#I’ve been feeling.. weird and unwelcome body feelings that have slightly improved but

[ectogeranium]

hehe guess who’s going to urgent care tomorrowwww

….

it’s me

[rkrxcky]

} bloody mary { SN (session) WK1

the room was brightly lit, almost harshly, and felt even smaller than it was with the video camera pointed very deliberately at his face. the simple backdrop behind him was a familiar shade of not-quite-white. hyemi sat across from him patiently, expectantly. he watched as a black-clad staff member disappeared through the door with a smartphone in hand and a frantic, busy energy that contrasted with the coach’s calmness. and then the room was quiet, a red light on the small camera next to her catching the light in his peripheral vision.

his mother stood just behind the camera, her arms hugging her middle and a smile on her face that was somehow nervous and encouraging at the same time. ‘what’s your name?’ the man had asked cheerfully, glancing up from his clipboard as the camera rolled to look the charming, round-cheeked toddler in the eye. ‘kaang-yuu-chan!’ he’d answered just as cheerfully, bouncing in his chair slightly, his hair following suit. then he slipped easily into his slate, just as he’d rehearsed with his mother on the bus ride over, ‘my name is kang-yu-chan, i’m from bu-san, i’m six-years-old, and i love power rangers!’

how are you feeling after your first week of supernova? she asked, as if she was asking him what his favorite color was or what the weather was like in the outside he hadn’t seen in more than a week. in spite of her intimidating aura, one possessed by most nova coaches, something he’d gotten quite used to, and comfortable with, while spending his adolescence under their tutelage. 

“good, i think. well...yeah. good,” she would pick up on his hesitation wouldn’t she? so he began to elaborate, albeit reluctantly. “it’s weird not doing anything else but singing all week. i’ve been having trouble sleeping, i think because my body wants to dance. even though i’m not very...confident in my singing.”

how did he feel about the project in general? he’s been training in nova for so long, surely he must be feeling excited?

the man on the other side of the table laughed, only glancing down to scribble something on his clipboard. ‘which power ranger is your favorite?’ ‘the red one! he’s the coolest! and the strongest! pow pow!’ tiny fists cut through the air, tiny legs hooked balanced on the rungs of a stool to keep him in place.

“i’m terrified,” he exhaled, in an uncharacteristically brush of emotional honesty, the hint of a sheepish half-smile curling just one corner of his lips, naturally, miraculously, instinctively on the good side of his face, the one with the dimple.

he wrung his hands in his lap nervously, “it’s a lot of pressure...i think, because i’ve been training here for so long, everyone is expecting a lot from me. i’m expecting a lot of me. i still have a lot of improving to do. i want to be confident that i’m ready to debut, or that i will be, soon, but...there’s no guarantee...”

saying it out loud, to another person, to a camera pointed at the good side of his face, made it feel too real, too tangible, like uttering bloody mary three times into a mirror and anticipating with bated breath the icy cold hand of failure reaching out and latching on. the month could end with his dismissal from the project. three months could end with a debut lineup that didn’t include him. how foolish he’d been to unpack his bag as if there were any spot here with his name on it. 

he could feel her icy cold hand closing around the lump in his throat even now.

he swallowed past it, his eyes flickering downward for a moment as he worked to filter his next words past the sudden unwelcome urge to cry.

he slurped wholeheartedly at the bowl of noodles in front of him, one noodle catching on the corner of his mouth and spraying a few perfect droplets of red broth across the pinks of his cheeks. ‘and which snack is your favorite?’ even at six, he could recognize a hidden cue line, could see his mother’s encouraging smile grow out of the corner of his eye. so he looked into the camera, scrunched his face up into a clumsy little smile and uttered his response through a messy mouthful of spicy noodles, in that way that always seemed to make grown-ups coo in his direction like pigeons, ‘shiiin-raa-myuuunn!’

“i’ll continue to work hard,” he declared quietly but firmly, with a small nod and a determined, pursed-lip smile, as if he hadn’t wavered at all, “no matter what happens.”