Ko Ahri had to admit that it was quite nice not being one of the new trainees anymore.

Sure it had been over three years now since she had first signed on with BigHit, but for a company that was growing so rapidly they didn't really have many trainees. Even now Ahri only has more experience than four of the other girls, and technically Kyungsoo started around the same time, just in a different company.

So whenever a new trainee started Ahri felt a rush of excitement at the prospect of being that much further from her old title of "new girl".

This year had actually yielded three new trainees, including the girl starting that day, which was rather odd considering there had never been more than one new trainee per year since she had joined. But really, who was she to complain? None of them were dancers anyway.

So she sat in the practice room with the other eight girls and stretched as they waited for their new coworker to appear.

"How old do you think she is?" Junghee wondered aloud. She was seated beside Ahri, as she often was, and had already finished stretching. She was now lounging back against one of the mirrors, focused mostly on a game on her phone though Ahri knew she was still listening to their conversation.

"I actually don't know. I only know she auditioned as a rapper so that makes two new rappers this year already." She replied with a shrug, lying back and begining to stretch out her spine.

Junghee smiled a bit. "That's too bad for Jinhyun though. She was the only rapper for a few years and now she has all this competition. It can't be easy."

Ahri switched sides for her stretch so she could frown at Junghee, not that her friend noticed it, wrapped up in her game as she was. "That's not nice, Jinhyun tries really hard. And we're technically competition but we get along just fine."

Junghee only shrugged. "I didn't mean anything by it." She finally looked up from her phone. "Really, I didn't. Some jerk online is cheating and it's a bit aggravating." She gave a genuinely apologetic smile, and Ahri sighed and sat up.

"Oh I know, you'd never be mean on purpose. Maybe put the game away for now though, we want to make a good impression on the new girl!"

Junghee smiled and did so, tossing her phone on top of her bag just as the door opened to admit one of the staff as well as an unfamiliar girl.

Ahri could tell right away that she was younger than the rest of them, even Selena who was only sixteen. She stood straight, her eyes sharp as the surveyed the room, but despite that her face showed clear signs of waning baby fat that made the girl look somewhat awkward as she tried to exude confidence.

Naturally Ahri spoke first. She always liked to meet the new girls as quickly as possible, which meant being as chatty as possible.

"Hello! I'm Ko Ahri, it's nice to meet you!" She gave her best smile to the new girl, who only gave a cool nod in return.

"Yvonne Han. You can call me Eve." She responded, tone as cool as her demeanour, and Ahri felt her smile falter.

"Well, um, that's certainly a unique name!" She offered after a moment of silence that none of the other girls filled.

"It's French. I'm half French."

Ahri saw Selena frown faintly off to the right, and she was sure Rebecca would be having a reaction to the news as well, though she wasn't in Ahri's line of sight.

Once again no one was saying anything so Ahri made another attempt to engage the new girl, who had been left alone in the doorway by the staff member, who had presumably gone back to his duties.

"Well that's neat! I've never met anyone who's French before!"

"Me either." Kyungsoo offered after another moment. "Where in France?"

"Paris." Eve replied bluntly.

Rebecca snorts. "Well that figures."

Eve immediately started glaring, clearing noticing the British accent in Rebecca's Korean. "And you're from London I assume, which is so much better."

Miyun's eyes were widening as the two biracial girls stared each other down, and Ahri sympathized. It was very quickly getting uncomfortable in the room.

"And now you're both in Korea!" She declared with a forced grin. "So why don't we all get along?"

Rebecca rolled her eyes but did sit back down. Eve hesitated but eventually went over to an empty spot to start stretching as well.

"Well that happened." Junghee quipped dryly, quietly enough that only Ahri could hear her. Ahri just sighed in response.

She'd really been hoping that would go better than it had, since it officially made three for three bad first impressions with the new trainees of 2016.

The dance coach arrived not long after and the group got to work on a simple choreography. Ahri naturally had no trouble picking up the dance, and after the first half hour she found herself spending more time assisting the other trainees than actually working on the dance herself.

She tried to linger around Eve, but the new trainee had no interest in the assistance, instead running the dance alone over and over, so Ahri eventually gave up. She ended up working with Kyungsoo and Jinhyun, as she often did during practices. Most of the older trainees didn't like her giving them instructions so she let Miyun help them out.

Jinhyun was struggling more than Kyungsoo, though Ahri knew well that it was only her own head that was getting in her way since the two girls were actually pretty equal in terms of their dance capabilities.

"It's a step-ball-change on the third beat, slightly off-kilter from the melody see? It matches the lyrics." It was the fifth time they were going over the measure and Ahri could tell Jinhyun was verging on giving up and moving on as she was often wont to do.

Jinhyun nodded robotically while Kyungsoo copied Ahri's movements despite having already achieved the step perfectly two tries earlier.

"I get it. It's clever really." Kyungsoo repeated the move. "I think it's cool when dances match the lyrics; it's sort of like telling a story."

Ahri grinned brightly. "It is! Should we try it with the previous measure too? That could help since it all flows together."

Both of the younger trainees agreed and Ahri did her best to hum the song while tapping out the beats with her foot. The two managed to stumble through the two measures with mostly minimal mistakes, so Ahri decided to move on.

"How were the terrible two?" Junghee greeted when the practice was over and they were heading for the lunch hall.

Ahri shook her head. "They're improving."

Junghee laughed. "That's Ahri speak for nothing has changed. Why do you keep working with them? You could have joined me you know. I was creating new dances for the song, it was a lot of fun! Miyun even jumped in for a bit after Rebecca rage quit, it was great."

Ahri's eyes widened sadly. "I didn't know! Junghee you have to come get me when you do that stuff, I can't read your mind!" She groaned loudly. "Now I'm going to spend all day regretting that."

The other girl just laughed again. "No you won't Riri, you'll forget about it once the afternoon lessons start. I know you didn't practice those vocal exercises that Coach Kim told you to do on Wednesday. He's not going to be happy."

Ahri groaned again as they entered the lunch hall. "Don't remind me. I don't get the point of those stupid exercises anyway! I'm a dancer - the best dancer! I should be focused on that!" She whined pathetically as they got into line for food.

Junghee grinned and rolled her eyes. "Such humility. And really, how are you going to get better at singing if you don't practice at least a little bit? I'm always happy to help if you want."

Ahri waved her off as she picked up a tray. "I'm fine Junghee, quit mothering. Leave the singing to the singers."

"Being an idol requires singing you know." Junghee pointed out, though her tone was more concerned than condescending.

Ahri shrugged as they carried their food to one of the open tables. "I can sing enough. There are lots of idols with no singing or rapping ability at all, I'm already better than them probably. And if I slack in my dancing I might lose it! That would be even worse I think."

"If you say so." Junghee let the conversation drop and they moved on to discussing Eve.

"I think she's just shy. It can't be easy moving to a new country and all." Ahri decided. "I mean, I know I would be nervous."

Junghee laughed. "Maybe, but we both know you'd make friends pretty fast. I dunno, maybe she just needs time to get used to things. That show down with Becky in the practice room makes me think she isn't really that shy."

Ahri frowned. "Maybe you're right. We shoud try to talk to her more!" She looked around, hoping the new trainee might appear in her line of sight on cue. Unfortunately the only other people in the lunch room were some staff members, and Rebecca sitting in a corner, typing away on her phone.

"She's a rapper Ri, remember? They have group lessons right now." Junghee grinned teasingly. "You only just dropped out of those last month, you really should remember."

Ahri sighed dramatically. "Right, I forgot. Well, we'll see her in the dorms tonight anyway. We have to talk to her then!"

With the plan set, they left to go to their private lessons. As expected, Ahri got into trouble with her voice teacher, but she didn't mind that much. She sang well enough she thought, and they had amazing singers like Becky and Selena to do all the hard singing parts so what did it matter if she couldn't sing as well as them?

She went back to the dorms early that night. Normally she would stay late to do some dance excersices and routines with Miyun and Junghee, but tonight she wanted to talk with Eve so she went back earlier than usual.

Eve was sitting in the living room listening to music when Ahri walked in.

Ahri waved to get her attention, and Eve frowned but paused the music and took out her earbuds.

"Hi?" Eve sounded a little annoyed that she was interupted, but Ahri pushed on with a bright smile.

"Hello! I'm Ko Ahri, we kind of met earlier at the dance practice!" She introduced herself again and Eve frowned.

"You already told me that. Is there something else?"

Ahri's smile dropped very quickly at the cold response. She had really wanted to be friends with Eve but it seemed like the other girl didn't want her to be around. So she shook her head.

"Ah, no, sorry. I just wanted to apologize for Becky earlier, she's kind of intense but she's really nice underneath!" Ahri smiled but it was a bit strained, and honestly she was lying a little since she didn't really know if Becky was nice or not. They still weren't friends even after six months that Becky had been at BigHit.

Eve shrugged. "Okay, but you don't have to do that. She can apologize herself if she means it."

Ahri shuffled in the doorway before waving again awkwardly. "Okay, well, goodnight then."

Eve nodded and put her earbuds back in. Ahri went up to her room that she shared with Junghee and sighed. That had not gone how she wanted it to at all, and now she was stuck at the dorms instead of dancing with Junghee and Miyun.

It hadn't been a very good day. But hopefully tomorrow would be better. WIth that in mind she quickly showered and put on her PJs, snuggling into bed and willing herself to fall asleep quickly so tomorrow would come and be a better day than today.

A/N: Okay, we're starting! Every chapter is going to be from different trainees' perspectives, so this one was Ahri and the next one will be someone else, so no one is the "main" character really. I'm not sure exactly how many chapters there will be, but I'm thinking between 20 or 30. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this first chapter - it's been a long time since I've written something that wasn't a paper or report so sorry if it was dry! I will hopefully get better over the course of the story!   ~Emma