Super Seventeen

Chapter Two

Mentally going over his dance one more time, Minghao couldn't help but worry. His friends all assured him that he was a top-notch dancer but he still wasn't quite confident in the new routine he had choreographed for himself.

Plus he had originally choreographed a different dance six months ago, leaving him plenty of time to polish it for the competition, but when he posted a snippet of the dance on his Twitter he had gotten a surprising amount of hate comments. An amount big enough to make him restart the entire dance, two weeks prior to the current date.

He had less confidence in this one. But the audience's opinion was key.

As the group of people in the waiting room slowly went in, one by one, leaving him practically alone in the room with two other boys whom he had absolutely no courage to even look at, Minghao started to panic. Should I just do the original dance? But then I would have to request a song change, and I already submitted the form with the music selection on it -

His thoughts were interrupted by a loud phone call, gathering the attention of the other two boys in the room. Their gazes were so piercing that Minghao would've dug a hole back to China right then and there if he could. Blushing, he bowed slightly and then muttered to himself, "Finally understand what a 'bitch face' is now.

"What do you want?" Minghao hissed into the phone. "I almost have to go on."

The other line was the frantic voice of Mingyu. "Minghao. We - we've got a problem."

Minghao felt something stir up in his stomach. Like something bad was about to happen. As a superhero, he got that feeling way more often than he would prefer. "What problem?"

Mingyu gulped, giving Minghao a dramatic three-count before responding. "The school... May or may not have just exploded."

~~~

Minghao supposed that that was the part in a book or movie or whatever where he starts freaking out, but he was strangely calm when Mingyu said this. Like the eye of the tornado.

"Okay. Is anyone dead?"

Mingyu, seemingly caught off guard by Minghao's question, took a while to respond before stuttering out, "N-No. No one's dead, as far as I can tell. So... what should we do?"

Minghao was a bit surprised. "You're asking me? Why not Hoshi? Or Jun?"

He should've expected the guilty answer from Mingyu. "Um. Well. We tried Hoshi's cell, but he isn't picking up."

Minghao couldn't exactly say he wasn't disappointed. Everyone knew that he did carry leader traits in him - he was, after all, the leader of his dancing group back in China - but here, in Korea where he wasn't even fluent in the native language, there was little chance that the members would turn to him for a change. He attempted covering up his true emotions and replied with the same reasonable voice. "Makes sense. He went on just a few minutes ago, he probably left his phone on mute or something."

Mingyu sighed. "Of all the times he could've went on. Anyway, do you have a rough estimate of when you can get back? We really need more people on deck here."

"Did you guys get Pristin?"

"Not yet. We're calling them next, and maybe even Yixing hyung and Taeyeon noona."

"Alright, solid plan." Checking quickly to see if the other two boys were listening, Minghao quickly dashed around a corner in fear of being overheard. "Split up the team that's there and get one team to go into the school and look for something that could've triggered the explosion. Just give the teachers some stupid excuse and then leave to change identities, they'll believe it with all this chaos going on. The other team can stay and deal with the entire rest of the school. All - what, nine of you? - going at once would be too suspicious."