There isn't much that can phase Jihyo. She's known to be reliable, confident, in charge. Yet when Son Chaeyoung does little more than look at her, annoyance flares within.

The two of them are undoubtedly the best performers at this school, over fifty awards earned between them. Despite this they could not be more different, even their base views on performance as an art way too distant for the gap to be bridged. Whoever had thought that assigning them to the same practice room was an absolute fool and would definitely be hearing from her soon.

The amount of times that Chaeyoung had changed her choreography or lyrics at the last minute, recklessly adapting things with no thought and yet still managing to win over her and her hours on hours of work perfecting the routine, pushing herself to her limits, her freedom and freshness and fearlessness rendering all the hard work useless, definitely did not help her feelings of animosity one bit.

Nor did the schools newspaper, that was keeping a running tally of the number of contests each of them had won. Rumours of arguments that never happened filling the gossip sections regardless of her constant denials.

It was the very same newspaper that had reported on the loss of funding for the schools arts program a few days prior; No doubt that was the reason that the two of them had been shafted into the same room, the fact they had been the schools main source of fame in the past few years seemingly irrelevant.

It bothers Jihyo. She knows how loudly Chaeyoung blasts her music, has heard it through the walls of a supposedly soundproof room before. How they expect her to practice with her when she knows she'll barely be able to hear herself sing, she's not sure.

The wonderful idea of divided scheduled practice time had already been shot down, Chaeyoung insisting that she can only practice when she's "inspired" or whatever. Jihyo wouldn't be surprised if she'd just said that to disagree with her.

☆

And so it came to be that less than ten minutes into Jihyo's carefully timetabled practice, warm-up barely completed, Chaeyoung enters the room with a person, presumably a friend, by her side. She isn't even wearing clothing suitable to dance in, scuffed jeans that trail on the floor slightly as she walks and a leather jacket that would surely make her overheat with mere minutes of exertion.

Chaeyoung and her friend ignore her, seemingly oblivious to the scowl directed at them as they slump against the far wall, animated chatting interspersed with the scribble of a pen in a dishevelled notebook, interrupting the quiet of the room. Their voices are unfamiliar, a distraction from the dance steps her mind desperately tries to remember. This becomes a regular occurrence, a constant sound that begins to fade into the background allowing Jihyo to refocus, reconfigure her mind, and practice as she should.

But of course Chaeyoung, the schools musical prodigy child, doesn't even care that she's being a disturbance, too busy conversing, wasting the time she should be spending practicing. Obviously she'd only arrived to keep up appearances, likely her next performance would only be completed the day before the competition as it usually was and now the reason behind that was obvious. She seemed to always spend all her time talking and not trying to commit to the task at hand. The fact that she could beat her, without nearly as much dedication, was surely a testament to her talent.

☆

This continued for a while, about three weeks aka almost fifteen practice sessions, before Chaeyoung breaks the trend by appearing at the door alone, no friend in sight. Jihyo doesn't want to get her hopes up, but maybe she's finally there to practice.

Unfortunately she had forgotten what that would entail, deafeningly loud music reminding her why she had been so opposed to this in the first place.

It took a whole two minutes for Jihyo to get tired of the noise and race over to turn the speakers off. Deafening noise being replaced by hollow silence and the pressure of Chaeyoung's glare on her back.

"Why?" Is all Chaeyoung says as Jihyo turns to make eye contact, frowns on both of their faces.

"Why what?" Is the lazy response from Jihyo.

"...did you just turn my music off?" Confusion clouding the question that was supposed to sound sharp.

Jihyo raised an eyebrow, stating plainly, "because it's way too loud."

"The walls are soundproofed so that doesn't really -" Chaeyoung's protest is cut off by a louder voice.

"Yes it does since this is a shared practice room." Jihyo was trying her best to stay calm, taking a breath before continuing, "Not all of us can do that with such noise."

"I uh… sorry?" it was impossible to tell whether she was being genuine with how dazed she sounded, "I forgot that you practice here too now."

"Yeah well i do so…" she cuts herself off, muttering under her breath, "have spent the past few weeks doing so but okay…" She's not sure how but it appears her mumbles were loud enough for Chaeyoung to catch, somehow surprising the girl. Had she really not noticed her?

"You were here? Sorry dude i was working on lyrics with Dahyun and when I'm in writing mode i don't notice anything" words spat out of hastily, a blush spreading across Charyoung's cheeks and a hand scratching the back of her neck in embarrassment "uh… sorry again. For that noise too i mean."

"It was annoying but.. I got used to it I guess."

"oh sor-" yet another apology attempted.

Too many apologies make Jihyo uncomfortable, especially when they're starting to make her believe her rival is maybe not as terrible as she had thought her to be. A distraction, change of topic, is what they need now and so she says, "Why do you practice with such loud music anyway?"

"Oh its dumb i just. nobody can hear me if I mess up then? and I mess up a lot at first so…. I just prefer it, I guess. Plus then like I can almost feel the beat. Makes it easier to dance in time and stuff." The rambling is… endearing almost, not that Jihyo would admit that, especially