chapter 1

As the cameras roll, everything that goes on is being captured. However, only the editor's favourite kids end up being known to the world. What truly goes on in the lives of our main characters?

AMUSE KOREA | LEE BAEKHYUN

"Hyung~" Baekhyun called out warmly one last time to his long time manager before heading into the building.
His manager sighed looking at the big baby and feeling a little worried. He was about to head back to his car but he heard Baekhyun's voice. 
"Yes, Baek? Need a hug?" He said as if he read Baekhyun's mind.
Baekhyun ran towards his manager and gave him a huge bear hug.
"Hyung, they are going to confiscate my phone. Please help me tell the boys that I'd miss them and remember to feed them, if not they'd just be gaming all day and forget to eat. Hyung I know you're busy too, so take some rest while I'm off and don't miss me too much!" Baekhyun then excitedly skipped away with his baggages.

The staff collected his belongings and he had to fill up some forms about his personal information. Meanwhile, he looked around to see other trainees streaming in, some were groups of boys, some were groups of girls and some were groups of boys and girls. He couldn't help but feel a little lonely. Initially, him and his group auditioned together for the show. However, none of s made the cut. Baekhyun was a little troubled but Baek being Baek, tried to shake off his negative thoughts and replaced them with positive ones. He told himself that he was going to make friends with the people sitting around him.
                                                         
"Hi! My name is Lee Baekhyun and I'm from Amuse Korea!" Baekhyun greeted joyfully to the people in the big hall. It was half filled and there were chatters when he entered the hall. Baekhyun had his eyes on seat number 10. It was his favourite number. The seat beside him was empty until the Starship trainees appeared. The girl took the seat beside him and the boy took number 8. He recognised the boy instantly. He is a Instagram model and is pretty popular.
"Hello I'm Choi Saedi! Oohh wait- you're from Double Strand?"
People rarely recognise Baekhyun, but probably because she was a trainee, many trainees learn the names of small idol groups as well.
"Ooh Double Strand?! Hi, I'm Kwon Seungjae. I remember learning the choreography to Headache, it's pretty tough." The Instagram star greeted.
"Hi! I'm Lee Baekhyun. I'm- Uhh I was Double Strand's leader." Baekhyun smiled at the pair warmly and was excited to make friends.
From time to time, when there were funny moments they would laugh a little together. When Baekhyun went out for his evaluation, they cheered on him.

For the billionth time that day, Baekhyun brought out his billion dollar smile and greeted, "Hello I am Lee Baekhyun from Amuse Korea."
The mentors were pretty nice and smiled at Baekhyun as well, thus he wasn't too intimidated by them. He felt that many times the editing made the mentors look way scarier than they actually were.

Baekhyun performed MOBB's Hit Me.

"You were Double Strand's leader... Where are your members?" Cheetah asked out of curiousity. Though feeling a little scared that he could say something wrong, Baekhyun smiled and replied confidently, "They are training hard and waiting for me to bring home the bacon!"
At this point it was pretty clear to everyone that the mentors liked his bright and soft personality, though he didn't have the best singing skills, his rap was fairly well done. There was much room for improvement, but the mentors weren't very harsh on Baekhyun and he received a C.

After all the evaluations, everyone moved into the dormitory. Saedi high fived Seungjae for at least 10 times before going to the girls' dorm. Baekhyun smiled in envy as he waited for Seungjae. They were going to be room mates for the next 3 months... or at least, he hoped that it'd be 3 months. Someone as popular as Seungjae would definitely last the three months right? Or at least that's what Baekhyun thought.
"Room mates!" 180cm tall Seungjae rested his arm on 174cm Baekhyun.
Baekhyun shook his head as he pushed Seungjae's arm away.
"You guys are cute." Unlike others who would jump to conclusions or bombard Seungjae with personal questions, Baekhyun just made a simple comment, which Seungjae didn't really mind hearing.
"Thanks hyung, we're not together..." Seungjae replied while unpacking his belongings.
Embarrassed, Baekhyun froze and turned to Seungjae, looking extremly apologetic. He then said, "Seungjae, I'm sorr-"
"Let's debut together, hyung." Seungjae stopped in his tracks and prompted Baekhyun to return his brofist, which Baekhyun did. Baekhyun smiled at his new made friend, excited for his new adventure. 
 

PLEDIS | LIANG YONGJIE

Before handing in his phone to the staffs, Yongjie made sure to text his parents. He stared at his phone for a while, seemingly waiting for someone's reply.

'u're gna do gr8 i know it' -minghao
'don't embarass me. you got this!' -yueyue

After he read the 2 text messages he immediately surrendered his phone to the staff. Though he was still dead nervous with these cameras watching all his little movements, these 2 texts gave him reassurance that he was going to be alright.

Yongjie bit his lip as he ran through the dance steps in his head. Soobin and Anna were giggling and talking excitedly about the other trainee's evaluations.
"Youngjae! You alright there?" Anna asked, feeling a little concerned when she saw his stiff-looking facial expression.
The 3 of them sat right at the mid point of the rankings. seats 50,51 and 52. Yongjie sat at sit 50, which was at the most corner. He would often end up zoning out into his dance choreography while the girls chattered away.

Things only headed for the worse when Pledis was called up. Yongjie has never felt his heart race that quickly. 3 years wasn't a short time, neither was it extremely long. Compared to many other trainees, Yongjie didn't exactly train for the longest time. However, Yongjie had always been a promising trainee in the eyes of his company and his company's trainers.In fact, Yongjie was talented enough to be the only male trainee selected for Produce 100. If he were to mess up, he couldn't imagine the reactions from his manager, his vocal trainer, his dancer, his parents, and his best friends, especially Xu Minghao, also his senior in the company and the guy whose song he would have been covering for the audition.

Yongjie was warming up his vocal chords by humming a few notes until he heard a quivering voice, "Soup I'm scared." It didn't help that his fellow trainees were equally afraid as Yongjie. Soobin alone was confident... Or maybe she wasn't, Yongjie couldn't tell. But when Soobin checked on him, he just replied, "No worries Soup, I'm okay." He wasn't.

The 3 walked onto stage and Yongjie felt the bright light piercing into his eyes. Cameras still everywhere, a hundred or so pairs of eyes fixated on him, the trainee coming from the company that produced 'Seventeen', one of the top boy groups in Korea. And he was representing that. 
"H-Hi, I am Liang Yongjie from Pledis." Yongjie did know how he looked like but he was 100% positive that he couldn't feel his face, nor his legs when he stood there. As he danced to Seventeen's Don't Wanna Cry, he knew that he lacked power because of his shaky legs. He couldn't focus on the movements and missed the important beats. Singing was a mess, though he had a naturally good sounding voice, he wasn't enunciating because his brain was in a mess and he forgot some parts of the lyrics. Yongjie assumed that the mentors knew the fact that he was the sole male trainee chosen out of many and thus was extremely disappointed with him. 

F class had 11 boys and Yongjie moved into the dormitory quietly unlike the rest in F class, all excitedly trying to make friends. After packing quickly, Yongjie left the room and headed over to the practice room to make sure he nailed Just Dance. It was a sleepless night for Yongjie. It wasn't the fact that he went to F class that bothered him, but the fact that he ruined his best friend's song and when the episode airs, people that had such high hopes for him would be extremely disappointed. Thus, that very night, he stayed up and ran through Just Dance over and over again.

"Annyeonghase- Oh! Nihao(hello)!!" Xueting entered the practice room and Tongtong followed behind.
"Hello."Yongjie responded in Mandarin, and then continued to practice.
It was 4AM in the morning and trainees began streaming in. By 4AM, Yongjie had already committed the full choreography to memory.
"Can't believe you're in F class. You're so amazing!" Tongtong commented as she watched in awe.
"Let's get cracking!" Xueting said as she dragged Tongtong closer to the mirror. 
Xueting then turned to Yongjie and said, "do help us out, bro." Yongjie nodded as he continued to go through the little details in his dance steps.
 

SM | LEE SUNGJIN

(Continuation from chapter 0)
Sungjin watched as Jaehoon chased Heeyeon, not sure if he was irked by the fact that they were being noisy or the fact that there was a speck of possibility that Moon Jaehoon may like Heeyeon.
"Stare, stare." Heeyeon stopped in front of Sungjin and said with her arms crossed while shaking her head gently.
"What's this?" Sungjin replied, puzzled.
"Well aren't you a confused gay?" As the words left Heeyeon's lips, Sungjin felt guilty for some reason, almost as if Heeyeon exposed his sin.
"Moon Jayden, you were chasing after me and checking Sungjin's reaction." Heeyeon smirked at Jaehoon. Sungjin heaved a sigh of relief after hesring that it wasn't about him.
"I'm not gay, noona." Jaehoon said confidently as he took a huge step towards Sungjin. He got close to Sungjin's face and flashed a bright smile. "Are you sure he's not the one who has a crush on me?" Jaehoon spoke as he looked right into Sungjin's eyes.
At this point Sungjin was completely flustered, but with his years of modelling and acting training, keeping a straight face wasn't difficult for him at all.

The atmosphere changed when Jeongyeon stepped into the training room. 
"Guys! Let's do a final round of practice! We have to go soon!" Jeongyeon encouraged the team to get into their positions. Heeyeon and Jaehoon quickly got into their positions while Sungjin dragged his feet. Sungjin wasn't exactly very fond of Jeongyeon. Though she was extremely talented, Jeongyeon always seemed like the odd one of the group, like a model student, or a teacher's pet amongst a bunch of bad students.

The SM trainee arrived late because they had a later call time than all the other trainees. Like spoilt children, most of the things were done for them by their managers and they just had to wait for their makeup to be done, and get dressed to be on stage. And for Sungjin, he's used to being pampered, especially because he's Lee Soo Man's beloved nephew.

On stage, the SM trainees performed exactly like how they practiced a few hours ago. To most well trained trainees, they would have seemed rather... mediocre. Sungjin knew well enough that he wasn't a good representation of a 'good SM trainee'. He knew well enough that SM probably placed him and Jaehoon in this show for their exposure and he hated the fact that he'd constantly be compared with Jaehoon and he hated that they were similar. 

Just as Sungjin expected, the mentors expressed their disappointment towards both him and Jaehoon. Just when would they talk about them as individuals? Sungjin was in deep thought until he heard Heeyeon's denfense. Sungjin always saw Heeyeon as this crazy girl that he looks up to... at times. Though he didn't express it, he was was grateful for wild elder sister character like Kim Heeyeon in his life. But she could be really y sometimes... As Heeyeon's identity was revealed, Sungjin was pretty much enjoying Heeyeon's embarassment. Though he couldn't understand why she had to hide it.

"A, Moon Jeongyeon, Kim Heeyeon. B, No one. C, no one. D, Lee Sungjin. F, Moon Jaehoon."

Sungjin received his grades like a death sentence and he was utterly pissed. It was as if Heeyeon wasted her energy to speak up for them, and worse, he wasn't in the same class as Moon Jaehoon. It hit Sungjin that the latter situation bothered him a little more.

After their own evaluations, the SM trainees had to sit through all the other evaluations. As Sungjin watched, he found himself dozing off. And before he knew it, he woke up with his head on Jaehoon's shoulder. Realising his actions, Sungjin immediately sat up straight. 
"Don't miss me while you're in D class." Jaehoon whispered.
Ridiculed, Sungjin sent Jaehoon a neck slice.
"ACK. Dude-" 
"If you're gonna miss me, you can just catch up." Sungjin whispered back to Jaehoon before winking at him, as he witnessed Jaehoon's most confused facial expression.
With Sungjin's peripheral vision, he sees Heeyeon sitting beside Jaehoon, mouthing 'gayyyyyy' at Sungjin, while he pretends to not see Heeyeon.

STARSHIP | KWON SEUNGJAE

"And lastly, I repeat, no crossing over to the female dorms." The staff gave Seungjae the look after making his exit.
Seungjae rolled his eyes as he headed over to pick up his belongings. Seungjae was grateful to be in the same class as Saedi. It meant that they could train together everyday until re-evaluations. 
"Choi Saedi! Don't be a to the other trainees!" Seungjae said jokingly, while being slightly worried that Saedi would be bullied or find it difficult to find friends.
"Dude, you're the one that should stop being a . Make many friends, JJ. Too bad I can't be in the same class as Linnie unnie. She's too good." Saedi, like Seungjae joked around as well.
"Alright then I'll see you." Seungjae lifted his hand, promting for a high five. Saedi high fived Seungjae for at least 10 times before going to the girls' dorm.
Saedi was a soul mate to Seungjae. Sometimes, he felt like she was exactly like him. And for some reason, seeing her just made him smile a lot. They spent years training together and being best friends. Though Seungjae isn't exactly sure his feelings for her are romantic, but he knows that he feels something special about this girl... could it be just immensely strong friendship?
Seungjae turned to see his new made friend, Baekhyun waiting for him. Baekhyun was like a really kind big puppy. Seungjae stepped into Produce 100 feeling competitive, but as soon as he saw Baekhyun, he decided that maybe he didn't want to fight everyone.
"Room mates!" 180cm tall Seungjae rested his arm on 174cm Baekhyun. 
Baekhyun shook his head as he pushed Seungjae's arm away. Baekhyun was just nice and fun to tease.
"You guys are cute." Unlike others who would jump to conclusions or bombard Seungjae with personal questions, Baekhyun just made a simple comment, which Seungjae didn't really mind hearing.
"Thanks hyung, we're not together..." Seungjae replied while unpacking his belongings.
"maybe." Seungjae mumbled without allowing anyone to hear.
Embarrassed, Baekhyun froze and turned to Seungjae, looking extremly apologetic. He then said, "Seungjae, I'm sorr-"
"Let's debut together, hyung." Seungjae stopped in his tracks and prompted Baekhyun to return his brofist, which Baekhyun did. 
Seungjae was glad that found a friend in the giant human beagle Baekhyun hyung, who was quite unlike the other trainees. 

Night fell and some trainees went to bed. Seungjae being the worrywart, was lying on his bed while staring at the ceiling. Thousand of worries filled his head as he pictured how Jaelin, his elder sister having a hard time finding friends and Saedi, his best friend not being able to do well. Seungjae went down from his top bunk to see Baekhyun on the lower bunk, zoning out and staring into space as well.
"Hyung isn't tired?" Seungjae asked.
"Umm? Wanna go practice?" Baekhyun flashed his signature smile.
"Great minds think alike." Seungjae said as he put on his yellow sweater with a big letter 'C' on the back.
"Let's get the purple ones!" Baekhyun encouraged Seungjae as he also put on his yellow sweater.

The pair practiced together through the night as they learn more and more about one another throughout the little breaks they have in between. When Saedi went to the training room in the morning, she thought Seungjae had already found a replacement of her. 
"Somebody has a new bestfriend!" 
"Oh you're here?" Seungjae turned to see Saedi folding her arms, walking into the practice room with some girls, "hey... you're no different!"
Seungjae was relieved to know that Saedi made new friends and he went back to practicing with Baekhyun.

YGKPLUS | SO JINGYU

As soon as Jingyu stepped into area, he was in awe. He's never seen that many cameras and he made sure to say hi to each and every single one soon as he saw one. Jingyu only entered the company recently and he still wasn't used to cameras.
"Shaun hyung, catch up!" Doyoung called out to Jingyu who was still mesmerised by the place and the cameras.
Jingyu caught up with the group and was passed a form to fill out his personal information. Being an American born Korean, some questions in the form got him scratching his head. Seeing Jingyu having some trouble, Hyunwoo went to his rescue.
"Shaun ah, don't just stand there. Ask if you need help!" Hyunwoo patted Jingyu's arm reassuringly.
Hyunwoo guided Jingyu through a few of the blanks in the form, completed it with him and then submitted it for him.

The YGKPLUS trainees went into the big auditorium and the seats were pretty much taken. There was a row with 10 seats but there were 11 of them. Seeing the situation, Jingyu smiled at the trainees and voluntarily moved up a step to sit seat 59, which was right above the rest who then sat on seats 79 to 88. He greeted his new neighbours shyly and slightly regretted his decision. To his left was a Chinese girl from Source Music and to his right was a rather pretty looking girl from Maroo. Being the awkward kid with his barely fluent Korean, he spotted the little camera in the corner and started interacting with it instead of the two girls surrounding him

Throughout the day, Jingyu was seen fiddling with his fingers and interacting heavily with the cameras. Jingyu wasn't feeling particularly nervous, but it was more of awkwardness that he was feeling. Maybe it was his awkward smile and clueless facial expression that left people a bad impression of him. People weren't usually very fond of him and though Jingyu knew, he chose to pretend to not know what was going on all the time because to him, ignorance is bliss. After all, this show is a battle. In fact, this whole industry is like a war behind all the sparkly costumes and stages and everyone has a mask on. So Jingyu is a foreigner. If he doesn't fight for himself, he knows that nobody else would. Well, at the very least, Hyunwoo is still a helpful fellow trainee to him.

Maybe if he acted a little more enthusiastically, push a little harder, stay up a little later or smile a little brighter someone might just notice him. Thus, every moment with a camera in sight, Jingyu was a little more extra because every camera that's shooting him was an opportunity for him to be noticed. To others he seemed like an attention seeker, but to him, he was really just working hard.

When YGKPLUS was called, Jingyu sprung out of his seat and joined his fellow trainees and headed backstage. He knew he wasn't the most skilled, but he also knew that he doesn't actually have to be. 

"No mistakes. That's all. Just no mistakes, Shaun So." He told himself as the group walked up the stage.

Before the performance, the mentors asked a few questions. The group was too young and too shy to speak up and were waiting for Hyunwoo to do so. However, Hyunwoo at that point was way to nervous to even speak. Thus, Jingyu jumped at the chance to answer some of them and prayed hard that none of his parts would be edited out.

The guys team performed Go Go.

"No mistakes." Jingyu mumbled as he unwillingly put on his 'D' sticker. He looked over to the only guy in the group that would ever bother about him, but of course, Kim Hyunwoo deserved that 'A'. 
"Congrats, Hyunwoo!" Jingyu put on a bright smile and cheered along with all the other boys as he tried to swallow the bitterness in his throat.

After all evaluations, the trainees are sent to their dormitories.
"Gyu hyung! We're room mates!" A bright and innocent Dongmin caught up with Jingyu's pace and smiled at him. Jingyu returned an emotion-lacking smile while still being troubled by his evaluation result and how he could get more people's attention. 

YUEHUA | AHN CHILHYUN

"Wait your name is Ahn Chilhyun?!" was BoA's first question upon seeing the Yuehua trainees on stage.
"Yes! My mom likes Kangta sunbaenim." Chilhyun answered proudly, masking his embarassment.
"Wow, I'll let him know!" BoA chuckled.
Rather than being nervous for his performance, Chilhyun's brain was still recovering from the embarassment he had from cheering Alexis on previously. But then again, he definitely did not regret it.

The girls in his company performed first and as usual, he was impressed by his best friend Baek Songyi. Sometimes, in fact many times he had caught himself in awe when he sees Songyi on stage. If Lex-O didn't exist, this girl would probably have been his idol. However with Ahn Chilhyun's 2 braincells, he would never admit that he has a crush on his bestfriend.

Chilhyun performed 'Don't Make Money' along with Songyi.

They performed similarly to how they usually did, if not slightly better, and the crowd was hyped too. The mentors seemed rather impressed until Taemin asked if Chilhyun could dance. Before the show, Songyi suggested that Chilhyun prepared a dance segment. But Chilhyun and his ego felt that his rap would win the mentors and thus spent all his time perfecting his rap. With all honesty and barely any second thoughts, Chilhyun replied Taemin, loud and clear with a 'Nope!'.

After receiving an 'F', Chilhyun knew he made a grave mistake by not heeding Songyi's advice but he knew the mentors were pretty impressed with his little rap, so he wasn't actually that disappointed after all.

Chilhyun and his randomness got him his first friend in F class. The conversation was kinda weird but at least he made a good friend. It went a little something like...
"You look like my best friend." Chilhyun said while he scooted beside Jaehoon.
"Huh is that a pick up line?"
"What-" 
"Nah can't be. Unless your best friend is EXO's Sehun or BTS's Jungkook."
"My best friend is not that impressive... but he is after all, Astro's Cha Eunwoo."
"Oh. Guess he looks kinda good then. But I'm the one and only teenage heartthrob."
"Right, I'm Ahn Chilhyun by the way, Mr... teenage heartthrob."
"Know you, Mr iconic. You spat some bars just now but your 'I can't dance' was a bad move."
"Dang should I have not said that I couldn't dance?" 
"You're only realising it now?"
"I thought I was just being honest?"
"Wow bro."
"BRO."
"I'm a 98-liner."
"yEsSs I'm a 97-liner."
"Chilhyun HYUNGGG"

And that's how straight men make friends. Chilhyun was the straight man, his new friend's... still unsure.