Kyuhyun woke up to the sound of a boy’s voice, telling him that he had to get up, please, for the hundredth time. Kyuhyun groaned as he opened his eyes. Then, the first thing he felt was intense confusion: Where the hell was he and who was this boy? And then he realized: the boy was Sky, his new group member, and Kyuhyun was on the stupid couch…

            “And wake up the leader”, Sky instructed him before he went back to his room to wake up his roommate, Jaesun. Groaning, Kyuhyun rolled out of bed and noisily barged into the other room where Leader and Gongchan were sleeping.

            “Leadersshi, wake up”, Kyuhyun said. He was so tired himself that he was just mindlessly slapping at Leader’s face to wake him up when all of a sudden his hand hit something rock solid. “Ouch!”, he yelled. Kyuhyun looked down to see what had caused such pain- and saw a textbook.

            What the-? Apparently, JiHyun slept with a textbook instead of a pillow…

            JiHyun had awakened to the sound of Kyuhyun’s yell and was now blearily staring up at Kyuhyun. There was an awkward moment of eye contact between them before Kyuhyun left to go wake Gongchan.

            “Gongchan, wake up”, Kyuhyun muttered, shaking Gongchan’s shoulder.

            No response.

            “Gongchan! C’mon, buddy, I’m tired too. Just wake up!”

            Nothing.

            “BRO! C’MON!”

            Kyuhyun saw Gongchan’s toe twitch, but that was all.

            “Having some trouble?”, JiHyun asked. He entered the room, having just washed his face and combed his hair.

            “Yeah, this kid…He never wakes up”, Kyuhyun sighed and flopped down onto the bed next to Gongchan, tired out of his mind. It was 5:20 am.

            SLAM!

            “WHAT THE-!?”, Kyuhyun felt himself get shoved off the bed. Gongchan had been so startled that he’d sat right up, accidently shoving Kyuhyun off the bed.

            Kyuhyun, clutching his side from the fall, looked over at JiHyun, who had slammed his textbook on the ground as hard as he could.

            “Good, you’re up. Now stay up while I go try and find something to cook for breakfast. Beast mentors left us some miso soup and rice… so maybe… NO! MAKNAE GONGCHAN! STAY UP!”, JiHyun yelled, because Gongchan’s tired eyelids were starting to slid shut again…

            Kyuhyun got up from the floor and started slapping at Gongchan’s face when Skyler came in, looking bewildered.

            “What’s up?”, JiHyun asked.

            “I can’t get Jaesunsshi up.”

            “The textbook didn’t wake him up?”, JiHyun asked.

            “Was that what it was? I thought someone shot a gun”, Skyler said.

            “Okay, it’s 5:30. We don’t have much time anymore. Revert to last resort”, Kyuhyun said, still slapping poor Gongchan lightly in the face.

            “What’s our last resort?”, JiHyun asked, interestedly.

            Five minutes later, Skyler had successfully dragged Jaesun out of his covers and into the bathtub, where he was still curled up, sleeping. Skyler had also successfully pried Chu away from Jaesun’s grip, knowing that if anything happened to Chu, Jaesun wouldn’t forgive anyone.

            “One. Two. Three!”

            Kyuhyun turned the shower on full blast, before all four of them sprinted out of the bathroom; pushing each other out of the way, laughing. None of them wanted to face the wrath of the boy with the rabbit.

            To their surprise, Jaesun only groggily pulled himself over the edge of the bathtube, before collapsing on the rug again.

            The four boys looked at each other, wide-eyed. He was sleeping again! Was it possible to wake this child?

            “Call his sister and ask for help”, JiHyun suggested, as he went to go turn off the shower and drape a towel over the wet Jaesun. JiHyun started to blow-dry Jaesun’s hair, so he wouldn’t catch a cold or something.

            “Which sister?”, Gongchan laughed.

            Kyuhyun called Krystal first, but she sleepily said she had absolutely no idea how her mother had done it each and every morning.

            So, Kyuhyun had to call Jung Soori (they had all exchanged numbers last night in case of emergency) at 5:40 in the morning.

            “What’s up?”, she asked cheerfully. All seemed peaceful enough in the girl’s dorm.

            “How in the hell do we wake up your brother?”, Kyuhyun asked.

            “Oh, that’s easy. Just make a cup of hot chocolate and put it under his nose”, Soori answered.

            “Hot chocolate? Yo, do we have hot chocolate on us?”, Kyuhyun asked the rest of them. They all shook their heads.

            “Damn. Okay, thanks”, Kyuhyun said.

            “Good luck”, Soori said, and hung up.

            “So, who’s going on a run for hot chocolate? You have to be back in-“, JiHyun checked his watch, “five minutes.”

            “Gongchan and I will. We’re used to running”, Kyuhyun volunteered.

            “Well, get to. We’ve only got ten minutes to get Operation WUJ done”, JiHyun said.

            “WUJ?”, Skyler asked, confused.

            JiHyun grinned as Kyuhyun flew through the door, dragging Gongchan with him.

            “Operation Wake Up Jaesun!”

“Yeah, good, except pop your chest more. Like, here. Watch this. Five, six, seven!”

            Shim Jang wiped the sweat from her forehead and watched as Hyunseung went through the routine again. Shim Jang had gotten the general gist of the extremely complicated movement, but needed to sharpen her popping and tutting movements. She watched as Hyunseung’s arms formed the perfect angles: this man was very attractive when he was dancing. Dance itself, she thought, can make a person attractive.

            “Okay, ready?”, Hyunseung asked her. Shim Jang nodded and took her position. “Five, six, seven!...”

            “What’s this thing you do with your hand?”, Junhyung asked Chan Hee. “You move it with the beat. Is it for show or does it actually help?”

            “It helps me keep the flow”, Chan Hee explained.

            Junhyung nodded. “Okay, cool. Just wondering. I mean, I think all rappers do it to a certain extent, but I just didn’t want you to do it for show.”

            Chan Hee nodded, “It’s not.”

            “Cool. Okay, so it was good, except you’re missing that pause just before the second verse. So, listen, it’s like “Salgo ship pu mun, breath*, dal yuh. Guhluhkeh geegoo gah breath* dol yuh.”.

            Chan Hee nodded and took a deep breath, Okay, I got this, she thought.

            “You have been selected as the Main Visual of Epik Love. Do you know what that means?”,  Kikwang asked. Lee Soo Ri shook her head.

            “That means you are going to model.”

            Soo Ri hesitated; she wasn’t really familiar with modeling and besides that, she wasn’t the most outgoing person… How was she supposed to strike an appealing pose?

             “Okay”, Kikwang said, noticing Soo Ri’s blank face, “Um… for starters, let’s both stand up…”

            Jung Soori sighed, stretching her legs out in front of her. It was lunchtime, and while a few of the boys had gone to get some food, she’d decided to get some fresh air. She looked down at the lyrics she’d tried to compose a few minutes ago; Yoseob had her try and write some lines about something personal to her. She looked down at the pathetic words:

 The youngest one spread her wings,

Happy that she’d finally grown some wings of her own,

But then she realized,

Hers were far less glamorous than those of her siblings’.

So she quietly folded her wings,

So that no one could see them,

And planned to deny their existence,

But the trouble was,

No one cared enough to ask.

            Upset with how the poem had turned out, Soori let the wind snatch it from her fingers. She watched it flutter down the street until it was out of her sight.  

            “Wow, was that training intense or what?”, Shim Jang said, as she slurped on her Ramen noodles.

            “We’ve got group dance in a bit, so don’t wear yourself out quite yet”, JiHyun told her.

            Jaesun finished his ramen quickly, and then, using his backpack as a pillow, made the couch a bed.

            Automatically, all four boys stood up frantically.

            “NO, JAESUNSSHI!”, Kyuhyun yelled.

            “Please, not another Operation WUJ!”, Skyler shouted.

            “Here, eat and stay awake ”, Gongchan said, and stuck a strawberry lollipop in Jaesun’s mouth.

             The girls were bewildered, except, of course, Soori, who grinned.

            Suddenly, Chan Hee noticed a missing member. “Oh hey, where’s the annoying gir- I mean, Eun Suk-sshi?”, she asked.  

            “Um… I haven’t seen her”, Soori replied, looking around.

            “Oh, so this is hers”, Sky said, indicating an untouched Ramen.

            Kyuhyun noticed that the cover of the Ramen was slightly unbalanced. He reached over and straightened it out. Things like that bothered him a bit…     

            “You’re so neat with everything… do you have OCD?”, Shim Jang asked him.

            Kyuhyun just shrugged.

            “It’s one o’clock”, Soo Ri announced, with a slight groan.

            “Well, time to go to class…”, JiHyun announced, cheerfully. Everyone moaned, but got up. Meanwhile, Chan Hee noticed that Eun Suk was still missing. Chan Hee deliberated whether she should go find Eun Suk, but at the last second, decided it wasn’t worth the risk of being late of class. Everyone shuffled off to class.

            To Chan Hee’s surprise, Eun Suk was already in class, though she looked pissed beyond belief.

            “You, um… okay?”, Soo Ri asked her, awkwardly.

            “Yeah, where were you at lunch?”, Shim Jang asked, pouting cutely.

            “Remind me why Tablo is our mentor again?”, Eun Suk said between gritted teeth, not noticing Shim Jang’s adorable aegyo.

            “Because he’s a beast at composing and rapping”, JiHyun said.

            “Why, is he bothering you?”, Jaesun asked.

            “It’s  not-“, Eun Suk started.

            “Shut up, class is starting”, Chan Hee said, noticing the teacher walking in. Chan Hee didn’t really mean to cut off Eun Suk in particular, but it just happened to be her. Chan Hee groaned internally as Eun Suk shot her a glare. 

            It became clear within the first hour of class that 1VS was an exceptionally bright group. All the members spoke at least three different languages with semi-fluency, with the exception of Jaesun, but his English was so perfect that it didn’t degrade him in the least.

            For the next week, lessons continued and nothing eventful happened, except Jaesun had an asthma attack once. The other boys and his sister had snatched him up and sprinted to the hospital, despite Jaesun weakly telling them over and over, that he had an asthma attack about once a week as it was.

            And now, at the end of the week, it was time for evaluation.

            1VS filed up and waited for each of the mentors to critique them.

            Hyunseung was first. He had been mentoring Shim Jang for her individual lessons.  His comment was, “Really good. You’re a quick learner. Just make sure you separate each dance move from each dance move and have some sharpness in your dance.”

            Yoseob was next. He had mentored Jung Soori and Kyuhyun. “Both of you have amazing range. But you need to learn from each other. Soori, your voice is angelic, but sometimes you have to put some strength in there. Kyuhyun, your voice is powerful, but you need to learn how to put that power when you are singing softly and gently.” Soori and Kyuhyun glanced at each other; they’d never really paid attention to each other’s voices. Only theirs.

            Dongwoon had mentored Gongchan and Jaesun. He spoke up, “Both of you are fine skill-wise, but make sure you practice harmonizing with each other and go over the fundamentals of pitch.” Both boys nodded.

            Kikwang had mentored Lee Soo Ri and Skyler. “Soo Ri and Skyler, both of you don’t know how to express your talents. Both of you possess talents beyond what I’ve ever seen before, but you both withhold it inside yourself. Watch other members in your group… members that are all about expressing themselves, you’ll see what I mean.”

Junghyung had mentored Chan Hee and JiHyun. “Chan Hee, just control your breathing. Listen to JiHyun rap, he has what I want you to have. And JiHyun, we’ve talked about changing your style. You’ve already been very pretty boy and now we need you to be more powerful. My advice is for you to listen to Chan Hee-“

Tablo stepped in suddenly. “Why do you all need mentors?”

There was awed silence.

“People, answer me”, he said. “Why are you all here?”

There was still silence.

“To be the best”, Chan Hee said boldly.

“You want to be the best?”, Tablo asked her coldly.

“Yes”, she answered, confused at his sudden coldness.

“What good is being the best by yourself when you’re in a group!?”, Tablo asked them.

There was silence.

“Every single one of you practice blindly. You heard your mentors. Every one of them are asking you to listen to each other because clearly, you never have. You call yourselves artists ,but you don’t use your own ears and eyes. If you just watched each other, instead of your  selves, you’d become the “best”. But you don’t. You don’t even need us mentors. You’re wasting your time. What’s the point of all this hard work, if you’re going to fail as a team?”, Tablo asked them.

            He was seriously upset. “I’ve never seen a group with so much potential, and so much failure. Your group trainings are the worst. I can’t even call out a weak link because you’re all weak links”, he said.

            “Well, we don’t know what the we’re doing, so that’s why we’re asking you for help! But we want you to help, not to just yell at us all the time!”, Eun Suk yelled all of a sudden.

            “No, you all know exactly what you’re doing”, Tablo replied. “All of you are refusing to admit that there is someone better than you at music. All of you. Especially you, Eun Suk.” 

            “Maybe it’s because we all want to be acknowledged as individuals! Maybe we’re all sick of being grouped and categorized over and over again. Maybe we just want the world to know US as PEOPLE!”, Eun Suk shouted.

            “Yeah, I happen to know that feeling. But what do you want to be known for? Sometimes that matters more than the fact that you’re famous…”, Tablo asked, his voice suddenly heavy.

            All of the members were suddenly silent. They knew Tablo was referring to his huge outburst of a scandal: people were calling his Stanford Diploma a fraud, his life a fraud, when he’d really gone there…

            Eun Suk cursed and then left, slamming the door shut.

            “Each one of you can help each other shape yourselves into what you want to become, what you want to be known as. So take advantage of it…”, Doojoon said, showing that he agreed with Tablo, however harsh Tablo may sound.

            There was silence for a moment more, and then Tablo excused them, asking them to come back tomorrow with fresh and ready minds.

a/n: okay, i know this chapter was a little bit boring and not as happy. :[ but it's all worth it and promising, i swear! XD i loved reading your comments: thank you so much for the compliments on my writing! i know it can't be the best, but i'm glad it makes you guys happy! and... well... i'm not sure if i should say this, but i'm attempting to write a couple songs for 1vs. X3 would you rather have a debut song written by me or a song already existing? let me know in your comments! we can do both since groups always do more than one song, but the debut song is extra special, right?