December 2014

There was one thing that Seohyeon was looking forward to, and it wasn’t their comeback. It was Christmas. 

Christmas 2014 would be the first one that the members would be spending together, seeing as they couldn’t go home because of their comeback date being so close; she had to admit, she had been slightly disappointed when Daeseun had told them that Sigma wouldn’t be returning to Korea at all until the middle of January, since she had been looking forward to spending some time with the other six girls, but so much would be going on that she figured that to be honest, seeing them would only make her more stressed, as she would be trying to make time for them where there was none.

The members had already agreed between them that they wouldn’t be buying any presents for each other seeing as they were so busy, but Seohyeon didn’t like the idea at all. Sure, in principle, it was a very sensible plan, but she wanted to buy something to show how thankful she was for her unnies, despite the fact that she always seemed so stoic and emotionless. The trouble was trying to think of what she could buy each of them because what might be appreciated by one member would probably be hated by another. Another worry was where she would hide what she bought - sharing a room with neat freak number two Lee Jimin (number one was Subin, of course) was hell on earth when you had to stash away surprise presents.

Finding the time to go shopping was proving to be a difficult if not impossible task, as Eunjung had predicted, and the maknae was getting extremely frustrated as she once again went over a step in the practice room, exactly one week before Christmas day. The tutor sighed and clicked her fingers, pointing to a spot on the floor about two feet away from where Seohyeon was currently standing.

“This is where you need to end up, Seohyeon, not where you are now. How are you not getting this right? You’re usually the first to pick choreography up, but this time you’re getting everything wrong. Do you need me to fetch Kai?” she asked, concerned. “You always learn best when he’s the one teaching you.”

“I’m fine, songsaengnim, you don’t need to call over Jongin sunbae,” Seohyeon assured her, remembering to use her manners (the months of Subin and Eunjung yelling at her to speak formally were finally beginning to work, it seemed). “I’m just distracted, that’s all.”

“Distracted by what?” the tutor asked, passing the idol a bottle of water. “You’re not fighting with your group, are you?”

“Oh no, nothing like that. It’s Christmas soon and I want to get them some presents but I have no idea what to get them and practicing for the comeback has leached the life out of me,” she explained as she took a seat on the floor. 

“Ah, I see. Well, you need to learn this step today, so distracted or not, you need to stay in here. Sorry,” the tutor explained as she walked to the door.

“Wait, where are you going?”

“Fetching Kai, of course!” she trilled before leaving Seohyeon on her own.

“I told you I don’t need him!” she yelled anyway, sighing as she sipped at her water, utterly exhausted. Five minutes later, the dance teacher turned up with EXO’s best dancer trailing behind her, looking confused.

“Kai-ah, I need you to teach Seohyeon her newly choreographed solo dance,” she explained to him. 

“Oh! So that’s what it is! I thought you were kidnapping me, noona,” he teased with a grin. 

“Just to help your hoobae,” the teacher responded, laughing. “Here, I’ll teach you the steps and then you can show Seohyeonnie.”

“Songsaengnim, I told you not to bother Jongin,” Seohyeon insisted. “I’m just having an off day, I can learn it fine with you!”

The teacher glanced between the two dancers. “Are you two fighting?”

“I don’t talk to him nearly enough to argue with him,” Seohyeon muttered, folding her arms across her chest. 

“Ah, what are you talking about, SeoSeo?” he teased, finally turning to look at her. “You’re my favourite dongsaeng of them all! We get on really well,” he added to the tutor. 

“Well, let’s at least teach you this solo and then you and your favourite dongsaeng can have some alone time to dance.” The dance teacher and Kai even had the nerve to laugh as Seohyeon huffed from her place on the cold floor and turned away.

Twenty minutes later, the maknae was left alone with Kai. He pulled her up by her arms and shoved her into position.

“What’s all this about you not picking up the steps?” he asked with a raised eyebrow, suddenly all business now that the teacher had left. “That’s not the Seohyeon I know.”

“I’m distracted, that’s all,” she explained. “And tired. Jesus, the last month has killed me! You never told me the first comeback was this hard!” she added accusingly, poking him in the shoulder. 

“Well, our first comeback was a year after debut, whereas yours is only after five months, so I can imagine that your workload is a tiny bit more crazy than ours was, even though you’re releasing a mini album and ours was an album,” he reasoned. 

“I guess,” she agreed reluctantly. “But enough about my workload. Are you going to help me learn this stupid solo dance or not?”

Kai grinned at her and leaned his back against the mirror. “Just show me what you can do so far and we’ll go from there, okay?”

She waited a few seconds before sighing. “No music?”

“I thought it was on Minah songsaengnim’s phone,” he informed her. 

“I still need some music, Kim Kai!”

“Aw, are you asking me to sing for you, Seohyeon? Oh, you’re just like one of the fans, aw, you’re precious,” he mocked, reaching over to pat her head; she shook him off angrily.

“I don’t think you can sing as well as my unnies can, but by all means, be my guest. Going deaf is just what I could do with right now,” she shot back, walking to the back of the room and reaching into her coat pocket for her phone. “You’re an idiot. I have the music on here, just play it, or is that too hard for you?”

“I’m pretending that I didn’t just hear you say that,” he warned her with a slight smile before gesturing impatiently. “Now get into position already, Jesus.”
Seohyeon chuckled at how easily her insults were ignored and did as he said. She managed to get roughly a third of the new steps right before messing up and, Kai being Kai, noticed her mistake immediately.

“Okay, so you can almost do it,” he praised her (although, Seohyeon mused, it really was a backhanded compliment). “And then you get your foot placement wrong, which ruins everything else. Here, watch this a second,” he requested and showed her what she should have been doing. The maknae took mental notes and nodded at random intervals. 

“Got it?” he asked when he had finished, raising his eyebrows. 

“Together?” she asked, rewinding the song to the verse before her dance solo and letting it play, dropping her phone on the floor near the bottom of the mirror.

Together, the dancers performed, watching their reflections carefully from across the room. Seohyeon copied what Jongin had done at the part that she had been struggling with and finally managed to complete the sequence in the right place. 

“Oh my God, I’m so relieved,” she panted as she fell to lie on her back on the floor. “Ah, you’re the best, Kim Kai, thank you so much.”

“Why is it that you only like me when I can teach you a move?” he questioned as he paused the music. “It’s like you’re actually daring to question my abilities.”
Seohyeon scoffed, studying the ceiling tiles. “I’m not saying that you can’t dance, Jongin-ah, if that’s what you’re saying,”

“Well, that’s good, because you’re my legacy,” he informed her, prodding her calf with his shoe. “I need to make sure that you don’t do badly because then it will reflect on me and everyone will think I’m a bad teacher.”

Seohyeon let out a short laugh. “That’s so nice of you, Kai, wow!”

“Plus,” he added seriously. “I think Kyungsoo hyung would murder me if I didn’t help his best friend’s maknae,”

“Aish,” Seohyeon muttered as she pulled herself into a sitting position. “Chaerin was talking the other day about how weird she finds it that we still go to you guys for help after the whole ‘mentoring’ thing finished. I think she’s just jealous that she can’t go running to Suho all the time because he’s too busy.”

“She could ask Baekhyun,” Kai pointed out while she laughed. 

“Are you joking? She can’t stand Baekhyunnie! I think they’re too similar and that’s why they don’t get along.”

“Probably,” he conceded. “Come on, anyway, let’s go through it again a few more times and then you can go home and I can get back to EXO.”

Seohyeon visibly brightened at the offer and stood up immediately. “What, I can go home early? You’ll tell songsaengnim?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not,” Kai agreed with a shrug. “She said you were distracted about something, so I feel like I should give you the opportunity to sort out whatever the issue is.”

“It’s not so much an issue... I need to go and buy Christmas presents for my unnies and I haven’t had the time to do it until now.”

“So let’s finish up here and you can go to Shinsa-dong or wherever it was that you were planning to go and buy stuff, then. Come on, one more run through.”

WHY IS THIS SO SHORT WHEN MY OTHER CHAPTERS HAVE BEEN LONGER, OTL. This did NOT work out the way that it was planned, either. KIM KAI, YOU WERE NOT MEANT TO SHOW UP IN HERE LIKE THAT, HOW DARE YOU! And as for the whole ‘AW I SHIP SEOHYEON AND JONGIN’ that I’m getting from Aria right now, NO. They are friends only.