hyeri strides into the practice room, curiosity lilting her voice as she comes to a stop in front of the mirrors and dumps her duffel bag onto the marley floor. she examines the other girl with unabashed interest and guesses, from her presence here, that this might be the last member of their evaluation group this month. rumors had abounded there was a new face at the company but hyeri hadn’t given much thought to it -- trainees came and went here like clockwork, after all -- until the strange name had appeared on their group configuration.
kim mihyun, that was it. “i’m lee hyeri,” the dancer introduces herself easily. she lowers her bottom onto the floor and elongates her long legs forward, relaxing them in the usual warm-up. “you haven’t been here long and they’ve already thrown you into an evaluation-- sucks, doesn’t it?” hyeri reaches out with her arms as well and curls her fingers around her toes, exhaling through her nose as she feels her muscles easing into the stretch. “i hope it won’t scare you off yet.”
sphere ent. evaulations! month of: june!
song of choice: vixx – gr8u
squad: tsundere!! ( park chorong & kim myungsoo )
oh crap. oh crap.
it’s that time of the month. no, the ice princess wasn’t shedding ice out from her uterus. she wasn’t bleeding. she wouldn’t be a fierce tigress, not today. it wasn’t the monthly, it was the monthly evaluations. she was all new to this, the concept of it deemed foreign at first and after a while, she began to understood what it meant all along. the dancing studio was a home for her for the past few days, seemingly familiar on the daily. dancing wasn't the worst for her. rapping was the least skill she'd excel in. apart from her creative wits, she only had her dancing abilities but it wasn't anything professional or jaw dropping.
to think that flare for dancing died out a while back, she was wrong. actually, the potential was still there but she didn’t believe it. not with her confidence that hit rock bottom. she chose not to dance alone, not to be a lone wolf this time but follow along a pack of great, big wolves. the wolves were icy like her, tsunderes for sure. they’re not the greatest dancers in sphere but they’re definitely not the worth out of the bunch. at least, she’d think so.
rehearsal for days on end. rinse and repeat, just like how she came to the sphere building on a daily basis now. it was part of her life, she didn’t complain a lot about it at all. in fact, she loved being in the sphere building. rehearsals always brought back memories of the well-famed mgas. though, she was thankful that this wasn’t going to be broadcasted on national television like the mgas. her butt was saved, thank god.
why is this such a big deal when this was only the first try and dancing isn’t even my worse..?
she mulled over why she was so anxious about it. the more anxious she was, the less sharp and precise her dance moves were. it wouldn’t look right, she’d look stiff and out of it as if she wasn’t in reality. dozing off to her own wonderland. this isn’t that bad. this isn’t that bad. she can reassure herself a million times til’ she felt okay with it. that surely did help ( sarcasm intended, yes ). quite frankly, what really helped her out was the aid of myungsoo and chorong to know that she wasn’t alone doing this dance.
choreography didn’t take too long for her to pick up. she’s a fast learner, swift on the feet and can memorise dance moves easily. however, she was in no way to freestyle. she’s not chachi gonzales, nope. she promised herself that she’ll give it all she got and not fail. failing isn’t an option.
and so, the three are called up.. the music started playing. soojung does her best to follow the choereography she had been learning for the past time. she’s in the centre, seriously. most of the time. she can’t fail since she’s there, but it was like when she was a child—feeling the flow of dancing enter her body, she isn’t charismatic but this was enjoyable. for the first time in forever, the ice princess was having fun. surprising, for sure.
maybe, this was the start of a new flame for dancing for her.
a serious song but playful practices, tiffany couldn’t ask for anything more perfect. as much as a perfectionist as she is, watching kwangmin stumble around yuri whether it be physically or mentally ( the occasional mumble and stolen glances just one of a few ways ) was well worth the extra practice time it merited on some days.
being asked to trade partners was the funniest day and she wondered when an eval felt so fun to her. even if she hadn’t found it so entertaining, there was no way tiffany could trade ( or want to ) because hyunjae was within her comfort zone. well past it from the first day they met and he stole her towel right in front of her.
still, there’s no denying the awkwardness that does come with performing with hyunjae because of certain lyrics. a crossing of gazes whenever the song starts, ‘the cold words you said to me / it’s been a while, you’re finally faded’ strike a little too close to him and they feeloff for the first few beats as if chasing a stolen melody other than the one given to them. in those moments, if yuri asked then, maybe she would’ve said yes.
maybe.
seeing yuri in the kt practice rooms after the conclusion of the mgas brings the brightest of smiles to her face and despite her own personal ordeals after the show finished, she couldn’t be more proud, more excited, more relieved.
sharing a stage with her, even if it’s merely an eval compared to being on national tv, was an honor tiffany thought she wouldn’t have again so soon. yuri’s potential shines more now to her than it did before. this time around, yuri’s the coach and tiffany loves being able to hand that title over to her now fellow trainee, to a friend. choreography comes to her more easily under yuri’s tutelage and the execution is far more smooth than she could accomplish alone. the more tiffany works with her, the more she believes that yuri does belong at kt and she’s shameless in letting the younger know it, affection and praise given easily— so easily that the guys jokingly complain.
‘what happened to the tiffany who’s so critical during practice?’
but, then again, kwangmin bites his tongue compared to hyunjae and it’s a laughable notion because the reason he has to is because being around yuri has him so tongue-tied in the first place.
regardless, practice makes perfect and she says so on the day of the eval— that they’ve come as close to perfection as they can because they do their best, they did their best when it comes to the performance itself and the most perfect moment of all is the ending. jackets stolen from the guys, straying from the original, and tiffany sneaks a grin in just before she dons the jacket herself ( because who needs a man to do that for you anyway ) , one she shares with yuri as their final position ends.
you’re pitiful, no matter how hard you try
( it’s nothing like before )
you’ve changed so much
( you’ve become nothing )
the way you talk, the way you look
so unlike you, so weak—
He was still reeling in the aftermath of the brief Wave promotions when he returned to his normal training schedule and a coach pulled him aside to explain this month’s evaluations. And where he was exempt before, being neck deep in the MGAs, that would not be the case this month, now that he was back to being a normal everyday Nova trainee as if none of it had ever happened. It felt like a low after the huge high that had come from participating on the MGAs and promoting a single, and after everything, even after spending hour upon hour with them, he missed his team, believe it or not.
He was fortunate enough to get to see Wendy every day still, but somehow it felt wrong not spending days in the same practice room with just the four of them running the same routine over and over, getting fed up with each other as anyone who spends that much time together would, and then immediately jumping back into it after a breath of fresh air a few moments of freedom away from each other. It had almost been like debuting, what with being a part of what was almost an idol group and practicing for what were almost full length promotions, and he was feeling the after effects of that fact. It was like having a taste of something so delightful and wonderful and everything he’d ever wanted, a free sample of sorts, with no promises of getting the whole cake, the one still sitting on a high-up shelf behind plexiglass casing, taunting him.
The itch under his skin, the one that wanted him so badly to be someone, had been satisfied for the month he spent in some kind of spotlight, but now that it was gone again, with no hints of ever coming back, the itch was back, and worse this time, like an insatiable addiction. His mood had improved noticeably, his spirit rejuvenated, and yet such a fact seemed to conflict with that. It made him enthusiastic about the evaluations, which he knew were a chance to showcase his skills, to show how he’d improved during his time with Mnet and Team Nova, to show what he’d learned from the experience, the one that was unique to him, a long time trainee and a coach and member of the team, and to no one else the staff would see perform on the day of evals.
It felt strange coming back to it all. A month away from normal trainee schedules at Nova felt like an eternity, and by the time he was preparing for his own evaluation, it felt like all of his peers had paired up with each other to prepare their own stages, which only made him long for his time with Team Nova even more. He’d be on his own this month, and he had to show Nova that he was just as apt at that as he was working on a team.
Chatter about everyone’s personal preparations for the evaluations was constant, and he spent plenty of time debating which song he actually wanted to perform. What did Nova want from them? From him? Surely by now they knew he was capable of their idea of ‘cute’. By now, everyone knew it, and never let him forget it. He wanted to do something that he wanted to do, for once, something his style, that he could feel confident in. He’d considered Call Me Baby more than once, but he knew his peers held a similar interest in it, and he’d hate to be in the category of trainees doing the same song so many times that their own coaches would grow bored with it, or worse, compare them all and find him anywhere near the bottom of the list. It also wasn’t the easiest song to perform solo, not when half of the dance’s appeal was the group aspects of the choreography and the other half was all camera work. In a practice room lined with chairs and stern faces and a handheld camera on a tripod, a performance like that wasn’t exactly ideal.
It was easy then to narrow down his choices to one song, one he was visibly excited about. He wasn’t sure if they expected Press Your Number out of him, but if they were surprised, it could only be considered a good thing. It was a song he could put a bit of his own style into while still maintaining the steps and the feel of the choreography, and having never shaken the time a high-up staff member had called him Nova’s Performing Robot, he couldn’t help but think maybe putting his own spin on things for once would work in his favor instead of working against him.
Where he’d discovered this newfound confidence, he couldn’t be sure, but perhaps weeks of people looking to him for advice and guidance to dominate a competition and those same people winning the entire competition had done something to boost his lacking self-esteem. That, and the rapid progression of his relationship with Sohee had instilled in him a particular confidence in executing the complex routine as originally performed by the KT artist while maintaining hints of his own dance style in the process.
He felt different after it all, after the MGAs and Wave. Things felt different. Had he changed? He wasn’t sure what had changed, whether it was him or something around him, some aspect of his life that was too intangible to monitor so numerically. But whatever had changed, for now it felt like it had been for the better.
