#badabe

art's been on her mind a lot lately.

after talking with her grandfather during seollal, she's been thinking about it a lot. been thinking about all the applications for art schools sitting in her drafts-- waiting. she's sent a few, but these things take time. they take trial and error, consistent failure and try until it eventually works.

so sua's been fine tuning anything she can. takes classes for things she doesn't typically do in the art field. sketching and digital art have always been her preferred choice; painting is nice, though. she liked it when her and chaerin did it-- and now with this watercolor class, she's adding a little more practice to the things she'd like to work on more.

sua stares, frowning at her canvas and the colors littered about. they're not...blending right, in the way she imagined in her head. in fact, they look quite ugly, but sua's not sure if that's her own dislike for it or it's actually terrible.

         at last, noel had escaped last place… though the bottom was still very much where he was placed… second to last, so not last place, but… still bad, still quite quite bad. and this time around he wasn’t just fighting for himself, he was teamed up with two others, and he couldn’t help feel bad, here they were paired up together with noel, a man who had only very recently begun practicing dance. maybe, though not admitted out loud, he hadn’t given his everything during the second round, he’d been a bit too focused on having fun and prioritizing just enjoying this. but this round, not only was there danger of eliminations, and he’d been placed in the bottom two so far, but this time it wasn’t just about himself, he had teammates. he felt bad, he felt bad towards his teammates that they’d been paired with him, but the only thing he could do was try his very best.

"i'm so excited!" eunbin couldn't stop the squeal from escaping her lips as she stepped into the festival. with the help of bada, she had managed to get free tickets to the waterbomb festival, and she couldn't stop buzzing from excitement.

usually, she had practice on the day of the festival, which is why she couldn't attend, but for some reason, the captain had canceled practice for the day. eunbin lowkey thinks it's because he also wanted to attend, but she didn't see him around, so it could have been for a couple of other reasons.

despite not having the biggest following whatsoever, jueun still found herself getting invited to pop up stores for new brands and launches. although she found it skeptical at times, she still showed up whenever she can because they were fun. plus, there was absolutely no harm in expanding her online social circle. who knows where she'll go from here, right?

she's wandering around the building where she's here for some perfume launch when she thinks she spots one of her instagram model buddies. someone she's only spoken to via dm's and comments but that she's been itching to meet. when she gets a little closer, she immediately recognizes bada and rushes to greet her.

bada is on her team.

to bada’s credit, nayoung thinks she’s improved, at least a little. is she talented? no, but succeeding in the industry isn’t about talent. it’s about hard work, and improvement, and maybe a little luck. talentless people can train their way into becoming decent idols, and maybe bada is lucky to be on nayoung’s team for their next challenge.

she supposes that’s subjective. bada seems weak-willed and fragile, given her tears the first time she and nayoung spoke. it’s been a few weeks since then, and nayoung wonders if she’s (wo)manned up at all in the meantime. 

it doesn’t seem like it. she’s still tentative in just about everything she does, and that isn’t going to cut it for the parts nayoung gave her.

bada basically opens the entire song for them, and all she really has to do is talk with confidence. she doesn’t even really have to be good. she just has to pretend she knows what she’s doing, and hopefully she can get that much down by the day of their performance. 

it just comes back to what nayoung said last time: attitude is everything. sure, bada has nothing to really be confident about here. she’s cute, but nayoung suspects bada is one of those girls with low self esteem that can’t see her own beauty, either, so even that won’t do them much good.

once they finish one of their group rehearsals, everyone dispersing to either take a break or go home if they so choose, nayoung approaches bada. 

believe it or not, she doesn’t want to make her cry again; she wants this to be productive. sometimes tears are necessary, though, so she’ll...try to be less harsh, and if bada cries, it’s not her problem.

“bada,” she gets her attention. “everything you do is still so...timid. you open the song for us, so you need to at least pretend to be confident. attitude is everything, remember? have you been keeping a notebook like i suggested?”

she tries not to sound accusatory, and keep her voice level and objective, genuine questions more than anything else. chances are bada will still be terrified of her regardless.

it will be their turn up on stage soon. he wrings his hands, massaging his thumb into the palm of the other as if he’ll be able to squeeze the stress out like lemon juice from the meat of the fruit. he presses into his own flesh until it nearly hurts. jinyoung doesn’t know if he’s ever been this nervous for a performance. he’s confident in his own abilities, in how much effort and practice he put into the choreography these past days. he knows that he has done everything possible to prepare. but he’s not quite sure he feels the same confidence in bada or noel.