#anyways go watch it for free legally on YouTube I really recommend it if u haven’t

[smallpapers]

TASKMASTER S16!!

[mxnark]

CONVEX - ADORE U - COVER

5000 mina

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it's been a rough couple of days since she had gotten the notification.

since then, there have been other updates from other colleges about her applications to them. some were yes, few were no's, but she only cared about the one waitlisted since she knew her parents would be the one to care about it the most about that school. after all, it was the best in the country. even if she didn't have much opinion on it, she wanted to at least get accepted from the school as a way to let her parents know she's good on her own. if she lets them know of her acceptance, maybe her mother would stop being so overbearing. whether or not that was possible, she wants to convince herself that she'll at least get less pressure if she showed that she was good enough somehow.

as she reads articles for an answer on what to do in this situation, she sees the common psa that every article says. being waitlisted does not mean no. do not give up all hope yet. it was easier said than done, not to mention it didn't exactly mean a yes either and that's what they care about in the end. she doesn't even bother trying to stare at the status after she got it. she's afraid to be reminded of her own failure, nor does she want to reflect on her own faults that led to this decision.

she didn't think she was bad at hiding emotions because her parents had never pointed it out. however, she was clearly not doing as well as she would since chohee, one of her friends, pulls her out of their literature class when she was busy thinking about the whole situation again. the both of them arrive at the bathroom, making sure no one was in there but the both of them.

"what's up with you?" chohee asks her. "you don't look seem like yourself."

mina frowns at the accusation. "what do you mean?"

"you're usually more excited during this class," she explains herself. "you didn't even say your response to the prompt allowed. you always do that."

"i'm just," she sighs, "tired. i'm tired."

she tilts her head. "what do you mean by tired? did you get enough sleep or-"

"i don't know!" she answers abruptly. "i didn't get much sleep, but there's also a lot going on in my head, okay? i'm just tired of everything happening to me."

there's a short silence that follows after she speaks. "do you want to talk about it?" she asks.

no point in hiding it from her since they were practically taking some minutes away from class because of it. "snu waitlisted me."

"that's not a big deal," chohee replies immediately, making mina frustrated. "being waitlisted doesn't mean that they don't want you."

"but it doesn't mean i'm guaranteed to be there, either!" she argues. "being waitlisted means that i'm not guaranteed a spot unless someone ends up falling out of it. it means that i'm not a priority." she looks down at the ground, the frustration of the situation making her more upset than it should. she didn't want to look up at her friend while she was crying. it would make her feel immature. "that i'm not good enough." she whispers.

"well, kang mina's not the best at everything, is she?" she asks. "you don't have to the picture-perfect student in order to get a spot there."

"then why do i have to wait to get it?" she asks, still looking away from the girl in front of her.

"because shit like this takes time, mina and you need to remind yourself that." she has a point, but it's not something that makes mina feel better. "all you can do now is wait for them to say what will happen next."

mina decides not to respond to that, afraid that if she says one more word, she'll probably bawl her eyes out. she didn't want to show a moment of vulnerability to a friend who has only seen her as the tough girl she comes off to be. she wants to say 'my parents will make me feel like shit for this.' 'how long will i have to wait until i get an answer that i want?' 'what will i do with my life knowing that my mom will never leave me alone because i'm not the bare minimum of who she wants me to be?'

chohee must have noticed this because she continues to talk. "if it makes you feel any better, i don't know exactly where i'm going either."

it doesn't do anything big, but it does catch mina's attention.

"i've only sent a few applications and more of them were rejections than they were at least waitlisted," she continues. "not to mention, i only applied to those schools because my dad told me i should. i was actually thinking of taking a gap year in order to make more money for even just community college."

it takes away the urge to cry, but she still doesn't feel like looking up at her. not yet.

"but i also want to take that one year to learn more about myself, you know?" she says with optimism, something mina thought was admirable. "i don't exactly know what i want to do with my life yet and i want to be able to get some time to actually think about what i want to do rather than write papers about some random thing at the top of my head, you know? and i know two guys from the theatre department that are taking a gap year to focus more on theatre. probably to add experience or more service hours. but either way, it's more added time to help you figure everything out."

mina looks up finally, feeling a bit calmer to talk to the other now. "are you telling me i should think about taking a gap year?"

she shakes her head. "it's a suggestion," she corrects her. "i know your mom is super strict since you basically talk about her as if she was a witch." that earns a snort from mina. "but, even so, you'll legally be an adult by the time it's decision day and it's ultimately your life in the end, not hers."

she shrugs. "i mean, i guess." she's already aware of the fact, as shown through her arguments with her mother about how the latter always bothers her about her future. it's the fact that it won't be easy to convince her about that decision since she'll be lucky if she's left with just an argument and a "go to your room!" and after not so recent events, she's not even sure if she wants to unleash her mother's full wrath. she's already experienced 100%, but she doesn't want to face her mother's rage being over 9000.

"i'll think about it," mina decides finally. "but thank you for talking to me."

chohee smiles and pulls her friend into a hug. "anytime. it's all up to you, though. remember that."

there's an obvious fake smile on her face when they pull back. "don't remind me."

the both of them laugh and mutually agree to head back to class. when they arrive back at the classroom, they see that the majority of them are just on their phones if not talking to the teacher about something. they both walk back to their seats and chohee's the one to ask what's going on.

the one person in their table group but not friend group answers that question. "one of us complained that she was teaching us too much for the day, so she decided to chill out and give us all a break."

mina couldn't believe what she was hearing. "no offense, but that sounds really stupid."

"hey, if it's free time, i'm not complaining," gaon, one of the girls in her friend group, responds to that, earning a nod of agreement from chohee.

there was no use in complaining about it because it does sound like a luxury. mina quickly takes out her phone and earbuds to distract herself with her favorite hobby: watching multiple videos on youtube. she would go to twitter, but she doesn't really have that much to talk about that will be entertaining to her mutuals. she'd go on instagram, but she didn't want to be bombarded with reminders about how everyone else in the school has gotten accepted into a university when she has not (regardless if it's on her rinsta or finsta, she knows she'll see at least one post about it if not on someone's story). plus, if it's youtube, who knows where she'll find herself?

she looks through her subscriptions to see a few new videos. however, one that definitely caught her eye was a new video from one of her favorite dancers. however, what interested her more was that it was a dance cover. when she clicks on it to watch the video, she had a lot of thoughts on her mind. 1. this dance is super basic and she didn't understand the multitude of comments saying "OMG QUEEN YOU'RE SO FAST 😱😱😱😱" , "YOU MIGHT AS WELL BE A MEMBER OF THIS GROUP SINCE YOU POST VIDEOS AT SONIC SPEED OMGGGGGGG!!!!!!!", and other ridiculous comments coming from an audience of middle schoolers or younger; 2. it reminded her of the fact that it's been a while since she actually got around to learning a new dance and actually performing it for a group of people and that fact alone made mina think more than she should. she thought a lot about how back in the day, she always made attempts of making cover videos, only to feel discouraged because she had a hunch that no one was going to notice it in the end anyway. but, to be fair, that was during a time where she had no friends and a lower self-esteem and she likes to think that she's somewhat improved a little more since then, thanks to the support of her friends.

all of a sudden, she gets an idea and she quickly taps on gaon's desk to get her attention from her game. gaon pauses the game and looks up at mina curiously. "you have a gym membership, right?"

"...yes," she answers with slightly squinted eyes, her voice sounding as if she was getting suspicious of her friend. "why?"

"i have a plan and i need to tell you and the rest of the group during lunchtime, but it involves going to the gym afterwards."

"are you finally thinking of working out as a hobby?"

that catches her off track. "wh- no. i'll tell you more about it later."

gaon shrugs. "alright. since it's friday."

mina smiles. "thank you, queen."

"no problem, weirdo," she answers before she gets back to playing her game.

mina expected her friends to think it was a good idea to start posting content on her own youtube channel. she's lucky that she has yet to post anything on there yet, as she mainly uses the website to watch her favorites.

"i need a distraction to get my mind off of the stress in my life," was her reason. though she was sure they would be up for the idea even if she didn't have a valid one.

"i think we all need a distraction to get our mind off of the stress in our lives," daeun says, gaining everyone's laughter as a response.

truth be told, this idea has been in the back of her head for a while now. she's thought about it since she moved back to korea. but due to the lack of friends at the time, she only thought of it as a thing to think about often. but the older she gets, the more she considers the option. but it was during lunchtime where she was making a channel layout with her friends that she decided she was going to do it.

so she stands in an empty gym studio that her rich friend gaon asked to borrow for the occasion, the rest of her friends either behind the dslr camera or to the sides where they were not seen on the monitor.

"i'm shocked you're learned this choreo despite all the workload we've had," daeun comments. "not that i'm complaining though since it's convex."

"why this song anyway?" gaon asks.

"the more recent the song, the more attention it gets," mina answers. "plus it's cute. it sounds really fun."

"fair," gaon nods.

mina looks over at chohee who stands at the side with a phone and portable speaker in her hands. she shows fives fingers before an okay symbol to check if the other was ready. when she gets a thumbs up, she goes into position by walking to the little bit of tape on the ground that she freshly placed, crosses her arms, and looks down from the camera.

"one, two, three," gaon clicks on the record button. she looks over at chohee, continuing the countdown by mouthing the next three numbers. "four, five, six." at six, the music plays.

one of the best things about living in a strict house is how when she's home alone, she's able to lipsync to her favorite songs to herself because if she goes any louder, she knows her mother will basically lecture her until mina's ears fall off. having had this song play constantly on repeat thanks to gaon, she was able to get some of the words in her head since she was not shy to singing at the top of her lungs in her car. so she lipsyncs them to the best of her ability. even if she messed up, it wasn't like the people were going to point it out. she's going to be a dance channel, not a lipsync one.

the dance comes to her naturally. though she uses the little reminders in her brain for certain parts of the song, she's able to do the rest with muscle memory thanks to her practicing whenever her parents were out. when she was learning it before she got the notification, she only thought about showing it to her friends. but with this? it was like gracefully patting two birds on the head with one stone (she does not condone animal violence at all). there's a smile on her face when she does the moves and it's not only for show since the song is about love and the group members had smiles on their faces when doing this dance. it's been a few months since she's had an audience to perform for, even if this one was a bit smaller than it was in the past (half the school to be exact since she'd only perform for school performances). but no matter the people, it just felt relieving to be able to dance again after weeks of stress breakdowns over upcoming assignments she procrastinated on, tests she barely studied for, or recommendation letters that have yet to be sent by her teachers. she was able to relax, even if she wanted this dance to be perfect.

the chorus finally hits and that's perhaps her favorite part of the song and choreography overall. when she jumps off the ground, she imagines herself like mario hitting a question block with the top of his head while simultaneously pushing away a paragoomba, even if that's never happened in the classic games before and she isn't throwing her hat at one. nonethless, her imagination is key when it comes to this dance. she taps her chest to match the consonants of "내 말-" before bringing her arms above her head to hit each other at "-은", kicking out her left leg as she does so. and when she goes down on both feet for a second before standing straight to continue the dance? she'd be lying if she said she didn't find that absolutely satisfyingly cool. whoever choreographed this deserves her highest praises.

she ignores the little giggles from her friends when there comes parts where simply just stands, such as at the beginning of the rap bit in the bridge. there's no reason to why she does it besides the fact that she didn't really choose one member to focus on for the choreo. it was just a bunch of them really. if they were in the center, she was most likely going to follow along with their moves.

when the song reaches its end and she bends down on one knee to mark it, she pants as she waits for gaon to click on the record button. when she does, she falls to the ground in relief and her friends begin to cheer for her before they all collectively each take off one of their shoes and throw it at her, making her squeal in response. as she covers her head and laughs along with them, she quickly stands up and walks to the camera, clicking on the gallery button to see the footage. however, the longer she looks at it, the more she cringes.

"can we do that again?" she asks, disappointment and exhaustion in her voice. everyone collectively groans, but they comply because they understand that she wants to make a good first impression on the internet.

she's never really understood the struggle with video editors until now. before this, she would only use imovie for group projects with her friends and even then, she was doing the bare minimum with what was given to her. but considering that this was going to be a normal thing for her, she'll have to learn to do it more often.

inserting the sd card onto her macbook, she looks at all the six takes of her doing the dance, half of them being less than the whole song due to her making small mistakes halfway during the choreography that frustrated her to the point she groaned about it before giving up and wanting to restart the whole thing. it was an exhausting process, but she knows that she'll have to get used to it in the end. unlike school performances, she doesn't have time to perfect the dance until she finally records it. and while her impatience makes it difficult for her to accept it, she'll have to take it as an opportunity to learn how to be more tolerant of this.

the sixth take is probably her favorite though since it was the latest and best version, as it was the result of her sharpening her moves and preventing herself from forgetting what to do at certain parts of the choreography. when she imports the clip onto the project, she takes the audio of "adore u" next and she actually bought it with her own money instead of using a youtube mp3 converter site. that's a mina point for being a decent human being!

now was the harder part: syncing the song with clip. truth be told, she's never actually done this part before, but she was told by a senior last year that if she were to ever consider making cover videos on instagram (ha!), she'd probably have difficulty syncing the video with the audio on a phone editor. she supposes she's lucky in this case since this is on desktop, but she doesn't know if that will make this process any easier for her.

with a pair of headphones and a lot of determination, she gets to work, shortening the take a little at the beginning to make sure that it would make the job of syncing it easier, she drags the audio file below the video and clicks play to hear how it sounds, only to be greeted with the sound of echoing. when she hears it for the first time, she frowns and clicks stop after hearing a good three seconds of it. she quickly zooms into the project to try and see if she can spot the same waveforms and match them up together. it doesn't take long until she plays the audio again and hears a slight little echo. this was beginning to get a little frustrating so she tries to move it up one more time and thankfully, she managed to do it.

however, despite the good (not great, but it's not too bad) lighting of the gym studio, she still feels like the video looked a little bland. it didn't help with the fact that she was working with probably one of the most basic video editors. she should be at least a little grateful that she even has a video editor and that it's not as bad as movie maker, otherwise she'd have to suffer from cringy nostalgia from the fonts. but when she goes through the filters and sees how they look with the video, she realizes that she doesn't... really have anything but what she's already put down already.

it's nothing to worry about though since being upset about it wasn't really going to lead her anywhere. all she can do is take a good screenshot of her first position and make it the cover photo with photoshop and hope that it'll at least get someone's attention on the website. after taking the screenshot, she mutes the video to only get the music as the audio for the whole thing.

it's done! and it didn't take that long either! relieved with how simple it was (for now), she clicks on the button on the export button and clicks on the export button immediately, not even bothering to give a creative name for the file because it's the least of her worries for now. as she waits for it to export, she goes on twitter to look at what's going on with her mutuals and favorite celebrities. liking reality show clips and quoting some with a keyboard smash because she apparently thinks they are so funny despite the straight face she keeps while watching it.

when the imovie notification appears in the corner, she quickly looks at it excitedly only to see an upsetting message.

exporting "my movie" has failed.

"bullshit!" she whispers to herself, going back on the editor and attempting to export it again to see if it will show anything else. she goes back on the internet shortly after, continuing to go through her timeline when the message pops up again!

at this point, she's going to pull out her hair! she goes to the finder app and selects a bunch of random pictures she saved from twitter and puts them in the trash, majority of them being images of her biases so she won't deny that it hurts her a little. after she empties the "apple trashcan", she goes back to export it for the third time and rather than going back on twitter, she stays on the app so she can watch the progress circle load and finally get her video exported.

it takes a little longer to export this time, which gives her a little bit of hope as she sees the circle slowly filling up. but right before it could even fill the whole thing, it disappears and she is about to lose her mind when she sees the popup once again. all of my efforts. all of my pictures that i could've kept forever. all of them are gone because this stupid editor thinks i'm a clown! beginning to be even more frustrated, she goes back to her finder to delete the barely finished drafts of the video, even more downloaded pictures, and one game that she barely touched after finishing it to throw it all in the empty digital bin. when she clears the trash once again, hearing the sound of crumpling paper in both of her ears, she exports the video, this time taking the opportunity to title it with something: if this video does not export, i WILL eat you.

it's one more segment of staring at the circle as it slowly fills up and when she sees it being completed, she lets out a sigh of relief. finally! four times! it took four times! if she ends up having to do any more times than that in the future, she'll probably get more gray hairs than both her mom and her dad combined.

not wanting to waste any more of her time by having to deal with her stupid laptop, she opens up photoshop, takes the screenshot, and chooses a random font before writing "adore u" in a bigger size than "convex" in a smaller one. it doesn't look like it could blend in with the lighting, so she calls it a day as she saves the image and goes on youtube to upload it.

she could be a bit more descriptive with the description, but she wants to be professional (for now) since it is her first video. so in the description, she simply leaves her instagram username and her twitter username because she wants the minimal clout for the one random person who wasn't her friend to follow her on both. before she could press the publish video, she remembers to drop a few hashtags on the bottom. #CONVEX #ADOREU #ADOREUCOVER #KPOP

when she clicks the publish video, she closes her laptop and stretches her arms, letting out a big sigh from all the "work" she did. she'll plug the video on her local twitter and her ig story later but for now? she was going to chill out and bingewatch fruits basket (the new one).