I can love with all of my heart,
I know I have so much to give
with a player like you
I don’t have a prayer
That’s no way to live

Her shoulders are tense, squared as she paced back and forth in front of the unpolished full-length mirror. Her face was buried into a piece of paper with lyrics and pencil scribbles all ove it, she flinches visibly when she hears herself cracking. As if too much weight has been placed on her voice, it has snapped like a thin twig - cleanly, right in the middle - or at least, that was how it sounded to a tired Chunyeon.

‘Yah! What are you doing?’

She can just visualize her vocal coach sitting in front of her, legs crossed and eyes trained carefully onto her. But the next few minutes would be hard to endure to say the least. Hands clapped against one another exaggeratedly, she would shout loudly, 'Just push it out, c'mon - you just have to keep going.' When it came to her vocal coach, encouragements were often delivered in the form of these shouts.

It did not matter that they were merely standing three steps away from each other - she would shout as if they were standing three football fields away from one another. But her vocal coach - a sunny, young woman b with energy, wasn't here. So instead of finishing the song - and she was about two minutes into the three minutes fifty seconds songs - she plops down to the cold ground, exhaustion and frustration quickly surfacing the absence of people.

She hated how she just couldn't seem to pull through the high notes. For close to thirty minutes, she had been standing here just trying to at least finish the song without any major mistakes. But her notes had cracked - and she could hear herself getting breathless more than just a couple of times. From shouting the song to belting it out, she had tried just about every trick lying against the sun, to no avail.

She hated how her voice bounced off the four corners of the vacant practice studio. There no one else in the room, she should be better than this. But she still felt the eyes of an invisible audience trained onto the every move - every word, every syllabus and every time she moved. Inadequacy hits her square in the jaw - and she wishes that she had a deeper voice, a stronger voice. She feels so pathetic for this - sure, what's a nose job but last time she's checked, there isn't plastic surgery to fix your voice.

I just .

She closes her eyes as she tips the water bottle into , hoping to drown all her thoughts. Her eyelids had progressively felt heavier: as if weights are tied against the skin of her hoods. Anger and exhaustion were starting to take a toll on her body, and all she really wanted to do was to get some shut eye. She didn't even mind if she could take a tiny spot here.

But water hits the back of - first in tiny sips and then in gulps, when she realizes that she can't remember the last time she actually bothered drinking water. She imagines the same practice room - the same empty space, filling with people in just a few hours. Familiar faces that she would greet every day flash in her head - some people she would have conversations wtih, but others were no more than impressions and faces. She decides that she is better off packing her bags than to deal with the snide remarks they would slide and the questions they would ask.

It is nearing half past three in the morning when Chunyeon finally gets to switch off the lights in the practice studio. Gently, she shuts the door behind her with considerable gentleness. Lights from the other studios are bright, and they dimly light up the hallways of the training centre - giving it much needed life. At this hour, there weren't many people left in the four storey building dubbed as the HQ training centre - trainees, evidently still trying to perfect themselves, a security guard who is probably catching some shut eye and one or two intern members, unfortunately drafted to a graveyard shift.

She shivers involuntarily the instant she steps outside. The biting cold air of a morning in late December wraps around her, like some kind of blanket. 'every ing day' she thinks to herself as she shuffles out of the HQ training centre - with an earpiece in one hand and a backpack slung carelessly over her shoulder. She pauses, stopping in front of the white building coated with a thin layer of dirty and snow. Usually she would find somewhere to stop - but its so early, she reasoned there's no one around her to judge her.

She clicks her tongue in annoyance as she attempts to untangle the earpiece. Her actions were slow, deliberate at first as she pries through the tangles, hoping that they would smoothen out. But the tangles on her ear pieces were stubborn little things and she could feel the cold air chewing on her fingertips. She eventually settled to randomly tugging at the little bastard and is filled with a sense of relief when she manages to smooth out the earpiece: it finally looks presentable to the eye now - though there is tiny ball of wire in the centre. She fishes in her pocket for her mp3 - eyes scanning the surrounding.

She expected to see nothing but the scenic, empty streets on the way back to the dorm. Her eyes, however, instantly landed on the figure of a male. His skinny figure was wrapped with multitudes of layers - you can see the hint of a uniform hidden underneath the bulky, camel brown winter coat. A guitar bag was just casually standing beside him.

"Oh, you're finally out," Upon closer inspection, her suspicions had turned out to be true. Slumping against the metallic streetlights at negative twenty degrees wasn't just a familiar face - he was a friend. In hindsight, it couldn't just be a coincidence. He beams brightly at her, even though you can hear his teeth chattering against one another, exhaustion lacing his voice, "wow, you get off really late, chun-ah."

She doesn't ask him what he is doing here at the HQ training centre at this hour - no matter how it was phrased, it just didn't seem nice enough. She doesn't know how to refuse when he announces that he is sending her home. They talk - he talks about the high school. Apparently, his favourite guitar bag was torn in a ugly tug of war. She laughed - they laughed as she tries not to think about how all seems to prick at her. She couldn't help it: she spent the next few moments missing the uniform she would only adorn a couple of times a month.

“oh right, that reminds me –” Jaesoo says, hands clapping together. They are standing in front of her dormitory now - a sleepy looking building, with dull paint slowly peeling off. He rummages through his bag noisily - you can hear pens against pencil case and empty sweet wrappers against textbooks. With much difficulty, he pulls out a messily wrapped gift. And then another, and then another.

"What are you, Doraemon or something?"
"You didn't even realize that today is Christmas?"

All her jokes suddenly lose their dimension but she manages to keep a poker face in front of him. Suddenly, everything seemed to click. She didn't have her phone, and she hadn't even been coming to school in preparation for that big evaluation. But she maintains a poker face - manages to wave him goodbye.

But she steps into the lift, and it was like she was hit by a train. She thinks about how tired she was. She thinks about his gentle smiles, thinks about all the gifts gathered in her hand. Some were from her family, some were from her other friends. 

Her eyes started watering.