When he wakes up again, he notices that Yifan has already woken up, which is never a good sign for anything.

Cursing under his breath, he goes to the bathroom to freshen up before walking out into the living room. To his surprise, there is no one there, and there's no indication of where they'd gone to.

“Hello?” he calls out experimentally, but as he expects, there's no response.

Jongdae wanders around the dorm a bit, just to double check that nobody's hiding in a closet making out or something (it happened once, and it was not an experience that he cared to recall), but the dorm is silent, save for his muted footsteps across the floor.

He sighs as he makes his way to the kitchen, fixing himself a bowl of cereal—eating breakfast, even though the clock hands signal that it's already past noon.

As he opens the fridge to get the milk, though, he notices a small sticky note taped to the stainless steel with his name on it.

Jongdae,

Zitao's dragging us all out on some sort of shopping expedition. I didn't want to wake you up—you seemed really tired yesterday.

You can come to me to talk, you know that?

Stop suffering alone.

The note was unsigned, but the handwriting was unmistakably Minseok's. Jongdae peels the paper off the fridge, balls it up, and tosses it into the trash bin. He knows that the elder means well, but Jongdae's never been good with talking to people, so he disregards it. He's done well enough on his own up until now, anyways.

Once he starts eating, he's suddenly hyperaware that the last time he's eaten was over twenty-four hours ago, and his stomach rumbles loudly, as if to emphasize that point. Jongdae finishes the bowl of cereal quickly, then pours himself another—eventually eating the entire box.

He tosses the box into the bin and throws himself on the sofa, switching on the television to see if there's anything good on. Of course, nothing really plays at noon besides bad dramas, and Jongdae isn't interested in those anyways.

He thumbs the channel button a few times before he hears the familiar sound of Pororo. He hasn't watched that in a while—the last time was ages ago, when Zitao was still fumbling with his Korean and needed to find something to learn from (and everyone remembers the moment that Zitao nearly swung his staff at the television in embarrassment after he called Minseok 'oppa' from watching too many Korean dramas. From that day forth, he'd pledged to never again watch dramas, and instead watch shows where he wouldn't learn strange things and suffer from embarrassment. Nobody said anything, though, when they'd seen him watching Secret Garden a week later, bag of chips in hand.)

So he watches the show with sort of a morbid curiosity to see if anything much had changed since the last time he'd seen the show—the only thing that he notices is that Jongin's Krong impersonation could use a little work.

~*~*~*~*~

Three sharp raps on the door shake Jongdae out of his Pororo marathon, as well as the scream of “Zitao! That's MY Chopper, for the last time!” that comes from Luhan. Undoubtedly, the two are having another plushie fight (and Jongdae once again wonders how Luhan is possibly the second oldest in their group, since his maturity level is most definitely on par with Zitao's, or possibly lower at times.)

Jongdae obliges their request, tossing the remote to the side and opening the door, revealing the five other members of the group standing outside—Yifan holding a ridiculous amount of shopping bags, looking very much like a coatrack with blonde hair on top; Luhan and Zitao fighting over the Chopper plush, screaming nonsense in Mandarin at each other; and Yixing and Minseok trying to pull the two idiots apart from each other.

“Get off him, you insufferable—oh, hi Jongdae.” Minseok manages to wave at him before grabbing onto Luhan's waist again, dragging him back from the scene.

Yixing, unfortunately, stuck trying to restrain a much taller, much stronger, and much angrier opponent than Minseok, ends up getting clipped in the shoulder by Zitao's elbow, which causes Yifan to flip out.

“HUANG ZITAO! FOR THE LAST TIME, STOP HITTING PEOPLE, ESPECIALLY YIXING! DO YOU WANT ME TO GO RETURN ALL THIS?” He shakes the bags in Zitao's face, and the younger just rolls his eyes, because everyone knows that Yifan's too nice (and too lazy) to actually go back and return the goods.

“Half of those are yours, ge,” Zitao mumbles as they file into the dorm. “Hello Jongdae-ge, how have you been?” he asks as he opens the fridge.

“Why are you watching Pororo?” Luhan hurls himself onto the couch and starts laughing, mouth wide open. “This is such a children's show! And you don't even need to learn Korean!” Luhan sticks his tongue out at Zitao at the last remark—Jongdae pretends he doesn't see Zitao flip the elder off.

“Because it was on.” Jongdae shrugs, stretching his back. “And I learned something from it.”

“What?”

“Jongin's Krong impersonation .”

“Hold up, hold up,” Luhan chuckles, digging out his phone and pressing a few buttons. “Mind saying that again?”

“...Jongin's Krong impersonation ?”

“YOU LITTLE !”

Jongdae glares at Luhan, who just starts cackling again before hanging up the phone.

Yeah. Jongdae seriously questioned Luhan's maturity level at times.

~*~*~*~*~

“Here.”

Jongdae looks up at Yixing, who s a folder of papers at him. “What's this for?”

“New lyrics. We have to go in later tonight to practice it. Start learning it now. Oh, and I already put the guide for it on your iPod, I did it while you were sleeping. I hope you don't mind.”

Jongdae shakes his head, thanking Yixing for his trouble. Once the dancer retreats to his own bed, Jongdae opens up the folder, cursing internally at the rows and rows of Chinese characters, each with pinyin underneath it.

He reaches over the side of the bed, grabbing his bag and fishing out his iPod, untangling the mess of the earbud cords and scrolling through the list of songs. He can't miss it—not when someone (presumably Yixing) has titled it 'THE NEW SONG. DON'T YOU DARE SKIP THIS!'

It's a traditional SM-style poppy dance track, and Jongdae finds himself nodding absentmindedly while he listens to it. He doesn't feel very attached to the song—he never really does, especially since he can't understand the lyrics on the first go anyways.

Once the song finishes, he picks up the lyric sheet and the translation sheet, sighing when he realizes that it's just a generic pop song, one that he feels was probably a Super Junior reject. He mouths the words to the song as he replays it over and over, until he feels that he has a good enough grasp on it to practice with the trainers later. His pronunciation is probably all over the place, judging by Yixing's near undistinguishable grimaces every time he whispers a certain phrase.

But he'll deal with that later.

~*~*~*~*~

“Jongdae, it's sháng, not shāng.”

Jongdae and the trainer sigh for the umpteenth time during the practice, and the trainer mutters a few choice words in Mandarin (Jongdae can actually understand them—Yifan's said them a good number of times—but he doesn't say anything) shaking his head.

“Just... just practice that part for now. Call Luhan in.”

Jongdae sighs, bowing to the trainer before leaving the room.

“Luhan-hyung, they want you in now.”

Luhan nods, patting Jongdae on the back once before walking into the room. Jongdae takes a seat on one of the chairs in the hallway, taking out the lyric sheet and whispering the lyrics over and over to himself.

Why couldn’t he just do anything right?

He hates dragging everyone down, because they all counted on him to be the main vocalist. But he just couldn’t help it sometimes—he had only a mediocre grasp on the language, and half the words sounded the same anyways.

I’ll get it right by tomorrow. I have to.