Trust | Lee Mark

Chapter 6

<September 2021>

It was finally the day of the last assessment. The trainees were told to sit beside the NCT member they got paired up with, hence why I'm sitting beside Mark right now. We're currently watching the other trainees' assessment while waiting for our turn. Despite my unbothered face, I grew more and more nervous as I watched the other trainees' performance. 

"Are you nervous?" Mark asked, noticing my nervousness. I gave him my eye smile, "Yeah, how did you notice though?"

He shrugged slightly, "I don't know, I just do." he answered truthfully. I nodded at him, not wanting to push the topic further due to wanting to focus on the performances.

Taeil and Chaewon's voices sang and harmonized so well that the people in the room can only close their eyes and enjoy the voices that heaven has brought down to earth. They were covering Adele's Hello, it's so good that I could cry.

"Well done the both of you. Thankyou for the wonderful performance you both brought for today's assessment. Taeil your voice technique just keeps on improving despite already debuting, I'm impressed." Ms. Kim complimented them. Chaewon bowed and thanked the teachers while Taeil just rubbed his neck while muttering a thankyou, obviously embarrassed by the compliment. 

"Next up, Min Eunhye and Mark." Ms. Choi announced. I took a deep breath and stood up along with Mark. We walked to the middle of the practice room and stood opposite of each other, facing the other way for the intro of the dance. 

When the song started we started turning our backs slowly, moving to face each other. We mimicked a movement, checking our faces as if there's a mirror in between us. Our hands then touched each other, before bringing it down and looking at each other.

Once the lyrics started playing our hands went to each other's neck, our moves were sharp but we both chocked each other softly for the dance. I closed my eyes and opened it again, feeling like I was in a different world. A darker world where there's only me and Mark, dancing to the song, without anyone watching us.

We executed every moves perfectly like our practices, except this time the look on our eyes are different. This time, we were totally immersed on our roles in the dance, two forces that were fighting each other. At the end, my look softened when I looked up to meet his eyes, showing the two forced tired from fighting each other.

We both walked to each other softly and he put my head on his shoulder, ending the performance. When the music ended, we immediately pulled apart from each other. It's not like we weren't comfortable in that position, we just didn't want to cause suspicion since we're actually getting way closer to each other than we were supposed to.

"I'm speechless, that dance was very beautiful and emotional." Ms. Choi complimented. I bowed and thanked her. "What do you think, Ten and Winwin? Since you guys were the one who choreographed this cover right?" Ms. Choi asked the two NCT members.

"I think they did a great job, I didn't think Mark would dance to contemporary dance though." Ten stated with a laugh. Mark rubbed the nape of his neck, "Ahaha.. Yeah.."

"Okay then, onto the next pair." 

***

It's currently 10 pm and we're still here in the practice room. The NCT members were with the teachers to report on our scores, they have been reporting for around an hour now.

"Pst, Eunhye, your performance was great! How did you get that much chemistry with Mark sunbaenim?" Jieun poked me suddenly. 

"Hello, Jieun unnie." I greeted her properly although deep inside I was a bit confused because Jieun has never talked to me before and now she's conversing with me randomly. Maybe she's a bit over friendly if she wants to?