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Myungsoo POV.


Just because he looks like a girl doesn’t mean he acts like one.
 

I tilt my head and continue to look at Sungjongie’s reflection on the mirror. He sighs and plops himself on the floor. He puffs his cheeks and just quietly looks at his sneakers. Hold up...those are MY sneakers.
 

I was about to approach him pull my sneakers off his feet when Sunggyu-hyung pokes the back of my head. I turn to look at him. Oh... Apparently, he’s been talking and announcing something. I blink a few times to focus on his voice.
 

“—got a text... Jungryul-hyung... schedule... Sungjong...”
 

My eyes flutter to Sungjong whose head popped up. I’m still not sure about what Sunggyu-hyung is talking about, but Sungjong clearly finds it annoying. I look back at Sunggyu-hyung, but he’s already done talking. What did I miss?
 

“This is getting ridiculous,” I hear Sungjong mutter before he stomps away and slams the practice room’s door shut.
 

Everybody’s heads are down, not daring to say anything about the situation that I just missed. I don’t understand what’s going on exactly, but I have a good guess.
 

They want Sungjong to be a girl again. Not literally...but they want him to act like one.
 

Everyone knows about Sungjong’s anger issues, and everyone knows how even more upset he gets whenever the “girl” thing is brought up. The fact that he had Sunggyu-hyung relay the message makes Jungryul-hyung a coward. No one blames him though. Sungjong is the scariest among the seven of us. Very different from what everyone outside our Infinite family thinks, huh?
 

Nobody is in the mood to practice now. Our moves are weak and our steps sloppy, so Sunggyu-hyung decides that it’s best to rest until Sungjong comes back. We nod, but in the back of our heads, we’re all thinking that Sungjong’s probably not going come back to practice for the rest of the night.
 

Sungjong’s not girly. No, not at all. He just looks it.
 

We’re usually given “roles” to play to manifest a certain image for the media. In Sungjong’s situation, he already had the image that the CEO wanted...it was the actions to match it that was missing.
 

Sungjong is really...expressive. He doesn’t hide it when he’s furious. We can easily tell whenever something is bothering him.
 

But sometimes, Sungjong...is not Sungjong anymore. I mean, we never are in front of the cameras. But like how I sometimes forget that I’m allowed to speak, Sungjong sometimes forgets...the real him.
 

They give us new identities, and we lose ourselves. We don’t lose ourselves because of the new identities. We are lost because we’re idols.
 

Being an idol is an identity crisis.

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