#rkmay15eval

nothing felt right. nothing still felt right but tiffany knew she couldn’t walk in there with nothing. she couldn’t live up to it. that was her greatest concern. how does one name themself? she even awkwardly asked her therapist, to which she received a question of when she’ll be coming in again and tiffany could only answer “when i have a name.” 

such a simple assignment, one that ended with a few words and a brief sentence, yet it had her struggling more so than the prevous assignments. 

if only she could sing. she’d even willingly dance to anything — a steep claim but she was at her wit’s end, not that she had much wit as of recently. 

she thought of all the useless things. why isn’t morgan dating garcia already? why isn’t sebastian stan filming more for civil war? why aren’t there more pictures and why couldn’t she just focus for at least two seconds? 

constantly changing and melting away, that’s how she felt. 

without form, without shape. a disney character had more direction than she did. then it hit her. 

disney. 

not a character’s title persay but a name. aurora. she was an aurora. 

“hi, my name is tiffany. kt’s very own aurora, brighter than the sky!” 

and all the other disney phrases she could use for it, she was sure she could embarrass her fellow trainees with later. she almost felt towel sunbae’s laughter tickling her ear as she spoke. 

now for a talent — 

it felt so cliche. so stereotypical for someone in her position, but she didn’t seem the fault in using what she has, what she’ll likely be known for when, if, she debuts. 

coffee prince was one of her favorite dramas, if only she could receive a role like that and pull it off but tiffany as a male didn’t seem likely and she wouldn’t dare compare herself to yoon eun hye. a girl could dream, but a girl couldn't wait. 

unlike the role she was portraying, she couldn’t ask for patience. she didn’t have much of it to offer, explaining why her role fell apart as soon as the scene ended. “ah, it was too serious,” she laughed to herself, tongue stuck out in slight embarrassment. 

The smile fades into a small frown as she thinks about her plan for the evaluation. They’re supposed to introduce themselves in some creative, memorable way and present a “special talent” that would set them apart on variety shows and the like. She knows what her talent is: the cello. Most idol musicians play piano, guitar, or maybe violin, but never cello. It definitely qualifies as special and memorable — at least, it does in Jinri’s opinion.

She’s not so sure about her introduction. Luna and Rachel had both suggested names related to flowers, which makes a bit of sense considering that her English name is Lily. She’s not sure if she wants to use any of those names, though; they’re all really embarrassing, but then again she figures that so is “flaming charisma,” so she should probably just go ahead and get used to the embarrassing part.

She thinks about the names again, picking one of Rachel’s suggestions from her memory. Pulling the grin back up on her face, she says it cheerily to her reflection. “Hello, I’m Sphere’s Tiger Lily Choi!” As soon as the words leave her mouth, the smile contorts into a grimace as she shakes her head. “No, that’s just weird,” she mutters with a sigh. Biting her lip, she tries to remember the other suggestions off the top of her head.

Something new pops in her head, and it’s hardly original; she knows of at least one idol who’s used it before, but she decides to give it a try anyway. The smile comes back to her lips, and she tries again. “Hello, I’m Sphere’s Giant Baby, Choi Jinri!”

A second later, she bursts out laughing. That name actually reminds her of a cartoon she saw a while back, which sometimes featured a giant floating baby head, so she shakes her head. “No, definitely not.”

Instead of using her own head, which is obviously a dangerous place, Jinri pulls out her phone and brings up the text conversation she had with Rachel the other night. “Flower Princess…” she mumbles, testing the name out on her tongue. Scanning over the other suggestions from both Rachel and Luna, she lets out a sigh and sets her phone down on the counter in front of her. Smiling at the mirror again, she puts on the cheerful voice once more. “Hello, I’m Choi Jinri, Sphere’s flower princess!” She chimes, holding the expression for a second before blinking at her reflection. With a shrug, she grabs her phone from the counter and turns to leave, figuring that it’ll do for this, at least.

——————

Later, in the evaluation room, Jinri sits with her cello in its case next to her, already tuned and ready. She watches the other trainees, finding this evaluation rather fun as she listens to their amusing introductions and watches their sometimes bizarre talents. She finds herself laughing at and with pretty much everyone, and she’s not nearly as nervous for this as she probably should be for an evaluation.

It’s like everything else with the Sphere family: it’s so relaxed and carefree that Jinri can’t help but feel the same. Even though it is an evaluation and is supposed to be serious, she can tell that the other trainees and even some of the instructors are feeling the same way she is. Looking at this, she can almost see why those netizens targeted Sphere and said they weren’t hard workers. From an outsider’s perspective, looking at it with Korea’s culture in mind, Jinri can almost see it.

But she knows that none of that was true, that it was all produced from unfair assumptions. Just because they know how to have fun doesn’t mean that the Sphere trainees aren’t hardworking: it just means that they — Jinri included — enjoy what they do. There’s nothing wrong with that, she thinks. In fact, that’s the best way to do things, in her opinion. She remembers that Confucius quote: the man who gets a job he loves never has to work a day in his life. Of course, it applies to girls too.

She wonders what it must be like at the other companies, ones that those netizens would call “hardworking.” She wonders if those people still remember why they love performing. She hopes they do.

Not for the first time, she’s hit with a huge wave of gratitude for Sphere as a whole. Trainee life is stressful, and Jinri doesn’t think she’d be able to survive it without these guys around her.

She’s snapped out of her reverie by the sound of her name. Standing up, she takes a moment to remove her cello and bow from the case before moving to the center of the room. She lays the cello on its side next to the chair in the middle of the room, the bow resting on top of it. Then she stands in front of the chair and bows to the judges’ table, taking a deep breath and painting that cheery smile on her face before she straightens.

“Hello, I’m Choi Jinri, and I’m Sphere’s flower princess!” She chimes, just like she did in the mirror earlier.

“What is your talent, Jinri-ssi?” One of the managers sitting at the table asks.

“I’ll be playing cello for you today,” she says, already sitting down and quickly setting up the instrument between her legs. Once the strings of the bow are tightened and ready, she looks around at the trainees and other instructors watching from the edges of the room. “I’ll start with a well-known piece; feel free to sing along if you know it~”

And without any other explanation, she sets her bow to the strings and starts playing. She starts with “Under the Sea,” the familiar percussion notes at the beginning coming out through the strings on her cello. She can already hear quiet gasps of realization, and as she goes into the melody of the first verse, she can hear a few quiet voices singing along.

She doesn’t do the whole song, stopping after the first chorus and looking around. “Any requests?” She asks, almost playfully, and as they planned beforehand, Luna calls out: “Circle of Life!”

Jinri grins, looking over at the fingerboard and playing a couple quiet notes to find the right pitch. Then, without so much as a breath, she plays a loud, high note, holding it out before going into the well-known tribal tune. It’s a lion, she thinks, remembering the translation. It’s a fucking lion. The thought brings another laugh to the lips, and she cuts off her playing after the second repeat of the melody, laughing with a few of her audience members.

“Hakuna Matata!” She begins the next song without prompting, saying the words without the cello at first. “What a wonderful phrase. Hakuna Matata…ain’t no passin’ craaaaze~” She sings the last line, playing it along on her cello at the same time. She stops singing after that, leaving the words to her audience as she plays the melody on the cello.

It means no worries For the rest of your days It’s our problem free Philosophy Hakuna Matata

“Anything else?” She asks, looking around at all the grins around her while sporting a wide smile of her own.

“Frozen!” Someone shouts.

“Mulan!”

“Aladdin!”

She plays little snippets of all their suggestions, from “Let it Go” to “A Whole New World” to “I’ll Make a Man Out of You.” Too soon, though, she knows she’s pushing it as far as time goes, so she stops and stands up, bowing to the judges and accepting everyone else’s applause graciously.

Moving back to her seat, she puts her cello away while humming “A Whole New World,” feeling like she could literally just float away with all the elation and happiness that’s filling her.