After the shocking announcement of Seulyong's relationship with Doojoon, the girls of Solibaljeon quickly adapted to the fact that their quirky leader wasn't seriously hitting on innocent younger male idols and had a stable relationship with one of their sunbaes instead.

"So this was the reason Junhyung-oppa had written LUV to us," Sumin muttered once when she was in one of the producing rooms, sprawled out on a comfortable sofa while observing how Yuntue was working on a composition that had occupied her mind for the past few months, "He wanted to support his leader's girlfriend."

"I think that was very considerate of him to gift us a song. After all it helped us to gain more interest for our group."  Yuntue mused, "But truthfully, I'd like to write our next comeback song myself."

"Yah, who told you that you are going to be the person who'll compose our next title track? You already wrote the majority of our debut song, it would be just fair if Sumin and I could also show our composition skills," Hyehyun chimed in. She was sitting next to a keyboard, playing different chords and trying to compose a fitting melody.

"But I'm the assigned main composer and it's been more than a year since our debut," Yuntue argued, crossing out and writing in lines.

"And I'm also a composer and until now I never had the chance to show my talent on a lead track," Hyehyun sighed. "What do you think, Minnie? Don't we deserve to get a bit credit for our songwriting too?"

Sumin blinked bashfully, a bit shy that her opinion was asked in the squabble. "I guess it should just depend on who has the better song to offer."

"Minnie, you are awesome," Hyehyun replied, a competitive glint in her eye.

"Let's have a friendly competition then," Yuntue said out loud what she and Hyehyun both were thinking. "All three of us will compose a song and we will send them to the management team without telling them who wrote which one. They can pick the best one which will be our next comeback song."

"I'm in," Hyehyun exclaimed. The past few days there was a tune floating around in her head and she couldn't wait to put it on paper (or the composing program which had been stored on the computers at SM Entertainment).

"I'd like to participate too." Sumin mumbled.

"How much time do we need?" Yuntue asked the other two.

"Two weeks will be fine," Hyehyun responded and Sumin nodded.

Yuntue smirked at her two band mates.

"Alright. I don't know how you feel but I'm very excited for this. There is this phrase about a songwriter under pressure being unable to create a good melody but I feel that this competition will make me only more creative.“

For her songwriting task, Hyehyun had planned to do her very best. In the past she had let Joonmyun hear all of her songs before she finished them. He was honest with his criticism – praising her when she created an especially catchy tune and giving criticism if her song was boring.

Even though Joonmyun wasn't as advanced in songwriting as she was, he had a good ear for music and could tell if the song lacked something and what was actually lacking. After spending multiple hours on a piece of music, it wasn't easy to put a distance between oneself and ones composition and say objectively whether the song was any good or could be commercialized.

There were a few times when Joonmyun really saved her compositions, there were days she had spent by solely working to complete one single song and instead of finishing it, she had only worsened everything and made a mess out of a solid draft. Joonmyun was there to encourage her, Joonmyun was there to evaluate and Joonmyun was necessary for her to create a good song and not get caught up too much in tiny details and focus on the song as whole.

All in all, it was necessary for her to have his aid in the competition and since she was determined to put all her effort to win the challenge, she dismissed the awkwardness and sudden shyness she felt in his presence and focused solely on her given task.

So one day when she saw him and the other Exo members going out of their dance practice room, she just approached him with the simple words 'I need your help' and dragged him to one of the producing rooms. She was sure she heard someone behind them whistle when she grabbed his wrist and pulled him away from the others, but she couldn't quite tell whether it was a fellow Exo member or one of the back-up dancers. Joonmyun looked flustered when she closed the door behind them. She made a motion for him to sit on the couch Sumin had been occupying a few days prior and he awkwardly sat down.

Hyehyun was reminded of the warm feeling of his lips against his, their breaths mingling together. She quickly shook her head to expel all memories of that scene, no, this certainly wasn't something she wanted to be reminded of right now.

"I need your help," she repeated, "because Solibaljeon will be coming back and one of our members will be composing the title track. I would be really happy if one of my compositions would get a music video and be promoted a but in order to do that I must deliver the best song. And for that I need your honest opinion on my composition."

"Okay, do you already have something to work with?" Joonmyun asked and he sounded like he always sounded before stupid feelings got in the way of each other and they somehow ended up kissing each other. Hyehyun felt an unimaginable amount of relief at his words, as simple as they were, because of her fear that this kiss had ruined the great friendship they shared.

"Yes, I've already started with a simple melody line and a few chords," Hyehyun informed him, "It isn't much though."

She opened the program she had saved her work in and began playing her composition.

"It's not bad for the beginning." Joonmyun replied after he listened intently to the song, "But I think we still have quite a bit work to do if we want to win this competition.“

Meanwhile Sumin felt painfully unsatisfied with her work. She had created a nice song, it was a beautiful melody in her opinion, calm and soothing, one of the songs she felt like listening to at night, when she lied awake and looked up to the ceiling because she couldn't fall asleep. It was one of those songs that sounded like lounging and made you feel melancholic while listening to, even though Sumin tried her best to make the lyrics as cheerful and happy as possible. It was the kind of song that would get buried in an album because it was not commercialized enough. It sounded good for a slower song but wasn't catchy and poppish enough to qualify as lead material for Solibaljeon.

Sumin buried her head in her pillow while her song was blasting through her headphones at maximum volume. She felt like going crazy! She really had tried everything to make the song more happy-sounding and pop-like. She changed the chords to Dur, she wrote funny nonsense lyrics, she even changed the entire chorus – but all the changes made the song only awkward and weird sounding. In the end she changed the chords and chorus back but kept the nonsense lyrics. She was too embarrassed to write deep emotional lyrics.

Sumin normally didn't aim for the title track. She was happy with smaller achievements too and any other day she would have been happy to have her song featured in an album at all. But now that Hyehyun and Yuntue both were rubbing the opportunity into her face, she also started dreaming about having her song made into a music video and performed on big public events. It would be really amazing. But while Sumin liked her song from a subjective perspective, she knew that the managers at SM's headquarters would never choose her song as a title track. In the past few days she tried to compose a few more songs but all ended up with the same melancholy in the melody and were good for nothing.

Suddenly Sumin felt a hand on her shoulder. She rolled onto her side lazily and looked into the face of a concerned-looking Bara. was moving but Sumin couldn't hear anything over the guitar riffs of her song. With one hand she pulled off her headphones. Her ears were slightly ringing and the music kept still blasting loud enough for her and Bara to clearly hear every word but at least she could also make out that Bara was calling her name.

"Hey Minnie."

"Hm."

"You seem a bit downcast. Do you want to talk about it?"

"It's nothing important. I'm having problems with composing but that's all."

"Have you composed the song that's coming out of your headphones? It might ruin them if it's on this loud volume."

"Yes, that's the song I'm having problems with."

"What? It sounds really nice! The melody is great. But what is up with these nonsense lyrics? 'I eat a jar full of green-dashed cookies? The garden gnomes are watching in their pink pajamas?' No offense but that all sounds rather strange," she stated matter-of-factly.

Sumin shrugged, "I'm bad at expressing myself through self-written lyrics so I rather just write something random than giving away too much of my feelings. Plus, I'm still dissatisfied with the song, I don't think anyone will pick something slow like that as the title track of an idol group."

"Don't be so negative. To me, good music is just good music. I think you tend to underestimate yourself and your work, you should show a bit more confidence. In my opinion you have a good chance of getting your song chosen as title track."

Sumin looked at her with raised eyebrows. She has heard words like these from dozens of people since becoming a trainee but she never felt like the people who said them were particularly right with their assumption. Most of the time, Sumin didn't think she was overly pessimistic, just realistic enough to know what she isn't capable of. But Bara seemed so certain and earnest with her words that it wasn't easy for Sumin to stay firm in her belief that no, she couldn't possibly win with her song.

Her instrumentals were very fancy and her music had a very polished and refined sound but most times her hook wasn't as catchy as a Brave Brother one – she usually cared more about creating a harmonious song instead of focusing primarily on a nice hook that carries the song. It was probably due to her background, studying at the Royal Academy of Music in London had influenced the way she composed. Overall she was satisfied with her work, it might take a few spins until somebody can really appreciate her songs but in the end people didn't grew tired of her songs as fast.

However, she wouldn't be a good songwriter if she was completely happy with her skills. She always craved improvement and knowing that catchy hook songs were something she has yet to master, she had the desire to enter the competition with that kind of song, to prove that her works contained diversity and weren't always just monotonous.

So for the last few days she had spend most of her time reading books about the technical aspects of pop music. However, most of these books were either for people on a beginners' level or were outdated and didn't focus enough on the aspect of the catchy hook. So Yuntue closed her books and put them away and opened her internet browser, typing 'You Tube' into the search bar. If her books couldn't help her, she had to find the criteria of a good hook song herself by searching up some Brave Sound's songs.

The first song, Bestie's Love Options, sounded quite good if it weren't for the horrendous amount of auto tune in the song. The second Brave song, Hello Venus 'Sticky Sticky' was essentially the same, too much auto tune worsening an otherwise great song. The third song she heard was Speed's Pain, the love of heart. It was very catchy but then Yuntue realized that she might shouldn't use that particular song as a template for her own song since she hasn't heard the name of the group before and judging by YouTube views, the song didn't make a great impact in the Kpop scene. She mindlessly clicked on the next song on her recommended side bar.

"Jesus museun mari pillyohae, modu neol jakpumirago bulleo
Just a little bit of you gyeokhage akkyeo Baby~ ye~ ye"

All of a sudden her slight boredom was replaced by a strong interest in the playing song. It stood out from the previous tracks by incorporating other genres like jazz or rock but everything fit together smoothly and the chanted chorus was the definition of catchy.

Yuntue looked at the music video. It was very colorful and weird and she felt like she had seen some of the faces before even if she couldn't pinpoint exactly which group they belonged to. Well, until Zico appeared on the screen. She stared at the screen in awe – since he wrote his group's songs himself, did that mean he also composed that track?

Yuntue took her mobile out of the pocket of her jeans and opened Kakaotalk.

Song Yun, 16:54: An Ostrich? Really?

The reply came immediately.

AnnoyingBrat, 16:54: Yunnie~~ You watched 'Her'? How did you like it? ^^

Yuntue frowned. Which guy used so many smileys while writing? It was irritating, really.

Song Yun, 16:56: It wasn't too bad, I guess. The wordplay on 'Heol' and 'Her' was quite clever and I liked the hook. I'm trying to improve my own hook songs right now, so I searched for a few good examples.

AnnoyingBrat, 16:57: Thanks~ If you want to, we could meet up and I could help you with hook songs :)

AnnoyingBrat, 16:57: Not that you need help since I listened to the whole first Solibal album and your compositions are really impressive

AnnoyingBrat, 16:58: But since we are both composers, we could perhaps grab a cup of cafe and exchange our song ideas someday...

Yuntue huffed. That guy seemed too exited which irked her a bit. She quickly googled the composers and producers of the song. Zico was one of them. So she could indeed learn a bit about hook songs from him.

Song Yun, 17:02: Ok.

Song Yun, 17:03: But I don't want you to help me write the song, I only want tips regarding songwriting in general.

AnnoyingBrat, 17:03: Yay \^o^/ I'm so exited to see you again

AnnoyingBrat, 17:03: You are so cute

Song Yun, 17:09: Yah! Woo Jiho! Don't make me re-think my answer!

Seeing that her battery was running out, Yuntue decided to switch her phone off. She continued browsing YouTube and downloaded some of the better songs she found on Itunes. Only later that evening she realized that this was actually the first time she initiated a conversation with Zico.

AN: Sori here! So this chapter focuses mainly on the composer line. So, whose song do you think will be chosen as the next title track?
If you don't know which song Yuntue is talking about, it's this one here