“Here, catch,” Jaehwan started, tossing the canned-beverage towards the latter’s direction. “It’s not exactly ice cold because the vending machine is practically dysfunctional, but cheers!”

Hyorim rolled her eyes, resting her chin on the palm of her hand. She cracked open the can before following Jaehwan’s foolish toast slash proposal. They were slumping on the floor of Jellyfish Entertainment’s practice room, dead exhausted from previous dance lessons, although it seemed that she was the only one practicing, and definitely not Jaehwan himself. She consciously didn’t know why she chose the male as a dance mentor, when she obviously could’ve asked Hakyeon to mentor her if it weren’t for his stuffed schedule.

Why was she practicing with the so-called Ken rather than being mentored by a professional dance instructor? Well, this week, the trainees were given a new task, and she listed them out in such displeasing handwriting.

        One, learn sunbae’s choreo.

        Two, must master the choreo.

        Three, be ready in a week.

The instructors said that the particular task had an intention to develop the trainees’ social abilities with other artists, and of course, to physically test their dancing abilities in mastering different types of genres. And she delightfully thought, VIXX’s Eternity would be grand — absolutely grand. She didn’t exactly prefer to learn other sunbaenims’ choreographies, because of course, it would involve socializing and talking and all things insane.

“Yah — get up. Need’a practice some more.” Hyorim ordered as she lazily propped herself up as well.

“Already? Don’t wannaaaa.” Jaehwan whined obnoxiously, and the other not-so-playfully kicked his knees. He mumbled an ‘alright, alright’, faking a hideous crying face. The girl just wanted to barf all over his well-styled hair. Hyorim stood in the middle of the room while the other guy comfortably leaned against the mirrored walls. He waited a bit more before playing the music. She was clearly dancing Jaehwan’s part, because sadly, Jaehwan only knew how to groove his part and his part only.

Look. Love is a nightmare.

As the intro passed by, her body began to move aggressively with rhythm. The way she moved synced with the music played in the background, because seriously, she shone — she shone brightly. Her head was slightly lifted, peaking bit by bit to see her reflection. As she reached the bridge of the song, her snapback was already long gone, descending to the squeaky wooden floor.

Jaehwan meticulously observed her until the end; closely looking if she screwed up or not, but wow, he couldn’t tear his gaze away from how she danced his song perfectly that it was almost hard to grasp in his mind. His thoughts were a mess, a ridiculous mess.

The song bitterly ended, and Hyorim approached the other as her breath thickened from exhaustion. The ends of her bangs were dampened from the amount of sweat. “How did I do?” she questioned, lips rosy and wet after a gulp of mineral water.

“Mother of God.” was the only thing Jaehwan managed to spur out for the past evening that Hakyeon wanted to punch him for the unknown silent treatment.

It was at around midnight, approximately a quarter past one o’clock in the morning when Myunghee found three seemingly drunk trainees in the kitchen, roaming and spilling alcohol on the scratched dinner table. There was a girl who looked awfully demoralized as she stacked the red cups to form a pyramid. Beside the girl was a couple, well, they looked like a couple. They were exchanging Eskimo kisses, and Myunghee could’ve sworn she saw the pair playing footsies under the table with their bare foots. And here she was, previously having a plan to snatch a juice box from the fridge as a midnight snack. Being illegal defiantly .

However, she did manage to retrieve her precious juice box before settling down onto a chair near the gloomy-looking female. The other’s interpretation of an odd pyramid suddenly collapsed, and she clicked her tongue in response. Myunghee carefully looked at the process while slurping down the juice box in hand. Oh, it tasted wondrous.

“You okay?” Myunghee decided to strike up a conversation with a drunken person, and at first, she thought it was a horrible idea, although she didn’t particularly mind.

The other glanced up — hair tangled and messy, eyes filled with oblivion, a peak of collarbone showing. The person in front of her was that girl; the girl who was left by her brother. People in the dorm or either at the company kept on bringing it up, and honestly, it was slightly annoying. Of course, it wasn’t the problem she was facing, but rather the rare space she was given. Everyone didn’t have the nerve to shut their mouths and erase her brother’s distant memory from their childish minds. They didn’t even know him that well, considering Eunjeo was a sister to him. Yes, you would have the right to be mournful about his passing, but why couldn’t they leave it behind? It had been a year since the occurrence. Now, Eunjeo’s current nickname was ‘the girl without a brother’, and that was sickly disrespectful.

The elder nodded for approximately nine seconds, but shook her head at the end. “Probably? I don’t know. It feels like I can’t apprehend anything at the moment.” a brief chuckle escaped her lips.

Myunghee slouched onto her own forearm, following the other’s chuckle. “By the way, have you learnt a dance choreo yet? I’ve not, and I’m totally screwed.”

“, forgot about that. I don’t like interacting with other sunbaes. I believe that they’re all putrid. I guess? Maybe. I know the choreo for KARA’s ‘Pandora’, so I think the instructors will let me slide through. I hope.” Eunjeo said, choking down another red glass of liquor.

“You’re lucky for knowing at least one choreography, look at my puke-worthy self,” she sarcastically wriggled her slender fingers over her waist. “I cannot dance at all.” and with that, Myunghee unknowingly received a frisky and drowsy slap from the other, followed by a muffled giggle.

It was time.

“Uhm… unnie? Sorry for asking this out of the blue, but do you long for his company? Kyungjeo.” she questioned in a quite inexplicable tone. Her voice sounded neither melancholic nor curious, and Eunjeo was dumbfounded by the particular question.

The older remained silent for a little while, gulping a few cups before began to crack open. “So much,” half of the cup she grasped was finished. “I miss him so ing much. It hurts. It hurts. It hurts.” she fought the irresistible urge to break down and cry and become drastically depressed. She didn’t like Myunghee’s question; once processed in the mind, it would hurt someone’s thoughts a lot, especially when it came to Eunjeo.

Objectively, the younger was heavily concerned with Eunjeo, and she wanted to compose a suitable outcome for the other — an effecting mind therapy. Silence filled the puffy air for approximately seven minutes until Myunghee gripped on the other’s palm, dragging her out from her position, which resulted a startled expression from Eunjeo, although she complied. Myunghee dragged her outside of the flat towards the nearby staircase. A few tiring steps led them to the building’s rooftop, unoccupied and dusty.

Before Eunjeo could ask, the younger pulled her hand towards the edge, and she thought Myunghee was out of her mind and dazed at that particular moment. “So you want me to kill myself?” asked Eunjeo in a scathingly sarcastic tone.

Myunghee constantly shook her head, face looking a little frazzled and horrified. She didn’t comprehend Eunjeo’s sarcasm. “No, no, no, no,” she was still shaking her head. “I want you to shout out all of your problems; everything that bothers you, basically.”

The older raised both of her eyebrows, but cackled afterwards. She thought the idea was ridiculous, and the alcohol practically digested her once she agreed to do it. After all, she wasn’t going to remember this night anyway. Maybe, just maybe, mind therapy.

“I miss you, Kyungjeo.”

“I want to debut.”

“I’m not satisfied with myself.”

Three faint screams were poured out to Seoul’s blurry city lights, and teardrops were poured out to Seoul’s concrete roads.

Twenty four hours passed by, it was evaluation day. A percentage of trainees were prepared to perform, whilst the other percentage weren’t quite ready to evaluate their given task. This evaluation was going to be painstakingly harsh because the examiner was the one and only Bae Minkyung or known as Eve Bae, complemented with the CEO. She may be a young soloist, although she was feisty and everyone in the company knew how she barked. Hyorim only wondered the reason why Hongbin had an immense crush on the soloist or rather she wondered why half of the instructors in Borium were a pain in the arse? No one knew why.

“I want to see excellent performances. The lowest ranks will receive a certain punishment given by the CEO.” said Minkyung with a monotone in both voice and expression.

The first one up was Ahyoung who danced I Like That by GLAM (as she was close friends with Miso) with all of her might; a little bit messy, but good enough to pass through. There were a few guys who covered the same choreography — Minkyung thought their performances were okay despite the similarities. Passing by a few other trainees, it was Hyorim’s turn to perform. Once the opening of Eternity played, a ludicrous roar of shrieks filled the entire room. She didn’t compromise whether they were rooting for her or were either hardcore slash terrifying fans. Next up was Myunghee who unsurprisingly stood awkwardly on the wooden floor, earning a glare from Minkyung. She was going to die, maybe, probably, after the evaluation.

After Eunjeo’s performance of KARA’s Pandora with a massive hangover that she up with, the person known for her dancing skills was up next to show what she had, and that person was Danji who decided to do a cover of Sixth Sense quite flawlessly. Summing up with the following trainees, the evaluation ended with a trainee who danced Eve Bae’s D Island. Even though there were trainees who showcased their sunbaenim’s choreography with top notch quality, no one earned a standing ovation from both of the examiners.

“What I’m concerned is that there are some of you that aren’t taking this evaluation seriously. What if this was the last evaluation until the final line up? Work with determination, please. The lowest rankings will be revealed by Minkyung. That is all.” said the CEO before exiting the practice room, gathering all of his belongings.

Myunghee’s enthusiastic mood was replaced by clouds and rain and overall, anything dull. She was just enticingly looking forward to cleaning duty.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

wooooo the second chap is finally up! this took me longer than expected because i thought it was quite a long chap? ok ok so i hope this chap isn't ish or whatever, like, i was totally braindead when i wrote the 'evaluation day' thingy i can't interpret the charas well ok. and i used miosenpailuvscookies' rooftop scene bc darl, i love that part of your app. i hope it's ok to use it with myunghee lul.
oh and my midterm exams are coming up, so i'll prob update rly slowly in early october. and and-- have you guys known about vixx's comeback in october screams i need a teaser. pls ignore myself yes? yes.