faraway,
starter for @idaroon kcon, sunday, after “pick me!” stages
some quiet, tired part of eunju worries that she’ll know the routine to pick me! for as long as she lives. she’ll be old and gray and swishing her hips and kicking her feet while her children’s children wonder why they haven’t put her in a home yet. the song is annoying to sing and only slightly more bearable to hear but she’s come to like it, has no choice when it’s the trademark song of all of produce project’s female trainees. even that’s kind of bittersweet - being involved in something like this, a survival show with no guarantee of success, even moving up as high and as quickly as she has in the ranks, even that comes with its own set of stresses.
the goal is to debut - really, actually debut with something she can call her own, something she can feel implicit in, picked for based on merit - talent.
it’s kind of surreal to her that trainees she was practicing alongside not-so-long ago are living that dream - aroon included. she feels the slightest bit left behind. it’s silly, though, they haven’t even known each other for all that long but he’s become a pertinent part of her process - a touch of normality and routine that makes her feel justified and inspired to do better in the little things, to tighten up her shapes and never settle for good enough. the produce project was full of plenty of other trainees who worked hard in their own right but it’d be different. she's nothing if not a bleeding heart and it makes her a little sad to think that this would be the last time the two of them would be able to level this way - likely the last time she’d see him again for a long time bar the party, if that. she's proud of him, though; knows through watching and listening and all other facets that he deserves this victory.
“so,” eunju says, tone light and friendly, approaching him when their stages are over and done with. she dabs sweat off of her forehead with the appropriately pink towel she’d been handed by staff. “how does it feel to know it’s the last time you ever have to sing the dreaded pick me song?”