chapter 003.   Episode 1 of Making Mystique (Part 3)

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Group C

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The speakers in the room blasted loudly with a familiar song to many, sung by the Nation’s Fairy, Lee Hyori. This song was left on repeat, and although unchanging, the sound of shoes squeaking and thumping on the floor, accompanied by the sound of heavy breathing from the four girls, was what made the difference.

After repeating the song about five times, the girls collapsed to the floor to catch their breath, whilst some grabbed their water bottles to rehydrate themselves before joining the others in settling on the sleek floor.

“Nice work everyone!” the eldest, who was sprawled like a starfish on the floor, commented with a slight Italian accent as she spoke, chest heaving up and down as she caught her breath. She hoisted her upper body off the floor and peered over at the others in her company with her bright blue eyes to check on their condition. It wasn’t spoken out loud amongst themselves, but seeing as she was the eldest, and no one else seemed to want to take the role, Aria chose to be the unspoken leader for the group until further notice.

“Seriously, Ria unnie! You should be one of the main dancers with those moves!” one of the girls complimented, smiling as she looked over at her.

Aria laughed, perching herself up on one arm to look over at the girl. “You’re being too kind, Yigyeong,” she replied bashfully before continuing, “I’m nowhere near as good as you.”

“Perhaps not. Perhaps you’re even better than I am!” Yigyeong exclaimed, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“You’re both really good at dancing, okay?” the youngest of the four of them, Tana, interjected with a light chuckle. That was the most she spoke in the session, as she was still too shy to speak to her groupmates. She shook her head at the two older girls for having an unexpected talent with bickering while giving compliments to each other.

The other laughed at the exchanges between the girls, standing up after their brief break.

“Why don’t we just put it to the test right now, to see who’s really the best?” she suggested, painting a smirk onto her face, as though confident she would come out victor from this competition. Soeun was mostly confident in her rapping skills, but her dancing was excellent as well, and she was determined that she would come out victorious.

“You’re on, Soeun!” Yigyeong shouted with a point of her finger, quickly jumping up to her feet and laughing at the proposition they were about to undergo.

One of the good things ever since Yigyeong moved from C-Jes Entertainment into Cube was that the latter entertainment company knew how to balance every trainee’s schedule well. Therefore, not only was she able to continue on practicing her singing and acting, but she was also able to improve on her dancing -- and improved tremendously, she did. Though she knew she still had so much more to learn in the field as opposed to everyone else in the room with her, Yigyeong was much more confident now, unlike before.

Aria and Tana followed the actions of the other two girls, standing up, walking into their starting positions. Although they weren’t really a part of the challenge, the pair were still determined to do their best, Aria especially. Even if she’s not in the challenge, she’ll challenge herself anyway.

Without further ado, the four girls continued with their practice late into the night, slowly getting comfortable with each other’s presence, until the moves became muscle memory.

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Group D

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In the final practice room were four vocalists. Amongst them were two more than capable rappers, so naturally, they decided to perform a vocal cover. There was, however, one problem that still remained; they were still undecided on what exactly to cover.

The four girls sat in a circle without a word. The youngest, Dami, occasionally glanced at the other girls to assess the situation. Without a word, she made the decision to keep her thoughts to herself, hoping someone else would do the talking soon.

“What if we cover a 4minute song?” one of the girls, with a short bobbed haircut, asked with a slight Thai accent, breaking the silence which once filled the room.

The eldest nodded, taking the girl’s words into consideration before replying, “Mm, I agree with Sora. It’s a good idea to sing one of our sunbae’s songs, but maybe we should choose a song that can showcase our vocals more?”

Another of the girls, with short, dark brown hair, Hyejin, also nodded, taking both their words into consideration.

“Well, considering we have two vocalists and two more than capable rappers; we should try to choose a song that has a focus on both,” Dami added.

“How about 4minute’s Crazy or Hate?” the eldest, Yoonji suggested, thinking of their most recent comeback titles.

“I think they would probably work better in a dance cover,” Sora interjected and reasoned.

Yoonji couldn’t help but nod in agreement, ensuing another long pause; the girls remained deep in thought.

Hyejin broke the silence once again with another suggestion, aware of the precious practice time they were losing just by sitting around in silence.

“4minute’s Cold Rain?”

“Hm, noted.  Although I don’t think it will showcase our rappers abilities as well since there’s only a short rap in the middle. However, a ballad with a rap  does sounds like a great idea,” Yoonji added thoughtfully, looking at the notebook with the list of song suggestions they had made in the past forty minutes.

“How about we go back to the classics, rather than looking at new releases? How does ‘On Rainy Days’ by our Beast sunbaenims sound?” Hyejin blurted out soon after, as she was getting more and more impatient to start their practice.

The others beamed at her suggestion, smiles finally painting their faces after over half an hour of silence.

They all stood immediately and started working on gathering the basics for their cover, such as printing out the lyrics, finding the song so that they could all have a proper listen of the song together, and finally, retrieving its instrumental.

After listening to the original, they decided on rearranging the lyrics to accommodate for their rappers. Once they had allocated and finalised their roles, the group started rehearsing their individual parts and working on their harmonising together.

Authors' note:

OMG, thank you for the long wait, guys! Apologies we updated this later than intended -- we got busy, and school has officially started ;; If this occurs again, please do understand because we will get busy, especially mid-semester... Anyways, hope you enjoyed that! Tell us what you think will happen in the next chapter/episode/etc :) Adieu! -the-badguy-or-hero-

Hi everyone! I hope that you enjoyed this chapter - the final part of their rehearsals for the first mission. So, you can maybe expect to see their performances in the next chapter. However, you'll have to wait until our next update to know for sure! Also, thank you for reading and leaving comments in our last update. Until next time o/  Forever-Beast