Here Or —

You are lashing out because you’re too sensitive. Yes, I was narrow-minded for a short while. Get over it.

in a perfect world, it would have just been lili and minkyu. just them, no need for lili to act up for anyone, let alone minkyu.

but this wasn’t a perfect world — as reality so helpfully liked to remind lili — and instead of it being just lili and minkyu. it was just lili and minkyu and a handful of cameras that were panning in on their every move and recording their every word. the things she would rather do — the things she would rather say are swept under her tongue and instead replaced with an appropriate, friendly smile rather than the snarky and amused — chagrin, almost — smirk.

a face the public could grow to like — a face she knows like the back of her hand. 

“i suppose you’ve got one thing going for you: good taste.” she laughs, eyes twinkling at the compliment thrown her way. despite of herself, lili knew she couldn’t deny herself the flattery.

( it was one of her weaknesses, ugh — remind her to lock it up later )

she takes his arm for hers to hold, squeezing his arm, gently, as she smiles at him. “ah, you caught me.” she laughs, lightly. “honestly, it was one of my favorite things to do when i lived in beijing. it’s like a whole event — you’d see huge, huge kites flying all around. it’s also about around this time when it’s held and i just wanted to share it with a special someone — thankfully, it’s you.” 

“oh, and we won’t just be flying them,” she’s steering him down the path towards the little workshop she had spent the past week researching. her steps growing hurried as they grow closer that the hand at his arm snakes down to grab his hand instead so they could rush forward. 

and once they do, in a plethora of sparkling hand gestures and a smile practically spilling of sunshine and warmth — god, was it aching her cheeks — “we’re also going to be making the kites!”

In Lili's company, there's an immediate sense of comfort that envelops him. Perhaps it's the deep bond of their friendship or the effortless harmony they share, but filming this reality show suddenly feels far more exhilarating than he had ever imagined.

With her, he doesn't feel the need to conform to any particular persona or mannerisms; he can simply revel in being his authentic self, secure in the knowledge that their natural dynamic will resonate with viewers.

"Who did I expect?" he ponders aloud, pretending to mull it over for a moment, mock-serious, "Some Hollywood celebrity, of course," before breaking into a grin. "Honestly, all I hoped for was someone with a pretty smile and a contagious laugh, and you fit the bill perfectly. I couldn't ask for more." His words aren't just for show or because he knows female viewers will be swooning in this moment; he genuinely means them.

Offering his arm for her to hold on to as they begin to walk, his glance casts up at the sky dotted with kites. "I'm sure flying kites will be a blast, although I've never tried it before," he confesses with somewhat of a sheepish smile. "I can't help but wonder how you came up with such a unique date idea, though. Is there a specific meaning to your choice?" His focus is solely on Lili, every ounce of attention on no one but her suddenly. "It's definitely one-of-a-kind."

lili immediately raises her fingers to form an ‘x’ in rejection. “no, no — just brunette and maybe layers, but no bangs.” lili was firm with her likes and her dislikes and she absolutely disliked the idea of bangs on herself. 

“yea, it’s kinda crazy. but i guess expected since we’re not like debuted official just training official? at least we get exposure through the company instagram.” like a pebble in an ocean, lili surmises. “better than nothing,” she adds at the end even if it was closer to nothing than anything else on her end.

nodding, her hand pushes the tray further towards kyoka with a smile, “はいー めしあがれ.” her japanese had somehow gotten better to a fault, enough for casual remarks but still not well enough to hold a lengthy conversation. 

Kyoka cocks her head to the side and blinks. Fair enough, Lili does look great as a brunette and she makes sure to say as much. Very mindful, very demure, she nods approvingly. Hey, maybe she should consider going brunette too someday, "With bangs too maybe, what do you think?" she asks, grabbing the tip of her hair to illustrate her vision.

She shrugs, the idea clearly not bothering her that much. "Everyone I really know is here or they're back home still and I'm not allowed to talk about them." She was definitely forgetting a lot of other people around her, but then again, she never made enough of an impression for people to really notice her anyways. "Can you believe we're not allowed in any social media, not even from fans posting about random meetings?"

And does she want Lili's potatoes, of course she does. Kyoka never turns down free food and she's also almost always kind of hungry anyways. Her piling up on the potatoes onto her plate is her response, and it's only right before she takes her first bite that she remembers to thank Lili, "I do, いただきます!!" head bobbing as she spoke.

XU LI YIFEI LILI, PERFORMER. ENCHANTED WAVES SANCTUM

she is a girl, just like the rest. her father sees her as such. no different than the others, just like the others, one more daughter to add to the his master plan. her father lacks nothing: daughters, wealth, nor ambition. she was just another one to be used for their father’s egostistic power play. her father, the founder of a well-known informant guild, had married into her mother’s noble family. the li family were well suited to his claims for power: they had both wealth and influence, built from years of triumph and trust; desirable attributes that only aided in her father’s ambitions.

pretty and quiet, this is your cross to bear. one of seven daughters, she is not the eldest, not the youngest, she is just a daughter — pretty and quiet, taught the bare minimum, ready to be sold off like cattle to the highest bidder. she’s seen it happen four times already in her twenty-three years. does she yearn for more? perhaps — there’s no other life she’s known except the one she’s seen within the walls of the li estate. outside was unheard of — a life she could only revere in her dreams. and in her dreams, the outside world is beyond the chains that hold her in this hell she calls home.  ( it is why, when she gets her first taste of freedom; stowing away in the servants' cart had been deplorable but thrilling, all the same, she wonders why had she waited so long to take a step out )

death becomes you. tw: sibling death, death by childbirth. her second eldest sister dies in childbirth. it’s an awful affair — the man was thirty years her senior and had left his wife to die as he held his newborn in his hands. to his dismay, the babe is also a daughter. promised a son, despite the self-evident reality that the li family found their luck in their daughters, he comes to her father with an ire to burn and an even more appalling offer. from this blasphemy comes yifei’s worst nightmare come to life. 

she is just a girl, just like the rest, part two. she’s known since she was five who she was to marry. it had been engrained into her memory with each waking moment and with every trivial interaction. her marriage had been decided for her and whether it be by the grace of god or not, at least, yifei didn’t dislike him. it is only when her sister dies does lili finally see the monster in her father. he is not only calculating, he is also heartless. her sister’s husband wished to replace her — with yifei. a payment for the defective wife he had lost. the night lili learns of this truth, is the night that changes everything.

death becomes you, part two. tw: murder, death by arson. she hadn’t meant for it to happen. at least — not in the way it did. she was to leave the estate in a fortnight, to depart for her new husband’s home and be his wife, bear his children and maybe, live the life her poor sister should have breathed. this is what should have happened. but suddenly the main hall is engulfed in flames and only yifei is there to watch it fall, ashes to ashes. ( she doesn’t remember how she gets out, had someone helped her? had she run off on her own? all she knows is by the time the pocket realm opens up, she’s on the run and suddenly her face is plastered all over posts within the district )

on the run: she is just a girl, unlike the rest, reprise. she changes her name. relinquishes claim of her sisters — prays that they had made it out alive, unlike her bastard of a father — but it’s too late, her new life had begun. a performer in the enchanted waves sanctum was not what she had always dreamed of but surprisingly it was better than what she had always known, if one could believe it. at least it was until one day she chances her face, its distinctive features all dressed up in charcoal, nailed to the post and a fear strikes her. the pocket realm hadn’t been her first choice but it had been the best one at the time. if she was on the run, there was no way they could find her from within, right? she could only hope.

apparently, lili wasn’t anti-love.

she was more … love … adverse, if one really had to put it into words. it wasn’t that she didn’t care for it — it was that she didn’t exactly believe in it. time and time again, she’s been proven that love was a wasted effort, no good would come from it, that love was not worth the tears and the stress-related skin afflictions. 

but what could be done when minseo looked so adorably cute and hell-bent to prove her wrong. 

watching her friend set up her faux-presentation, ipad and persuasive tone included,  lili was convinced to give it a try — if only to humor the younger girl. who was lili to crush her hopes and dreams of finding lili’s one true love — actually, it was more accurate of lili to be that said person but she was feeling nice today.

( a rare occurrence and she wonders if it’s because of her new increase of caffeine intake ) 

watching the other swipe across her screen, she nods along to the facts — tall, good looking, athletic; they were all good traits. things lili never really considered when it came to her ‘type’ — did she even have one at this point when all the boys she’d seen up to this point had either been vetted by her grandmother or some backstage mishap that never saw the light of day? 

( lili doesn’t know which is worse )

“it’s not seojin is it — wait, never mind, he’s not 183 cm …” her eyes glance passively over her nails — god, she needed a manicure — before she takes in the headshot shown to her. suddenly interested, her fingers tap along the screen to inspect the blurry image, trying to zoom in; but to no avail, she pouts. “can’t you just show me his face, what if i go on a date with an axe murderer who has the same hair?” unlikely but true crime podcasts would beg to differ.

“oh yea?” a brow is raised, chin settled into her palm when her sights turn to minseo, “so, why haven’t you tried to date him yet? not your type — or do you have someone else in mind?” 

MINSEO'S MATCHMAKING SERVICES

If Cupid's arrows weren't meant for her, she was more than willing to commit theft in broad daylight and steal the bow and arrow from her most recent enemy. This February, she would happily play the role of matchmaker for two of her friends. She should have known better than to meddle, but when the opportunity arose, she had to seize the inspiration and commit to the bit. There was no way that she saw her brilliant idea of matching two of her friends ending horribly. Had she even asked her friends if the two of them were single and ready to mingle?

Nope.

It was her first experience trying to set up a blind date. She figures that too much information wasn't ideal, but at least she could ease their worries that she had thought this through. She had good intentions, relinquishing some apprehension and trusting her would be necessary. She pulls out her iPad from her bag, opening up the presentation she had set up for Lili. "Obviously, I can't show you his face, but he's tall —183 cm!— and looks like he came out of a shōnen manga..." She reveals a headshot picture, blurring most of Byeongkwan's face to her best of her ability, but if she was being honest with herself...

It was clearly BK. He was one of the few trainees that had a specific look, which had been added to the pro section towards the end. She had done this on her iPad in like twenty-minutes. A survey would not be given by the end of her presentation. "He works out, has a way with words, which can be a pro and a con— but we're working on it! He'll make you laugh a lot, your stomach will hurt by the end of it, which is probably the biggest reason you should say yes to the blind date. "

@lgclili

“you have a point there,” she murmurs quietly, fingers tapping mindlessly at the desk they were seated at.

“don’t forget there’s also to, too and two. oh! and complement and compliment. it’s honestly insane.” her english as a second language class had been hell growing up; if she had been asami’s shoes, she would have thrown her hands up and called it a day but alas, here they both were, suffering through english. fortunate for lili, she liked learning languages; unfortunately for lili, it was fueled by her need to succeed and to prove others wrong for doubting her and her lovely intellect. 

“english is full of things that sound the same but are spelled different, it’s dumb but … it’s english.” she says as if that would help asami's predicament at all. it didn't but lili truly didn't know what else to say, "you know what you need is a break! should we go for lattes?"

Asami smiles satisfied with herself for pulling that reaction out of Lili. She shrugs, "As far as you know, I might only be able to count up to ten and know how to ask for directions to the bathroom. When I got to Korea, that was all I knew for like a month. Oh, and also colors!" Asami points her finger up like she made a discovery at the addition of that last piece of information.

She could feel her head starting to hum with the foreshadow of a headache. Learning new things that didn't require her moving often left that little impression in her. "It makes no sense. The best way to keep us from saying idiotic things is by not being able to say them at all," she says with a little pout and a sigh, but then she deflates, "I understand how this is important, since it's a easier language for most people to follow abroad, but doesn't change the fact that is so confusing," Asami points at the screen where she is seeing interesting language facts where the words 'they’re, their and there' are all side by side, "These all sound exactly the same."

they play their own game of pick and choose — his comments on the masses do little to appeal her to go out of her way to ask for another favor from another person she would rather not spend a second of her time with.

the thought, itself, made her moment here with seunghyun seem the slightest bit more bearable than any of the other options made available. at least she wouldn’t get hit on, proposed to, and/or suddenly arranged to be married. all of things she was trying to avoid with seunghyun’s mother — but her way with words was all too tempting. 

her eyes follow his line of sight to a woman in dangerously tall heels and a purse that looked like it was from marry poppin’s on xanax. “oh, she seems to love you.” then she frowns, eyes redirected to his seemingly nonchalance. “what ish? does she get nicer whenever she gets a touch up on her migrating zyderm?” lili was more preferential to eating her duck rather than seeing it on the face of some over-aged mistress.

Seunghyun snorts. "Nothing? Nothing at all? What a shame..." He knew so little about Lili other than his mother's infatuation with her bone structure - but she was beginning to seem a lot more foolish than she looked. Who would subject themselves to an evening of this willingly?

He bends to swipe at his pant leg with a subtle scowl, rising up to cross his arms over his chest. He eyes the elder waddling this way and that by the terrace's edge, muttering something to himself.

"Do you know who that is?" the model asks with a quirk of his brow. "New appointee on the board of directors at Hanhwa group. Total basket case. If I even so much as say hello I'm going to be stuck listening to him babble on for the next three hours..."

He scans the area for a moment, spying a woman frantically searching through her purse. He can't quite put a finger on it but she seems so familiar... They lock eyes and she frowns almost immediately. Oh, that's right. One of his mother's acquaintances whose shifting filler he just found so interesting ( and often commented on it quite loudly ). "Why don't you ask her? She's friendly. ...Ish."

two girls freezing their asses off but don’t you know a gossiping hoe never gets cold? — @lgcmaylin

ever since snow had fallen upon seoul, the chill in the city had only turned for the worse — cloaking the entirety of the peninsula in the near negatives.

and you might be asking: just why was lili subjecting herself to the very cold that was freezing her to bits?

well — there were two presentable answers for such a thing.

one.

lili needed a smoke — badly — and the designated places for such a thing lacked the common decency of having a working heater.

and two.

she needed some space to air out her grievances after the last practice with a certain coach. and oddly enough, lili thought it was tacky to talk shit about an anal coach inside the company — but outside, mere feet away from where the door had safely hit its hinges, and even further away from nosy ears, did she feel comfortable to do just that.

unfortunately, the smoke that flows from pursed lips cease within minutes of another’s arrival. the cigarette snubbed at the sudden welcome, crushed beneath a leather boot, before being replaced with a pack of gum. it wasn’t a worthy substitute but because it was maylin, lili made an exception — just because the other girl quit all those years ago didn’t mean lili would ignore the other’s hard work just to get her nerves calmed.

immediately she flies into the other’s side, arm in arm, as if to conserve whatever heat the other had brought with her. “it’s so fucking cold tonight —” she breathes, the warmth of her breath billowing out into the cold in a puff.

໒꒱ . WORKSHOP OPPORTUNITY # 002 _ IDOL JAPANESE: PRACTICE 、 aka “LILI, CAN YOU TEACH ME JAPANESE?” I SAID 「はい、はい」

it would be an understatement to say that lili take’s ichika’s words to heart. in fact, after talking to ichika, lili was probably more determined to the learn the fuck out of this language than she had initially wanted to.

it is no secret that she was confused by the assignment. like — hello?

xu lili … speaking japanese? 

girl had sat through the entire briefing thinking that she was sitting on an incredibly long practical joke — and yet, 

the punchline never came.

after the inevitable had sunk in, lili had gone to work. sulking over useless woes would never get her anywhere and lili knew better than anyone that no one was going to go boo hoo, poor little lili.

anchored to her desk, she sits upright and focused. what once was clear-cut legible writing has been reduced to chicken scratch over ever word and phrase she had squeezed out of ichika before she had to leave for her next schedule. the rest is what she picked up from random japanese learning videos she had searched up on youtube.

even though such a evaluation wasn’t going to be televised — hence the mock — the last thing lili was was a half-asser. she’d give them something to laugh about for challenging her like this — they would rue the day they thought they could catch her slipping.

if they wanted her to speak japanese, she was going to speak the best damn japanese she could muster in the three months they gave her to learn this language. 

she knows what they’re looking for — it was kind of hard not to know. it’s the usual: creative beyond your means, doing what no one has ever done before — that kind of thing, making a mark for yourself out of the box you called home. 

however, for lili — she hardly cared about the creative process. for lili: it was probably beyond her and her expertise. as long as the song or the choreography didn’t make her look like a laughing stock, she was fine doing something that someone else had put their blood, sweat and tears into engineering.

but now, as she puts her own blood, sweat and tears into whatever this could be — it exhausts her, and she’s ready to take a quick way out; but not before making sure that whatever the fuck this came to be didn’t look like she just pulled it from the depths of who knows where. 

“nah, nonsense — all i need is a new eye.” ( and unwarranted, half-hearted praise ) “i’m trying to match the beat but i feel like it’s coming off as stiff.” and it probably is considering this was far out of lili’s line of comfort. 

playing the song from her phone, lili lets lovely filter out into the quiet. with the help — and a healthy bribe — from one of the other trainees who had skillfully isolated the metronome in the song, she was concentrated on hitting with each move is louder than the mellowed songstress who was mumbling in the background but each move she did felt weird — disconnected, and as she does these movements before rua’s eyes, they feel even more amplified as wrong. 

“god, it looks silly, doesn’t it?”

honestly speaking, rua wasn't that interested in choreographing.

thinking about having to come up with different steps and moves then combining them into something that'd be presentable as a full dance is a tall wall she's not sure she wants to try scaling - but as it goes with all things she's taken on since becoming a trainee, she's at least open to trying. she'll never know if she might end up liking something if she doesn't give it a chance so when it was basically a requirement to focus on their personal creative skills, rua chose what she felt were the most appealing to her out of the given options.

still, she wasn't quite confident in what she picked; it showed in how she had absolutely no idea what she should be doing but not wanting to appear like she needed to be hand-held through the entire thing, rua opted for googling choreography tips and looking up videos on youtube for ideas and inspiration in the corner of the practice room she had claimed for herself. no one had to know, right?

that is, until she hears someone calling her name which causes her to look up from her phone in surprise, as if she had been caught doing something she shouldn't have. when she processes that the person--whom she remembers (hopefully, correctly) to be another trainee named lili--who said her name was not trying to expose her and instead, was asking for her advice on something, rua feels a small sense of relief - but only a little bit and the feeling doesn't last for long either.

she's not sure how much valuable input she can give considering she was just searching everything up a mere moment ago but rua doesn't want others to find that out. so she smiles and says, "i don't know how much i can help but sure," before walking over to lili and nodding. "what move are you trying to do?"