`not that easily { nova ent. july evaluation }
song
it’s not a big stage. it’s not a main stage or an mnet soundstage. it’s not the mga’s or a an audition for something even bigger, if something such as that even exists. it’s not a big stage at all; it’s a small stage set up at a summer camp for trainees from every company to give their all in front of each other. it’s not a big stage. and yet, he feels so small.
he sits in front of an upright, not a baby grand, because it’s what’s available. he sits in front of it for a few moments, hesitating, a few moments that feel like an eternity. it’s because he spends those few moments lost in his own head, feeling a sudden ton of nervousness fall down on him like an anvil.
he’s one of the few who’ll take on this stage on his own, and already it feels like some sort of blunder, even if it wasn’t one he made by choice. he can feel eyes on him, breaths taken in indifferent anticipation of what he might have up his sleeve. or what he might not. he’d wanted to branch out, to surprise even himself by collaborating with someone outside of his comfort zone, from a different company, with skills different from his own. but since the mga’s, the thought of approaching trainees from another company somehow felt forbidden, taboo, an act rife with tension like some obstacle course of booby traps to keep him out of the hearts of companies that rivaled his own.
by the time he’d worked up the courage to ask, it seemed everyone had already paired up, leaving him without a lifeline when even his fellow nova trainees are revealed to have grouped up with others while he was tripping over his own metaphorical feet. it brought back memories of his first day at school after the first time he’d been pulled out of show business, thrust into a life considered ‘normal’ with children who didn’t know him and therefore wanted nothing to do with him, the boy alienated by his own accidental success.
it’s a stark reminder of it all, as he sits there on the piano bench, of how much he knows most of the trainees out there actually hate him. for winning or for not being good enough or for performing alone or for all three. the stark text of tweets by people he thought were his friends is still burned onto the back of his eyelids, confirming his suspicions. all this time and effort he’s spent into getting people to love him seems only to have gotten people to hate him instead. and now he’s suffering the consequences for it.
he takes a deep breath, but doesn’t let it go until he’s played the first few chords of the song, letting his fingers travel across the keys based on their own muscle memory. his emotions, the ones he keeps so tightly bottled up, seep into the way he plucks a melody from black and white keys, into the dramatic harmonics of the song, until the instrumental intro ends, rings into silence before the more upbeat music begins over the speakers.
he starts the dance, the choreography he’s altered just so to make it more complex, more suited for the image he and his company are known for. still, a lack of confidence and the knowledge he thinks is surefire, the knowledge that everyone watching would rather see him fail, lingers in the back of his mind.
but even so, there’s the small inkling that someone somewhere out there wants the opposite, wants to see him succeed just as much as he wants himself to.
he’s not going to give up. not that easily.
