At sixteen, she graduated from Peking University and already held a license to practice traditional Chinese medicine. Shen Xingwan was the gifted heiress her family had pinned all their hopes on.
Then came a SEVENTEEN concert and a talent scout who wouldn’t leave her alone. She cast aside all her accolades, concealed her identity, and signed a trainee contract with Pledis, becoming a rookie at the very bottom of the South Korean entertainment industry.
“Six months,” her father said as he signed the contract, setting a condition as strict as iron law. “Get into Seoul National University’s business school, or come home and take over the family business.”
From then on, her life was split in two.
By day, she was Shen Xingwan, a Grade A Pledis trainee, sweating it out in a mirrored practice room and competing with her teammates for a faint chance to debut. Her classical dance training became a constraint, while her native-level Korean was her only weapon. In the stairwell late at night, she met an older trainee in glasses. He handed her a coffee and said, “You always seem to be in such a hurry.”
By night, she was an anonymous applicant studying in the Seoul National University library, poring over difficult economics texts and writing a research proposal in Korean that could impress the top professors. Her savings dwindled by the day, a debut remained out of reach, and the admissions deadline hung over her like the sword of Damocles.
As the stage lights came up for the monthly evaluation, the countdown to submitting her research proposal hit zero, and an offer to work part-time at a traditional medicine clinic arrived at the same time as a secret visit from her father...
Shen Xingwan stood at a crossroads, with her burning dream of becoming an idol in one hand and a ticket to a top university in the other.
And she chose to hold on to both.
“I’ll make everyone remember that I’m not someone’s daughter, or a girl genius.”
Very nice!!