the hard work that she and the other members put into their debut paid off, and Sunyi’s slowly growing into the confidence that the other members always pushed her to have. She still has her moments of being the same, shy girl that Spotlight probably saw when they let her and the other girls go, but Sunyi still hopes that she can leave that version of herself behind and keep making those she cares about proud.