legal name: hong suran
stage name: anne
birthdate: 2000/06/09
age: twenty-four
training period: five years
company: ninety9 creative
group & position:nymth’s pink
skeleton key: ny5
career focus: solo music, commercial work, hosting
She doesn’t look up from where she’s hunched over her desk, not right away. Maybe if she wills it enough, the curtain of dark hair separating her from the rest of the classroom will turn into real fabric and hide the mortification staining her cheeks.
“Hong Suran.”
Her name is spoken like an order. She considers ignoring it, but her resolve doesn’t last. It never does. What she sees first is the blackboard, covered in obscene doodles and profanities. Her teacher doesn’t look disappointed, most of all she just seems tired. That stings even worse.
She takes the blame because there’s no one else to do it. It’s her word against the one of four other girls, old enough to hold back their gleeful cackles until class is over and the teacher is long gone.
Word travels fast, so no doubt tomorrow people in other classes will know about this, basking in the relief that it’s not their names that are being passed around like a hot potato for everyone to laugh and sneer at. The ones who share Suran’s predicament usually don’t even dare to lift their head in the hallway, so she doesn’t either.
Put a pin in that. The rumours, the whispers, the blame game.
“They must be hurting,” that’s what her mother told her. She hadn’t looked up from where she’d been hunched over the stovetop either, her voice a soft phantom of the one Suran remembers singing her lullabies years ago. I got that from you, she wants to tell her mother.
What about me? I’m hurting too. I’m your child, shouldn’t you be worrying more about my hurt than theirs? she wants to yell.
She doesn’t. Just like her mother would, she bites her tongue, stabs at the fried anchovies on her rice.
Hong Suran is talented, and that’s the source of her misfortune. Of that she is certain.Thing is, talent only gets you so far. It’s the first step, sure, a potential foot in the door if people are particularly charitable. It’s a flashy party trick. But it’s convenient. Studying isn’t really something she struggles with until she starts training under ninety9 creative— we’re getting ahead of the story now, but put a pin in that.
ninety9.
We’ll get back to that.
Point is, things come easily to Suran. She’s good in school, so when she stumbles into the pop star dreams a lot of girls her age eventually stumble into, her parents don’t mind humouring her for a little. Dance classes? Sure, as long as she remains top five in her class. It’s never all that serious because it never has to be. Things are easy, remember?
She makes friends, too. Where she struggles to fit in at school (and her mother always has a different, infuriatingly good excuse as to why the other girls insist on shunning her that she can’t really push back against) in dance classes Suran is among equals. They’re all here because they love music so much, they couldn’t possibly sit still when Dream Girls were playing on the radio.
So Suran’s parents let her. It’s inoffensive, right? Where’s the harm in their daughter having fun if her grades are good and she’s socially integrated somewhere?
It’s one of her friends from dance classes who talks Suran into coming to audition for ninety9 (the pin, remember?) with her. She’s just meant to be set dressing, emotional support, but when she’s asked if she’s trying out for the company too she doesn’t know how to say no. Maybe she doesn’t want to, she considers in retrospect.
The callback is the first time Suran experiences real pushback from her parents as far as her silly little artistic pursuits go. What were you thinking? is followed by being an idol is not a real job and we did not make the sacrifices we made for you to waste your hard work and potential like this.Her parents, but really, it’s her father. Suran’s mother sits next to him and looks at her hands and it fills her teenage daughter with a deeply set dread of becoming like her, a shadow of someone who used to have wants and hopes and dreams of her own, set aside for everyone else’s benefit.
They must be hurting, Suran. You have to be patient with them.
Suran’s rib cage seizes around her heart.Her first instinct is to lower her head, to apologize, to promise it’ll never happen again and that she’s quitting dance classes. She could say she was stupid, that she should’ve known better.Instead, she tries to bargain.
Her father signs her trainee contract because, in his own words, he respects her passion for standing up for her decisions. Suran watches his hand scrawl his name on the dotted line and wonders how she was supposed to know that was what he wanted from her when all he’d ever taught her and her mother was to concede?
Things come easily to Suran and then, ninety9 creative happens.Suddenly, she’s middle of the pack and juggling school and grueling training hours and not being immediately good at it makes her reconsider it all a few weeks after joining their trainee roster.Maybe the girls at school were right when they told her not to get too full of herself, that she’s really nothing special. Maybe the passion her father respected was nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
But training teaches Suran patience and perseverance. And patience and perseverance give her time she needs to turn her talent into practiced skill. And in the end, it’s practiced skill that gets her where she needs to be, the right girl at the right time in the right place.
Suran isn’t sure pink is her colour.It doesn’t matter. When you’re handed a chance to step into the light you take it.Right?
Remember that other pin? The one from the very beginning? Let’s follow the thread back to it.
Someone asks a question. That’s all it takes. The controversy of Selene’s debut is still so fresh and someone from the same school who only ever knew her through the grapevine voices confusion about why they’d debut a troubled bully— the house of cards unravels far too easily.
Suran should heed the advice not to search herself online but she does it all the same. In some way, rubbing salt into the wound feels almost cathartic, as if the gnawing, hateful voice at the back of her mind is being validated. She’s instructed to not comment, pretend it’s not happening. These things happen, they’ll blow over, management says. She believes them. They’re the experts, she’s their dancing, singing dress-up doll.
It’s her old homeroom teacher who puts the bully rumours to bed at last. Suran should be grateful but the bitter aftertaste of why couldn’t you have stood up for me when it was happening sits with her anyway.The flood of hate comments slows down, then dries out. Mostly.She tries to remind herself that hate comes with the job.
It’s the demeaning, humiliating, hurtful comments that haunt her before she falls asleep still.
Part of Suran hopes that Selene’s tenuous first steps as an idol group will pay off. And they do — kind of. Is she a bad person for worrying that the love they get isn’t enough? Is she entitled when the lack of acknowledgement in the domestic market, their home turf, is comparatively subdued?
Shouldn’t just getting to be on stage enough?
She considers terminating her contract when she’s given the opportunity. Go back to school, do something that will make her parents prouder than a lackluster career in a field that is notorious for its instability, do her best to blend back into the masses and live with the knowledge that she tried, at least, and that she got the chance to experience something most trainees never did.
But there are certain things someone will only understand if they’ve been through it with you. The glory and grief of being part of then-Selene-now-Nymth is something no one else but her group mates will understand. And how does she plan on going to university, anyway? She’s far from the academic standard she’d be expected to attain if she wanted to make it into a reputable university and she’s not sure she’s good enough of a person to be able to let go.
The waiting, the fear that their next comeback might be their last, the old wounds hurting every time she catches a glimpse of a hateful comment online, all of it pales next to the knowledge that here, at least, she belongs somewhere, that she shares something with other people that is irreplaceable.
So she doesn’t. When Suran is offered the chance to jump ship she hunches over her work and looks away. When it pays off, she wonders if this is somehow what her mother found when she refused to lift her gaze from the stovetop.
003: image.
Look up “Nymth Anne” on Google or Naver and you’ll come across conflicting accounts. Some posts, particularly older ones, are keen to point to school violence and misbehaviour rumours she never truly addressed, firmly believing that the resolution to the issue must’ve come through company funds paying off outlets reporting on it. Newer, equally disgruntled netizen notes cite company favouritism as their reason as to why they think that their issues with her have to be aired so publicly.Some don’t bother trying to moralize their dislike for her, criticising her voice, her dancing, her looks, the way she carries herself.
There are, however, also plenty of voices who will praise her abilities as a musician, some less founded in actual technical knowledge than others, admirers of her looks and fans on all rungs of the parasocial ladder who have found something worth loving in her.
The years have been mostly kind to Anne, giving her the chance to prove to Selene’s audience that those who put their faith in her are rewarded. Just like the title of her debut promised, her image as an idol is radiant and sweet and, perhaps most importantly, as relatable as a curated idol persona might get. While she is a charismatic performer, Anne has somewhat opened up about her shyness and anxiety. The candidness has paid off, with voices even outside the fandom commending her for her honesty.
She’s cultivated the aura of a dutiful fansign girlfriend over the years, garnering praise from fans for how she’s been repeatedly able to recognize fans and remember things they’ve shared with her in the past — regardless of gender, which has helped to endear her to an international fanbase.
