“it’s Okay,” She Pipes Up, Appearing As Happy As One Could Be Given The Circumstances, “that’s

@LGCENT just posted a photo!

family con is always my favorite time of the year! what was your favorite performance? mine was obviously performing i got a boy and so hot with everyone! will i see you all tomorrow? let’s go another day 💗

#lgctrainees #lgcent #xulili

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.

lili had never thought her social battery was one with a limit — but today, it seemed to exist in bursts. teetering on its last legs as she lets zoe’s drawl come in one ear with a nod and a small, passing smile when it goes out the other. it wasn’t that she was tired or anything but there was only so much energy could exert and unfortunately, much of it had been placed on emphasis when for the first time in the last four hours she had finally tried to try her luck in selling these goddamn soap bars that just were not their consumer’s target product today.

soap — she thinks, while sipping on the cup of juice she had snatched up from emi earlier — why had it been soap?

“mm,” she says in reply, setting her cup beside her on the bench. biting her tongue when zoe mentions luck — and sure, maybe the others did have luck on their side. even if the unspoken advantage was a tell-tale sign of it all. 

“grace, huh?”

losing with grace had never been her style but lili liked that that was how it seemed despite everything. 

“i wouldn’t be hyping up the food too much, if it’s anything like yesterday, the food will probably not be to the best expectations.” again, lili was not looking forward to being dressed to her elbows in misplaced vegetable chunks that did not make it onto the cutting board. her heel kicks gently at the ground with a small wry laugh, “you’d think because it’s our last day they’d treat us to a nice meal, i could really go for some ginseng chicken soup.” 

she didn’t want to complain — scratch that, this was lili — all she did was complain. 

♥︎ ╱ ꜱᴜɴᴅᴀʏ - ᴡʜᴏ ᴡᴀɴᴛꜱ ᴊᴜɪᴄᴇ? ⤿ ꜰᴛ. @lgclili

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Zoe leaned back against the weathered wooden bench, relishing a moment of calm amid the bustling marketplace. The frenetic energy of the morning's sales still echoed in her mind, but now, with a satisfied smile, she turned her attention to Lili. She had seen her around Legacy before, so Zoe was grateful to get a chance to talk with her really.

"Can you believe how quickly today flew by? Team Juice really nailed it!" Zoe exclaimed, a glimmer of triumph in her eyes. She felt a swell of pride for their team's success, knowing they had earned a well-deserved break while the other teams took over the cooking duties.

Glancing at Lili, Zoe acknowledged her friend's efforts. "I guess luck was just on our side today," she remarked, reaching for her water bottle to quench her thirst. "But hey, don't stress too much about it. You did fantastic out there, and now we get to enjoy a scrumptious meal thanks to Team Soap Bar!"

Zoe's curiosity got the better of her as they continued chatting over their lunch. "By the way, how was your challenge with selling soap bars?" she asked, genuinely interested in Lili's experience. "I know it was a tough crowd out there, but you always handle it with grace."

a hand shoots up — “wait, wait — i said i sucked, i didn’t — do you think i’m a loser?” should she get her ears checked? did she, lili xu, actually sound that bad for ichika to immediately dismiss her as the affronted and absolutely — totally uncalled for — damning title of ‘loser’?

she feels herself default — not from discouragement — but the shock. never had lili ever felt herself feel so crestfallen — so rug pulled out from under her bewildered. again, it begs the question of: why was lili even here?

lili groans, feeling a crease iron itself permanently between her brows in concern. “was it really that bad?” lili was no japanese maestro but even she didn’t think she had failed as miserably to deem it — oh, god, lili didn’t even want to repeat it again.

she sniffs, bringing the stylus back to the document she had pulled up on her ipad where the rest of her diligent — but messy in the way a chaotic mind like lili could only understand — notes lay. “fine, if that’s what you think is best.” she taps the end of the pen against her cheek as she thinks.

“it’s supposed to be a mock of some hosting event, right?” she asks for clarification — “how would i even begin?”

In all honesty, Ichika did feel for some of her trainees. She had assumed that they would come with more experience but seeing that someone like Lili was being asked to perform without much exposure well, the more she thought about it, the more on-brand it seemed. When she was a trainee, there had been girls who had been chosen to take part in LGC Girls Japan with very limited Japanese, and some of them had been given more lines than she had. As long as you were able to make it work, what was the problem? Or so, she assumed the mindset was. 

“You are not a loser,” she replies even, shaking her head slightly. “You’re only a loser if you do not try.”

And to her credit, Lili does try. Ichika had dipped her toe into learning Mandarin over the last year, but for someone to ask her to host with a trace of fluency would have been hard. “You /are/ improving.” She assures the younger woman, “So long as you show effort, that’s what’s important. I want you to keep practicing your pronunciation and I’ll see about preparing you a phonetic script to practice with. If you can show confidence in speaking and continue to practice, a lot of errors can be forgiven. I’m sure you experienced that when you first came to Korea, as well.” 

Unlike the other two, Ichika knew that Lili went through a similar situation when she came to Korea years ago, and with that alone, she knew Lili was not a loss cause. “Actually, how about this: I want you to write down what you want to say and we can work on translating it. We can work from there.”

CHEF BOY ARE WE FUCKED. where lili is no chef and @jiahlgc knows.

lili could feel it in her bones: exhaustion.

and it wasn’t even the good type of exhaustion — the one you usually get after a good dance practice, or after a hot stone massage. no — it was the one where every part of your body ached, even just moving a finger seemed to hurt. she frowns, pulling on the tap to turn on the hot water, ready to scrub her hands raw — as if doing that would clean them well enough to do their next task: cooking.

ugh, it never seemed to end, did it?

were they supposed to be variety stars or manual laborers?

“ugh, my fingernails are filthy.” lili mutters, more to herself than to anyone really. though, it doesn’t really hurt that the only one in earshot happens to be her roommate, who she is sure is already used to lili’s dramatics — if one could call it that.

her eyes pass from where she was currently brushing, hard, at her fingertips to jiah’s pretty manicure. “how’d you clean your nails so fast?” 

and then, after a long pause, with a hint of disbelief at the sight of her roommate: “— wait, you’re not seriously going to cook are you?”

so much had changed in the scheme of hosting. rather than the direction of lines being read and executed, not only were they expected to improvise, they were also implored to do so with an ease of a natural — even if the language spoken was far from your native tongue.

even more so, in these cases.

all while being as confident as possible when faced with the barrel of a red-lighted camera, airing live to thousands across the nation. and worse — millions across the world. 

it’s these types of pressures that didn’t bother lili — but the fact that they acted like they were doing a service to them. improvisation of a music show scene was beyond a day’s work — unless your goal was to be a host at the end of the day and well, since lili didn’t like to call herself a all-rounder for nothing.

( truly — lili was just complaining to complain )

but in today’s case, as she sits next to kyoka and looks at the other’s notes once more — unprompted and concerned — she tries to tweak the frown on her face, “how did you feel about the lesson?” she asks, after having looked over the other’s notes, and having seen all the question marks. “it was kind of a lot, right?” 

Kyoka’s not a complainer. She happily does what she’s told unless there’s something else that catches her attention, in which she then gets distracted. But that’s beyond the point. Point is, rarely does she ever feel upset or slighted with what’s expected of her.

What that doesn’t mean though, that she never has any negative emotions. Like now, pure confusion and maybe a teensy bit of frustration creeping in too.

What, a whole script for a music show scene? Wasn’t a music show hosting just a simple who what where when why? Who changed that format? What happened to it? Where did this new expectation come from? When did it become a thing? Why?

Ah… too much thinking, not enough answers. Her brain is turning to mush, she can feel it already.

Kyoka is still staring at her notebook, eyes already glazing over when a voice knocks her out of her trance. “Huh? Oh, ummm yes,” she squints at her notes, which really was just a row of question marks and nothing else, “my notes. Yes, they’re my notes.”

“you flatter me. it’s hardly professional,” the pristine bow says otherwise but the words are almost automatic — a false sense of humility that never really suited lili falls from her lips and even though she, emi and the world probably know she’s the furthest thing from humble, lili relishes in the compliment. “just a little extra, sure, but it’s christmas. and i’m kind of in a giving mood.”

and lili leaves the reasoning at that.

once she’s secured the ribbon to the box, she makes quick work on pulling the bow into it’s shape and finishing it by curling its ends for the final spiral. “and it’s done!” probably her best accomplishment of the year, but who was really counting.

placing the gift with the rest, she looks to emi and at her own array of dressed up gifts and smiles, “and you were saying i was professional — yours are exactly like the ones i pick up at the department stores for the holidays all crisp corners and all.” the kids probably wouldn't care for the effort — already imagining them ripping the pretty wrapping to shreds — but lili had always appreciated anything pretty, especially when they were gifts.

something about christmas was frankly, just magical. the whole holiday season somehow made her feel better-- despite the chilling cold that seeped into the bones, and the sometimes loneliness that came with not getting to spend it back home, depending on funds and how busy they were. this though, this seemed to re-ignite her spirit just a bit. it was nice, getting to get together and make things look pretty-- now that she was good at.

she's just adjusting some frills of her own when lili gets her attention, dark eyes looking over and meeting her eyes, before they're casting down to see her tiny dilemma. she offers a chuckle, nodding as she's leaning to offer her finger, holding the piece in place. "wow, this looks really good. you must have spend a while on it. i like doing this, but that looks professional!"she comments.

pretty girl, bored out of her mind, now with a missing cig and a cursed migraine on the horizon — what was she to do. all she had really wanted to do was get out of the noise and smoke but even that was now out of the question. it was almost too easy to feel the spike of irritation at her nape — oh god, was that her blood pressure on the rise? 

she feigns offense — not that what he says strays an offensive line when in reality, lili would have been a fool to pay a helping hand with nothing to bargain with. and yet — “what?” a scoff cuts clean as she looks him in the eye, “nothing — she didn’t offer me anything.” it was safer to say that it wasn’t really what the woman offered that lili was after, it was vanity that lili was after, anyways. a glance to some point of ambiguity in the distance clears her conscience — if there was anything left of it. 

“ugh.” lili nearly stomps a frustrated sole, then remembers where she is and turns on said heel — eyes taking in where they are once more. loitering about with scattered boomers in every direction. hm.

tapping a pointed toe against seunghyun’s shin to get his attention, she points, in no way Inconspicuous as she should have been, to a man not too far off from their path. “go ask him for a smoke.”

Seunghyun supposes he should be impressed. His mother had really outdone herself orchestrating such an event under the guise of casual 'networking.'

While her crowd of middle-aged socialites would normally send Seunghyun up the wall, she'd done a remarkable job of wrangling a few smaller designers for a short appearance. And if the incentive of mingling with future contacts wasn't enough to keep him there, the threat of falling out of his father's good graces again surely was ( at least thanks to Seungah's poor showing in the press as of late, his position had been rather stable and he had no intentions of changing that ). All this just to keep Seunghyun in place long enough to be shoved into yet another playdate.

While he had no qualms with entertaining his mother's antics for one evening, if he had to hear another word about Lili's harmonious features or glass skin his head would be going right into the fountain along with that cigarette.

"We?" he answers with a quirk of his brow. "Well, I'm not about to go fishing for it. It's your fault it even fell in." And him making a haphazard grab for it in the first place had absolutely nothing to do with their current predicament at all.

"This whole thing is such a bore..." he groans, giving a huff as he perches himself awkwardly along the edge of the fountain. "What did she offer you this time, anyway? It had to have been some sort of bribery... Or was it blackmail?"

“and chance you going deaf from hearing my screams all day? no, i think you chose wisely. plus, i like your ears.” her free hand reaches out to tug on an exposed lobe that wasn’t hidden by the helmet, fingertips lingering — as if relishing the heat that emitted from what was notably the warmest place on the body outside of one’s armpits but there was a hell of a chance that lili was going to shove her hands into his pits on national television. 

a brow crooks at his suggestive remarks — “a surprise? theres more? was this not all of it?”

oh, how lili loathed surprises — but her smile says otherwise; relaying a contrasted emotion: one of genuine confusion. “what could you have possibly prepared —“ she catches herself as she watches his feet shuffle into the skiis. sure, they were on a date but lili still wanted them to be safe — ski accidents were no joke!

( minkyu had to give her this — it might be the only time lili cared for someone’s well-being that wasn’t her own )

“yes! that looks about right,” she does the same, clicking her boots into place before turning to him, “so what’s this surprise down there, don’t i get a hint of some kind?”

if she had to bear with a surprise, she should at least get some clues to spark her interest.

Holding hands. Oh. They’re edging closer and closer to becoming the ultimate picture of an ultra-cute date couple - sweeter than any romance anime Minkyu has ever watched. It doesn’t feel unnatural, even if the physical closeness is new. They’re friends, after all. Regardless, he enjoys it, a soft smile tugging at his lips as his hand gently clasps hers in return.

“Luckily, while my skiing skills are lacking, I’m not afraid of heights at all,” he muses, a thoughtful hum escaping him. “Maybe I should’ve chosen an amusement park with the tallest roller coasters instead.” He laughs at the thought, lighthearted and easy.

Before long, their stop approaches, and they step off the chair lift. Ever the gentleman, Minkyu helps her down before guiding her to where they’ll get their skis ready. The air is much crisper up here, and when he glances at her, he notices the cold hasn’t left her unaffected.

“Your cheeks are so cute when they turn red like that.” he remarks with a grin before pressing his gloved hands gently to her chilled skin, offering a bit of warmth. “There’s hot chocolate waiting for us down there - aaaaaand maybe a little something special I’ve prepared as a reward for making it down in one piece.”

With that, he finally lets go, turning his focus to the skis. “We just step in until it clicks, right?”

໒꒱ .  莉莉 ✽ PLOT CALL _ q4

calling for plots because we are always very, terribly late plots juseyo

⤷  TRAINEE MISSION 019

VOLUNTEERING _ open !

SETLIST DUETS _ open for 2 !

lili's duet options are: - close to you by the carpenters - love by keyshia cole - if i were a boy by beyonce - romeo n juliet by clazziquai

⤷  HALLOWEEN 2024

lili is going as bayonetta! i'm open for both despite not collecting points for both, i just would love to see more interactions for this baby !

ET TU, ALICE _ open !

FACTIONS _ open !