Fortunately, the very next day, the arrangement and choreography were completed over a full day, and we, who spent the rest of the time practicing, finally had our first competition ahead tomorrow.
In the meantime, I sent Poing to check the status of Team B from time to time, but the team atmosphere did not improve, and Hajun and Youngbin often seemed to talk until dawn.
Once I decided to focus only on the team I belong to right away, I prepared water for the members to drink in advance and made breakfast whenever I had time.
I arrived at the company earlier than the members early in the morning and listened to Deputy Ahn on how to handle a DAW called Cubase in more detail, and I was steadily increasing my own survival cheats.
Today, the last day of practice, I arrived at the company with my back to the morning air I was so used to.
When I fetched a song that I had been playing recently for practice in studio #5, which I have become quite accustomed to, Assistant Ahn came in.
“Jihwan, are you okay?”
“Oh, sir, are you here?”
Deputy Ahn, who usually laughed and joked a lot, looked around with a slightly stiff face and closed the door of the studio well. I looked at him in an incomprehensible act, and sat next to me and held out his cell phone.
“What is this… .”
“Shh, quietly, quickly watch and give me back.”
Before I began to wonder at the sight of him standing as if covering the door of his studio and handed me his cell phone, I couldn’t help but widen my eyes when I saw a community post he had put out.
On the bulletin board made by fans of idol creation, there were many comments about me and the daily logs I took recently.
He held out his phone to him again, cleared his trembling voice a few times, and looked at the monitor screen again, pretending to be as calm as possible.
“What’s this?”
“If you put in a little more effort, you will pass the contest, so please do your best.”
“Yes… ?”
“I’m secretly showing the mood not to crash like the last time.”
Is it because of the deepening of personal friendships?
The last time I heard the broadcasting station and company staff brand me as a retired member, I seemed to know that the accident had happened.
I realized that I was showing this post to me as I was checking the mood of the community for fear that I might be depressed, that I might not be able to perform the contest properly because I was so desperate.
The fact that this person, who always pretended to be naive and indifferent, was worried about me made one side of my heart flutter.
“Thank you, sir.”
“You’re doing well, man, so please try harder.”
“Yes, I will work even harder.”
I was just approaching people a little more proactively, asking a lot of questions, and saying thank you for every kindness I had been given.
As a trainee with nothing, all I could give them was to move more diligently, to learn harder, and to express my gratitude in words.
I just did that, but something I couldn’t even dream of happened before, so I laughed out loud without realizing it.
“Hey, hey. Don’t laugh strangely and just focus on your work. This, this one, will it be released in the meantime?”
“Ah, no. Could it be! haha!”
I saved the song that I was making a fuss about and greeted Deputy Ahn once again. Now I had to get to the practice room before the members came.
“Deputy Ahn, then I’ll go to the practice room.”
“Hey Jihwan, don’t get hurt and practice. There are a lot of kids who got really hurt at the last minute.”
“Yep! I’ll be careful not to get hurt.”
Arriving at Team A’s practice room, I slowly relaxed and checked my reflection in the mirror again.
Dark circles were the first thing that caught my eye before the slightly raised and slightly cold eyes.
“Ah… . I haven’t really slept well lately.”
For Youngbin and Hajun, who are under the most stress, I would go ahead and clean up the dormitory. The members spent time in a virtual space pretending to sleep while packing food, but they only slept about two hours a day.
“I must go to bed early today… .”
“What are you doing all night, so your face is dying?”
“Hahaha… . I just have a lot of thoughts.”
“You are doing great right now. It’ll turn out okay.”
Himchan, who looked at me smiling awkwardly, patted her on the shoulder as if somehow pitiful.
No, that’s not it, Chan-ah… .
We couldn’t even tell the situation, so we both just wanted to work hard, and all we did was support each other like that.
I couldn’t tell if it was the influence of the ‘inner acquaintance’ skill or if it was because we were on the same team, but Kyunghwan and Himchan approached each other more friendly than before and used to joke around without hesitation.
Perhaps thanks to that, the stage that we all put our heads together and composed seemed to come out quite well in my opinion.
It was originally an exciting dance song. In addition, Hajun and Kyunghwan changed the existing rap part to suit their mood, respectively, and the group dance scene in the middle of the melody was also divided into beats and changed to a choreography in which we move a little more.
It was a method we came up with because 4 people couldn’t make a formation that fills the stage like the seniors.
As the number of scenes in which they face each other like a mirror mode or move in the opposite direction has increased, if even one of the four people does not have a good angle, the overall choreography seems to have collapsed. As a result, everyone was poisoned during practice time.
Soon after, Ha-jun and Kyung-hwan also came in, and as they each finished warming up, teacher Kim Je-young came in just in time and called us together.
“Guys, how are you?”
“Thanks to Je-young, everything is going well!”
“Ugh, the words are very simple.”
“Thanks to the real teacher, my worries about choreography are reduced a lot. Would it have been ruined if we did it all together?”
“Yeah, so let’s do better on the stage of the contest. I’m supposed to look after you this morning, so prepare yourself.”
Teacher Je-young, who smiles kindly, was scary, but I was determined to be a person who looked after me that much.
They said they would look after us in the morning, so I thought that they would take care of Group B in the afternoon, and I erased it from my mind. ‘Cause it’s not my concern anyway.
And after that, for 4 hours, we poured all the moisture in our body through sweat and focused on practice.
Je-young’s shouts that we heard throughout practice made it impossible for us to let go of the tension.
“Can’t you lift your arm properly? is it broken What kind of debut are you making like that!”
“Tell me a few times to count the beats that turn your back, what kind of robot are you?”
Fortunately, thanks to practicing the entire choreography, I was able to concentrate on practicing only the choreography that changed, and only today was it polished to a satisfactory appearance.
“Heh, I’m going to die… I think.”
“haha. just don’t tell me… .”
While our green onion kimchi spread on the floor squirmed and gave each other a bottle of water, while demonstrating our friendship, Master Je-young looked at us and shook his head.
“They still can’t keep up with their stamina. If you don’t develop your basic stamina, you won’t be able to keep up with the schedule even if you debut.”
“Yes… .”
We, who grew pale, added harmony to our answers.
“Still, you guys are trying to be quite an idol now. Take a good rest today and see you tomorrow.”
Teacher Je-young, who burst into laughter at the sight, watched us with eyes full of warmth, added a word, and left the practice room.
Hajun, who was lying on the floor to catch his breath, smiled and said to us.
“Still, when they see us, they say we are idols.”
“Iknow, right. Now I want to become a real idol.”
We, who had stretched out from where we each finished, crawled on the floor and gathered next to Ha-jun.
“What is it, why are you sticking around all of a sudden?”
“Wow, look at how hard our leader is. It’s disgusting.”
“Jun-hyung, how can you do that to us?”
“Just now, huh? Is this because we caught fish?”
“No, you guys don’t do that!”
Now, even if I don’t start, the members are so special that they cast off the leader on their own, so when I hit the closing remarks, Hajun, who was timid, abruptly got up and walked away from us.
As we giggled, we slowly got up and the ground went down. Ha-jun, who was sighing, called us to go eat lunch without talking nonsense.
ON Enter was not a mega-large company, but it was a solid exhaust type.
Thanks to this, the treatment of the staff was pretty good, and the rice in the staff restaurant was delicious. Moreover, there were many people who continued to diet as much as trainees, whether they were actors or ballad singers, so the diet was well organized in a variety of ways.
We couldn’t eat as much as we were full thanks to the weight loss, but we wanted to know where we could eat without spending any money, so we simply took a shower and ran to the restaurant.
Then, looking around with rice, Kyung-hwan noticed that the B-team kids were sitting on one side and blinked at Ha-Jun. It was meant to go there.
Ha-jun, who had paused for a moment, nodded and sat next to each other in front of Team B and greeted everyone warmly.
Even if the team is now torn apart, there was no need to set up a date with a contest because they were just a team anyway.
“Is your practice going well? Don’t get hurt and be careful.”
“Yeah, make it less hard on you too. So that makes it a little less difficult for us.”
“Oh, is that okay? I heard that Jaeyoung was trying to eat us earlier.”
“Sebin-ah, can you eat that? Eat some more.”
Our cute little one said it’s really bad to eat these days, but it seems to be true, so I pushed the sweet potato from my plate to Sebin’s plate.
Sebin likes to eat sweet potatoes and milk, so when she was on a diet, I remembered that she almost lived on sweet potatoes, so I got up and gave her milk.
“You should eat sweet potatoes with milk.”
“Is that right? Also, what does Jihwan-hyung know?”
Sebin, who was shivering, ate the sweet potato and milk I had pushed with a bright expression on her face, and I was looking at it with a happy face.
“You look like Sebin’s mother… .”
“Isn’t Fortress Jihwan getting more nagging?”
“No, even if these people take care of you, what do you say? Do you know how easy it is to cook breakfast in the morning?”
“No, it’s strange that a kid who didn’t do that just became a family member.”
“I want to eat kimchi fried rice again.”
Now the atmosphere was good.
They quarrel with each other and joke around without hesitation.
Unlike the first time, I would like to be able to debut together with all but one person, and now I always fall asleep with that thought in mind.
“Come on, stop playing and let’s go practice again. Today is the last day.”
“Yeah.”
Fortunately, while Youngbin and Sebin were chatting with us, she was able to part with a smile as if she felt a little better.
The last day before her first contest was coming to an end.