Divided We... :: BTS
Twenty-One :: A JYP Survival Show
1
"We both know if I couldn't do it this time I may as well just give up on debuting now."
Byunjae considers himself a patient person. For two years he's worked hard and put in everything he has into debuting with JYP. His life's dream. Two years of constant struggle and slow improvement.
Two years is the average length of time a trainee spends before debuting. He can't remember where he read that, but it's something that echos in his mind every time he fails to make a project group.
Then the show was announced and it was a sign. If Byunjae could make the viewers like him, then he would debut. He would debut and all this would be for something.
Obviously one could debut after training for two years, but it was harder. That was what Byunjae believed.
This show had been his last chance, and it was gone. He was done. Everything had been for nothing.
He had somewhat known it even during the challenge. He hadn't realized until too late the true nature of it, and by then it was too late to backtrack. So he pressed on, more determined than ever to put on an amazing performance.
He's failed. He know that as they walked back to the dorms. He's finished.
But that doesn't mean he can't try to salvage what little he does have left. To try and bring his friend back to him.
He isn't sure when he lost Sanghyun, but he was more angry to find that it didn't surprise him than the situation itself. Did he have so little faith in his best friend? Apparently. But he wants to try and fix that. If nothing else can come from this entire experience, he at least wants to keep his best friend.
So he tries. He tries to remind Sanghyun of the fun they've had together, sneaking around the JYP building, learning secrets and pulling pranks. He keeps his spirits up, trying to be fun and playful like they've always been together. He even tries to tolerate Koda (and yes, he failed that attempt miserably but he still counts it as an attempt).
But he can feel Sanghyun slipping further away and he becomes desperate. He becomes angry. And it derails him and causes him to lose his chance.
But in a last attempt he still tries. And playing Smash Bros really does feel good. It's something they've done for years to relax after long days of training, and while it that Koda still wins basically every time things feel more normal than they have in a while.
And Byunjae lets himself hope that maybe, just maybe, things could go back to normal.
But then the truth returns and he's eliminated. And worse, he watches Sanghyun leave with little more than a short good bye. Even Danny takes more time to check in on him. And in that moment, he finally, completely, gives up.
Everything was a waste. Nothing came from this. Two years gone with nothing to show.
He won't care anymore. He can't. He can't keep doing this.
But there's still one more episode left.
2
"Everyone nods except Koda, who raises his hand and shakes his head emphatically."
The decision to become an idol is simple enough.
Actually figuring out what that means is an entirely different situation.
Gosaeng doesn't figure this out until after he's told everyone in earshot about his new direction in life so really there's not going back. That would look bad. You can't say you'll do something and then not do it, that would just make him look like a quitter and a loser. And he's neiter of those things.
He tells his parents at dinner and recives the usual "that's nice sweetie" from his mother before his parents return to their conversation. He's a bit let down, but they didn't say no so he'll have to figure this out after all.
So he takes to the computer after dinner - the internet knows everything after all! But while he does find some great songs for his next dance battle, he ends up distracting himself with said songs until his parents tell him he needs to go to sleep. He puts up a fuss, but slinks to his room when it doesn't get the reactions he was hoping for.
The next day a few of his friends ask him if he knows which company he's going to audition for. He didn't even realize there were companies. He stays vague with his answers and they end up unknowingly filling him in a bit on some of the bigger names, which he's careful to write down in his notebook later. That night when he gets home, he rips the names out as carefully as he can and then picks one at random.
JYP.
Alright, now he has a company. Now to try and figure out this 'audition' thing.
Now that he has the right search words to use he gets slightly less distracted when he returns to the internet to try and answer the question. He finds an open JYP audition coming up within the week and puts it on his phone's calendar, adding an alarm to remind him the day of.
He tells his friends the next day and they all wish him good luck and start talking about some of JYP's groups, particularly one called Twice.
So he looks up Twice. He's not really impressed - their music is no good at all for his style of dancing - but he writes their names down anyway just in case.
He loses that sheet of paper less than a day later but he's already forgotten about it anyway.
The day of the audition comes, and he's glad he set the reminder because he probalby would have forgotten. His friends ask what routine he's going to use and he shrugs. Was he supposed to prepare something? He'd always specialized in freestyling, so he saw no reason to prepare anything for this.
So he shows up, does some freestyle dancing and then does some rap as well when asked if he can do anything else.
He gets his acceptance a few days later and his friends tell him how lucky he is to have gotten into the first company he auditioned for.
Koda only shrugs, smirking proudly. He is awesome, after all.
3
"Yeah, I keep nearly elbowing Danny in the head. I'm not sure he appreciates that much."
Na Sanghyun knows that his distraction is getting ridiculous, and that it will probably result in him getting eliminated, but he can't help it.
Everything in the past few days has been a haze of confusion and self-questioning, and the answers he's been finding are flipping his world upside down. What he thought was inequivocal fact is actually just a shroud of falsehoods.
Good gracious he's being dramatic. He jerks as he once again almost misses a dnce step due to his mental distraction and nearly takes out one of Danny's eyes. His friend had been sympathetic to his plight at first, but now he was clearly just frustrated with the constant screw ups.
Sanghyun sighs and tries to apologize with his eyes but Danny has gone back to focusing on the dance, and really Sanghyun should be doing that too.
And yet he doesn't, instead getting distracted by his own guilt and confusion once again. And once again he nearly hits Danny.
Why are they so close to each other so often in this dance anyway?
He gives another sheepish grin in response to Danny's disgruntled look and this time he tries a little harder to stay focused on the task at hand.
It kind of works, but he's never been a great dancer and the added distraction only worsens his step. He's actually glad when Collin singles him and TJ out to practice individually.
He shares a small smile with the other trainee, and there's more than just understanding shared. He can almost see a flicker of doubt in TJ's eyes, reflecting his own internal struggle.
Sanghyun practices diligently, hoping that if he exhausts himself phsycially the mental bombardment will somehow leave him in peace.
It works for a bit. Working with TJ is familiar - they're both often kept after class to practice further and this feels no different than that really.
But when Collin decides that they're as good as they're going to get and passes the torch, Sanghyun is dissapointed to find that his distracting worries haven't gone anywhere. And now images of Byunjae looking utterly defeated as he was officially cut are mingling with the questions and making him feel entirely too closed in.
He nearly elbows Hongsol in the face this time, though of course the older trainee is much nicer about it than Danny. Which of course makes Sanghyun feel worse when it happens again.
Surprisingly he doesn't actually hit anyone - TJ does that for some reason - but he continues coming close. He's both mentally and physically exhausted by the time practice ends, and he is not ready to go out and face an audience right now.
Right now he wants to go home, not to the dorms but to his real home with his parents, and curl up under his sheets and sleep until he can forget about everything that's happened.
Why had he wanted to be an idol so badly? Heck if he knew anymore.
4
"Aren't you at least a little upset by Collin saying that?"
Even with JYP backing him up, Jude still errs on the side of caution when the cameras are around. Better to have as much usable, positive footage as possible to keep himself at the top of the voting chart each week.
But Xaris is making that rather difficult at the moment.
Jude considers several of the other trainees as friends. Hongsol, Soul, even Xaris, they're all nice enough guys and he enjoys spending time with them. But if Xaris is going to make him choose one way or the other he's going to choose debuting over friendship.
He'd prefer if there was some third option that invoved keeping them both, but Xaris is making it difficult to find one right now.
The rapper and Collin had gotten into something of a tiff in the early hours of the morning concerning something about the eliminated contestants. Jude had been present at the time but he was with Hongsol and thus only half paying attention to what was going on. After all, Xaris getting snippy with people isn't exactly uncommon, and Collin being difficult to get along with when he's tired is a constant. Their argument was inevitable, and probably over something utterly juvenile. Jude had felt no need to give it any heed.
Only now, hours later, Xaris is still upset about it and looking to Jude for confirmation of his wrath.
Normally Jude would just nod and they'd move on, but with the cameras pointed at him he doesn't want to come across as a pushover, or someone who doesn't care about his friends. That would look bad to viewers, and while sure JYP would probably have anything negative edited out, Jude prefers knowing that there isn't anything incriminating caught on tape.
Fans could be pretty crazy, and if the wrong thing got into the wrong hands all his planning would be for nothing.
Being an idol has been a dream for years. It's to the point where there's nothing else he can do, and nothing else he wants to do either. He can't lose that now because Xaris is sleep deprived and petty.
He's responding to his friend's complaints on auto pilot, trying to maintain damage control and act as the sympathetic neutral third party. It's tough though, and he can almost feel his mask slipping under the weight of his desperation to keep it up.
Thankfully the exhaustion finally works in his favor, and Xaris gives up and nods off, probably forgetting about the situation entirely. Jude allows himself a small sigh of relief before flicking his eyes towards the cameras trained on them. Maybe he should do something nice for Xaris? But as he watches the red light flicks off and he can only hope that what was caught will look good. He can't afford a slip up, not when he's this close.
He scans the rest of the group, all flopped over in their own piles of exhaution, and he feels bad for a moment, that he has the CEO on his side and they don't.
But that isn't his fault. And really, he deserves this debut.
5
"What are you two doing, exactly?"
Hong Daewon had only known he was going to be managing the new JYP group when he first applied for this job. The question concerning his MCing skills in the interview had confused him, but he'd done some acting in childhood and was confident he could handle himself if he happened to find a camera pointed at him during a variety show.
He had therefore been quite surprised when informed of his role in the survival show. Or indeed, that there was a show at all. At the start he had decided there was no harm in it, and that MCing could be fun. But having watched the struggles the boys were going through he was growing less comfortable with his role in events.
He finds himself retiring to the staff's room more often than not these days, eager to keep away from the trainees and their misfortunes.
Daewon has always liked kids, and though several of the competitors could easily be seen as adults they're still young in his mind and it's becoming increasingly difficult to keep himself neutral. And so he films his required scenes and then slinks away and hopes that the trainees he has found himself attached to will somehow survive to the final round.
It's a futile hope he knows, but it helps somewhat.
And when it doesn't he find himsel awake at ridiculous hours of the night, sitting in the staff room and watching the monitors, watching them struggle through each new challenge. That's where he is the night before the JYP Nation concert, sipping coffee and taking bites of a long-cooled bagel.
He notices when Seongjun and Koda leave the room, but he assumes they're off to practice something special, the way KimQ and Koda had in the previous challenge. So he doesn't think on it too much as he continues watching the screens.
Then he hears voices outside the room. He can't help but smirk at Seongjun and Koda's bickering, and he listens with mild amusement as he drops his bagel in the trash - he was never going to finish it anyway - and then arranges his face into something he hopes was serious.
He's pretty sure that if his hesitance shows on any cameras he won't be fired, but he's not taking any risks. So with a quick breath he pushes open the door.
He realizes quickly he must have almost hit Seongjun from the startled look on the young trainee's face. He holds his posture and expression to the careful neutral he's been practicing as he regards the two.
"What are you two doing exactly?"
He does let them into the staff room at the end of it. He doesn't think he's showing any favoritism since they'll be sharing it with everyone, and after all the staf doesn't need that many bottles of water, especially not when it's the boys working tirelessly at all hours of the morning.
He can't wait until all this is over with.
6
"Okay point."
Seokbin likes to consider himself a fair person.
Sure he has moments when he's not, but everyone has those. Generally speaking, he's fair. Of that's he's confident.
However today things have not been going very well for him, and maybe it's making him a little less patient and a little more snippy. He can admit that.
But there are reasons for it. First Collin went out of his way to be insufferable while Seokbin just wanted to have a quiet breakfast. Then Junho had the nerve to brush it off as if it was nothing!
Junho has been acting weird for a while now that Seokbin thinks about it. He's generally a pretty chill guy for the most part, unless a situation involves debuting in some way. Then he gets intense.
Maybe that's in then. This whole show must be getting to him. Seokbin can understand that, there are times it almost gets to him as well, but he tries to keep himself motivated and optimistic. You can't let them know they get to you, or things will only get worse.
He's seen it happen to, with Byunjae and TJ and even Na Sanghyun a bit. Things being situated just so to push them a little farther past breaking, because they slipped and showed that it was getting to them.
But today it's harder to keep himself distanced. Everything just feels more personal when you're completely exhausted, and Seokbin's mouth is running ahead of his mind.
He tries to balance it out by taking short naps during rest times, but a few minutes of light dozing isn't really compensating for days of constant stress and activity. It only helps enough that he notices when he's being a bit less mature than maybe he should be, but it doesn't actually stop him from going ahead with his complaints.
It's driving him crazy. They haven't gotten to him, and he won't let them know that they have. Or, haven't. Great, now his thoughts aren't making any sense either.
And so he opts to stop talking entirely. Better to be unseen than negatively noticed, and he's not doing too badly in the ranking at the moment. He can afford one week of limited camera time. Assuming they don't use the footage of him being a petty idiot from earlier.
But really, he knows that's an empty hope. He's seen it happen after all. Everything is orchestrated for drama and misery and he's stupidly got himself mixed up in it now.
Hopefully after this he'll be able to keep himself at arms length. Because really, it's hard enough staying indifferent without the drama targeted right at him. He wouldn't be able to handle anything more intense than this.
So he sits down and shuts up and prays that everything is be okay. Even when he knows that in this industry, it's a futile prayer.
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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