No You Girls || 艺兴

t w e n t y t h r e e

t w e n t y t h r e e

The latter half of the year was a repetitive and unappealing blur to the Baby Lips maknae when it came to things regarding her career and Pledis Entertainment. There was the release of their repackaged album called Sweet, which happened to be on the same day of release as EXO's repackaged album Growl. Their music videos came out on the same day even, and both groups were once more pitted against each other for dominance over the music charts. The typical Romeo and Juliet set up in which two families--in this case two kpop groups--who were very alike, deeply hated each other. 

Time after time, Baby Lips came in second in everything. There was not one time that they were able to defeat EXO, and the girls saw it as a failure. Their agency saw the profits as something salvageable of the whole situation. They were still the top selling group in Pledis Entertainment and were only behind EXO in all the music charts. 

But for Sun and her group mates it was frustrating. 

Always coming in second to EXO.

Then there was the fact that she and Aron had officially announced their relationship to the world and she no longer had a single moment of peace. All her time was spent either in the dorm building, the agency where she practiced every day, or going out with Aron on fake dates organized by their managers. Those were the most difficult because she had to pretend that she was happy being with Aron when she wasn't. It was also hard for her to sneak off at night to see Yixing, since the media was always watching her, ready to take photos of her and her label mate who had been already confirmed as her boyfriend. Sun and Aron quickly became the power couple of Pledis Entertainment--second favorite after Minnie and her boyfriend Isaac who were held in high esteem by the fans due to the years that they had been together already.

It wasn't long before her managers offered her a solo opportunity, since they had seen what the relationship had done to her popularity. It had skyrocketed even more, and Pledis wanted to pull in all the profits.

Sun accepted on the condition that her group members Ara and Rin would be next on the priority list to release solo albums. They were the main vocalists of the subgroup BLK, and Sun wanted it to be fair for them all to receive the same opportunities as vocalists, since she had seen and heard about the unfairness in SM Entertainment when it came to their idols. On various occasions, Yixing had vented to her about wanting to seek solo opportunities within the company, but he had been too afraid to request them because he had seen the way other fellow label mates had been denied those opportunities. Pledis was a bit more supportive of their idols when it came to branching out of their groups. So much so that the rap line of Baby Lips was already working on a project together, while the dance line had their own solo commitments planned.

It was well into the month of November when Pledis started promoting her as a solo artist officially, with her upcoming album which would be titled If I Never See You Again.

During that time, Sun and Yixing were happy with each other. Though both of them lived an almost forced happiness whenever they were away from each other. Yixing wanted to say something to her, to urge her once more so that she would finally decide and they could take that next step together. But he didn't want to pressure her and he knew that each time he talked about it, they ended up arguing senselessly. For Sun it was the forced happiness of having to spend all that time with Aron, pretending that she loved him, when she already had a boyfriend that she loved.

As her self given deadline was approaching--she had promised Yixing that they would out their relationship by the end of that year, she still felt like she wasn't ready. She was ready to love him, but she wasn't ready to tell the world about it.