Taemin pushed the door open and let the cool air wash over him. Another beautiful day wasted away in that cement prison. It wasn’t dark yet, although it soon would be, so despite it being a little lower in the sky the sun still shone. He sidestepped to the flowers that were planted along the walls, and leant against the low metal fence that stopped strangers walking into and ruining the shrubbery. With a slight moan he slid off his trainers and saddled back into his pumps. As he slotted the footwear away into his bag he thought back to the events that had taken place earlier in the day.

Back in the studio everyone had been sat down like expectant children waiting for a puppet show to start. Taemin sat somewhere in the middle of the crowd, his legs crossed as he fiddled with the laces on his new trainers. Although he sat in the centre of the room he felt isolated. The other boys had left an uncomfortable amount of room around him. Clearly they weren’t all that relaxed around the idol yet, despite him being younger than some. They all talked amongst themselves, leaving him to wonder his eyes around the room.

As the leaders were sorting out the music on the laptop-to-stereo hook up, Jongin and the Yixing kid were messing around at the front, jostling each other, and laughing about some inside joke that clearly only trainees were in on. Every so often Taemin would catch his eye, only for a fraction of a second, but it felt like an eternity. Enough time to analyse his face and try to understand the meaning under every muscle at work, whether it be his eyebrow, his eyes, his lips.

A beat started to play and the effect was that of a gunshot. The room fell instantaneously silent. The boys at the front’s expressions turned to that of professionals. Where there had been children seconds ago there now stood men. Sweet became y. These guys were good. The main track picked up and they were gone. Off in flurry of fluidity, one like water the other fire. Their dancing styles complementing each other so well it was as if their audience had washed away and only the movement remind. But almost as soon as it started Taemin wanted to leave. Everything he had found mildly attractive about the boy had disappeared. He had become some egotistic heartbreaker that seemed to have blossomed out of nowhere. Cocky would be the best way to describe his stage presence. Taemin rolled his eyes. He turned back to look at the boy who was making full eye contact whilst his hand lay on his groin which was manically ing. Jongin grinned as Taemin blushed. Part of him thought ‘What an ’, yet he couldn’t suppress the side of him that felt a little humoured. As if this character, this stage presence, was their own little inside joke

The song eventually came to an end and Taemin was invited to give feedback.

“It was great,” he put plainly. “I see a lot of potential.” He looked at Jongin who smiled at him whilst trying to get his breath back. Despite the sweat and the panting the boy was still very handsome, if not more so. The teacher looked around as silence fell and shook his head a little in confusion.

“Is that all the imput you’re going to give us?”

“They were good teacher,” he said. “I’m not sure what else to say.”

“Fine,” he motioned for the two boys to join the others so they went and took a seat on the wooden floors. “Come up here and give us a demonstration.” There is a certain experience to behold at the start of a concert, before the cheering and stomping of hungry fans, even before the music starts to play. A hush will fall on the concert hall, a lull. That feeling was reproduced as the idol stood up and waded his way forwards.

The cool air brushed against Taemins face as rays of sunlight kissed his skin. He smiled. The look on pretty boy’s face had been priceless. He tended to have that effect on people when he was dancing. At the time it had been hard for him to not to rub it in Jongin’s face whilst wearing a smug little smile.

Taemin looked over to the van where Key was already sat waiting, clicking away at the buttons on his phone probably texting someone from his endless list of contacts. The door beside him opened and out stepped Minho. He walked a few paces to the car then stopped and loitered for a second as though pondering whether or not to turn back.

“Are you okay?” The boy jumped, clearly startled at Taemin’s presence. He did a double take back towards the car before fully turning back to walk towards the maknae.

“ Taemin-ah, you scared me.” He put a hand to his neck as he hoisted his bag a little further up on his shoulder. “I was just uhh… I was just waiting to check that umm… that Onew didn’t need any help bringing his stuff to the car. I saw him carrying a lot of things on the way in. He’s our leader you know? We should help him with this sort of stuff.” Minho glance back again over his shoulder. Taemin leant over and looked past him to the car where Key was still sat unaware, then back to Minho. He didn’t ask questions, Taemin knew when to keep his nose out of things that didn’t concern him, despite his young age.

The  door opened once more and the leader stepped out as if called by his intuition, he had with him only a light plastic bag that contained a couple of books of his sheet music and lyrics. Again Taemin looked at Minho. The rapper turned scarlet before quickly grabbing Onew’s singular bag in one hand, and the leader himself in the other, then marching over to the van with his hair brushed over his eyes.

The other members had arrived at later points throughout the day. After Taemin it had been Onew, who being musically gifted met up with some of the other children to teach them about arranging, of course only after accidentally stepping into the dance studio where he was met with a far more excited crowd than Taemin had been. He made a good leader, but he certainly was a kluts. Key had arrived a few hours later, presumably with Jonghyun as always, and joined the maknae in the dance studio this time purposefully as they performed as a duo for the budding trainees. He wasn’t quite sure as to when Minho had got there, however he was sure it had been perfectly on time.

After several minutes of simply tapping his foot, going over some dance moves, and accidentally humming a few tunes out loud, the door to the training building finally opened once more.

“Hyung finally, we’ve been waiting for you to finish up the vocal training so we coul-“ he stopped mid-sentence as looking up he came face-to-face with Kim Jongin.