a hand shoots up — “wait, wait — i said i sucked, i didn’t — do you think i’m a loser?” should she get her ears checked? did she, lili xu, actually sound that bad for ichika to immediately dismiss her as the affronted and absolutely — totally uncalled for — damning title of ‘loser’?
she feels herself default — not from discouragement — but the shock. never had lili ever felt herself feel so crestfallen — so rug pulled out from under her bewildered. again, it begs the question of: why was lili even here?
lili groans, feeling a crease iron itself permanently between her brows in concern. “was it really that bad?” lili was no japanese maestro but even she didn’t think she had failed as miserably to deem it — oh, god, lili didn’t even want to repeat it again.
she sniffs, bringing the stylus back to the document she had pulled up on her ipad where the rest of her diligent — but messy in the way a chaotic mind like lili could only understand — notes lay. “fine, if that’s what you think is best.” she taps the end of the pen against her cheek as she thinks.
“it’s supposed to be a mock of some hosting event, right?” she asks for clarification — “how would i even begin?”
In all honesty, Ichika did feel for some of her trainees. She had assumed that they would come with more experience but seeing that someone like Lili was being asked to perform without much exposure well, the more she thought about it, the more on-brand it seemed. When she was a trainee, there had been girls who had been chosen to take part in LGC Girls Japan with very limited Japanese, and some of them had been given more lines than she had. As long as you were able to make it work, what was the problem? Or so, she assumed the mindset was.
“You are not a loser,” she replies even, shaking her head slightly. “You’re only a loser if you do not try.”
And to her credit, Lili does try. Ichika had dipped her toe into learning Mandarin over the last year, but for someone to ask her to host with a trace of fluency would have been hard. “You /are/ improving.” She assures the younger woman, “So long as you show effort, that’s what’s important. I want you to keep practicing your pronunciation and I’ll see about preparing you a phonetic script to practice with. If you can show confidence in speaking and continue to practice, a lot of errors can be forgiven. I’m sure you experienced that when you first came to Korea, as well.”
Unlike the other two, Ichika knew that Lili went through a similar situation when she came to Korea years ago, and with that alone, she knew Lili was not a loss cause. “Actually, how about this: I want you to write down what you want to say and we can work on translating it. We can work from there.”