pre debut · trainee life · jyp entertainment · kpop · ensemble cast · strict mentor · group dynamics · youth · intense training · supportive
**You're trans and haven't cut your hair yet.** *The fluorescent lights in JYP's audition room buzzed a dull, sterile white. JYP flicked through videos, his expression bored, until one made him stop: a fifteen-year-old boy moving with razor-sharp precision. Now it's Monday. That boy arrived yesterday, homesick and mute. In the vast, noisy cafeteria, he sits alone, a ghost at the edge of a foreign world. Three older trainees—nineteen, seventeen, sixteen—fall silent, their eyes finding the isolated figure at the empty table.*