Strengths :: BTS
Twenty-One :: A JYP Survival Show
1
"Shouldn't you of all people be used to this kind of stuff?"
Jaejin was barely five years old the first time he met his uncle.
"Oh my gosh, he's just like me!"
"Jinyoung you always say that."
"Yes, but look at him Jinah! You have to see it too!"
Five year old Jaejin tuned out his mother and uncle. He didn't think their discussion would affect him.
How wrong he was.
Growing up his uncle was constantly stopping by, making suggestions, talking about Jaejin's future as if he had a say in it.
The worst part was that he apparently did. He found himself with vocal lessons, choir practice, and then a trainee spot in his uncle's company when he turned seventeen. His parents said that it would be a good growth experience. He said he wanted to go to university.
Apparently he had no say in his own life.
"No, Jaejin it's a back step first then you move right." The choreographer is somehow still managing to sound patient despite this being the fifteenth time (at least) that Jaejin has gotten the choreography wrong.
He can see a few of the other trainees rolling their eyes as the teacher decides to call for a short break. Jaejin ignores them, opting to instead beeline for his backpack, left abandoned in a corner at the start of the lesson.
He's quick to lose himself in his textbook. He's already a chapter behind in Biology and he refuses to waste any time that could be spent studying.
Of course the other trainees aren't making his life very easy.
"Studying again Jaejin? Shouldn't you be learning the damn dance so the rest of us can actually get something done?"
Doc fights an urge to close his book and use it to smack the other trainee. Kim Jihyun had started at JYP only a few weeks before Doc had and the two had developed a rivalry rather quickly due to clashing personalities.
"I doubt one lesson will do you any good Jihyun. You couldn't even make it in SM and everyone knows all you need is a nice face to do well there." He snipes back, never once looking up from the book in a pointed show of disinterest.
That's how every day passes for Jaejin. Two years he flounders through training, barely keeping his head above water and only caring enough to get annoyed with Jihyun.
Throughout the experience, his uncle drags him to showcases and variety shows to "watch and learn".
He always brings his textbooks to those outings despite his uncle getting increasingly frustrated with his doing so. But he's not sorry. He doesn't want to be here and he's not going to make any pretenses about it.
Two years pass, and slowly his uncle seems to give up. Even Jihyun becomes somewhat of a tolerable evil the more time Jaejin spends around him.
For a short time he thinks that maybe he can ride out this contract and then go back to his real life.
And then his uncle announces the survival show and everything Jaejin is accustomed to comes crashing down.
2
"Well you can wait since someone snored all night and I look terrible without beauty sleep."
Jihyun makes it a point to get his things moved into their new dorms as early as possible.
He wants the best bedroom, preferably one to himself, as far from the street and the center living area as possible. Sleep is too important to lose over avoidable background noise. Plus he looks terrible if he doesn't get his beauty sleep.
Jude moves in shortly after he does, and then everyone else seems to pile in at once. Jihyun just sits back, headphones in, and glares at anyone who comes into his chosen room. It encourages most of them to find a different place to set up.
However, Andrew Yong pays him no mind and instead begins unpacking around the bed opposite Jihyun's.
Jihyun observes him for a long moment, frowing heavily, before he pulls out one of his earbuds. "Hey kid."
Andrew doesn't reply, and gives no other indication that he's listening at all.
Jihyun frowns and pauses his music. He doesn't mind rooming with the younger trainee, but if this arrangement is going to work he expects certain ground rules to be followed. Ground rules that have to be heard first.
He clears his throat loudly and, when that fails to achieve any reponse, throws a pillow at the other boy.
He misses, but Andrew startles when it hits his suitcase instead. He glances over at Jihyun, a look of mild curiosity on his face. "Sorry, did you say something?"
Jihyun makes a face. Great. He's never paid much attention to the other boy, not enough to know more than his name, but he's starting to think that this won't be the smoothest rooming arrangment he'd ever had.
"Yeah, I said hi."
Andrew blinks. "Oh. Hello." He starts to turn back to his suitcase but Jihyun is a quick learner and figures if he allows that he'll have to give up another pillow to get Andrew's attention back on him.
"Hey I was thinking we should probably get a roommate agreement decided on now, yeah? The show starts tomorrow so we won't have any time really to talk about it." Jihyun decides to actually make an effort and sits up in his bed. Thankfuly Andrew responds in kind and turns completely away from his unpacking.
"Roommate agreement?" He looks slightly confused, but he nods anyway. "Okay."
Jihyun barely waits for him to agree before launching into his pre-planned roommate requirements.
"Okay so-"
He's surprised that Andrew stays perfectly attentive throughout his entire plan, even the part when he gets into an argument with Jaejin over his "neediness" (he's not needy, he just bothers to actually care about things).
When he finishes, Andrew nods. "Okay, sounds good."
Jihyun waits, but the other trainee just goes back to unpacking.
"Hey, um, is there anything else? Anything you'd want?"
Andrew actually looks up this time, and Jihyun is thankful for it. "No, I'm good. Thanks."
Jihyun just shrugs and puts his headphones back in. Maybe this roommate won't be so bad after all.
3
"Walk with me."
Jude hurries along behind JYP as they make the short treck from the dorms to the main building. The CEO hasn't said anything yet but Jude knows it would be rude to say anything himself so he waits.
Finally JYP speaks. "Alright, now that we're away from the cameras let's get started. Jude, you're easily one of the most skilled vocalists on the show, as well as the only one I can see working as a leader. As such we need to make sure you're well-liked by the fans."
Jude tilts his head. "I ranked third this round sir, I'd say I'm doing rather well."
JYP nods. "Yes, and I intend to keep it that way. This challenge you'll be acting as the host for the performances."
Jude keeps his face carefully neutral, but internally he's thrilled. When he'd first heard about the competition from Hongsol it hadn't exactly been exciting. Putting a human element into the lineup choices meant that there was a non-zero chance he could be cut, and that was something that had been worrying him.
The CEO continues speaking over Jude's internal monologue. "I'll leave the performance up to you and whoever you decide to work with, but I'll be sure to have some cues written up for you for the actual MCing."
Jude nods and the CEO claps him on the shoulder. "Excellent! Well I'll leave you to it then, I'll check back a few days to see how you're doing."
Jude nods again to show he's heard. Once the door closes he turns to head to the studio where the backup dancers regularly practice.
He's greeted by a few familiar faces as he steps in. Foremost amongst them is Lee Hyunmi, a choreographer who's been working with JYP longer than Jude has been a trainee. She's working a few of the dancers through a routine, but she pauses as the door closes behind Jude.
"Good afternoon noona, do you mind if I borrow a few of your dancers?"
The choreographer waves idly and a group that had been working independently find their way over to him.
Jude has worked with backup dancers before, but he's never been in charge of the performance until now, and things start off rather rocky.
It takes the rest of the day to decide on what songs he's going to use - something he probably should have done before getting the dancers - but once that's finished things go, for the most part, smoothly.
The most difficult aspect is keeping what he's doing a secret from the other contestants, especially Hongsol. His best friend has always been something of a mother hen and he's been even more of a nervous wreck than normal with the pressures of the competition weighing him down..
But Jude doesn't really have time to deal with Hongsol's insecurities and create his own performance, so he opts to perfect the latter and handle the former later. After all, he'll have plenty of time once he's debuted.
4
"We have a secret weapon."
Ant knows somewhere in his mind that JYP won't be very happy about him not singing. But the group is excited about him rapping - Kangjoo is already doing some rearrangements for his song - and he doesn't really want to sing.
He's technically helping with the rearranging but Kangjoo has always been hard to work with. The teenager has the habit of falling into his own world and not noticing even if someone else does offer to help.
Though Ant himself also tends to do that so he can't really judge. He knows a lot of the other trainees don't like Kangjoo that much but really the teen isn't so bad as far as Ant can tell. He's just picky about what he wants.
Kangjoo taps him on the shoulder, startling him out of his reverie. "Hey, I think this is just about ready. Think you could look it over and pen in your lyrics?"
Ant tilts his head. "Didn't you have lyrics for these parts?"
Kangjoo shrugs. "It's a big thing that rappers write their own lyrics these days, so I figured you might want to do that. Plus your songs are always good, I figure whatever you put it will be solid."
Ant shrugs in return and nods, pulling the paper over to himself and looking over what Kangjoo has put down already, while the teen heads over to where the rest of the group is working on vocal warmups.
The song is pretty cliché, so Ant has no problem working out matching lyrics for the parts Kangjoo left blank. It takes about ten minutes to work out a flow he likes, and then he moves to join the others.
Sanghyun smiles over at him and shifts to make room in the circle they've formed.
Ant isn't quite sure what to make of Sanghyun. He's certainly a nice person, but to be honest Ant doesn't talk to him often, so when he'd suggested earlier that Ant rap he'd been caught off guard. Was he so easy to read, or was Sanghyun just observant?
He stands next to his unexpected ally, getting caught up in his thoughts again as the group divides the remaining vocal parts of the song. It takes longer than it maybe needs to, Ant isn't sure what the argument is about but he knows there is one, but eventually everyone seems satisfied with their parts and they get to rehearsing.
There's another dissagreement later, and this one Ant does pay attention to.
"None of us know how to dance well, why can't we just stand a sing?" TJ complains.
"Because we want to stand out. We don't have to do anything fancy Doyeon-hyung, but we should do something!" Kangjoo insists.
Ultimately Kangjoo wins and they scrape together an extremely simple chair dance at the last possible minute. From that point everything goes smoothly, and when they're standing in the wings preparing to perform, Ant feels confident that they'll do well.
Well, hopefully they will anyway.
5
"Chairs were nearly thrown, hyung. I don't think that kind of drama is the good kind."
Noheul is getting sick of this group already. Why JYP thought it was a good idea to put Doc in his group he has no idea, but as expected it's going horridly.
It had taken all of a few minutes to realize that three of their group members had lower voices, and that Doc specialized in jazzier sounds, so choosing an Rn'B song was the obvious choice. It was another minute to decide exactly which song would best balance out their glaring weak point.
But of course when he tells the group that they're doing "Bom Bom Bom" Doc throws a hissy fit.
Really he shouldn't have expected anything else from the self-righteous trainee. He thought he ran the show just because his uncle was the CEO. Well Noheul had never stood for that in the past, and he won't now either.
It certainly doesn't help that Jude 2.0 is in the group with them. Soul is nice enough, but his friend has somewhat rubbed off on him and now he can get rather bossy if Jude isn't around to do it for him.
Between the two of them trying to comandeer the group, Noheul is starting to develop a headache.
He always gets a headache around people like them though. People who don't know a good idea when they hear one. People who just want to turn everything into an argument.
He understands Doc's sentiments, he does, but they don't have time to debate song choices when Noheul knows the best one to use and they're on a time limit. It's common sense really.
Eventually Doc gives in, long after the other three have seen reason, but at that point they've lost almost two hours.
And then they have to divide lines. Soul and the other two worked out a distribution, but it's all wrong. Byunjae has lines that should go to himself, Sanghyun just has too many lines in general, and half of Soul's sections would sound better from Doc.
This of course sparks more whining from the latter when Noheul brings it up, and this time Byunjae gets upset as well, though he's easy enough to ignore. He's always upset about something, tuning his hissy fits out is practically a right of passage as a JYP trainee.
Soul ultimately offers to play guitar instead of singing most of his parts, which gets the others to calm down somewhat.
Noheul isn't thrilled with the compromise, but with half a day gone at this point he figures he should take what he's given. So he sorts out the remaining lines and they finally start practicing.
The vocal practices go decently, but when they try adding a simple chair-based dance into the mix (so Soul can sit while playing) things fall apart again.
Noheul will admit he may have been a little overaggressive when he picked up his chair and waved it at Doc, but really this was getting ridiculous.
Why were the others so bad at working as a group?
6
"We came to a compromise."
Danny isn't normally one to start arguments. If someone is bothering him, he usually just walks away. But Jihwan has always been oddly congnizent of people's weak points, and with recent developments he's been much more open about attacking them. And Danny doesn't see why he should take that sitting down.
However he also knows Xaris has a point. They should find a compromise.
And it's not like he doesn't kind of get why Jihwan is acting the way he is. But he stil doesn't appreciate it much.
It's been almost ten minutes since Xaris and Reito left the room, and there's been nothing but silence since. It's not a stony silence, or even a particularly charged one. It just is, and Danny sighs loudly.
"Alright, Xaris is right. There's got to be some way to work together. We've done it before, we can do it again." He looks over at Jihwan, who hasn't turned his eyes from the floor. Danny isn't sure at first if the other trainee has even heard him, but after a moment Jihwan nods.
"Sure." But he doesn't offer anything past that and Danny holds back a more frustrated sigh. Jihwan has always kept more to himself, even before Yejun was dropped out of the show's lineup, but his tendency towards privacy seems to have increased in the past few weeks.
"Okay so can we talk about it?" Danny presses impatiently.
Jihwan shrugs. "Talk away. You're good at that, right?" His tone is tired and it's clear he'd rather not have a conversation at all, but Danny is done with attempting to sympathize.
Everyone has been walking on glass around Jihwan since his best friend left and frankly Danny is sick of it. He lost friend too, but you don't see him moping around instead of being productive.
"Fine! Fine we'll just sit here in silence and do absolutely nothing, how does that sound?" Dany snaps.
Jihwan actually looks up this time. "Sorry, okay? I'm just-"
"I don't care, okay? This is a show and you need to start being more aware of your surroundings and how you're affecting the rest of us. Maybe you don't care about debuting but we do. So it up."
Jihwan blinks in surprise, and Danny knows that maybe he went a little too far but he's so beyond done with the other trainee's crap.
"How about this. We'll each do the song we want to and I can mix them together. We don't have to deal with each other at all, and Reito and Xaris can spend about a day each with ech of us to learn their parts. Everyone is happy."
Jihwan nods slowly. "Sure. Everyone." But he has a look in his eyes that Danny hasn't seen in a while. The one that says he's analyzing everything around him. The one that's always made Danny uncomfortable.
But he isn't going to deal with it today. He's done dealing with Jihwan. "Fine then. Good luck with your part."
A thus I finally put down my pen and release this story as truly complete. Hope you guys enjoyed the BTS and that you'll check out my new apply Princess!
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