“Ryu…Hwayoung. What shall we do with you?” Hyomin sneered. She adjusted her heels and Hwayoung played with the zipper of her jacket nervously, avoiding the judging looks from all directions. Frantically, she bowed, realizing that’d she probably be scolded for being impolite later.

“Hello, I’m Hwayoung. I hope that we can work together and…maybe become friends.”

She somehow doubted it though. But then again didn’t arguments make some groups closer? It must have done the exact opposite at one stage, though.

“You’ll never be one of us; you don’t even know your purpose.” Eunjung stated bluntly. Her glaring eyes were just visible behind her bangs. In Hwayoung’s opinion it only made her look scarier.

“I’m…a rapper.”

“I didn’t mean that, you dumb.”

“What do you mean then?”

Hwayoung knew that she had asked the wrong thing, so she tried to ignore Eunjung’s scowl and arrogant swagger out of the practice room.

She knew that this would happen. It would obviously be hard to be accepted on the easy ride of fame, especially if the ones already on it had to work the hardest that they ever had to get where they were. It didn’t make sense that they had to give up even a fraction of it for someone that wasn’t even guaranteed to be of any worth. And that was ignoring the fact that they’d probably have more mental competition on who was the most popular of the group. Of course they’d be compared.

But they were supposed to get used to it after a few weeks, and would no longer be bothered to have a grudge against that one person and just help them become accepted by their followers too – in this case, fans.

Hwayoung could tell by the recent conversation that Hyomin and Eunjung would probably be the hardest to please. And Jiyeon too perhaps; she looked like she was ready to kill. Soyeon was looking at a piece of paper, looking like she wasn’t paying attention to anything, but it was easy to see that she was probably the person most alert with the drama. Boram looked indifferent – like she was just there.

Qri just looked like a confused schoolgirl. She was looking down at her shoes nervously, just like Hwayoung previously. She had an ashamed expression on her face, but it looked like she was ashamed of herself. Hwayoung had no idea why; wasn’t she supposed to at least react like Boram? She looked quite peculiar, but she seemed to be a nice enough person. But then again, not everything had been at the same scale of her expectations.

 “When are you joining?” Jiyeon asked bitterly.

“Comeback after the next,” Hwayoung replied.

“Psh. Must not be good enough,” Hyomin scoffed.

No; it’s just that you need time to get used to my existence.

Soyeon looked up from the piece of paper and stood up, breaking the silence with the scratch of the chair on the floor. She walked towards Hwayoung and handed the paper to her and Hwayoung received it, confused.

“Learn your lines. Title track first.”

Hwayoung looked through the song, looking for her purple color-coded line. She found it amidst the sea of colors, read it and continued to look for more.

“I…only have one line.”

Soyeon’s face suddenly changed from its poker-like state to a look of superiority and power.

“Of course you do. Relief isn’t it?” she smirked. She snatched the paper out of her hands quickly, which surprised Hwayoung.

“Ahh!” Hwayoung gasped. She looked at the thin line of blood gushing from the inside of her index finger. She forced herself not to look at Soyeon in distaste.

“Paper cuts hurt, don’t they?” Soyeon said simply before leaving the practice room the same way as Eunjung.

As per usual, a very short first chapter. T.T