Trust

I'm Still and I'm Here

"Good training, everyone."

For the first time ever since we've started doing dance practice all together, the seven of us are gathered in Hongjoong's studio. We should be ecstatic that we've just finished our first training as a complete group, that we went through our five choreos in one go, and that Hongjoong even concluded today's training with a compliment. Here's the thing though: the training was shit, and Hongjoong is one of the worst actors I've ever seen. It's so obvious how disappointed and stressed out he is as he buries his face in a towel, pretending to wipe sweat off his forehead.

There were several things off during the training – one of them being the huge mood killer that Seonghwa had brought to us just before training. 'I'd had a feeling something might be different about this year's auditions, because one of our mentors gave some weird answers when we asked him about it', he'd admitted, 'but now it's official: last year, our uni's performances weren't too grand, apparently – so now they've decided to decrease the percentage of available spots for students of Seoul University. From fifteen to ten percent.'

If I hadn't started to get kinda invested in our project, I would've dropped out at exactly this moment. Increasing the competition to get allegedly better end results is such an inconsiderate move, to put it nicely – especially with artists, because they are basically notorious for being always under pressure.

I bet all the organizers of the festival have studied Business Administration or some shit like that.

One and a half weeks ago, Hongjoong had explained to us that we'd be competing with about forty other groups for twenty-seven spots. Now, apparently, our uni's got nine spots less. Nine opportunities less to get into the festival. 'Also, there are exactly fifty groups registered now', Seonghwa had added, a maximum apologetic smile on his face as Yunho, Mingi and Yeosang had all groaned in despair.

So that was our mood killer right before training. But the second reason why today's training has been far from good is actually worse. Because finally meeting up as a complete group should've been a boost. But it wasn't.

The group constellations, the formations – it all feels off. Dancing together in sync, dancing as a team, getting a feel for everyone's individual styles and who needs to go where and when... it all should've clicked by now. Or maybe not clicked, but it should've started to make a bit more sense at least. But it didn't, and if training continues to be like this- I'm not sure we can make it. We've only got two and a half weeks left until the auditions, and as of now, we're nowhere near blowing the jury's minds with our performance.

As of now, we're screwed.

We need to jam in way more dance practices with the whole team, and fucking everybody needs to be present for those trainings for our performance to work out. It's gonna be tricky, because last week had been a disaster of over-full schedules for every single one of us, especially Yeosang, Yunho, and me, since we had to start taking up additional singing lessons.