You woke up to your alarm blaring the next morning. You hadn't planned on falling asleep considering you had more than 17 hours before, but you gave in for a few hours at around three o'clock this morning. You stood up to get dressed and your head was pounding. "Aish..." you muttered as you you went to get some medication. Other than your headache though, you felt perfectly fine. When you finished getting ready, you looked at yourself in the mirror and put on the face you knew you had to keep on at school today. Even though you knew on the inside that you weren't okay, not even close. You practiced your poker face all the way to school, but it wasn't becoming any easier. Just because you lie to yourself for a long period of time doesn't make it true. As you walked onto school campus, you saw a bunch of people gathered around the announcement board. You were just getting curious when some of your friends from music ran up to you and exclaimed, "____! There's gonna be a competition! Anyone from the vocal department of the music program can participate!" They smiled brightly, then ran off to join the rest of their friends. Once the commotion had died down a bit, you walked over to see the announcement for the competition. It read:

Vocal Competition:
Come show us your passion and talent!
Open to any student in the vocal department!

Date: September 17th
Time: 7:00 PM
Place: The large amphitheater

Our winner will receive a special music trophy and
will also get the honor of having a plaque with their
name on it displayed in the music room.

If you wish to participate, the sign up sheet will be
available in the music room the rest of this week and
all of next week.

Hope to see you there!

You didn't even have to think about it. It was already a done deal. Of course you would participate because singing was your passion. Singing was one of the only things that gave you release. It was like a good friend you could always lean on and tell everything to because you knew it would never betray you. There was a little less than a month until the competition, but you knew you could prepare well enough. Maybe preparing for this competition and losing myself in the music will help me get over all of this... You were extremely determined now to put your whole heart into this show of vocal talent. Because now you had something to look forward to again.

The events of this morning put you in a better mood than you thought you'd be in and everytime your emotions began to creep into your thoughts, you simply took a deep breath and told yourself that you were fine. After multiple times doing this, four hours of school were finally done. Instead of going straight to lunch after 4^th period, you headed to the music room because you didn't even want to wait through those 45 minutes. You wanted to be one of the first ones on that list. You didn't know why you were so determined and "gung-ho" all of the sudden, but it might have had something to do with that fact that you needed something good and your life and this was that one thing. You arrived at your second home and and opened the door. You looked around the room a bit until your eyes rested on the sign-up sheet and you hurried over. Quickly, you signed your name and then clapped happily. You were officially going to be in the show. You were just thinking about how you had made such a drastic turn around from this morning when you opened the door to leave, looked to your right, and saw JongHyun and GyuRi wrapped up in eachother's arms and kissing. You couldn't even process anything. Every bad thought, memory, and feeling from the past couple days all came back in that one moment. You weren't broken now. No. After seeing that, you were shattered. You didn't know what to do. So you ran.

You didn't stop running until you were safely in the bathroom where you finally let out the sob you had been holding in. You hadn't wanted them to hear you, and it almost killed you to keep your sobs and emotions inside of you for that short amount of time it took to get to where you were right now. At this moment, you were glad nobody used the upstairs bathrooms during lunch because you didn't want anyone to ever see you like this. You were a mess. Your makeup was streaked and smeared and your eyes were red and swollen. And by this point, you were sobbing so loudly, you would be surprised if the whole school couldn't hear you. It just felt impossible to keep anything inside you anymore. Like, it physically hurt you to do so, so you just sat there on the ground, crying the hardest you had ever cried in your life, not even caring what anyone thought anymore. You didn't have the energy to be strong any longer. You just wanted everything to disappear. What's happening to me? The scariest thing about this question you asked yourself was that you couldn't answer it because you honestly had no idea. You could no longer pinpoint any single thing that had gone wrong. Everything was a big blur of those same feelings you had felt when JongHyun first told you except 100 times worse. It had gotten to the point where if anyone were to ask you what was wrong, you would most definitely explode because you had no idea what to tell them and even if you did, there was no way of explaining everything you felt. There was too many emotions and feelings. It was like you were trapped underwater and couldn't reach the surface no matter how hard you tried. You swam and swam, but it never came closer. If anything, it was getting farther away and eventually the pressure of the water became too great; suffocating.
And then you were drowning.

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 ~So, I was really tempted to write more in this chapter because I have some really great ideas, but it'll just have to wait until chapter 17, because this just felt... right. So I hope you all enjoyed your daily dose of drama ;D haha don't forget to comment and subscribe! ^^ ♥