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.
Rapping. It’s something Jinri had never even come close to considering for herself. After only a tiny bit of practice, she realized she really can’t pull off the whole tough girl rapper dynamic. However, she can hold a beat fairly well, though she always manages to sound like she’s trying to half-sing, half-speak the words instead of just rapping them.
That’s why she ended up on Ed Sheeran. “Don’t,” while being a little overplayed, is a great song that is a healthy mix of rapping and singing. It’s enough rapping to fit the assignment of Jinri’s evaluation, but with enough singing that it not only fits her style, but can be seen as playing to her strengths, as Jae told her.
Plus, it’s extra advantageous since she already knew the words, thanks to the song being so overplayed. So during practice, she worked on making it sound more like rap and less like singing. There’s only so much she could do with that, though, so eventually she enlisted Jae’s help once again and made her own acapella backtrack.
It was pretty fun, actually; the two of them (occasionally with the help of Luna or one of the other trainees) sat around in the recording studio every day during independent study for a whole week, just figuring out how to make the different percussive sounds in the song and recording them all. The difficult part was keeping all the files straight on the computer and making sure they were all in the right order on the final track. Even now Jinri still isn’t completely sure they didn’t switch a few things up, but hopefully they’re so small they won’t be noticed, especially since the song will only be played once.
The actual evaluation isn’t nearly as nerve-wracking as the Valentine’s one was, which is a little surprising considering that this time she’s stepping a little out of her comfort zone and doing something a bit closer to rapping. However, after a bit of thought it’s not that surprising: what she’s doing actually isn’t too far from singing, and actually probably shouldn’t be called rap at all (but there’s no way she’s gonna admit that until after her eval.) On top of that, this evaluation isn’t also a competition like at Valentine’s. Or at least, Jinri hopes it’s not.
(But if it is, she has to applaud them for doing it this way. Making them unknowingly compete against each other really cuts down on the nerves and will probably improve everyone’s performance.)
((But at the same time, idols have to perform under pressure all the time, so the trainees should probably get used to it--oh wait, she’s getting off track.))
She sits in the evaluation room, watching the other trainees perform and waiting for her turn. When they call her, she goes up and grabs the microphone, smiling and bowing towards the small panel of judges. “Hello, I’ll be rapping Ed Sheeran for you today. My instrumental track is an acapella track I made myself, with a little technical help,” she adds with a small smile towards Jae, who she can see standing at the back of the room.
The “ah la” parts are part of the backtrack, something Jinri knew from the beginning she would have to do. They just overlap too much with the lyrics.
Jinri loves this song because of the story it tells on top of a regular rhythm and beat. She supposes a lot of rap songs are the same way, but for some reason she can never get into them as much. Maybe she’s just mainstream.
Even though Ed always had a bit more singing throughout the song, for the purpose of this eval Jinri makes sure to focus more on rapping during the verses. Then, since the chorus doesn’t sound good as a rap (she knows because she tried), she makes that more singing, more similar to Ed.
Before the third verse, at the point where the original song makes a knocking sound, Jinri claps her hands together three times, along with the clapping sound on the backtrack. She smiles as she “raps,” honestly having fun with the performance.
It feels like too soon when the song ends, and she hopes that was enough rapping for the instructors, because she’s not sure what would happen to a trainee who failed the evaluation assignment, and she’s not too excited to find out.
