2014

Mina is quiet.  It's no secret.  It started when she showed up in Korea, New Year's Day 2014, without an ounce of Korean in the back of .  

She'd generally have trouble getting to know the non-Japanese trainees at JYP, those with whom no common language was shared and who made only limited efforts to include her.  

And so, alone and with nobody to talk to save for a couple of other Japanese girls (most of which know more Korean than she), Mina comes up with a game.  

She calls it "footsteps".  

Everybody has a different set of footsteps.  It's almost like Mina gets to know them by the way they walk.  It's the second best thing.  

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The curvaceous trainee with the booming voice, Jihyo, has the most powerful footsteps; Mina makes a particular effort to discern hers because Jihyo has been among the best trainees at trying to incorporate the Korean-helpless Japanese girl into the community, and she's grateful.  The footsteps are not a comment about her weight - she wears her body type as beautifully as anybody - but rather a comment about her confidence.  She clearly knows she's cut out for stardom, and Mina hears through the grapevine that she's been here for 8 years - 8 years! - and has just missed out on debuting many times.  

An average human might be discouraged by that plight, but Jihyo clearly isn't the average human.  

With a little bit of savvy and a little bit of quiet, Mina feels like she knows Jihyo already.  

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Most trainees try to make their movements, and by proxy their footsteps, light, fluffy, and feminine, so it can often be hard to distinguish some from others.  And yet, there's a certain set of footsteps that stands out as lighter, fluffier, and more feminine than all the rest.  

Imagine how shocked Mina is when she sees the titan they belong too.  

Honestly, Mina has never seen a taller girl, and as thin as she is, she must weigh more than most of the group based on her height alone.  

Imagine how shocked MIna is when she discovers that the girl is just 14.  

Mina couldn't lie; something about the girl rubbed her the wrong way.  Not only was she so, so pretty, but she was also aloof and seemed haughty and queenly.  She always glanced around, like a predator searching for prey, and Mina - who'd been bullied before - was sure that some day she'd sink her teeth into the little Japanese penguin.  

Of course, all that sour sentiment was washed away when Mina discovered that this girl, Chou Tzuyu was her name, wasn't a total and that her Korean was even worse than hers.  Those glances around were pleas to anybody, for anybody, to talk to her and make her feel more comfortable.  Mina felt some sort of kinship to Tzuyu, and they began to sit in absence of Korean - together.  

Mina would've put a lot of effort into learning the Taiwanese girl's footsteps had she needed to, but she really didn't; they were as uniquely beautiful as Tzuyu herself.   

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Im Nayeon was very physically distinguishable, given her comical and endearing bunny teeth.  She was a happy and confident girl, always surrounded by friends and always talking and laughing, saying things that Mina couldn't understand.  

Another girl who Mina made the snap-judgement (and what would soon be an incorrect judgement) that she disliked.

Her footsteps were really weird.  It was almost like she had a perpetual limp, like she favored one leg over the other, though it was faint and took it Mina a while to be sure of what she heard.  Maybe she did limp, maybe as a cry for attention, to get other girls to say, 'omo, Nayeonnie, what's the matter?' and she could reply, 'oh, I was practicing so hard and I guess it did me in!' or maybe she could