juyeon’s a little taken back by sphere girls suddenly going from one to one hundred in about five seconds flat. but it wasn’t a bad thing. it had been hard watching so many trainees leave sphere, be it to follow a dream elsewhere or to find a new dream. juyeon understood. she wasn’t one to hold grudges and while she had felt sad about it for a long time, almost giving up herself, it was heartz that was her opportunity to finally follow her dream for real, and not just dream about it. with her fellow sphere girls, and some new faces too.
the new girls are all very pretty, and they seem nice and approachable. which makes this much easier for juyeon and the other girls. it’s probably advisable that they get acquainted quickly. it’s a girl with pretty hair and a kind face that juyeon decides to approach first. with both of her arms outstretched, a wide smile on her face; juyeon bounds over to her in a friendly but somewhat intimidating manner. “hi there!” she stops a little front of the trainee, not wanting to make her anymore uncomfortable than she already had done. she could be a little forward at times, but she hopes that it’s taken well. “welcome to sphere! i’m juyeon.” she gestures to the space around her before extending a sweater-pawed hand.
amidst her introduction, juyeon glances around the room. it’s happening. after what feels like an eternity of waiting, practicing, dreaming and hoping, everything she and the other girls had been working hard for was coming to life. are all of these girls her future group mates? is she going to end up making the cut? or is she still dreaming?
daniel isn’t so involved in the social aspects of sphere. he is a little moreso now that chungha is here, and he’s gotten closer to the other boys, but most of the time, he stays in his bubble of training. he fills his time with writing songs, mainly, but when it’s not that, it’s everything in between: singing, dancing, acting, basic workshops required for debut. he doesn’t even know what he’ll do once he’s done with those and the world is his oyster, but he takes everything one day at a time, quelling his anxious mind’s anticipation.
today, independent study is spent on dancing, or at least he intends for it to be so. the routine they went over in dance lessons today was exceptionally difficult for him. he improved in his dancing greatly in his, how long was it now, four months? of training, but it’s still undoubtedly the area he struggles the most in. it seems their evaluations most commonly involve dancing, so he tries to make sure he doesn’t slip, even when his evaluations don’t involve dancing. this month, he’s doing another band performance, with only a little of bang bang bang’s choreography.
when he opens the door to a studio, he’s shocked to see a familiar face: yongsun. “yong noona?” once the initial surprise wears off, he knows she wouldn’t be here if she wasn’t a trainee practicing herself. why was she in sphere, though? “what are you doing here?” it’s certainly not a bad thing. in fact, he wants to smile; he hasn’t seen her in a while. he refrains, though, just in case it is bad news for her.
sunmi had mentally checked out with the rest of nova following the conclusion of the sueprnova project. it had been a strenuous time: draining both physically and mentally. the mind games played, the favouritism, the dramatics; sunmi was more than ready for it to end. not to mention that after that, they weren’t even given much time before pushing them into dorms. sunmi had to then pack everything she brought with her plus more in order to move to the and*roma dorms. then it was many, many months of waiting until and*roma’s debut.
that means she didn’t maintain contact with yongsun (or bambam) since the competitions conclusion. although she at the very least had dinner with bambam and they regularly text. because of the timing of yongsun’s addition to nova, sunmi didn’t really have a lot of time to get to know her. the production was the bulk of the time they’ve ever spent together. ultimately, they ended as acquaintances. maybe that’s why sunmi hadn’t seen much of her since.
but when she does see her, it’s on her way to the cafeteria for lunch. sunmi didn’t feel like spending an excessive amount of money and nova offered pretty good meals for all of them. her eyes catch yongsun on her way back, her tray filled with food and dishes (she was super excited for the selection of kimbap). she takes a detour, sitting across the other with a wide smile. “hey stranger,” she greets, pushing back her now dark hair out of her face. it was barely brushing her shoulders now. not long enough to toss up into a ponytail just yet. but getting there.
“how’ve you been? good, i hope.” she starts transferring her food from the tray to the table. “what have they kept you guys doing for evaluations?” a part of her missed them -- when they were good, that is. it was a time to interact with other trainees in other companies. sometimes they were doing some really cool stuff. “i hope you’re not doing just basic covers.”
there are good things about new transfers from other companies to be part of heartz debut project like for instance there are new girls to work with plus the ones who joined the ranks are taeyeon’s friend which is all dandy however the bad side of things meaning that the chances of becoming the main vocal are looking pretty slim when wonderful vocalists like yongsun and luda are around. its funny taeyeon was never really interested in becoming the main vocalist she just felt happy to be part of the team yet sphere kept giving her more lines in the evaluation projects and singing abilities improved immensely she realize that she wouldn’t mind being the main singer in the group. the older female sitting in the practice reading over the lines realizing once again she gets to sing the chorus of she’z song which is honored to do, she always understands that she never to picked to fancier powerful notes because that’s her voice however she did worry about next month since the coaches said that new girls didn’t many lines since they don’t really know what really capable of which means that might get fewer lines once more back in the old trainee days. a small pout formed on her lips thinking about that horrible possibility even though she knows that yongsun & luda do deserve more lines since their vocals are beautiful, she never felt so conflicted before especially they were her good friends too.
she jumped onto her feet staring at the mirror in the practice room then start practicing her lines trying out various facial expressions while singing loud & clearly to see what suited more to the routine since she wants to make sure she looked her best while doing it and what would touch their hearts more than others. she’z is that group she always works on doing the song justice since she is quite a big fan of her sunbaes so she couldn’t just give a half-ass performance. during her little practice, she could hear someone opening the door to come in, it happened to one and only yongsun. the older trainee stopped looking like a deer in headlights as she didn’t know who it was at first but once she realized it was her fellow group member her eyes formed into happy crescent moons.
after a few days, jiwon still feels like she’s in another world. ( or more appropriate : a whole different galaxy ) she’s spent days holed in either her room or in a practice room learning the steps to a group she had yet to completely wrap her head around. after months of memorizing eclipse’s entire discography, here she is allowing her head to leak out the steps in order to make room for and*roma’s extensive and difficult choreography. to say it was hard was an understatement, at least to jiwon’s sentiments. if she thought she was a good dancer at kt, here at nova, she was above average, at most.
even when she was learning the choreography, she felt like she could barely keep up. her movements growing sloppier by each attempt. so much so, that after the nth time, she had given up and finally decided to give herself a break. if she kept giving herself such a hard time, there was no way she’d improve, this she knew. so, she takes a breather. allowing herself to get out of the one practice room she’s made a home out of, to venture around the building, memorizing the layout of the company building she was now to call home. and much like the last, jiwon wasn’t sure she had a place in its world, either.
she knows this is supposed to be a competition, but honestly, sua doesn’t feel the fire burning in her like she should. she hasn’t felt that fire in awhile.
it’s odd for her - in every aspect but this, sua has always been a competitive person but perhaps what’s happened has left her ice cold. it’s certainly made her more numb than anything else and even hearing the news about a potential debut only made her blink and carry on. truthfully, she didn’t want to do this, but here she is: thrown into the midst of a preparation for debut, in a company that she doesn’t want to be in, doing things she would rather not be doing.
the music industry is a dumpster fire, and they’re all burning.
still, sua does what she’s supposed to and bites her tongue. there’s nothing yet that has made her want to spit her venom, so she pretends to be the good girl that sphere wants her to be. she pretends that debut is something that she wants, that she’s working hard towards because in truth, sua is someone who works hard anyway. even if she hates the concept that they’re going for.
( she can always pull out of this at the end if she really doesn’t want to do it. right? )
and just because she feels this way, doesn’t mean that others do. there are girls who have transferred from other companies for this opportunity and she doesn’t want to destroy their hopeful desperation. this is something that they want - sua doesn’t understand why they’re asking to burn. her eyes pull to yongsun especially, shot down once by her own company and still trying. she sighs a little as she watches her practice on her own. “ the move you’re doing there - it should have a little more impact.” sua finally speaks up. “ you’ll get noticed more that way.”
So Hot (line distribution) | @rkchungha, @rkhyojeong, @rkyngsun
Today was the big day. Today, Yoona was participating in her first evaluation as a trainee and she was freaking out. Scratch that. She was full-on panicking. There was a lot riding on this eval, and she had a lot to prove. Her father was expecting a lot out of her and she knew what would happen if she were to fail on her first try. She was reminded of her failed MGA and Royal auditions and she knew if she were to fail again it would be the end of her. Literally.
It wasn’t that she lacked confidence in her group, they had rehearsed a lot. It was that she lacked confidence in herself. If Chungha wasn’t in the group and she had been surrounded by all senior trainees then she would have run long ago. She was thankful that Chungha was a newly signed trainee like her. Yoona felt more at ease being around her.
Yoona was still adjusting to her new schedule and to the fact she had less free time than before. She wasn’t able to do as much as she used to do, but she didn’t mind. She was where she wanted to be and had made it one step closer to achieving her dreams. That was all that mattered to her. The group’s rehearsals were not a bother to her. In fact, she enjoyed them. No one rehearsal was the same and she loved moments like that. While it had been awkward and slow at first as they got to know each other and worked out what they would do, by the end they were all dancing with power and their vocals were spot on.
Being the oldest in the group, Yoona naturally took on a motherly role and so she was always bringing water and food to rehearsals and making sure Hyojeong, Yongsun and Chungha were not working themselves too hard and that they remembered to take care of themselves since she had heard how some people can get when it gets close to evaluation time.
Yoona had a caring and upbeat personality and so she always found herself wanting to take care of others before herself. If the girls were happy and cared for then they wouldn’t notice how hard she was working herself, right? They wouldn’t notice the late-night practices by herself and her lack of sleep if she made sure they were happy. She had barely eaten and had almost injured herself due to how much time she was spending on practicing. Even when she wasn’t in a practice room, she was running it through in her head. She would go over the choreography and her vocals. She would plan exactly what she was going to do and repeat it a million times in her head. Even her dreams were full of her practicing and rehearsing. There was a lot of pressure on her to pass this evaluation – she couldn’t afford to mess up.
Waiting for their turn was torture on her and Yoona could feel her anxiety worsen with every passing minute. She suddenly thought about all the things that could go wrong. What if she missed a step? What if she sang the wrong line? She gripped her pants tightly as she gnawed on her lower lip. She was barely sitting on the seat and it looked like she could fall off at any moment, but she was too distracted with her thoughts to notice.
When it was finally their turn, Yoona took in a few deep breaths before she made her way before the staff. The girls had rehearsed this hundreds of times. All she needed to do was remember her lyrics and the choreography and she would be fine. Once the girls were in their beginning poses the music began. It was too late to turn back now.
The choreography began with the girls moving around in a circle, with Yongsun starting in the centre, then Chungha, then Yoona. Yoona had volunteered to be the one to do a sexy move since she wanted to push herself out of her girly image and try something different. She didn’t have time to wonder how it had looked since she was the first to sing. She only had two lines at first, but she didn’t mind since they all shared the chorus and she had more lines later in the song.
Why are you staring at me? Why?
Am I that pretty?
I’m so hot
I’m so fine
I’m so cool, I’m so gorgeous
While Chungha and Hyojeong rapped Yoona happily danced along to the choreography. She was still in awe at how they were able to rap. It was a distant dream to Yoona. She wasn’t even sure if she would sound any good rapping. After the girls had slain the rap, it was Yoona’s turn to sing again.
Mum why did you give birth to me like this?
My life is so tiresome
I’m so hot
I’m so fine
I’m so cool, I’m so gorgeous
I’m so hot
I’m so fine, I’m so attractive
I’m so cool
I’m so so so hot hot
Their performance was officially over and so was Yoona’s first trainee evaluation. Yoona had forgotten her worries while they were performing, and she owed it to the girls and how comfortable she had become around them. Yoona hoped that they stayed friends even after today. Considering two were also Nova trainees she knew she would see them around, but she wouldn’t get to see Chungha as much which saddened her. Yoona hoped that she had done enough to survive as well as to showcase how talented her groupmates were.
