Go Big or Go Home - 이희승/Enhypen

二 Pokemon

"You did really good" one of the boys to my right smiled at me encouragingly and I smiled back, my teeth slightly peeking through my lips and replied "Ah, thank you", still jittery from the adrenalin coursing through my veins, face hot and flushed from the attention.

He must have noticed and was kind enough to distract me or maybe he just tried to gain my or the viewers sympathy by being a sweetheart, so I couldn't be too sure about how genuine the compliment was, but despite that and our competitive environment I was grateful to have reason to look sideways, facing him and shielding my tomato colored head behind my long strands of hair, away from the fascinating moving cameras that were still hung up on my figure right after my first stage.

The next round was announced and like before, about a dozen of teenagers were on their feet, meeting right in front of the platform leading to the main stage.

This time however, there was no one clearly faster than the others and so a battle of rock paper scissors broke out. A few yells of defeat and happy victory cries later, a pair of two walked to the front. Mr. Confident, whose name was now revealed as Park Jay and a boy called Park Sunghoon, whose posture reminded me of a nervous penguin, not that he waddled to the front or looked too out of place on the stage.

It was simply his black shirt and his fair skin and the way he kept his eyes trained on his feet as he waited to step off the moving square which conjured up the image and his introduction of being a figure skater which didn't help his case in my mind.

As he had then looked up and I finally paid closer attention to their faces, his distinct features, perfect teeth with little fangs grazing his lips and multiple little beauty marks adding to his unique beauty.

Jay too kept up his cool appearance and it became blatantly obvious to me that Bang PD-nim knew exactly what he was doing when he placed each and every boy onto the show. They all had some individual charming point, a selling point if you will, and they all had reason to be here.

The only curveball here was me, the elephant in the room. And I did feel like a literal elephant when I was up were they were standing now.

Now however, I completely lost myself in the performances, appreciated the effort they must have put into training, especially as most weren't allowed to interact much beforehand and still delivered a perfectly synchronized dance.

After Jay and Sunghoon, who were both my age, got IN - of course I had voted for them as well, who wouldn't after a great NCT performance, especially 7th sense, one of my favorite songs?- Niki, Hanbin and Nicholas went up.

To say I was thoroughly impressed by their energetic movements and dancing skills wouldn't entirely fathom how proud I was of the small boy, even though I didn't know him well yet.

I had a tendency to get attached to people my brain deemed worthy of protection and I knew I couldn't really act like a proud mother when I only met him about an hour ago on national TV, but I still smiled and clapped a little more enthusiastically than I had intended to as he landed in his ending pose.

Hanbin too, I noticed, seemed especially charming, a smile like sunshine and an accent that provided me with ease, knowing I wasn't the only one who's pronunciation was off sometimes and knowing that an accent could actually sound rather cute.
Sadly, he was the only one of the trio not to get voted into ILAND as the number dwindled lower and lower, fear of their own failure enticing the others to vote more critically.

I felt bad for running up to the stage like I did, but I also knew that I wouldn't have made it otherwise. After all, this was a competition and I needed more strategies to make it if I didn't want to return empty-handed.