name: hwang ❝ tiffany ❞ miyoung
➥ kt’s aurora, brighter than the sky
song: 北极星的眼泪 ( tears from polaris )
he’s the one person she expects to recognize the song and she’s right. a glint of recognition settles in his eyes and she hides a smile. hyunjae thought she wouldn’t do it.
like a broken piece of string that has disappeared in a sea of people
my eyes have finally lost sight of your face
just wait a while desperately waiting for a shooting star to appear
if wishes really do come true
can love really be forever?
tomorrow's change may come too late
but the memories of our shared history grows dimmer by the day
fingers curl around the mic. a slight twitch of her pinky and she’s shaky within the second line of the chorus. another glance and again she knows he knows.
tears from polaris, thoughts that are unspoken
for we live two separate worlds apart
there’s rarely a song she sings anymore without thoughts of her mother. it’s drawing in on her third year with kt. an anniversary she doesn’t know whether to anticipate or dread but above that, it’s been yet another year without her mother. another year of trying to sing loud enough so she can still hear her, even if they live two separate worlds apart.
tears of polaris, your eyes are red from crying
drenched promises are submerged in my heart
i raise my head and find that the love has gone
memories fade out. the more she finds her voice within kt walls, within seocho walls too now, she more she forgets her mother’s. can love be gone like that? can the first voice tiffany fell in love with disappear from her forever? eyes close, darkness comes and she knows it’s too late. letting her emotions reign has always been her weakest point— her achilles heel when it comes to singing. a slight crack, because so much love has come and gone.
so much love has been tossed aside by her out of fear.
tears from polaris, thoughts that are unspoken
for we live two separate worlds apart
tears of polaris, your eyes are red from crying
drenched promises are submerged in my heart
i raise my head and find that the love has gone
she’d realized it more and more. her life is no longer in california at all. her world is separated now. once again, when her sister needed her, she wasn’t there and she begins to worry that it’ll soon be too late. soon, tiffany will be too stubborn, too selfish to fulfill another wish the way she didn’t for her mother. if only she sang that day. now, there cannot be a day she doesn’t.
with the right person yet cannot find the right time
in the instant when our hands separate, the love that we share is torn in two
the whole universe is shedding tears —
so is she. tears from polaris are the closest she can get to that separate world to the person her and cassie both need now.
but she’s not there. her pronunciation is, her singing is but — save for that small crack, a pity, a shame, overlooked because— she’s not.
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—
”i just wanted to thank you,” he starts off but there’s no room for apologies, for winded explanations and unwanted praise or expectations.
tiffany’s more frustrated than ever because she knows exactly what a bag full of lush bath bombs means when it comes to hyunjae, a guy that doesn’t know the difference between bath bomb and a jawbreaker from what she remembers in the past. she already knew but she didn’t need physical proof.
they say ignorance is bliss and hyunjae stole away such bliss from her, took it away when he took her hand and placed string handles within her grasp, an unwarranted substitute.
“tur—”
“don’t call me that. not right now.”
because she doesn’t think a simple smile will fix everything. because she was pushing everyone away but at least, at least, tiffany told herself those at kt would be fine. at least, she’d be at the company. at least, she could be practicing with them or seeking advice, something. at least, she wouldn’t feel as if she was slacking, as if she was falling apart second by second.
at least.
he took that away from her too, handing her such a thing in a kt practice room under the guise of coming back to start on another project, singing this time, and whatever pride she felt in him for trying to focus on more outside of modeling and a few acting cameos here and there quickly fades away.
but it’s mere thought and the notion of thinking or speaking of something is always easier than actually fulfilling it. she’s constantly filled with ‘what-if’s’ and ‘maybe’s’ but no ‘definitely’s’ and ‘certainly’s.’
no, certainly is the last thing she has right now.
and ( yet another ) maybe comes to mind, maybe she thought that since she had let go of her first love, that he could. but the truth is the wound is still raw, still open, still unhealed, and she can see it in his eyes.
how he hasn’t let go even though he let hyesun walk away already.
“don’t involve me this time around, okay?”
“yah, hwang miyoung, you—” he can’t finish his sentence because what fades now is her.
( ♥ ) ent may evaluation: teamwork challenge edition!
name: hwang ❝ tiffany ❞ miyoung
➥ kt’s aurora, brighter than the sky
song: troublemaker ft. hyunjae / towel sunbae
“are you sure you still want to?”
“you need someone to work with, don’t you?”
“way to make me feel better. you know i can ask someone else.”
but tiffany knows just as well as he does that there is no one else he could ask, not for this song, not for this level of intimacy in a dance, not unless he wants to be bright red for the duration of the eval performance.
excuses are easy to find, easy to dismiss with these two.
“you’ll be tired” and “i’ll be tired anyway.”
“i could go back to acting—” and “you said you wanted to try out something different.”
ultimately, it’s “don’t you want to make up for the last time we danced together” that wins hyunjae over and he knows there’s no fighting that one. by now, he was more than over fighting with her— they’d fought too much then for him to let it fall apart again, or so he thought, so he hoped.
good things never last.
‘it’s difficult’ would be putting it lightly, because tiffany is the one with more experience this time around and it’s odd. they’d learnt the choreography together before, struggled together, but it’s a song she’s performed before with a different trainee who’d also been one of her best friends within company walls and most definitely outside of them.
even away in china, she considers him one of her best friends because keeping any secrets from him is easier to avoid than with hyunjae but it’s harder for her to deliberately lie to him, to not want to tell him in the first place. but one thing tiffany knows best about hyunjae is that he performs best in the clutch— and so he does this time, he exceeds even her own high expectations of him and it’s almost distracting. he owns the song and there’s a stroke of guilt when she thinks, “even then, people are never satisfied” and she knows she’s projecting remnant feelings about the mgas onto him. or was it the other way around?
because, the truth is, she always wanted the best for him, whether it be a what or who.
“will you just dance already? you’ve been pushing this off until now and there’s barely four days until we have to do evals.”
“i don’t like dancing in front of people.”
“says the girl who went clubbing at least every other week for the past few months.”
“shut up, jae.” he couldn’t deny that he missed it, when she said shut up. just the fact that they were slowly coming back to being the way they used to be.
she hadn’t forgotten or forgiven everything but she wanted to try. made no promises of being able to completely go back or understand how he felt or why he did what he had done but she admitted enough; that she kept making mistakes and she can’t even learn how to seek forgiveness or be truthful if she wasn’t willing to offer the same.
if anything, that was what she took away from talking to kwangmin. it wasn’t exactly what he wanted, he thought as he watched the two slowly recover their friendship, but it was a start.
still, if she didn’t start dancing soon, he swore he was going to kick her butt back to the dream high set, a daunting feat when the set was no longer the same, she joked. it wasn’t the same, it wouldn’t be.
tiffany could pretend she was entirely somewhere else when acting but dancing felt so new to her in terms of choreography. one thing’s for sure, she admired those who could not only choreograph their own dances but could also do so as fiercely as possible.
awkward, forgetful, sincere — the best words to define her performance, coming and going in waves, nowhere near consistent but, like kwangmin thought of her and hyunjae, tiffany felt so sure of something for once, that it was a start.
the eval had taught her plenty before actually reaching the deadline; a lot can happen in one month.
those words scare nearly anyone. tiffany thought she was immune to them until kwangmin insisted on walking her home. she rejected, turned him away, declined over and over but he was persistent and she was tired.
she was always so damn tired these days. it started off easily enough. small talk. small talk that builds up annoyance until it festers and she feels restless for everything to stop, the same way she feels every night when she tries to sleep until she’s eventually too exhausted to blink let alone stay conscious.
“they broke up, you know.”
tiffany feigned ignorance, shrugging, the strap of her bag digging into her shoulder as it shifted awkwardly with the gesture.
“i’m friends with both of them so it’s hard. i understand why he broke up with her — “ a fact she thought she was better off not knowing. she didn’t even want to talk of them, vaguely and roundabout or not, but he showed no signs of stopping, no hint of concern for her well-being the more he delved into the topic. “and i understand why she was so upset when you came back.”
“do you want an award for that?”
“don’t pull that defensive sassy shit with me, i already talked myself into this.”
“bravo.”
“tiffany.”
“no one stopped you.”
“he told me what you said. that he doesn’t know how to keep a promise.”
another shrug and a hastened step forward. his words settled uncomfortably on her skin with each vowel and consonant.
“he promised her things before you ever came around, did you ever think of that?”
“i — “
“he promised to be with her. from day one, i’ve never seen them apart.”
there’s an elephant in the room even when the two are not confined by four solid walls; why does it feel like she can’t breathe?
“i’ve never seen her so insecure but before you came around, i’ve never seen him look at anyone else.”
“why are you doing this?” she finally asked. “why? what does it change?”
“hopefully, you. i’m not trying to tell you that he’s in love with you or anything. it’s not like that. he cares for you and as long as i’ve known him, the guy doesn’t care for much.”
“then why didn’t he care when i was bullied? i was tripped, shoved, my stuff stolen and trashed. it might as well have been him doing that to me. it felt like that anyway.”
“you don’t get it, do you?”
“get what?”
“he chose between you and her.”
“you don’t get it either . . . the world’s not so easy as black and white.”
the next day —
still, she thinks about it all when practice comes around again. tiffany wonders about black and white, hyesun and hyunjae, a girlfriend and a girl friend.
if only it didn’t all just distract her from her training and she’s tripping on her own during the second chorus.
the difference is that this time, he catches her. and later it’s tiffany saying those words to hyunjae,
unless it’s running away. then tiffany might as well have a gold medal.
“that’s not what i meant.”
“well, i know i’m not much of a dancer either but that doesn’t mean you have t — “
“tiffany.”
“sorry.”
“why are you apologizing?”
because it’s easy to apologize for something small like that instead of all the things i’m guilty of.
“i don’t know.”
“your choreography is progressing well. do you still feel awkward?”
always.
“not really.”
“does your body roll still look as awkward as a slug?”
“excuse you, i’m pretty sure i’m at least a few times faster than a slug.”
—
kwangmin had a point though; she could feel the exhaustion. it dripped down the side of her face, along the bridge of her nose, and fell as steadily as her improvement did the more she forced herself to continue. limbs ached and weighed heavily, bogged her down, sunk her to the floor and she still wasn’t sure just how to feel like herself again. tiffany was — is — a hypocrite, telling hyunjae he doesn’t know the meaning of a promise when she doesn’t either.
her words have proven to mean nothing and she still can’t face any of the people who she broke her word to time and time again.
“are you dead yet?” kwangmin gave her a few hours alone but he’s back with his own worries over the monthly evals.
“i try when we practice. i don’t have to do shit for you.”
“you used to be happier.”
“and we used to be friends.”
the silence prickles her skin and she hates him; wants to hate him but she can’t. she doesn’t, even now, not when she looks at him and still remembers the day they met, still feels the cool wind whip around her when her towel was so abruptly taken from her — but it’s so much colder these days.
ice cold.
“you meant something to me.”
“you’re using past tense.”
“because it’s over. we’re over. as friends, anyway. i’ll still respect you, especially if you debut before me.”
“that’s not what i want. you and me. we promised to have each other’s backs.”
“what do you know about promises? you can’t even dance to ‘promise.’ i’ve gotten it together in the last week and you haven’t.”
“you’re still mad at me and you have every right to be — ”
“you’re damn right i do. you left me. you acted like you don’t know me. you let those people — you — you let them — ugh, the point is you and i are strangers now. you don’t know me, not anymore.”
“i want to.”
“want is never the same as being able to. i know that,” i’ve been trying to be better and i want it but nothing changes. i can’t change. “why should this be any different? please, just leave. tell kwangmin we’ll practice more tomorrow. i want to do this alone.”
“you always do things alone.”
i don’t hurt anyone that way.
i don’t feel hurt that way.
“why do you care?”
it’s hours and hours of practice. hours and hours of denial that cascade into waves of realizations and regret, crashing into harsh truths and fading into numbness.
it’s easier alone — at least that’s what she tells herself at the end of the day.
