Shuhua’s biggest dream was to be an entertainer. Ever since she was a child she loved to look at the TV and dream that she would be the one inside it. Of course at first her parents thought it was only a childhood's dream. But the years passed and she still had this ambition. So she started to take acting lessons. As she grew older the exact path she wanted to follow became clearer, Kpop was getting more and more popular in Taiwan and that’s when she knew that she wanted to be a Kpop idol. 

She auditioned for a medium sized agency in Korea and to her surprise got in. She was overjoyed to get so close to her dream. But once she got there everything wasn’t so perfect, she didn’t speak Korean and she was homesick. She wasn’t usually shy but she barely spoke to anyone the first two days. Fortunately she quickly met Yuqi, a chinese trainee that was only a year older than she was. 

So she spent most of her time with Yuqi because they were speaking the same language. Yuqi was really nice and sociable, Shuhua was glad she met her. But still she didn't feel quite at ease, because she couldn't properly communicate with the other trainees. 

Shuhua had a dance class, but she couldn't remember where the exact room was. She entered the elevator and pushed the button to go to the second floor, not even sure it was the right floor. Once she got out, she was completely lost. Every single room in this part of the building looked the same. A plan was on the wall but of course it was in Korean. Shuhua walked a bit to see if maybe she'll remember which room the dance class was in. Then she heard someone singing through a door that was ajar. She stopped to listen to it. It was beautiful, she had never heard someone being this good at singing before. That person certainly had talent.  

Someone tapped her shoulder and she screamed. She turned back to see that it was Yuqi. 

 "Hey, what are you doing here looking lost?" 

 "Well I'm lost."

  "Oh... where do you need to go?" 

  "To the dance room." 

  "You're not at the right place at all, I showed you already not even five days ago and you already forgot?" 

  "Yes, sorry everything looks so similar."

  "It's alright. Follow me I'll show you again." 

  "Thanks, honestly I don't know how I would survive without you." 

It was the end of the month which meant that the monthly evaluation would happen soon. Shuhua was really anxious about it since it was the first time she'll pass it since she joined Cube. Yuqi told her everything about it and it seemed awful. The trainees that were the worst 

were fired really quickly if they didn't show any improvement. 

The day arrived, she sat next to Yuqi who was already sitting with a few other trainees. She had a sheet of paper with the lyrics so she could revise them before it was her turn. Preparing for this evaluation had been hard, she had to sing a song in Korean and she still had a lot of problems with the language. She knew she wasn't pronouncing every word like she should and she was worried that she would forget the song completely because of the stress. During these monthly evaluations, the trainees were all together in a room and they would see the others perform. It was clearly a way to make each of them feel even more anxious. 

Shuhua was trying her hardest to focus on her paper, she didn’t want to watch the other trainees perfom, her stress was already high enough. 

She succeeded for the first few trainees, she didn’t pay any attention to what they presented. But then she heard it, the voice, the same exact voice she had heard a few weeks ago when she got lost. She looked up to see who was singing this well. And the first thing that shocked her was the girl’s appearance, that's not how she imagined someone with such a clear 

and sweet voice to look like. She was dressed all in black and was wearing fishnet stockings and a choker. She looked intimidating but she was also extremely pretty. Shuhua looked around the room and saw that everybody was watching her performance with attention. After it was over the teacher looked at the girl with what seemed pride and said "Yes, that's exactly what I'm expecting from every single one of you. It was amazing, as always. Thank you Miyeon". Then the girl left the room, Shuhua was surprised because she thought that everybody was supposed to stay in the room until it was over. 

Shuhua’s turn was at the end, she wasn't confident but it went way better than what she expected. She didn't understand everything the teacher told her but she understood that it wasn't bad especially for a first time. But deep down she also knew that she would have to improve in the future if she wanted to debut. 

She left with Yuqi and they went outside to get a drink, it was nice to get out of Cube's buildings from time to time to take breaks from the stressful trainee life. Shuhua knew it would be difficult, she had heard many things about it from people who had experienced it but actually living it was way worse than what she expected. She also missed her family a lot. Thankfully she had Yuqi. 

They were talking about a lot of things as usual, it was nice to be able to express herself freely without the language barrier. She then remembered a question she wanted to ask : 

- Oh by the way, I know that you know almost every trainee at Cube so do you know this girl, I think her name is Mi- Miyeon ? 

- Oh ! - Yuqi didn't say anything for a little while which wasn't something she usually did. Shuhua raised one eyebrow at her, intrigued by this reaction. 

- Well, I don't really know her. She's not really sociable, she's mostly hanging out with that other trainee, I believe her name is Minnie. But she’s actually pretty famous within the trainees because... - Yuqi didn’t finish. 

- Because ?

- Well there are a lot of rumors about her. She's a pretty new trainee as well and she arrived a short period of time before you did. But she had experience before, she was a trainee at a big company and the thing is that no one knows why she left all of a sudden and why she came here. And of course people are intrigued about it so a lot of rumors are being spread. 

- What rumors ? 

- Things like she was fired because she broke the dating ban or because she had a conflict with another trainee. I know a lot of other rumors are circulating but I don't really enjoy gossiping so I don't know about all of them.