teamwork evaluation.

after her recent feedback from the judges, she’s aware this will be her greatest challenge yet. she doesn’t mind being scary. as far as nayoung is concerned, she says what’s necessary and what others are too nervous to say. could she be nicer about it? sure, but the industry isn’t nice, and some people don’t get it if you don’t put matters bluntly. 

she needs to get along with everyone, though, especially her teammates for this round. 

her teammates: hyejin and eunkyung, both of whom she had the...opportunity to encounter during her practice last round. as far as she’s concerned, hyejin needs to mind her own business and eunkyung needs to take the competition more seriously, and it seems the judges at least agree with her on hyejin. on eunkyung...they have vastly differing opinions. they called eunkyung center material. she doesn’t understand that at all, and isn’t looking forward to working with her. she’s trying to be optimistic about it, though: if the judges like eunkyung, maybe she’ll be an asset to their performance. or maybe the judges will suddenly see her the way nayoung does this round, and they’ll lose. maybe then, eunkyung will get eliminated instead of she or hyejin. 

she realizes there’s no real point in thinking about that now, though. all that matters for now is putting on the best performance possible, and. practicing as smoothly as possible. 

nayoung isn’t one to waste time. the first day they have available to work together, she gets started on the line distribution, and it’s nayoung, so her poor team has no real choice but to endure her taking charge. she listens to any requests the others have as far as lines go, then listens to the song, and watches their guide video–– over and over and over, and draws up the rest of the line distribution herself. she tries her best to be fair, but above all else keeps the quality of the performance in mind.

she and hyejin have more experience and rap skill than eunkyung, so it makes sense for them to start and end off the song; the audience will likely remember those parts the best, so they need to make sure they’re as high quality as possible. then, she tries to assign the parts that seem the hardest to either herself or hyejin, and leave the simplest ones to eunkyung. it should be easier for her to learn those and perfect them than any of the others.

once she’s done, she gathers the other two girls and sits on the practice room floor with them, and hands them lyric sheets outlining the parts she assigned for them. 

“okay. this is what i settled on. does this look good to you guys?” she honestly is open to suggestions. sure, she thinks she knows best, but it is a teamwork evaluation, and even she knows it’s important this at least looks like a team decision.

hyejin didn’t know what she expected when she got her team since even if she had bitter feelings, she always wanted to be a team player and show she could get along with anyone even if it meant she might need to put up a guise of sorts. she at a brief moment with nayoung last episode since she didn’t want her to overwork herself at all. she knew from the other’s past before that it wouldn’t end well if that happened. with eunkyung though, this was her first time interacting with the girl and honestly there was something about her that hyejin likes a lot even just from watching her from afar.

“even if it’s hard i’m always the unnie”  mentioned: @behyejin @eunkyungxbe​

nayoung gets two things out of her feedback for this round: stabilize her vocals and play nice.

both of those will be easier said than done. she personally doesn’t think she’s not getting along with anyone. is she harsh? sure. does she hate anyone here, or want to hurt them? no, even if it is a competition. okay, maybe she wants haein in particular to fail, but it’s not like she’s fighting anyone. if anything, she’s helped people here, even if her methods aren’t as coddling as many others. some of the people here just need to get better, and need to be told the truth plainly. she’s sure bom would agree, and maybe that’s why nayoung could’ve sworn she smiled at her. scarier than bom, people are saying. honestly, she takees that as a compliment. she doesn’t mind being feared, especially if it gets the job done.

now, she just needs to find a balance between playing nice and getting the job done for this upcoming team challenge. she doesn’t doubt her ability to play nice at all, given she did it for years before this competition, emphasis on the play. she used to fake friendly, helpful and kind, but now that her real personality was broadcasted nationwide for everyone to see, flipping the switch entirely doesn’t seem like a good idea. they’ll know she’s faking it, and she suspects it won’t be as well-received this time as it was on her previous shows. 

she figures she’ll just have to be herself, but hold back and remain more...diplomatic. she thinks she can do that. her patience runs thin easily, but she can still stretch it out for as long as needed. she can fake that much and make it look convincing, surely. she’ll still be strict and honest, but try not to make anyone cry this round. she can go a little easier on her team.

her team: hyejin and eunkyung.

@behyejin:​

{  `❁  } “this looks great to me honestly. i’m pretty content with the lines i got.” it’s the lines she asked for but talking about it amongst each other is best since they are a team for this round. she wonders what eunkyung thinks about it all.

@eunkyungxbe

center material.

it had taken everything in eunkyung to keep her face calm and level, so as not to offend the judges’ evaluation of her performance with her own display of shock and disbelief. in just a handful of days, she’d gone from submitting to a television on a whim, odds narrowed against her, who had never even considered being a performer herself, to being placed in the top five on an idol survival show out of countless auditioning hopefuls.

she has her own tags now, on all the socials she’d perused to get to know her fellow contestants. thank goodness she got that root touch up before the first episode.

of course, scrolling through her own mentions on social media, a notably risky hobby for anyone known to the public, she can’t avoid the instances that her name appears alongside nayoung’s. how quickly eunkyung’s feeds had gone from old nayoung-centered clips to trivial debates about which female contestant was in the wrong, which was prettier, which was more talented. initially, eunkyung had brushed it all off as petty internet drama, faceless strangers hiding behind pixels just to pit women against each other. nayoung had a point, one that had been reiterated by one of the show’s top professionals. perhaps, the way she’d gone about it had been a bit tactless and proud, but it wasn’t anything eunkyung had taken personally. not at the time.

but then eunkyung had watched the episode, felt something inside of her spasm at the sight nayoung, rattling off the flaws of faceless contestants in a harsh, unforgiving tone, one after the other. and if there had been enough content for that small montage of degradation, how much more was there on the cutting room floor? she didn’t care about her own critiques–she’d faced far worse than nayoung in her lifetime–but the way nayoung spoke to others, as if they were all beneath her, as if she had any authority to hurt people for the sake of, what, throwing her weight around? it was far too reminiscent of the girls from school, the ones who made a regular pastime of making their classmates feel small.

eunkyung tries to remain civil and polite when they first meet up as a team, for hyejin’s sake, and for the sake of their performance. but there is a lingering disdain there, just behind her eyes, whenever she glances at nayoung, and a glint of daring, as if challenging her to step out of line again.

then there’s the line distribution, which is a blatant indication of just how little nayoung thinks of her. normally, it wouldn’t bother eunkyung, who has yet to become too emotionally invested in this process or its outcome; yes, the stakes are a little higher for her, now that she’s been told she might have a shot at this, but it’s not enough for her to let a bully off scot-free. sorry hyejin.

she can’t help the drawn out, disappointed scoff that passes through her soft palette as she scans the page again, tilting her head to the side and squinting her eyes.

“this is…” she begins, trying to formulate her impassioned thoughts into words suitable for network television. another scoff, this one through an ironic, sardonic smile.

“nayoung-ssi…” she finally addresses the elephant in the room head on, looking up to look their self-designated leader in the eye, “do you really think so low of me?”

she’s smiling even more now, as if she finds the whole thing bitterly amusing, holding up her copy of the distribution in one hand, “most of my part would be censored like this. do you want me to disappear that badly?”

nayoung flashes hyejin a smile. “okay, great!” she replies, perhaps a little more chipper than typical of her true nature. sure, she’s playing up the enthusiasm, but she is genuinely excited to get a chance to rap properly for the show. granted, it was a rap performance that sent her out on her first survival show, but back then she was incredibly inexperienced. in her time training after that point, she made sure she was able to rap competently too, just in case the company called on her to do so. next gen isn’t her company, but she’s being called on to do it regardless, and she’s thankful she put the work in that she did.

that excitement ebbs a bit when eunkyung speaks up. nayoung honestly doesn’t expect eunkyung to fight her on this. the eunkyung she last encountered was lighthearted and, as she pinned her herself, not taking the competition seriously enough for nayoung’s liking.

to eunkyung’s credit, that seems to be different now. either that or she’s just being difficult to give nayoung a hard time. at first, it’s incredibly irritating. nayoung can’t help the brief moment her face betrays that feeling, before she evens it out, because honestly, this is good for her. eunkyung is testing her. she doesn’t know if that’s the other girl’s entire intention, or she’s genuinely more ambitious than nayoung gave her credit for, but this is a test she intends to pass, and really, she can use this moment in her favor. she had a feeling any test of teamwork wouldn’t go swimmingly for her, but what a perfect opportunity to make eunkyung look like the most unreasonable of the group.

surely, if eunkyung did look up her history on past survival shows, she should know of nayoung’s ability to save face. she hasn’t been trying it this time, opting to show her true colors in favor of spending that energy focusing on her skills instead of being someone she’s not, but she has faith in her ability to turn on politeness and a good nature, however fake it may be. it’s for the sake of the team, after all, and the judges asked her to play nice. she’s just implementing their feedback.

“i do think you have less experience than hyejin and i,” she admits honestly, albeit as level-headedly as she can. that much is true. the rest of the truth is that she doesn’t think eunkyung is very talented outside of her dancing. she doesn’t know what the judges see in her at all, but fine, if eunkyung isn’t satisfied, nayoung will cooperate. maybe how much the judges love eunkyung will help them if she has more lines, or maybe she’ll do a piss poor job, they’ll end up in the bottom group, and then eunkyung will get eliminated for her lack of talent and lack of cooperation. of course, nayoung never wants to lose, but that’s not a terrible outcome.