The vision must be followed by the venture.  It is not enough to stare up the steps - we must step up the stairs.

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Donghae’s POV [Flash back]

            I woke up at around 6:25 to the sound of the dorm room’s door slamming shut. After rubbing my tired eyes I glanced over to the bunks to see both beds empty. Even Jason’s blankets were carelessly tossed onto the floor and his pillows were hanging on the edge of his mattress about to fall down. I knew Taecyeon had a knack for morning jogs but Jason never appealed to me as much of a morning person. After one loud yawn, I slipped my feet into a pair of fuzzy slippers on the side of my bed and skidded towards the window, taking a peek to see Jason heading towards one of the larger trees outside. During the afternoon the shade it provided was ideal for outdoor reading and relaxation, but seeing that it was so early in the morning, without a jacket Jason would probably catch a cold. Normally, I probably wouldn’t compromise my sleeping time for someone else’s well being but school starts soon. If Jason caught a cold he would just start first semester like a mess. Sighing, I pulled one of Jason’s sweaters lying on top of his backpack and made my way outside.

            “Maybe you’re the one… Maybe ojjeomyeon…” A shockingly familiar voice sang from a distance. My head perked up to see Jason sitting casually with his back leaning against the tree trunk. The familiar voice was no doubt coming from him. Even the song itself was familiar, but where did I hear it before?

            “Maybe it is true… Eonjena Neomu…” He continued to sing to himself. Despite the sudden gusts of wind I could hear the lyrics perfectly. My mind instantly replayed the same lyric but with Jieun’s voice instead of Jason’s. This was definitely that song Jieun sang with Wooyoung on their graduation! Jieun’s mom filmed the whole performance but the flaring lights made her low quality fancam hard to see. The audio turned out pretty decent so when she uploaded it onto a video sharing site and e-mailed me the link, I myself was enchanted by how perfectly their voices fitted together. Though I couldn’t recognize Wooyoung’s face from the video, what I couldn’t forget was his voice. The Jason that I’m sharing dorms with is Jang Wooyoung—Jieun’s first crush. Before I got close enough for Wooyoung to realize my presence, I turned back around as I spotted Taecyeon approaching him. Walking away casually with my back facing the two of them, I was sure they wouldn’t pay any attention to me. After all it hadn’t been long since we met so I was certain they couldn’t recognize me from behind.

            “Yo Wooyoung,” Taecyeon huffed with a tired voice, having probably just lapped the entire school. His greeting reassured me of Jason’s real identity. This was all my curiosity would allow me to hear, and as I ventured back towards the entrance of the school I passed a girl with long, straight brown hair who walked with a tall and unshakable poise. Her confident face emitted a conceitedly cautioning atmosphere around her as she headed towards Taecyeon and Wooyoung with a moderately amused smirk. Shivering as she passed me, I rubbed the back of my neck and felt my cold hands sending more involuntary shivers down my spine and entered the school with Wooyoung’s sweater still by my left arm.

Jieun’s POV

            I entered the first class of my first day with Eunjung at my side, taking a seat at our assigned desks. My desk was unfortunately at the very back corner; the fact reinforced by a loosely folded piece of white paper with ‘Lee Jieun’ written in black, bold font. Eunjung was fortunate enough to be sitting in the second row from the front, in perfect view of the teacher and of the whiteboard. My first class was musical theatre, and though there weren’t as many students enrolled in this course as dancing and singing, I could feel that competition was going to be rough. Like I predicted, once Eunjung was exposed to the other peers, her inner social butterfly appeared and I could guess that she probably already made five friends in the last two minutes with her sickeningly fake friendliness.

            “Welcome to musical theatre; you may all call me Kim Seonsaengnim!” Our musical theatre teacher gushed, standing front and centre of our cramp classroom with a warm and welcoming smile. Her name made me think back to the Kim Seonsaengnim in high school—the teacher who gave me the most support and it was sad that only now did I realize how much I missed her confidently encouraging remarks she gave me every day. This Kim Seonsaengnim, though looks friendly for as far as I know, could never replace the Kim Seonsaengnim that helped me to push out of my stage shy shell throughout high school.

            “I’ll start with attendance. When I call your name you must yell out your favourite musical out of the list up front!” She pulled down her bifocals until they reached the tip of her nose and began scrolling down the list attached to a clipboard in her hands after pushing up the overhead screen to reveal a list of twelve famous international musicals.

            “Once two people have chosen the same musical, it will be taken down from the list and the two that chose it must prepare to perform it together for the annual autumn showcase.” Kim Seonsaengnim explained, and began reading out the names. I squinted from the back of the classroom, trying to read her small and messy print on the board and stopped at the name of the third musical—Dreaming of Spring—the same performance I did with Wooyoung at our high school’s year end musical. The memories came flooding back to me and by the time my name was called, without hesitation I blurted,

            “Dreaming of Spring,” and the entire class turned to gasp at me. It was then that I realized out of all the musicals listed on the board, Dreaming of Spring was the only one that had a kiss scene. Now that I was in a serious art school, there was nothing called framing a kiss or alternating scenes of already world renowned musicals and plays. Back in high school when our adaptation of Dreaming of Spring had a dance scene was because Kim Seonsaengnim saw it unfitting for a high school to perform something so ‘R rated’ but in the original version the kiss scene was in it. Without question, she scribbled my name on the board under the musical name and moved on. With cheeks flushed bright red, I lowered my head onto my desk cowardly.

            “Dreaming of Spring,” A male voice declared proudly after me amongst the twenty-something students in our classroom. His choice caused more loud gasps to erupt from the class, and with uncontrollably blushing cheeks I scanned the classroom with my eyes for the person who just indirectly chose to steal my first kiss. Because I was dazing off earlier, I couldn’t catch his name. I found it out soon enough when she scribbled it beside mine.

            “Lee Kikwang…” I mumbled his name out loud.

            “Nice to meet you, Lee Jieun-sshi,” His face was now staring up at me, chin resting on the surface of my desk as he smiled. When did he even get there? My thoughts immediately grew violent as I imagined him to be a ert, and instinctively, I inched away while staring back confusedly. It was when he dropped his hand back to his side that I realized he was waiting for a hand shake.

            “You’re quite a shy person, aren’t you?” He assumed—and correctly at that—before pulling a chair from his desk in front of me, turning it to face mine. Nervously I muttered,

            “You do know that Dreaming of Spring has a—“

            “Kiss scene? I know.” He interrupted with a smug smile. Did he seriously not mind it at all? From the looks of his confidently outgoing personality along with his attractively cute baby face I could assume that he probably fitted quite high in the high school hierarchy of current irrelevancy. In a way, he reminded me of Wooyoung…

Wooyoung’s POV

            Sloppily straightening out my dress shirt, I entered the dance studio where my first dance classes were being held. It was crazy to think that they scheduled b-boying so early in the morning, but what shocked me even more was when I entered the room to see several Caucasian males doing windmills everywhere. How the heck are they so energetic? The speed and sync of their dance moves intimidated me a little, but once Taecyeon walked in all the tables had turned. Back in high school the two of us won first place in several b-boy competitions in our age group, which was probably what contributed most to our popularity status. Despite our many successes, I still had my fair share of doubts as to how far this kind of stuff would take me in life. Truthfully I never considered dancing or singing to really be a solid career of mine because of my own insecure doubts and fears. Seeing Taecyeon just jump into the dance studio with no care in the world, cutting past the group of Caucasians to bust out some of his moves really displayed the boldness I wish I had. This lack of assurance got me wondering—was this really what I wanted? All throughout my life I didn’t dare to expect anything of myself; everything that happened to me just felt like chance, but just how far can chance get me?

            “Yo Jason, you gonna join or what?” Taecyeon called out to me in fluent English. This was probably one of the first times he actually referred to me as Jason and coming from him, it did seem a little unfitting. With my English that improved with every passing day I responded,

            “Yeah.” The two of us were just fooling around, free-styling on the floor as if we owned the world, ignoring the snarls of comments from other people. By the time our teacher walked in, we were already drenched in sweat and dying of thirst. He restored order to our out-of-control class and started us back at the basics because there were a few first timers here. By the end of the first class, I learned that the three Caucasian guys were capable of doing windmills—and windmills only. It turned out that in our decreasing class of fifteen, Taecyeon and I were undoubtedly the most experienced.

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I had no afternoon classes today, and neither did Suzy. Taecyeon on the other hand wasn’t so lucky and somehow got enrolled into ballet, so like the loyal buddies we were, we sat outside the ballet studio and waited patiently, fighting the temptation to peek through the glass windows behind where we sat and giggle at how preposterous ballet was for Taecyeon.

            “So what did you mean last time when you said you came here for a dream?” Suzy suddenly broke the silence with her unexpected question. I never expected to have a conversation with her let alone having her start one, but talking to pass the time wouldn’t hurt.

            “It’s complicated.” I replied, unready to just open up to Suzy, who I still see as a cold hearted descendent of amphibians. Her cold blooded nature really suited my metaphor.

            “The Jieun girl hurt you enough to force you out of Korea didn’t she?” Suzy assumed, facing directly ahead as she spoke to me. It was scary how she never blinked when she was being serious and straight forward.

            “In a way, I guess you could say that.” I admitted, realizing how much of a coward I was for just leaving suddenly and without a word. I never even gave staying to endure everything a second thought, not even when Jieun’s mom phoned me at the airport. It could’ve been as simple as me running out of the airport to search for Jieun in every possible location and apologizing. The prideful me never let such a dramatically happy ending commence.

            “So have you found a dream yet?” Suzy wondered, now giving me eye contact.

            “I’m not sure. What about you?” My stare dropped to the floor and I began fiddling with my thumbs. She turned her head back to face the wall ahead of us and sighed—probably the first sign of emotion other than anger I’ve seen from her since we met.

            “I want to study vocal music more in depth, but once Taecyeon finishes at this school my parents are forcing me to go back to Korea with him.” She admitted with a defeated voice. Taecyeon and Suzy must be extremely close family friends to have their futures so intertwined.

            “If I want to stay in the entertainment industry then I’ll probably have to drop everything and become an idol.” She explained, creating an imaginary glowing light bulb above my head.  

            “An idol?”

            “Yes, you know, like SNSD and Super Junior.” I thought about life as an idol for a moment, remembering how fun variety shows seemed whenever I watched them on TV. I knew that one day I would no doubt return to Korea. If the options are this limited then chances are I’d probably end up as an idol as well. The thing is, I knew competition to get into the top entertainment companies internationally intense, so I would have to start taking things more seriously. Perhaps this was one step closer to finding a dream—considering possibilities.

            “You’re going to be an idol, aren’t you?” Suzy asked, sounding slightly more uninterested.

            “I guess so…”

            “Where does that Jieun girl fit in then?”

            “Hm?” Jieun’s name brought my attention back to Suzy completely.

            “Is Jieun not going to be part of your new found dream?” Suzy almost demanded with an impatient voice. I shuttered before answering,

            “I want to be someone who can protect her and watch over her when she’s scared, make her happy when she’s sad and laugh with her when she’s happy.” I confessed, replaying Jieun’s smiling face during the many days she spent together in our High school musical theatre room. To be able to see her smiling like that everyday would be a blessing to me.

            “Pabo,” Suzy coughed sarcastically. I glared at her. After just admitting something so personal she still has it in her to degrade me? She is really something. Rolling her eyes at me she lectured,

            “To protect someone, one must protect themselves first. To be able to make someone happy, one must be happy. If you can barely even watch over yourself here in Canada, how are you going to appear in front of her in Korea with your head held high, knowing you let me—a girl—guide you through life?” I considered her response for a moment before asking,

            “Are you happy, then?” Immediately she fell silent and I regretted opening my mouth so thoughtlessly. Seeing Suzy so speechless was almost frightening.

            “That doesn’t matter right now,” Suzy finally answered with her conceited nature back in full throttle, “Just focus on remembering to tie your own shoelaces before worrying about others.” Her eyes directed me to my undoubtedly untied shoelaces. I quickly knotted it into a tight bow and soon enough, Taecyeon joined us.

            “Ballet is seriously tiring!” Groaned Taecyeon who ed an arm over Suzy’s shoulder. She pushed it off immediately and began walking away from us—her natural cue for us to follow.

            If I dare to even hope that I’ll be able to return to Korea with the dignity to win back Jieun, then would the possibility of it happening really increase? To live worrying about results, fearing for my future and the unsteady path that it holds—how effectively can I adapt? Without something to fight for in my life, I may never be able to say that I have truly lived. Cheers to me, for beginning a new chapter in my life where I allow the adrenaline of fear and worry to push me past my limitations. Maybe, just maybe, the unexpected excitement of reaching success will be far more than worth it. 

A/N: This took me over 2 hrs to write XD It's a pretty long chapter compared to my usual as a treat for you all. I think the story is finally getting right back on track. It seems like my past chapters were completely unrelated to the theme of the fanfic but I've found back my inspirational mood to write--and to write well at that so I hope that this chapter will not disappoint any of you lovely readers! I worked really hard on this (even tho I didn't edit it yet haha). New character introduced! Lee Kikwang from B2ST! Hope this lights some anxious sparks in you all (:! i will try my best to update again soon! 

To protect someone, one must protect themselves first.

- Yoon Baekhee Dream High Episode 14