#rkmay15eval

[rktiffxny]

                                              ( ♥ ) ent may evaluation: talent edition!

name: hwang ❝ tiffany ❞miyoung                                 ➥ kt’s aurora, brighter than the sky talent: acting oh so creative 

“hi everyone, i’m kt’s shining star!” ( . . . ) “shooting star! . . .. no, not right”  ( . . . )  “i’m kt’s . . . ugh, forget it.” 

nothing felt right. nothing still felt right but tiffany knew she couldn’t walk in there with nothing. she couldn’t live up to it. that was her greatest concern. how does one name themself? she even awkwardly asked her therapist, to which she received a question of when she’ll be coming in again and tiffany could only answer “when i have a name.” 

such a simple assignment, one that ended with a few words and a brief sentence, yet it had her struggling more so than the prevous assignments. 

if only she could sing. she’d even willingly dance to anything — a steep claim but she was at her wit’s end, not that she had much wit as of recently. 

she thought of all the useless things. why isn’t morgan dating garcia already? why isn’t sebastian stan filming more for civil war? why aren’t there more pictures and why couldn’t she just focus for at least two seconds? 

constantly changing and melting away, that’s how she felt. 

without form, without shape. a disney character had more direction than she did. then it hit her. 

disney. 

not a character’s title persay but a name. aurora. she was an aurora. 

“hi, my name is tiffany. kt’s very own aurora, brighter than the sky!” 

and all the other disney phrases she could use for it, she was sure she could embarrass her fellow trainees with later. she almost felt towel sunbae’s laughter tickling her ear as she spoke. 

now for a talent — 

it felt so cliche. so stereotypical for someone in her position, but she didn’t seem the fault in using what she has, what she’ll likely be known for when, if, she debuts. 

coffee prince was one of her favorite dramas, if only she could receive a role like that and pull it off but tiffany as a male didn’t seem likely and she wouldn’t dare compare herself to yoon eun hye. a girl could dream, but a girl couldn't wait. 

unlike the role she was portraying, she couldn’t ask for patience. she didn’t have much of it to offer, explaining why her role fell apart as soon as the scene ended. “ah, it was too serious,” she laughed to herself, tongue stuck out in slight embarrassment. 

now if she could do this on a variety show, that’d be perfect. for now, she’d have to work on it. 

[rkxeve]

Jinri stands in the locker room, staring at herself in the mirror. Compared to just a few weeks ago, she’s already looking much healthier — following Luna’s advice, she’s started coming home to sleep every night rather than just staying at the Sphere building, no matter how late it is when she stops practicing. That alone has helped her mental health, since having a place to unwind away from Sphere has given her a chance to de-stress every day.

For a few weeks after those articles came out about her and Sphere, Jinri seemed to wilt. She became determined to prove the netizens wrong, to show that she’s better than what they said. To do that, she started practicing quite literally all the time, and only stopped when her body was too exhausted to do anything more, at which point she would collapse on a couch somewhere at the company and sleep for a few hours before getting up and repeating it all over again.

Now, however, after a little push from Luna, she’s stopped pushing herself quite as much. She still works hard, of course, and her practice schedule is still rough, but she isn’t working all the time until she drops. She’s gained back a little of the weight she lost after the articles came out, and though her physical trainer isn’t exactly happy about that, Jinri herself feels better now. Healthier.

She smiles at her reflection, touching one of the colorful extensions in her hair and taking another second to enjoy how confident and happy she looks. The decision to start wearing these extensions was a risky one, one that took a lot of confidence, but Jinri’s glad she was able to do it, because while it required a lot of confidence to make that decision, the colors themselves have given her quite a bit more self-confidence. They make her feel good about how she looks, and that changes the way she sees herself. She stands taller, smiles more brightly, and has more of an air that says she knows what she’s doing, whether she does or not.

And that’s exactly what she needs for this evaluation.

The smile fades into a small frown as she thinks about her plan for the evaluation. They’re supposed to introduce themselves in some creative, memorable way and present a “special talent” that would set them apart on variety shows and the like. She knows what her talent is: the cello. Most idol musicians play piano, guitar, or maybe violin, but never cello. It definitely qualifies as special and memorable — at least, it does in Jinri’s opinion.

She’s not so sure about her introduction. Luna and Rachel had both suggested names related to flowers, which makes a bit of sense considering that her English name is Lily. She’s not sure if she wants to use any of those names, though; they’re all really embarrassing, but then again she figures that so is “flaming charisma,” so she should probably just go ahead and get used to the embarrassing part.

She thinks about the names again, picking one of Rachel’s suggestions from her memory. Pulling the grin back up on her face, she says it cheerily to her reflection. “Hello, I’m Sphere’s Tiger Lily Choi!” As soon as the words leave her mouth, the smile contorts into a grimace as she shakes her head. “No, that’s just weird,” she mutters with a sigh. Biting her lip, she tries to remember the other suggestions off the top of her head.

Something new pops in her head, and it’s hardly original; she knows of at least one idol who’s used it before, but she decides to give it a try anyway. The smile comes back to her lips, and she tries again. “Hello, I’m Sphere’s Giant Baby, Choi Jinri!”

A second later, she bursts out laughing. That name actually reminds her of a cartoon she saw a while back, which sometimes featured a giant floating baby head, so she shakes her head. “No, definitely not.”

Instead of using her own head, which is obviously a dangerous place, Jinri pulls out her phone and brings up the text conversation she had with Rachel the other night. “Flower Princess…” she mumbles, testing the name out on her tongue. Scanning over the other suggestions from both Rachel and Luna, she lets out a sigh and sets her phone down on the counter in front of her. Smiling at the mirror again, she puts on the cheerful voice once more. “Hello, I’m Choi Jinri, Sphere’s flower princess!” She chimes, holding the expression for a second before blinking at her reflection. With a shrug, she grabs her phone from the counter and turns to leave, figuring that it’ll do for this, at least.

——————

Later, in the evaluation room, Jinri sits with her cello in its case next to her, already tuned and ready. She watches the other trainees, finding this evaluation rather fun as she listens to their amusing introductions and watches their sometimes bizarre talents. She finds herself laughing at and with pretty much everyone, and she’s not nearly as nervous for this as she probably should be for an evaluation.

It’s like everything else with the Sphere family: it’s so relaxed and carefree that Jinri can’t help but feel the same. Even though it is an evaluation and is supposed to be serious, she can tell that the other trainees and even some of the instructors are feeling the same way she is. Looking at this, she can almost see why those netizens targeted Sphere and said they weren’t hard workers. From an outsider’s perspective, looking at it with Korea’s culture in mind, Jinri can almost see it.

But she knows that none of that was true, that it was all produced from unfair assumptions. Just because they know how to have fun doesn’t mean that the Sphere trainees aren’t hardworking: it just means that they — Jinri included — enjoy what they do. There’s nothing wrong with that, she thinks. In fact, that’s the best way to do things, in her opinion. She remembers that Confucius quote: the man who gets a job he loves never has to work a day in his life. Of course, it applies to girls too.

She wonders what it must be like at the other companies, ones that those netizens would call “hardworking.” She wonders if those people still remember why they love performing. She hopes they do.

Not for the first time, she’s hit with a huge wave of gratitude for Sphere as a whole. Trainee life is stressful, and Jinri doesn’t think she’d be able to survive it without these guys around her.

She’s snapped out of her reverie by the sound of her name. Standing up, she takes a moment to remove her cello and bow from the case before moving to the center of the room. She lays the cello on its side next to the chair in the middle of the room, the bow resting on top of it. Then she stands in front of the chair and bows to the judges’ table, taking a deep breath and painting that cheery smile on her face before she straightens.

“Hello, I’m Choi Jinri, and I’m Sphere’s flower princess!” She chimes, just like she did in the mirror earlier.

“What is your talent, Jinri-ssi?” One of the managers sitting at the table asks.

“I’ll be playing cello for you today,” she says, already sitting down and quickly setting up the instrument between her legs. Once the strings of the bow are tightened and ready, she looks around at the trainees and other instructors watching from the edges of the room. “I’ll start with a well-known piece; feel free to sing along if you know it~”

And without any other explanation, she sets her bow to the strings and starts playing. She starts with “Under the Sea,” the familiar percussion notes at the beginning coming out through the strings on her cello. She can already hear quiet gasps of realization, and as she goes into the melody of the first verse, she can hear a few quiet voices singing along.

She doesn’t do the whole song, stopping after the first chorus and looking around. “Any requests?” She asks, almost playfully, and as they planned beforehand, Luna calls out: “Circle of Life!”

Jinri grins, looking over at the fingerboard and playing a couple quiet notes to find the right pitch. Then, without so much as a breath, she plays a loud, high note, holding it out before going into the well-known tribal tune. It’s a lion, she thinks, remembering the translation. It’s a fucking lion. The thought brings another laugh to the lips, and she cuts off her playing after the second repeat of the melody, laughing with a few of her audience members.

“Hakuna Matata!” She begins the next song without prompting, saying the words without the cello at first. “What a wonderful phrase. Hakuna Matata…ain’t no passin’ craaaaze~” She sings the last line, playing it along on her cello at the same time. She stops singing after that, leaving the words to her audience as she plays the melody on the cello.

It means no worries For the rest of your days It’s our problem free Philosophy Hakuna Matata

“Anything else?” She asks, looking around at all the grins around her while sporting a wide smile of her own.

“Frozen!” Someone shouts.

“Mulan!”

“Aladdin!”

She plays little snippets of all their suggestions, from “Let it Go” to “A Whole New World” to “I’ll Make a Man Out of You.” Too soon, though, she knows she’s pushing it as far as time goes, so she stops and stands up, bowing to the judges and accepting everyone else’s applause graciously.

Moving back to her seat, she puts her cello away while humming “A Whole New World,” feeling like she could literally just float away with all the elation and happiness that’s filling her.

This. This is what she loves. And she’ll do it for the rest of her life, no matter what.

[rklizzy]

Lizzy was excited for her time to shine during the evaluations that were to occur for Nova, as she had, since even before coming to the company, always known what it was that she was going to choose for her memorable introduction.  She wanted to be "Nova Entertainment's Busan Girl, Park Lizzy".  Something said in passing to her made her reconsider that option, though, as they did give a pretty good explanation for it, though.  Min had called her an "Energizer Bunny" because she never seemed to be out of energy, even at the end of the day.  She thought that that sounded pretty good to her, but she didn't want to give up the part where she was calling back upon her roots.  Her Busan accent was always prevalent when she spoke, so it was something she was proud of.

When the day finally arrived, Lizzy stood up for her turn and decided to heck with it, and she decided to combine the two in an amalgamation of sorts. "I'm Nova Entertainment's Busan Energizer, Lizzy!"  she threw in a bit of aegyo to drive the point home, which would be sure to gain both admiration and disdain.  

"Today, I have a special treat for you~" she smiled brightly, grabbing for a microphone that had been placed on a stand on the performance area.  "Those of you who know me, know that I'm a big fan of our MyName opp-  MyName sunbaes." she grinned as she corrected herself "But I like to listen to them so much that I had to learn a way to listen to them in a way that my grandparents would like when I'd go visit them."  she got a serious, dramatic look on her face and then burst into singing a trot version of Before The Dawn, earning quite a few laughs from the audience, Lizzy taking her bow, thinking this might be something to follow up on in the future.  

[hakyeonrk]

No Name||solo

Upon entering Royal, Hakyeon was met with enthusiasm. Excitement for the road ahead, in tough times. Hope, for the chance of debut. Emotions that he’d shed previous to the ink drying on his contract. So once his coach gave him the task of bringing all of this and more to his evaluation, he had truly had work before him.

“I’m Royal’s Azalea boy, Cha Hakyeon.” He said putting his hand up in a half salute and half wave by his face. After thinking on a name for too long, he’d decoded this was not that terribly important and had gone with a suggested name. Something he’d chosen at random when they’d told him to choose a family flower. When questioned about it, he’d bull shitted that he chose the flower meaning woman hood because he’d been accepted in drag (delivered as a joke, when really he hasn’t cared enough to look at the information. He'd shrugged it off as a funny story to give in an interview ).

Today’s evaluation was smaller than normal. Shockingly (not shockingly at all) people didn’t care about other’s talents, so it was pretty much himself and the coaches he’d been studying with. “I’ll be drawing.” He smiled and brought the sketchpad he held forward. His intention was to draw on the enthusiasm that his fellow trainees, but as he drew, in a thick black marker, a characture of the very coach who coach who told him he needed to do this, he found himself falling into the same sort of Hakyeon he pretended to be. The one who existed at night when he held someone, or needed to be daily when he needed people to like him. Almost fun. Almost happy.

This was Royal’s Azalea Boy. He could be that, if in the end it got him where he wanted to go.

The drawing drew chuckles from the coaches in the room, and he laughed, the same way he did that he knew people found genuine, almost unattractive, the way he screwed up his face. This was a game that Royal’s Hakyeon could enjoy, and one that the real Hakyeon, this one had no name, only wanted to conquer