#rkjan17eval

he started learning english in grade school. everyone did, really, but jinwook never lost touch with it. he’d been fascinated by its ubiquity. growing up in a guesthouse, working in a tourist town, and now dating an american girl — basic proficiency (plus relentlessly pestering native speakers) bred conversational skills he’s proud to call his own.

it doesn’t take long to pick up the lyrics of a song he already knows and loves. for his december evaluation, he’d also sung in english, with another slow, stripped-down song.

are two consecutive evaluations enough to earn a reputation as a one-trick pony? honestly, jinwook is just grateful for another assignment that sits nicely within his comfort zone. he dreads the day when he’ll have to prepare a dance performance instead.

his voice has sounded tired lately, struggling to adjust to the demands of trainee life just like the rest of his body. jinwook remembers to drink a lot of water the morning of his evaluation, so it’s not obvious as long as the instrumental plays behind him. the track starts right after jinwook introduces himself with a few comfortable, simple english phrases.

it’s his first performance in sphere with a premade backing track. jinwook had practiced a live guitar arrangement — the song begs you to play along — but ultimately decided against the extra distraction. standing in front of sphere’s coaches, all he has is his voice and his second language.

surprisingly, the biggest challenge is figuring out what to do with his hands. jinwook grips his mic with both at first, almost demure in posture. he errs on the side of over-enunciation through the entire first verse, just shy of dragging the syllables offbeat.

will your eyes still smile from your cheeks?

he opens up afterward, pressing one hand to his chest. it’s not theatrical, but the lyrics are sweet and sincere. jinwook can’t resist a smile as the song crescendos with a short vocal run.

so honey, now...

“take me into your loving arms,” he sings, swaying slightly along with the music. this part is fun to sing, and jinwook relaxes into the more familiar lyrics. it was the easiest section to learn, given how much jinwook had already absorbed in the two years since the song’s release.

kiss me under the light of a thousand stars.

the second verse was much more difficult. besides containing some of the hardest words to wrap his tongue around, jinri insists there’s an audible british accent on the record, which further abstracts it all.

jinwook really truly can’t tell the difference, and he glosses over the tricky lines with some indistinct mix of his, jinri’s, and ed sheeran’s accents.

maybe it’s all part of a plan...

as the music builds again, jinwook sings his way back into familiar lyrical territory. he even lets some of his emotion from earlier spill into the potent song — only for his voice to crack on the second line of the chorus.

he recovers with a smile immediately, reflexively, and picks up the end of the line with only the tiniest waver of embarrassed laughter. “—of a thousand stars...”

jinwook composes himself as two hands find the base of the microphone again. the last few lines flow smoothly, sliding into a little falsetto flourish at the end.

i’m thinking out loud; maybe we found love right where we are.

jinwook bows as the song fades into its interlude, satisfied at least with succeeding in the evaluation’s task, though the execution wasn’t flawless. weak. he resists the urge to bring a hand to his throat.

rest, he thinks. jinwook would only need a day or two of rest to be back at a hundred percent.

It might’ve been the second season and it might feel like a lifetime ago but there’s still no room for second best. He can’t take the end of his contract laying down. No going back but he’s thinking of the past when he chooses this song. Two summers ago and the way he reverted back to who he was even years before that, all because he was heartbroken.

You left me paralyzed, no cure, no rehab for me Funny that you got the nerve to keep asking me How i’ve been You’re the victor in this pageantry But the only trophy you deserve, catastrophe

He said he was moving forward but he wasn’t, not then. Clubbing, drinking, smoking. A complete return of the asshole he was before. Reckless behavior for a guy who’s only halfway through a contract with his dream contract. TICK TOCK. Another year has passed, that fact is shoved aside as he raps now, channeling that guy, using that pain the way he should’ve.

I’d rather we be dead to each other No eulogies said for each other No “rest in peace”s The memories got my chest in pieces

Dimmed lights, he’d asked for it to be that way and a snapback on his head, the same one he’s been wearing for years. More than who he is, his hat hasn’t changed. It’s seen him through a lot. Through the move to Seoul to the night he went back to the beach on his own without her to scream at the ocean, one different than the one he’s used to back home, than the one he missed, to the place that fostered the accent he tries to focus on shedding now.

He couldn’t rest in peace that night. Thinking about it now, he can’t either. His heart’s discontent as if it’s happening again, as if he won’t be able to go home tonight and see her. A home that’s not his except for the fact that it’s the place where she is. That’s how he finds home and for the sake of the performance he’s running away.

I’m praying that your eyes are the first to go The way they looked when you smiled The way they opened and closed And your nose, every single breath against my neck And then your lips, every empty promise made and said Please fade, fade to black Please fade, fade to black But the nightmares come back

His bitterness came out then and it comes back to life in this moment, in this song, in his voice, in how emotion almost brings his accent back with a vengeance the way he spits out the wordkiss. He hadn’t even gotten that far. It wasn’t until he saw her face again in Seoul that he understood the power of a kiss, or lack of. She still had him messed up without one.

Because your eyes, nose, lips Every look and every breath Every kiss still got me dying Uh, still got me crying

Because your eyes, nose, lips Every look and every breath Every kiss still got me dying Uh, still got me crying You wish me well Uou wish me well I wish you hell

even for him, a man who could pick up almost any instrument and learn a basic melody with significant practice, this was something else. he wasn’t a miracle worker. he couldn’t match stevie wonder’s incredible talent in four weeks— no way. 

but— he could give it a damn good go. 

he places one to his lips for the first time on january 5th. after throwing around song ideas uselessly for almost a week, he can’t afford to waste any more time. he thinks about piecing together an instrumental himself, to play as he sings, abandoning his guitar for a major evaluation the first time since he was signed. a simple feat, usually, but between learning the harmonica and late night skype calls to jeonghan from the studio, repeating the same syllables back and forth until they sound the same, he just doesn’t have time. it’s not a problem; after all, he’ll have plenty more chances to show off his skills in the future. 

honestly, the longer it goes on, the more grateful he becomes for such a tricky evaluation. it’s far too easy to mess up on the day, and he’s petrified of a poor slip of the tongue throwing his confidence wildly off course, let alone the harmonica solo, but he can’t help but love the task as he spends more time than he has in months, maybe even the entirety of the past year, in jeonghan’s company. it makes no difference to him that his bright smile is slightly blurred from poor signal, because it’s been far too long since he’s seen it this frequently — as frequently as he used to; before everything became such a mess. 

despite jeonghan’s help, seungcheol still doesn’t feel even remotely close to confident in his pronunciation by the time the deadline rolls around. (his mother, however, is more than a hundred percent confident she hates the harmonica.)

as he stands before the panel of judges, he trembles. it’s hard to believe the past four weeks have flown by so quickly, and it’s even harder to believe that he might soon pull this off. by some miracle, maybe he can get through the next four minutes cleanly— or at least without making too much of a fool of himself. he’d risked it in his audition; he’d certainly risked his image in last month’s christmas concert, but there was less room for fun and quirky here, and that left him with nothing but worry. it felt too serious, and it didn’t feel like a test of his music skills. he was a musician, not a linguist. but he’d do his best. 

that’s all he can do, after all, and that’s all he will accept being asked for. he cannot be perfect, for he is human, and that’s something he had accepted many, many years ago. all he could hope was that sphere understood that, too. (though his hopes aren’t particularly high, given the effect he saw trc have on jihoon, but seungcheol wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t have at least a little optimism.) 

isn't she lovely? isn't she wonderful? isn't she precious? less than one minute old. I never thought through love we'd be, making one as lovely as she, but isn't she lovely, made from love.

he jumps at the volume of the instrumental once he’s hit play, lowering it quickly and returning to his spot in the centre of the floor. his harmonica is tucked safely in his back pocket, a surprise — he hopes — for the coaches in his audience he has yet to meet, or yet to tell of his plans. the introduction isn’t quite long enough for him to find a little composure before he has to open his mouth to sing, and it leaves his very first word slightly wavering, as he stumbles over the second syllable. his fingers drum against his thigh, and it’s to the beat, but it’s far too obvious that it’s a nervous habit. luckily, as time goes on, as lines start to flow more, he finds a little more comfort. 

he imagines he’s back at home, tucked in the studio, jeonghan in his bedroom however far away it is that seungcheol doesn’t like to think about, swaying to the beat as he sings. he imagines he’s not staring back into the eyes of judges (because that’s what they are, really, right? here to judge his pronunciation, the level of effort they feel he’s given the performance and practices. judge, judge, judge. he decides he doesn’t really like that word too much.) 

his gently closed eyes flutter back open naturally as the verse comes to an end, a deep breath filling the small space between it and the verse that follows. 

isn't she pretty? truly the angel's best.  boy, I'm so happy. we have been heaven blessed.  I can't believe what god has done. through us, he's given life to one.  but isn't she lovely, made from love. 

it’s the moment of truth as the second verse draws to a close. he has a good three seconds to tug the instrument from his right back pocket, bring it to his lips, and pull this off, and it all feels like a blur. one moment, he’s feeling the cold metal touch his rough lips, sweaty hands trying desperately to hold on tight enough. the next, he’s back to singing, the final verse bubbling up his throat. 

his pronunciation isn’t horrid so far. it’s far from perfect, but he hadn’t expected much else. hours were spent practicing, and he hadn’t been entirely incompetent before the evaluation was announced either, but he had realised rather belatedly that far too much worry had gone into his damn harmonica than the sounds he was actually being evaluated for, but there wasn’t enough time to do much more about it. he wouldn’t wow, he knew this, but he wouldn’t disappoint either, and he thinks that’s good enough if he can make up for the former with two smooth instrumental solos. 

be careful what you wish for? don’t get too complacent? don’t let nerves get to you? he’s not sure which advice he wishes he’d have taken, as he transitions through the last vocal verse and horrifically into the following harmonica solo. 

isn't she lovely? life and love are the same. life is aisha,  the meaning of her name.  londie, it could have not been done, without you who conceived the one,  that's so very lovely made from love.

it starts with the wrong note, a grating noise against the ears in the room, and a startled squeak from the player. it continues with a red flush to his cheeks, and it almost ends there and then, embarrassment ready to stun him, but he hasn’t spent hours, weeks, too many sleepless nights, playing this damn instrument for nothing, so he pulls it back against his lips a few seconds later, the sound he intends for breaking through the screaming he can only hear in his head. 

it’s not perfect; none of his evaluation is, he isn’t— he’s already been through this— but it’s good enough. it’s proof that there’s fault to trying to show off too much, that we all make mistakes, though he doesn’t think any of sphere doubts that in him, anyway. 

taking on the task of recreating such a legendary piece with less than four weeks of practice is almost impossible, anyway, he reminds himself, as he heaves out heavy breaths in the silence that follows the end of his performance. a soft ‘I’ve only been playing for a month’ floats around in his mind, threatens to spill off his tongue, but he doesn’t see the point. he shouldn’t make excuses. owning up to your mistakes and learning from them is far more admirable than anything else, and he won’t be a coward here, despite his track record. 

he bows, and leaves when instructed, and later that night, he and jeonghan call once more. 

“how did it go?” 

“it went.” he laughs, “I messed up my solo a bit, but I’m only human. thanks for helping me out with my pronunciation; I think that part went pretty well! all thanks to you, of course. I’ll be sure to credit you in all my future albums.” 

jeonghan chuckles, “good. you do that.” 

“I will. I’ll do it.” he grins, fingers running through his hair, heart at ease. 

it’s still a little hard for sooyoung to navigate the samsung building, as evidenced by the five wrong coaches she finds before finding her own. (sooyoung calls coach chun hers, but in reality, the trainee has almost made it a point to avoid coach chun since august, though very poorly.) she’s one person, one teacher, that sooyoung respects most, and one that isn’t afraid to tell her where to shove her own opinions about her singing. so when the evaluation announcement comes that they’re supposed to be singing- and she finds herself absolutely dumbfounded, coach chun is the person she goes to. (maybe it helps that sooyoung is working on a korean song too, because then she can get perhaps the harshest criticisms from a native speaker and someone that’s seen her improvements.)

outside of being a dancer (and a living, breathing meme), there’s not really any defining qualities that sooyoung has going for her, not in her mind at least. rapping has crossed her mind- it crosses her mind even twenty three days into the strict rehearsal and refining of her singing skills, but perhaps that’s best to explore later. despite having rapped for the mgas, sooyoung is on the opposite end of the spectrum for anything remotely like rapping, and she doesn’t dare try for an evaluation, not yet. 

it doesn’t help that she’s picky, either, that everything from american 90s music to the hip hop scene in seoul intrigues her more than the pop hits that she sometimes thinks she should actually be studying. she doesn’t have a voice for singing by herself, she already knows, (this is confirmed when coach chun stops their session only ten minutes in and brusquely informs sooyoung that right now she sucks, and a question as to where the girl that performed a song like fantasy went- sooyoung still doesn’t know), but she wants to try, if anything not to endanger her position within kt when she’s almost made it an entire year without causing any trouble whatsoever- something that she does consider a personal record. (she’s actually scared shitless of potential trainee debt, and sometimes she thinks that that’s why she hasn’t done anything outrageous.)

and so, for a month straight, on coach chun’s orders, her focus on dance is restricted and switched to singing (she sees a lot more of tiffany and taeyeon, at least, and that she can’t complain about). sooyoung finds herself fidgeting a lot, or nervously staring at the wall ahead while praying that she won’t be an example to anyone- but learning nonetheless. without an outlet for her energy though, she’s restless, always ready to move and do something with all of the excess energy she has. (this is why they enrolled her in dance classes when she was a kid.) her trainer tells her to channel the energy into her singing, but sooyoung still doesn’t understand exactly how that works. how is she supposed to practice vowel pronunciation and energy balance? as the days on her calendar pass by, it really seems to be only more and more hopeless for her.

speaking korean is easy enough (most times, sometimes the longer words, or the slang phrases, still caught her), but when adding the embellishments that a singer normally puts, sooyoung fell flat. it’s only when she’s listening to a late night radio station that she learns (maybe) her favorite genre, and she at least has a song that she wants to try and emulate. and though the work is hard, way too hard if you asked sooyoung on the wrong day, she feels herself improving, and notices that coach chun’s harsher comments seem to occur less and less often (definitely not absent though), and sooyoung feels a little more confident in her singing ability. 

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. 

“oh, climb on board. we’ll go slow, and high tempo.” he taps his fingers on the stand, breathing into the mic with a soft, lofty voice, fitting for the original. “light and dark, hold me hard and mellow.” his throat bobs, eyes falling shut for a brief moment as he catches his breath, tongue swiping over his lips. he keeps up with the beat, keeps the practiced lyrics in his head the best that he can. “i’m seeing the pain, seeing the pleasure, nobody but you, nobody but me. nobody but us, bodies together. i love to hold you close, tonight and always.” it’s an intimate song, one that once the lyrics were translated explained, had woohyun blushing for a long time. he’s enjoyed the song immensely just hearing it, and now it’s almost strange to sing it with such intent, such emotion. it feels strange, especially after knowing what the song entails. “i love to wake up next to you, i love to hold you close—tonight and always, i love to wake up next to you.”

he raises his voice as the chorus dictates, trailing his hard earned work and passion into his voice. he keeps his gaze strong, keeping up with the feel of the song, the intensity. “so we’ll piss off the neighbours, in the place that feels the tears, the place to lose your fears. yeah, reckless behavior—a place that is so pure, so dirty and raw.” he tries his hardest not to blush, but he’s sure the tips of his ears are tinging pink. “in the bed all day, bed all day, bed all day, loving in fighting on,” he casually slides in a replacement word for the curse, tongue swiping over his lips as he tilts his head, hair falling into his gaze (he needs to cut it soon). “it’s out paradise, and it’s our war zone. it’s our paradise and our war zone.”

he feels comfortable. he feels confident. “pillow talk, my enemy, my ally. prisoners—then we’re free, it’s a thriller.”

he falls back into the lyrics, gets comfortable at what he remembers—and the song goes by smoother than he expects. sure, there’s a couple of slurred word from his accented english, but woohyun takes them in stride, lips quirking up when they happen with no bother at all.

Then followed a musical intro, which made things slightly awkward but she tried to make up for the silence with a happy smile and a few dance moves to the rhythm. She hoped it wouldn't look dumb, but there wasn't much else she could do in this situation. On a real life stage, she would have probably prepared props to interact with, but here the options were limited.

If you accidentally fall down, then just get straight back up and pretend nothing's wrong Humour is this world's greatest gift Don't just think about being that prince or princess Don't be cold to others, acting cool Let all the preparation end in a perfect performance Let all the hardwork end in a beautiful ending Ai yo wei ah, there's no entries for these in the dictionary You'll unconsciously blurt them out if you nearly fall over

It wasn't exactly rap nor was it exactly singing either. The entire song was a weird mix of these two, which made it much more comfortable for Eunae. Rapping in Mandarin would be extremely difficult because of the pronunciation, while singing, well... it wasn't the best skill for the trainee to showcase, especially during a solo performance.