[cherieviere]

𝙁𝘼𝙆𝙀 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏𝙄𝘾 𝙏𝙍𝙀𝙀𝙎 ───

───────── ❝ 02. LUCKY NO 6 ❞

𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 : cortis × female! sixth member reader

𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀 : for seven years, you've been almost everything — almost chosen, almost debuted, almost enough. long after your mother's death, long after friends left and opportunities disappeared, the only thing that remained was the stubborn refusal to quit. then a last-minute decision places you in CORTIS, a group built without you in mind, and suddenly the future you've spent years chasing is within reach. but resentment has a way of lingering in crowded rooms, and belonging isn't something that can be assigned by a company. especially when you're the sixth chair at a table set for five.

𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲 : contemporary fiction, idol Industry, drama, coming-of-age, found family, slow burn, miscommunication, slightly character driven, comedic at times

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 (chapter) : multiple descriptions of burn out, dissociation, grief of a parent — literally blink and it's gone, depictions of exhaustion, depictions of pressure within the industry, for more in depth warnings of the series visit the master list linked above, awkward so awkward I cringed while writing this, take a shot everytime I say 'floor' or 'chair', hints of perfectionism

𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 : comment or dm to be added

cherry 🍒 speaks : so so sorry it took me so long, I would love to hear what stands out to you, comments, reblogs are all appreciated. show some love and don't be a silent reader! also I feel like this is another boring chapter. I only have one beta reader and it's starts with a M and ends with an E. To all the people who have shown their interest and support, thank you so much, there's fewer members in the avengers than in the tl lol

Lucky numbers are proof that people would rather inherit meaning than create it.

We assign miracles to seven. Misfortune to four. Wealth to eight. Smooth sailing to six, as though the universe has ever been sentimental enough to favour mere numbers.

We're expected to believe the universe pauses long enough to glance at a cosmic dice roll and think, 'Six? Better make this one work out. '

It really doesn't. Numbers are always born empty. We are the ones who feed them stories.

Which admittedly, was a rather dramatic conclusion to reach while sitting in a corporate conference room. Anyway.

The rhythmic friction of paper against skin almost echoed throughout the silent room.

Your thumb kept finding the same corner of the folder, rubbing the crease flat only to bend it again a second later. A quiet little act of vandalism. Maybe a search of control. You were unsure.

The paper was forgiving, it let you hurt more than once.

The room smelled faintly of coffee and crisp suits, if that even made any sense. The chairs looked expensive enough to belong in a company brochure, though none of them seemed particularly interested in being sat in.

Your gaze lingered on the yellow folder.

Martin Edwards Park.

James Chao Yufan.

Juhoon Kim.

Seonghyeon Eom.

Keonho Ahn.

You'd repeated these five names often enough in your head that they no longer sounded like people. Words tend to do that. Say one often enough and it eventually abandons its meaning. All that will remain is its shape.

Martin, James, Juhoon. Seonghyeon, Keonho.

Five sounds and five strangers. Five futures quietly moving towards yours.

You wondered which one had taken the news the worst. Probably the leader. Leaders inherited disasters they never volunteered for.

Your thumb found the corner again and the paper bent again. You smoothed it flat, yet it curled anyway.

Your eyes drifted to the closed door. Any minute now, it would open. Five names would become five faces.

The thought settled beneath your ribs with the quiet certainty of a stone finding the bottom of a lake.

Out of vague nervousness, you looked around again, wishing and hoping for some intervention to distract you. You tried to take in the appearance of the room, burying it underneath the thousand thoughts racing through your head.

It took you a second to notice—and bury—the fact that there were only five chairs.

You stared at them a moment longer before quickly pushing your own chair back and getting up slowly. Rooms remembered their original intentions surprisingly well.

The hallway wasn't far. Neither was the spare chair. It complained the entire journey. The metal legs caught every groove in the floor with an enthusiasm that bordered on spite. By the time you reached the doorway, the ache in your wrists had settled into something worse than what you carried before. Making room always sounded kinder than it felt.

While you eased the spare into the gap, the scrape echoed louder than you'd intended. Then the door swung open without any warning.

Conversation—if there had been any—never got the chance to begin. Five men stood lined in the doorway. The one at the front looked familiar.

Because you'd stepped around each other in a hallway less than a few hours ago. Martin Edwards Park.

His eyes flitted towards the chair grasped tightly in your hands (a rather grounding action it seemed to you at that moment) then to you. There was no visible reaction. Not evident at least. Recognition was a peculiar thing, you thought.

Behind him, the others lingered in varying stages of confusion, curiosity and poorly disguised apprehension, instinctively following the only person who looked as though he might know what was happening. Ducklings, or condemned men.

You straightened, flexing your fingers once before letting your hands fall back to your side. The dull ache lingered.

Another pair of footsteps, the manager brushed past them with the ease of someone who had orchestrated the silence and intended to keep it that way.

The last of them —'Seonghyeon' you think — closed the door behind him, hand resting on the handle for a second longer than necessary. "Everyone's here."

You cleared your throat. The sound caught somewhere on the way out, clinging stubbornly to the back of it. Swallowing did little more than move the discomfort around. Then took a seat at the same chair you had dragged in.

Another folder met the table a little harder than intended. The room seemed to shrink by imperceptible degrees, every breath borrowed from the same reluctant pocket of air.

Your fingers found each other beneath the table. They laced together and tightened. Enough to remind you they still belonged to you.

The manager clapped his hands once. And you heads lifted on instinct.

Your eyes caught a flash of brown again. James. Sat opposite to you. His gaze drifted across the room before settling briefly on you. He leaned forward, an ankle drifting over the opposite knee before returning both feet to the floor. His fingers tapped once against his leg—eyes still lingering on you with quiet concentration. Not on your face, just you as a whole.

Juhoon squared his folder with the edge of the table. Paused. Then nudged it another millimetre.

And Keonho loosened the cap on his water bottle. Yet he never drank from it. Tiny movements. People leaked more truth through their hands than they ever intended.

The manager sighed, as if sensing the tension in the room (he was used to it nevertheless) and started blurting out a barrage of details—schedules, re-recordings, dance practices, concepts, and god knows what else.

The words drifted across the room with the peculiar weightlessness of things that would eventually become your entire life.

You nodded when it seemed appropriate. After all, agreement required remarkably little effort. Your attention settled somewhere easier. The crescent your thumbnail left against the side of your finger.

Pressure.

Release.

Pressure.

Release.

The sting remained faithfully consistent.

Your name surfaced somewhere in the conversation. Martin's followed soon after. Then someone else's.

The names arranged themselves into sentences you couldn't quite bring yourself to hear.

Across the table, Martin's pen moved steadily across the page. Every so often it paused. Then it continued again. Under different circumstances, you might not have noticed it. Today, it buzzed inside you skull like a mosquito.

The manager snapped the folder shut.

"Martin. James."

Neither of them looked surprised. The manager motioned towards the door with a tilt of his head, "outside."

Martin rose first, already closing his notebook before he'd fully stood. James followed a second later, slipping his phone into his pocket with the absent ease of someone interrupted halfway through a habit.

The door opened then closed.

Silence settled in almost immediately and the room seemed to forget what it had been doing. Juhoon reached for his phone before the latch had even finished clicking into place. His thumb drifted lazily across the screen, expression unchanged.

Across the table, Keonho glanced at Seonghyeon. Seonghyeon looked back.

Something passed between them.

Judging by the way Keonho eventually sighed and looked away, whatever conversation they'd attempted had died somewhere in transit.

Your mouth twitched while your hand slipped into your pocket and felt the coolness of the metal device.

The screen woke beneath your thumb, spilling pale light across the polished table. Notifications crowded the lock screen. You swept them away without reading a single one.

Your thumb already knew where it was going. By the time you noticed, her conversation was open.

Three years could hollow out a home. Empty out a wardrobe and even erase the smell from a favourite sweater. A text thread refused to participate. It preserved everything with quiet indifference, holding onto a version of the world that no longer existed simply because nobody had asked it to do otherwise.

Your thumb drifted lower. The messages were exactly where you'd left them.

you: ill be home this week❗️❗️

you: evaluations finally ended 😭

you: don't wait up tho. gonna be late.

you: love u ❤️

Seonghyeon coughed into his fist. And as if reflex, you quickly pressed the power button of your phone. Letting it slide from your palm to the table with a thud.

Soon, the door handle turned again. Martin stepped inside.

James followed a pace behind, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie, looking no more enlightened than when he'd left. A stack of freshly printed schedules rested beneath Martin's arm, the corners still stubbornly warm from the printer. He crossed the room without a word. One by one, he slid a copy in front of each of the boys.

When he reached you, the pages came to a stop beneath your hands. He let go. Paused. Then, almost as an afterthought, his fingers found the edge of the paper and turned it around until the print faced you. A tiny adjustment. Almost negligible. Barely worth noticing. You noticed anyway.

"...Thanks," your own voice caught you off guard. Hoarse. Lower than you remembered. The sort of voice that belonged to the end of a twelve-hour practice rather than the beginning of a conversation.

Martin's dark eyes lifted briefly to yours. Just enough to register it.

"No problem."

His voice on the other hand remained as rough around the edges as it had in the hallway. He moved to his own chair. Silence reclaimed the room with impressive efficiency. Nobody spoke. Someone turned a page. He looked down at his schedule. Then up around the table. The expression on his face wasn't quite uncertainty. He drew in a quiet breath. "..So," Five heads lifted almost in unison.

He seemed to realise he'd successfully acquired everyone's attention before figuring out what he'd actually wanted to do with it. Another beat passed.

"Um..." he glanced briefly at the schedule in front of him, as though answers might have been printed somewhere between tomorrow's dance practice and Thursday's vocal rehearsal.

"They didn't really tell us..." The sentence drifted off. James rubbed a hand over his face, "good start," he muttered. A small reluctant snort escaped Keonho. Almost accidental. But it cracked something. Just enough for the room to remember that everyone inside it was lost. Perhaps not on equal levels. But lost nonetheless.

The awkwardness returned. The clock ticked loudly behind you and your eyes wandered. Martin first. His expression remained stubbornly uneventful except the polite curve of his lips that seemed to be too painful for it to be anything other than forceful. Emotions do not announce themselves properly. They arrive layered over one another until separating them felt like trying to untangle rain. You could try though.

Fatigue. Responsibility.

Whatever came after.

James sat with his jaw set just a little too tight, as though every sentence he wasn't saying had decided to wait there instead. Juhoon's attention never seemed to settle. It moved from the schedules to the table, then back again, assembling the room one detail at a time. Seonghyeon's shoulders remained stubbornly lifted. Tensed and tired.

Keonho looked everywhere except another person. Discomfort had a body long before it ever reached a face It lived in shoulders, hands, and breathing and in that moment you were seeing it live. Your gaze circled back and stopped when Juhoon looked up abruptly.

Because apparently people eventually felt themselves being watched. Neither of you moved. His brows pulled together ever so slightly in a questioning motion. A heartbeat later, you remembered that staring generally belonged somewhere between childhood and poor manners. Only then did you look away.

Your thoughts were interrupted when your phone made a noise too loud for a room that had let the silence run the long mile for forty-five minutes. The sound threaded neatly through the silence. Some of them glanced in your general direction.

You glanced down.

Stop by my office when you're done.

Right. There was always another signature. Another version of your life waiting for your initials. You got up quickly, shoving the newly printed schedules inside your bag with more force than required.

The words left your mouth before you had time to rehearse them, "excuse me."

The room hesitated for the briefest moment. Most of them rose, halfway bowing. Habit — neat and precise. You returned them, your own arriving a fraction too fast.

"See you tomorrow," Martin's voice carried the same quiet steadiness as before. You nodded once. The sort of sentence people reached for when they knew they ought to leave behind something gentler than silence.

Your fingers curled around the handle as the cool metal pressed against your palm. The door hadn't even closed properly until you heard, behind you, the sharp sound of a chair creaking.

"...Jesus."

James. A breathy, exhale, almost. like a tightly wounded spring suddenly being released.

Another chair shifted. Someone laughed, quiet and thin with something closer to disbelief than amusement. The room began breathing again. You reluctantly took another step, grip tightening around the strap of your bag.

After all, some sounds followed you farther than footsteps ever could. And the worst part? You can't even blame them.

Your laptop's busted speaker crackled while the song played. Sometime around two-thirty am, the choreography stopped looking like choreography. It became arithmetic. Counts, weight shifts and formation changes. A left shoulder arriving half a beat too early or a head turn that looked effortless until the thirty-seventh replay. The video looped on.

GO! — Practice Ver.

Sleep finally came at five, when your body was simply too exhausted to keep going. You knew better than to force it. The laptop though remained open all night.

After all, Tommorow morning had a habit of arriving too early.

The shower helped. Water reached skin. Just not with the exhaustion—that had roots.

Your hair was still damp by the time you stepped into the hallway. Strands clung stubbornly to the back of your neck beneath the hood of an oversized charcoal jacket. A white ribbed tank disappeared beneath it. Loose pants and dance shoes hooked loosely around two fingers. Your backpack hung from one shoulder, threatening to slide off with every step. Comfort had become a uniform somewhere around your third year anyways.

The dorm door clicked shut behind you.

Three steps that was all you managed before —

"Damn."

A familiar trainee, slowed beside you, eyebrows lifting as his eyes travelled over your face.

"You look like shit," he whistled, "did a tornado ransack your house and you or what?" You blinked. That sentence made no sense at all, you bit back a snide comment.

"So I've been told."

"No, seriously," his head tipped slightly to one side.

"Did you even sleep?" The question lingered.

"Enough."

The answer wasn't a lie by any means. It had simply developed a flexible relationship with the truth.

After a few minute walk, the music found you before the practice room did. A bassline bled beneath the door, followed by the familiar complaint of rubber soles against the floor.

"I'm serious. That wasn't even my mistake."

"I call bull."

"It wasn't."

The trainer laughed first, "oh? Someone is confident. Should we check the recording?" A chorus of groans answered him. Then something soft hit somebody else.

"Ow," the syllable dragged — like a small whine.

"You deserved that."

Another laugh. You stopped outside the door. Rooms had personalities long before people introduced themselves. This one hadn't noticed you yet and you wished you could keep it that way.

You entered with a creak in the hinge of the door. Comically almost, conversation immediately faltered. As if it simply forgot where it had been going.

The trainer looked over first. "Morning," you bowed, not the usual formal. A glorified nod would be more appropriate.

"Good morning."

The greeting rippled back around the room. Uneven.

Keonho still had a towel slung over one shoulder which nearly slid on to the floor if it was not his quick reflexes that saved it as he bowed. While Martin's arrived with the absent-minded precision of somebody who'd done it too many times to think about anymore.

James waited somewhere between two blinks. You never quite reached him. Some words had a habit of standing exactly where they'd been spoken Tiny things, you suppose. Yesterday had introduced names. It hadn't introduced ease.

Your bag slipped from your shoulder and settled against the mirrored wall. Jacket beside it. Shoes exchanged for practice ones with movements your hands had stopped asking permission to make years ago.

"Alright first warm up," The trainer narrowed his eyes at the way the five boys lingered like they just walked into traffic and froze.

The mirrors caught six version of the same stretch, each body carrying it differently.

Seven years had long since taught yours where to begin. You occupied the corner, and started with your neck, then shoulders, wrists, then hips and finally hamstrings and ankles. The sequence unfolded without much thought.

The trainer wandered between people, correcting a shoulder here, a knee there, nudging somebody's stance with the toe of his shoe.

Then he stopped beside you.

"So," you straightened suddenly. He raised his hands in mock defence, "relax."

He walked over in front of you with a gaze that screamed scrutiny.

"I've got no idea what they actually sent you."

"Just a video," you breathed out, your voice smaller than expected.

He nodded toward the center of the room, "let's see." The others continued stretching. Nobody stopped, but nobody pretended not to listen either. He reached for the speaker.

"We'll start with the first verse, just follow as much as you know."

You nodded again. Automatic, like your neck had a brain of its own.

The music started. Your body answered. Eight counts of beat.

The first count landed, then the second. Soon seongyeon's voice filtered in through, korean and english mixed, 'We don't need any other sign, Paint the town with the green lights, Pedal to the metal, like a bike'

The choreography came easily but your feet hesitated whenever they were meant to travel. Technically you knew where to go, but to you, there wasn't anywhere to go. Five bodies had existed between those counts yesterday. Today there was only empty floor.

You caught yourself shrinking every movement that depended on another person. The trainer watched in silence. Halfway through, he lifted a hand. The music stopped a minute later.

"You watched the guide?"

"Yes," you exhaled, chest rising and falling. Your wrists throbbed that same dull ache and your calves felt as though somebody had filled them with wet cement overnight. Your body had already begun filing complaints in places your mouth never did.

"When?"

"Last night."

He looked at you for another second.

"How much of it?"

"The choreography," you hesitated, suddenly aware of the perplexing feeling you got at his reaction. You'd thought that was simply what needed to be done.

"The whole choreography?"

You nodded, wiping a small streak of sweat from your brow.

"But I still need the formations," you glanced briefly toward the strips of coloured tape crossing the floor.

"...and the transitions," you paused, "the guide doesn't exactly teach spacing."

He folded his arms. Confusion and something unreadable flickered in his eyes.

"Weren't you only informed yesterday?"

You shrugged, "I pulled an all-nighter."

The sentence left your mouth with the same carelessness as commenting on tomorrow's weather. When it did, it felt like the room collectively sucked in a breath, the trainer winced mentally before even comprehending the sentence.

Words had an unfortunate habit of changing shape once they belonged to somebody else's ears. Like they had weeks spent weaving each thread with red blooming in their hands, just for you to bring a freshly painted canvas and painting on the missing room.

Your fingers curled loosely against your palm. You considered saying something else. The thought exhausted you before the words ever had a chance to. Silence settled over the room instead.

The trainer looked at you for another moment, then nodded once.

"...Right."

He clapped once alerting the room which made you flinch at the loud reverberation, "forget the choreography for now."

He stepped into the centre of the room, the toe of his shoe nudging one of the white strips of tape.

"I want to see the formations."

Martin quickly crossed to his place. The others followed almost absentmindedly, feet tracing routes they had walked often enough to stop thinking about. The room rearranged itself around them with quiet efficiency.

You stayed where you were. The trainer looked over his shoulder.

"You'll be here."

He pointed to a strip of tape tucked between Martin and James. New.

The white stood out against the older pieces, still bright around the edges where the adhesive hadn't gathered dust and shoe marks.

You crossed the floor, but someone stepped back. You stepped sideways.

Your shoulder caught another, and then a light bump occurred.

You glanced to see who it was.

Keonho.

His hand lifted instinctively, palm half-raised between the two of you. An apology, already fading before either of you had decided whether one was necessary.

You dipped your head, he did the same. The moment slipped past as quietly as it had happened.

The trainer waited until you found your mark.

"Half a step left," He circled the line slowly, studying it from different angles. Only an inch.

James answered without looking and Juhoon rotated on the ball of his foot. Seonghyeon adjusted almost lazily, though the final picture looked different because he had. One movement required five corrections.

Like watching someone straighten a frame only to realise the entire wall had leaned with it.

The trainer sighed, "again." A dancer's favourite word if you asked the audience. A dancer's least favourite if you asked the dancer.

Everyone reset. Your feet found the tape immediately. Theirs arrived later.

Repetition had a peculiar way of settling into the body.

Long after the mind accepted change, the body continued searching for yesterday.

"Good."

He nodded once and reached for the speaker, "let's mark the intro."

Music rolled through the room and Martin counted them in.

Eight. One. Two. Three.

You moved when the count asked you to.

Your eyes found James for the smallest of moment, accidentally through the mirror, before he looked away again. As if he was measuring you in the most subtle way possible

The same breathy exhale filled with relief, like a tightly wounded spring being released, etched on to your brain from yesterday lingered again in your thoughts.

You stepped through the space waiting for you.

The correction was seamless.

Almost invisible.

You wondered, how many repetitions it took before a house finally accepted that someone else lived there alongside.

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Do you ever just

TEPPANYAKI ON MY MAC, HUH, I GO YEONGKEUKEU

[cherieviere]

𝙁𝘼𝙆𝙀 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏𝙄𝘾 𝙏𝙍𝙀𝙀𝙎 ───

───────── ❝ 02. LUCKY NO 6 ❞

𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 : cortis × female! sixth member reader

𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀 : for seven years, you've been almost everything — almost chosen, almost debuted, almost enough. long after your mother's death, long after friends left and opportunities disappeared, the only thing that remained was the stubborn refusal to quit. then a last-minute decision places you in CORTIS, a group built without you in mind, and suddenly the future you've spent years chasing is within reach. but resentment has a way of lingering in crowded rooms, and belonging isn't something that can be assigned by a company. especially when you're the sixth chair at a table set for five.

𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲 : contemporary fiction, idol Industry, drama, coming-of-age, found family, slow burn, miscommunication, slightly character driven, comedic at times

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 (chapter) : multiple descriptions of burn out, dissociation, grief of a parent — literally blink and it's gone, depictions of exhaustion, depictions of pressure within the industry, for more in depth warnings of the series visit the master list linked above, awkward so awkward I cringed while writing this, take a shot everytime I say 'floor' or 'chair', hints of perfectionism

𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 : comment or dm to be added

cherry 🍒 speaks : so so sorry it took me so long, I would love to hear what stands out to you, comments, reblogs are all appreciated. show some love and don't be a silent reader! also I feel like this is another boring chapter. I only have one beta reader and it's starts with a M and ends with an E. To all the people who have shown their interest and support, thank you so much, there's fewer members in the avengers than in the tl lol

Lucky numbers are proof that people would rather inherit meaning than create it.

We assign miracles to seven. Misfortune to four. Wealth to eight. Smooth sailing to six, as though the universe has ever been sentimental enough to favour mere numbers.

We're expected to believe the universe pauses long enough to glance at a cosmic dice roll and think, 'Six? Better make this one work out. '

It really doesn't. Numbers are always born empty. We are the ones who feed them stories.

Which admittedly, was a rather dramatic conclusion to reach while sitting in a corporate conference room. Anyway.

The rhythmic friction of paper against skin almost echoed throughout the silent room.

Your thumb kept finding the same corner of the folder, rubbing the crease flat only to bend it again a second later. A quiet little act of vandalism. Maybe a search of control. You were unsure.

The paper was forgiving, it let you hurt more than once.

The room smelled faintly of coffee and crisp suits, if that even made any sense. The chairs looked expensive enough to belong in a company brochure, though none of them seemed particularly interested in being sat in.

Your gaze lingered on the yellow folder.

Martin Edwards Park.

James Chao Yufan.

Juhoon Kim.

Seonghyeon Eom.

Keonho Ahn.

You'd repeated these five names often enough in your head that they no longer sounded like people. Words tend to do that. Say one often enough and it eventually abandons its meaning. All that will remain is its shape.

Martin, James, Juhoon. Seonghyeon, Keonho.

Five sounds and five strangers. Five futures quietly moving towards yours.

You wondered which one had taken the news the worst. Probably the leader. Leaders inherited disasters they never volunteered for.

Your thumb found the corner again and the paper bent again. You smoothed it flat, yet it curled anyway.

Your eyes drifted to the closed door. Any minute now, it would open. Five names would become five faces.

The thought settled beneath your ribs with the quiet certainty of a stone finding the bottom of a lake.

Out of vague nervousness, you looked around again, wishing and hoping for some intervention to distract you. You tried to take in the appearance of the room, burying it underneath the thousand thoughts racing through your head.

It took you a second to notice—and bury—the fact that there were only five chairs.

You stared at them a moment longer before quickly pushing your own chair back and getting up slowly. Rooms remembered their original intentions surprisingly well.

The hallway wasn't far. Neither was the spare chair. It complained the entire journey. The metal legs caught every groove in the floor with an enthusiasm that bordered on spite. By the time you reached the doorway, the ache in your wrists had settled into something worse than what you carried before. Making room always sounded kinder than it felt.

While you eased the spare into the gap, the scrape echoed louder than you'd intended. Then the door swung open without any warning.

Conversation—if there had been any—never got the chance to begin. Five men stood lined in the doorway. The one at the front looked familiar.

Because you'd stepped around each other in a hallway less than a few hours ago. Martin Edwards Park.

His eyes flitted towards the chair grasped tightly in your hands (a rather grounding action it seemed to you at that moment) then to you. There was no visible reaction. Not evident at least. Recognition was a peculiar thing, you thought.

Behind him, the others lingered in varying stages of confusion, curiosity and poorly disguised apprehension, instinctively following the only person who looked as though he might know what was happening. Ducklings, or condemned men.

You straightened, flexing your fingers once before letting your hands fall back to your side. The dull ache lingered.

Another pair of footsteps, the manager brushed past them with the ease of someone who had orchestrated the silence and intended to keep it that way.

The last of them —'Seonghyeon' you think — closed the door behind him, hand resting on the handle for a second longer than necessary. "Everyone's here."

You cleared your throat. The sound caught somewhere on the way out, clinging stubbornly to the back of it. Swallowing did little more than move the discomfort around. Then took a seat at the same chair you had dragged in.

Another folder met the table a little harder than intended. The room seemed to shrink by imperceptible degrees, every breath borrowed from the same reluctant pocket of air.

Your fingers found each other beneath the table. They laced together and tightened. Enough to remind you they still belonged to you.

The manager clapped his hands once. And you heads lifted on instinct.

Your eyes caught a flash of brown again. James. Sat opposite to you. His gaze drifted across the room before settling briefly on you. He leaned forward, an ankle drifting over the opposite knee before returning both feet to the floor. His fingers tapped once against his leg—eyes still lingering on you with quiet concentration. Not on your face, just you as a whole.

Juhoon squared his folder with the edge of the table. Paused. Then nudged it another millimetre.

And Keonho loosened the cap on his water bottle. Yet he never drank from it. Tiny movements. People leaked more truth through their hands than they ever intended.

The manager sighed, as if sensing the tension in the room (he was used to it nevertheless) and started blurting out a barrage of details—schedules, re-recordings, dance practices, concepts, and god knows what else.

The words drifted across the room with the peculiar weightlessness of things that would eventually become your entire life.

You nodded when it seemed appropriate. After all, agreement required remarkably little effort. Your attention settled somewhere easier. The crescent your thumbnail left against the side of your finger.

Pressure.

Release.

Pressure.

Release.

The sting remained faithfully consistent.

Your name surfaced somewhere in the conversation. Martin's followed soon after. Then someone else's.

The names arranged themselves into sentences you couldn't quite bring yourself to hear.

Across the table, Martin's pen moved steadily across the page. Every so often it paused. Then it continued again. Under different circumstances, you might not have noticed it. Today, it buzzed inside you skull like a mosquito.

The manager snapped the folder shut.

"Martin. James."

Neither of them looked surprised. The manager motioned towards the door with a tilt of his head, "outside."

Martin rose first, already closing his notebook before he'd fully stood. James followed a second later, slipping his phone into his pocket with the absent ease of someone interrupted halfway through a habit.

The door opened then closed.

Silence settled in almost immediately and the room seemed to forget what it had been doing. Juhoon reached for his phone before the latch had even finished clicking into place. His thumb drifted lazily across the screen, expression unchanged.

Across the table, Keonho glanced at Seonghyeon. Seonghyeon looked back.

Something passed between them.

Judging by the way Keonho eventually sighed and looked away, whatever conversation they'd attempted had died somewhere in transit.

Your mouth twitched while your hand slipped into your pocket and felt the coolness of the metal device.

The screen woke beneath your thumb, spilling pale light across the polished table. Notifications crowded the lock screen. You swept them away without reading a single one.

Your thumb already knew where it was going. By the time you noticed, her conversation was open.

Three years could hollow out a home. Empty out a wardrobe and even erase the smell from a favourite sweater. A text thread refused to participate. It preserved everything with quiet indifference, holding onto a version of the world that no longer existed simply because nobody had asked it to do otherwise.

Your thumb drifted lower. The messages were exactly where you'd left them.

you: ill be home this week❗️❗️

you: evaluations finally ended 😭

you: don't wait up tho. gonna be late.

you: love u ❤️

Seonghyeon coughed into his fist. And as if reflex, you quickly pressed the power button of your phone. Letting it slide from your palm to the table with a thud.

Soon, the door handle turned again. Martin stepped inside.

James followed a pace behind, hands tucked into the pockets of his hoodie, looking no more enlightened than when he'd left. A stack of freshly printed schedules rested beneath Martin's arm, the corners still stubbornly warm from the printer. He crossed the room without a word. One by one, he slid a copy in front of each of the boys.

When he reached you, the pages came to a stop beneath your hands. He let go. Paused. Then, almost as an afterthought, his fingers found the edge of the paper and turned it around until the print faced you. A tiny adjustment. Almost negligible. Barely worth noticing. You noticed anyway.

"...Thanks," your own voice caught you off guard. Hoarse. Lower than you remembered. The sort of voice that belonged to the end of a twelve-hour practice rather than the beginning of a conversation.

Martin's dark eyes lifted briefly to yours. Just enough to register it.

"No problem."

His voice on the other hand remained as rough around the edges as it had in the hallway. He moved to his own chair. Silence reclaimed the room with impressive efficiency. Nobody spoke. Someone turned a page. He looked down at his schedule. Then up around the table. The expression on his face wasn't quite uncertainty. He drew in a quiet breath. "..So," Five heads lifted almost in unison.

He seemed to realise he'd successfully acquired everyone's attention before figuring out what he'd actually wanted to do with it. Another beat passed.

"Um..." he glanced briefly at the schedule in front of him, as though answers might have been printed somewhere between tomorrow's dance practice and Thursday's vocal rehearsal.

"They didn't really tell us..." The sentence drifted off. James rubbed a hand over his face, "good start," he muttered. A small reluctant snort escaped Keonho. Almost accidental. But it cracked something. Just enough for the room to remember that everyone inside it was lost. Perhaps not on equal levels. But lost nonetheless.

The awkwardness returned. The clock ticked loudly behind you and your eyes wandered. Martin first. His expression remained stubbornly uneventful except the polite curve of his lips that seemed to be too painful for it to be anything other than forceful. Emotions do not announce themselves properly. They arrive layered over one another until separating them felt like trying to untangle rain. You could try though.

Fatigue. Responsibility.

Whatever came after.

James sat with his jaw set just a little too tight, as though every sentence he wasn't saying had decided to wait there instead. Juhoon's attention never seemed to settle. It moved from the schedules to the table, then back again, assembling the room one detail at a time. Seonghyeon's shoulders remained stubbornly lifted. Tensed and tired.

Keonho looked everywhere except another person. Discomfort had a body long before it ever reached a face It lived in shoulders, hands, and breathing and in that moment you were seeing it live. Your gaze circled back and stopped when Juhoon looked up abruptly.

Because apparently people eventually felt themselves being watched. Neither of you moved. His brows pulled together ever so slightly in a questioning motion. A heartbeat later, you remembered that staring generally belonged somewhere between childhood and poor manners. Only then did you look away.

Your thoughts were interrupted when your phone made a noise too loud for a room that had let the silence run the long mile for forty-five minutes. The sound threaded neatly through the silence. Some of them glanced in your general direction.

You glanced down.

Stop by my office when you're done.

Right. There was always another signature. Another version of your life waiting for your initials. You got up quickly, shoving the newly printed schedules inside your bag with more force than required.

The words left your mouth before you had time to rehearse them, "excuse me."

The room hesitated for the briefest moment. Most of them rose, halfway bowing. Habit — neat and precise. You returned them, your own arriving a fraction too fast.

"See you tomorrow," Martin's voice carried the same quiet steadiness as before. You nodded once. The sort of sentence people reached for when they knew they ought to leave behind something gentler than silence.

Your fingers curled around the handle as the cool metal pressed against your palm. The door hadn't even closed properly until you heard, behind you, the sharp sound of a chair creaking.

"...Jesus."

James. A breathy, exhale, almost. like a tightly wounded spring suddenly being released.

Another chair shifted. Someone laughed, quiet and thin with something closer to disbelief than amusement. The room began breathing again. You reluctantly took another step, grip tightening around the strap of your bag.

After all, some sounds followed you farther than footsteps ever could. And the worst part? You can't even blame them.

Your laptop's busted speaker crackled while the song played. Sometime around two-thirty am, the choreography stopped looking like choreography. It became arithmetic. Counts, weight shifts and formation changes. A left shoulder arriving half a beat too early or a head turn that looked effortless until the thirty-seventh replay. The video looped on.

GO! — Practice Ver.

Sleep finally came at five, when your body was simply too exhausted to keep going. You knew better than to force it. The laptop though remained open all night.

After all, Tommorow morning had a habit of arriving too early.

The shower helped. Water reached skin. Just not with the exhaustion—that had roots.

Your hair was still damp by the time you stepped into the hallway. Strands clung stubbornly to the back of your neck beneath the hood of an oversized charcoal jacket. A white ribbed tank disappeared beneath it. Loose pants and dance shoes hooked loosely around two fingers. Your backpack hung from one shoulder, threatening to slide off with every step. Comfort had become a uniform somewhere around your third year anyways.

The dorm door clicked shut behind you.

Three steps that was all you managed before —

"Damn."

A familiar trainee, slowed beside you, eyebrows lifting as his eyes travelled over your face.

"You look like shit," he whistled, "did a tornado ransack your house and you or what?" You blinked. That sentence made no sense at all, you bit back a snide comment.

"So I've been told."

"No, seriously," his head tipped slightly to one side.

"Did you even sleep?" The question lingered.

"Enough."

The answer wasn't a lie by any means. It had simply developed a flexible relationship with the truth.

After a few minute walk, the music found you before the practice room did. A bassline bled beneath the door, followed by the familiar complaint of rubber soles against the floor.

"I'm serious. That wasn't even my mistake."

"I call bull."

"It wasn't."

The trainer laughed first, "oh? Someone is confident. Should we check the recording?" A chorus of groans answered him. Then something soft hit somebody else.

"Ow," the syllable dragged — like a small whine.

"You deserved that."

Another laugh. You stopped outside the door. Rooms had personalities long before people introduced themselves. This one hadn't noticed you yet and you wished you could keep it that way.

You entered with a creak in the hinge of the door. Comically almost, conversation immediately faltered. As if it simply forgot where it had been going.

The trainer looked over first. "Morning," you bowed, not the usual formal. A glorified nod would be more appropriate.

"Good morning."

The greeting rippled back around the room. Uneven.

Keonho still had a towel slung over one shoulder which nearly slid on to the floor if it was not his quick reflexes that saved it as he bowed. While Martin's arrived with the absent-minded precision of somebody who'd done it too many times to think about anymore.

James waited somewhere between two blinks. You never quite reached him. Some words had a habit of standing exactly where they'd been spoken Tiny things, you suppose. Yesterday had introduced names. It hadn't introduced ease.

Your bag slipped from your shoulder and settled against the mirrored wall. Jacket beside it. Shoes exchanged for practice ones with movements your hands had stopped asking permission to make years ago.

"Alright first warm up," The trainer narrowed his eyes at the way the five boys lingered like they just walked into traffic and froze.

The mirrors caught six version of the same stretch, each body carrying it differently.

Seven years had long since taught yours where to begin. You occupied the corner, and started with your neck, then shoulders, wrists, then hips and finally hamstrings and ankles. The sequence unfolded without much thought.

The trainer wandered between people, correcting a shoulder here, a knee there, nudging somebody's stance with the toe of his shoe.

Then he stopped beside you.

"So," you straightened suddenly. He raised his hands in mock defence, "relax."

He walked over in front of you with a gaze that screamed scrutiny.

"I've got no idea what they actually sent you."

"Just a video," you breathed out, your voice smaller than expected.

He nodded toward the center of the room, "let's see." The others continued stretching. Nobody stopped, but nobody pretended not to listen either. He reached for the speaker.

"We'll start with the first verse, just follow as much as you know."

You nodded again. Automatic, like your neck had a brain of its own.

The music started. Your body answered. Eight counts of beat.

The first count landed, then the second. Soon seongyeon's voice filtered in through, korean and english mixed, 'We don't need any other sign, Paint the town with the green lights, Pedal to the metal, like a bike'

The choreography came easily but your feet hesitated whenever they were meant to travel. Technically you knew where to go, but to you, there wasn't anywhere to go. Five bodies had existed between those counts yesterday. Today there was only empty floor.

You caught yourself shrinking every movement that depended on another person. The trainer watched in silence. Halfway through, he lifted a hand. The music stopped a minute later.

"You watched the guide?"

"Yes," you exhaled, chest rising and falling. Your wrists throbbed that same dull ache and your calves felt as though somebody had filled them with wet cement overnight. Your body had already begun filing complaints in places your mouth never did.

"When?"

"Last night."

He looked at you for another second.

"How much of it?"

"The choreography," you hesitated, suddenly aware of the perplexing feeling you got at his reaction. You'd thought that was simply what needed to be done.

"The whole choreography?"

You nodded, wiping a small streak of sweat from your brow.

"But I still need the formations," you glanced briefly toward the strips of coloured tape crossing the floor.

"...and the transitions," you paused, "the guide doesn't exactly teach spacing."

He folded his arms. Confusion and something unreadable flickered in his eyes.

"Weren't you only informed yesterday?"

You shrugged, "I pulled an all-nighter."

The sentence left your mouth with the same carelessness as commenting on tomorrow's weather. When it did, it felt like the room collectively sucked in a breath, the trainer winced mentally before even comprehending the sentence.

Words had an unfortunate habit of changing shape once they belonged to somebody else's ears. Like they had weeks spent weaving each thread with red blooming in their hands, just for you to bring a freshly painted canvas and painting on the missing room.

Your fingers curled loosely against your palm. You considered saying something else. The thought exhausted you before the words ever had a chance to. Silence settled over the room instead.

The trainer looked at you for another moment, then nodded once.

"...Right."

He clapped once alerting the room which made you flinch at the loud reverberation, "forget the choreography for now."

He stepped into the centre of the room, the toe of his shoe nudging one of the white strips of tape.

"I want to see the formations."

Martin quickly crossed to his place. The others followed almost absentmindedly, feet tracing routes they had walked often enough to stop thinking about. The room rearranged itself around them with quiet efficiency.

You stayed where you were. The trainer looked over his shoulder.

"You'll be here."

He pointed to a strip of tape tucked between Martin and James. New.

The white stood out against the older pieces, still bright around the edges where the adhesive hadn't gathered dust and shoe marks.

You crossed the floor, but someone stepped back. You stepped sideways.

Your shoulder caught another, and then a light bump occurred.

You glanced to see who it was.

Keonho.

His hand lifted instinctively, palm half-raised between the two of you. An apology, already fading before either of you had decided whether one was necessary.

You dipped your head, he did the same. The moment slipped past as quietly as it had happened.

The trainer waited until you found your mark.

"Half a step left," He circled the line slowly, studying it from different angles. Only an inch.

James answered without looking and Juhoon rotated on the ball of his foot. Seonghyeon adjusted almost lazily, though the final picture looked different because he had. One movement required five corrections.

Like watching someone straighten a frame only to realise the entire wall had leaned with it.

The trainer sighed, "again." A dancer's favourite word if you asked the audience. A dancer's least favourite if you asked the dancer.

Everyone reset. Your feet found the tape immediately. Theirs arrived later.

Repetition had a peculiar way of settling into the body.

Long after the mind accepted change, the body continued searching for yesterday.

"Good."

He nodded once and reached for the speaker, "let's mark the intro."

Music rolled through the room and Martin counted them in.

Eight. One. Two. Three.

You moved when the count asked you to.

Your eyes found James for the smallest of moment, accidentally through the mirror, before he looked away again. As if he was measuring you in the most subtle way possible

The same breathy exhale filled with relief, like a tightly wounded spring being released, etched on to your brain from yesterday lingered again in your thoughts.

You stepped through the space waiting for you.

The correction was seamless.

Almost invisible.

You wondered, how many repetitions it took before a house finally accepted that someone else lived there alongside.

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[cherieviere]

fake plastic trees chapter two "Lucky no 6" is out soon ❗️❗️

[cherieviere]

writing a fanfic is not for people with anxiety because tell me why I nearly crashed out thinking wheather my readers were going to like the first chapter or not like hello?

[cherieviere]

𝙁𝘼𝙆𝙀 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏𝙄𝘾 𝙏𝙍𝙀𝙀𝙎 ──

────────── ❝ 01. MONKEY'S PAW ❞

𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 : cortis × female! sixth member reader

𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀 : for seven years, you've been almost everything — almost chosen, almost debuted, almost enough. long after your mother's death, long after friends left and opportunities disappeared, the only thing that remained was the stubborn refusal to quit. then a last-minute decision places you in CORTIS, a group built without you in mind, and suddenly the future you've spent years chasing is within reach. but resentment has a way of lingering in crowded rooms, and belonging isn't something that can be assigned by a company. especially when you're the sixth chair at a table set for five.

𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲 : contemporary fiction, idol Industry, drama, coming-of-age, found family, slow burn, miscommunication, slightly character driven, comedic at times

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 (chapter) : description of burn out, dissociation, anxiety, grief of a parent — literally blink and it's gone, depictions of exhaustion, depictions of pressure within the industry, for more in depth warnings of the series visit the master list linked above, SHAKESPEARE!!

𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 : comment or dm to be added.

cherry 🍒 speaks : my laptop officially has some hidden agenda against me. this chapter is boring I'll warn you. pretty short chapter, slow paced mostly inside mcs head, I would love to hear what stands out to you, comments, reblogs are all appreciated. show some love and don't be a silent reader!

"You'd be perfect if you were just a little luckier."

The manager probably meant it as a compliment. That's the funny thing about compliments. Sometimes they stay longer with you than insults.

You don't even remember his face anymore. Only the sentence. Human memory is a landfill. It discards entire beings and preserves fragments. Like the color of a stranger's umbrella glimpsed through the rain. A melody leaking from a convenience store radio. A sentence spoken carelessly by a man who probably forgot it before the meeting ended.

"You'd be perfect if you were just a little luckier."

As though luck were a skill. Something measurable. As if you could spend another hour in the studio and emerge with better odds.

The memory followed you into consciousness. It arrived before the sunlight.

Before the ache in your neck.

Before the familiar weight beneath your ribs.

By the time you opened your eyes, the room had already begun to brighten.

The dorm was suspended in that uncertain hour between night and morning, when the darkness had retreated but the day had not yet committed to arriving. The walls were washed in a weak grey. Your hoodie lay where you dropped it yesterday. Or the day before. A water bottle rested beside the desk, half-empty. Or half-full.

You suppose optimism has always been a matter of perspective.

The air tasted stale. The window had been shut for so long you couldn't remember opening it.

For a moment, you stayed exactly where you are. One arm was numb. Your cheek was creased from the pillow. Your mouth was dry in the particular way only mornings seem capable of achieving and the teeth felt fuzzy. Neither dirty nor clean. Just coated in the residue of being alive. It was disgusting when you thought about it.

Sleep was supposed to make you feel better. Most mornings it felt more like an intermission.

The mattress shifted beneath your weight. The springs complained—a tired metallic groan. You knew that noise. You had known it for years.

The same way you knew the stain on the ceiling looked like a non-existent continent.

Knowledge accumulated not through affection but repetition. Knowledge accumulated the way a river accumulates sediment. Slowly. Without permission.

Most people imagined their lives were built from grand moments. The triumphs and the tragedies. The turning points that split existence into before and after. But perhaps people were really assembled from smaller things. The details repeated so often they became part of the architecture of the self.

The room smelled faintly of detergent. The cheap kind the company bought in bulk. Sharp and artificial. Trying far too hard to smell clean.

You knew that smell too. But suddenly that felt unbearable. Not because there was anything wrong with the room. But because you had become fluent in it.

Every nook and cranny. Every smell and stubborn imperfection. As though the dorm had memorized you. Or worse — as though you had memorized it.

A laugh died somewhere behind your teeth. You had spent years trying to become unforgettable. Only to end up knowing the exact sound a cheap mattress made when you sat up too quickly.

There should have been a word for this. For dedicating years of your life to something and still feeling like a guest inside it. For standing in the middle of a dream you had spent so long chasing and realizing it fitted someone else better than you. Perhaps there was.

You dragged a hand down your face.

The digital clock read 7:12.

Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed. Someone laughed. Another swore.

Life continued with the stubborn persistence of a weed breaking through concrete. You considered staying in bed.

Not seriously. Just long enough to imagine it.

People thought quitting arrived like lightning. Most days it was only a passing thought. Gone before you had finished brushing your teeth.

You wondered how many times you had almost quit. Not enough, apparently.

A line surfaced from somewhere in the back of your mind.

Shakespeare.

"I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition."

You had always thought ambition was misunderstood. People talked about it like it was a virtue. Something polished or admirable. A shining thing. Most of the time it felt more like an old injury. The kind that healed incorrectly. You learned to move around it. You forgot it was there. Until someone brushed against it. Until someone said the wrong thing.

Then suddenly the ache returned.

"You'd be perfect if you were just a little luckier."

The worst part was that he hadn't been entirely wrong. You hated that. Almost as much as you hated the fact that part of you still cared.

The thought lingered longer than it should have. Then vanished faster than it felt.

One moment you were staring at a dormitory ceiling, feeling the thoughts turn in your head like gears. The next—your lungs were burning and the hands on your wristwatch pointed to 10 something.

The practice room mirrors glared back at you from every angle, merciless in their honesty. Overhead lights flooded the room in sterile white. Sweat trickled down the back of your neck.

For a second, you just stood there. Blinking. Panting in rapid and loud breaths.

Your towel hung around your shoulders, damp and heavy. Your shirt clung unpleasantly to your skin. Music reverberated through the floor beneath your feet, bass vibrating through bone.

Someone was speaking. You realized, belatedly, that they were speaking to you (well mostly).

"…and then he told me to shut up. Like the audacity!"

Sharp laughter erupted somewhere to your right. Several people groaned. You wiped your face with the edge of the towel.

"Huh?" It was like the room paused.

The girl, Chae-hwa, stared at you with an unreadable look in her eyes. "Damn."

"What?" you repeated, hands clutching the towel at the sudden attention, the dense loopy fiber suddenly felt course to you

"I've been talking for, like, three minutes." You considered apologizing. Then decided against it.

"Sounds important," you said, turning away from the other trainees with a sigh.

"It wasn't." A beat passed. "That's not the point."

You weren't entirely sure what the point was anymore.

A water bottle arced through the air. You caught it without looking. The movement happened before thought could reach it. Muscle memory.

Most of your life seemed to operate that way those days. The choreography. The schedules. The monthly evaluations—you name it.

The endless cycle of wanting something badly enough that it became indistinguishable from obligation.

You twisted the cap open. The water was uncomfortably warm. The kind of tepid drink that did not quench your thirst after hours of physical exertion. You drank it anyway.

Across the room, someone changed the music. The opening beat rattled through the speakers. Conversation died instantly.

Bodies shifted.

Everyone returned to their places. Like a flock startled into flight. Feet moving to find their marks. Hands lifting. Entire sequences unfolded without permission, as though some quieter version of themselves had taken the wheel.

Including you. Especially you.

Your body obeyed before your mind did.

Burial. Layer after layer of practice pressed beneath your skin until it became instinct.

Left. Turn. Step. Again. And again.

The strange thing about exhaustion was that eventually it stopped feeling like tiredness. It settled deeper than that. Into muscle and habit. Into the space between thought and movement.

Which meant that when the lines blurred, you would realize that you had simply forgotten how to stop.

The music ended mid-beat, and silence rushed in to occupy the space it left behind.

A collective groan followed. Someone collapsed dramatically onto the floor.

You hooked the towel around your neck, offering your throat to the air as you slid down the mirror wall, pulling your knees up to your chest. Your lungs were still trying to negotiate with the rest of your body. You grunted, the sound low, hollow, and utterly spent.

Sweat slid down the side of your face. The mirrors blurred beneath the harsh lights. Or maybe your vision did. It was hard to tell anymore.

"Sunbae." You glanced over.

One of the newer trainees stood nearby. He was tall and looked polite.

The look of a kid who apologized when somebody else stepped on his foot.

"Yeah?" He shifted his weight. He sat down beside you while maintaining a strangely respectful distance. The sort of space anyone barely gave regardless of age these days.

He looked strangely nervous. Then:

"I was just curious about how long you've been here," he asked softly. It didn't hurt. It was just familiar. Like touching a bruise to see whether it still throbbed. A small pause later he added, "it's just that the others said you are the oldest here." Your eyes trailed the maladroit explanation that was demonstrated by alot of hand movement. After a few moments of silence, you replied.

"Six years and a few months. Give or take." His eyes widened slightly. Right on cue. You looked away toward the mirror before it arrived. Because it always arrived.

"But—given your reputation," he paused, as if wondering if he should continue, "given how talented you are, shouldn't you—" He cut himself off, scratching his nape awkwardly.

"Yeah, well, that's impressive." Even more awkward laughter followed. The kind people used to patch over a conversation they had accidentally damaged. Because silence had a way of making people uncomfortable, and you had just handed him plenty of it.

You could almost hear the questions forming behind his eyes.

Persistent. Dedicated. Look how young she is. She spent her entire childhood here?

Nobody said it. Nobody ever did. They let the sentence die before it reached their lips. As though mercy existed in omission.

It didn't make it any gentler. A blade doesn't become less sharp simply because nobody names it.

Your phone vibrated. The screen lit up. For a moment, you only stared at the name

Your tongue darted out to wet your lips—a nervous tic that you had developed over the years. You didn't particularly dislike the sender, but some names became associated with places. Conference rooms. Evaluations. Plastic water bottles arranged neatly across long tables. The slow erosion of expectation.

Your thumb hesitated. Then tapped on it.

Come see me after practice.

Nothing else. No explanation. No urgency. One ordinary sentence.

Your pulse stumbled uncomfortably anyway. The body remembers things the mind grows tired of carrying.

"Everything okay?" The question came from the new trainee, whom you just noticed was still sitting beside you.

You locked your phone. "Probably." Too quick. Too automatic. As though good news had ever arrived in a message that shorT.

Around you, conversation resumed. Life continued with the confidence of people who still believed tomorrow belonged to them. You stared at your reflection. Sweat-darkened shirt. Hair stuck to your forehead.

A face made familiar by repetition. A face you had seen in dressing-room mirrors and bathroom mirrors and practice-room mirrors and elevator mirrors.

A face that suddenly felt temporary.

The thought arrived so quietly it almost slipped past unnoticed. Maybe this is it. Seven years is the pathetic end of the line.

Long enough for seasons to change. Long enough for entire trainee generations to come and go. Long enough for potential to become a question instead of a promise. The idea should have terrified you. Instead—relief. Small, sharp, and sudden, hits. Gone almost immediately.

There was the possibility of an ending. The possibility of putting down something you had carried for so long that you had forgotten what it weighed. Guilt followed a second later, as predictable as gravity.

For those who weren't first in this continuous and endless race, burnout waited at the finish line—if they even reached it, that was. Raw and immovable. Even the most successful ones didn't get the warmth of commemoration nor caresses.

After practice ended, you remained where you were. Still enough for a passerby to think that you were trying to count the droplets of sweat that dripped down from your face to the floor. Your phone felt heavier in your pocket. Five words. Not many people could ruin an afternoon in five words. You sighed, you do that a lot these days.

Moving toward something had always made it harder to pretend it wasn't real.

The hallway outside was colder than the practice room. The glass panels threw your reflection back at you. You looked past it.

The walk should have taken two minutes. You made it take seven. Then eight.

At one point, you stopped to check your phone. Nothing.

No new messages or missed calls. You stared at the screen anyway. Wishing that another notification might appear and spare you from the first.

Halfway down the corridor, a thought caught you off guard.

If they terminate my contract today—who do I tell?

Your footsteps faltered. The answer arrived immediately.

Nobody. Nobody cares.

The words landed with a dull sort of finality. Years ago, there would've been another answer.

Your mother. Before every evaluation. Every showcase. Both of the almost-debuts—those frantic weeks where you had tried on stage outfits, only to pack them back into suitcases when the groups dissolved before the first teasers could even drop. Every tiny victory inflated by excitement into something enormous. You would've called her first

Like a hand withdrawing from a flame, out of motor reflex, you shoved that thought down.

Your thumb hovered over your contacts. Names. Phone numbers. People you cared about. People who probably cared about you. Friends. Former trainees. Some mentors. A dozen conversations waiting to be resumed. People already carrying enough weight. Enough that adding to it made your chest feel heavy.

Yet none of them felt like the person you would call when a life ended. Because that is what this would be. Not your life exactly, just the version of it you had been constructing since you were ten years old. Brick by brick. Practice by practice. Evaluation by evaluation.

You wondered what happened to dreams after they were declared dead. Whether they got buried somewhere. Whether there was a ceremony. Flowers. A eulogy. A polished plaque engraved with something respectable.

'Here lies Potential.'

The thought should have been funny. It wasn't.

You kept walking while the building hummed around you. Managers carrying coffee and employees carrying laptops. People who were all pretending to know what they were doing. You used to think adulthood came with certainty.

Now you suspected everyone was improvising. Some were simply better at hiding it.

The conference room waited at the end of the corridor. The door was closed. You stopped in front of it, and suddenly the hallway felt very quiet. For a moment, all you could hear was your own breathing. Seven years distilled into a closed door and a trembling hand. It was ridiculous.

You curled your fingers toward the wood. But just before your knuckles met it—the handle turned first. The door swung inward. You stepped back automatically. The person emerging did the same.

A near-collision with a man tall enough to classify as a pole. Silky brown hair was pushed back from his forehead with a hairband, and rimless glasses hung from his nose, looking one careless nod away from falling off. He had a black folder tucked beneath one arm.

There was a particular look people wore after spending years chasing something. You had the ability to recognize it immediately.

After all, it was knowledge accumulated not through affection but repetition. You recognized it because you saw it in the surface of every mirror you stood in front of.

The exhaustion sat differently on everyone. On some people, it sags. On others, it hardens. His had settled somewhere behind his eyes.

His gaze landed on you. Briefly. Not long enough to become rude. Not short enough to be accidental. A flicker of recognition passed between strangers who had occupied the same building for too many years. The ecosystem of people perpetually waiting for permission to begin their lives. Perhaps something adjacent to familiarity.

The moment slipped away. He shifted to the side. You noticed the distance he left. Just a few inches. Enough. The space reserved for strangers. Or for people carrying fragile things, there was no in between. His eyes were still on you. Assessing carefully.

"Sorry." His voice was rough around the edges. Overused. Like he had spent hours arguing with someone.

Despite the fact that it was nothing but a careless apology thrown at a stranger, to you, it felt oddly heavy.

You nodded once. The universal language of people who had no intention of having a conversation. The exchange ended there. He continued down the corridor. Long strides. Head lowered slightly. The folder (now lowered) tapped gently against his leg with every step. Then he disappeared around the corner.

The silence returned. You stared after him for a moment. There was something oddly comforting about seeing another person leave a room you were terrified to enter. Proof that survival remained possible.

The conference room waited. The open door revealed only a sliver of the interior. Small plants littered the brightly lit room. They all looked vaguely like plastic.

The office was smaller than you had expected. Not cramped. Just ordinary. A desk. A few chairs. A framed platinum record hanging slightly crooked on the wall. The sort of room where futures were discussed in the same tone people used to discuss lunch.

The man behind the desk looked up when you entered. Mr. Choi. He smiled, motioning for you to sit down.

With your lips in between your teeth, and legs dragging behind you like wet blankets, you did.

He slid a folder toward you, it was yellow. At that moment, you weren't sure why that bothered you so much.

Maybe because yellow was the colour of summer. Children's drawings pinned to refrigerator doors. Bright and happy. This yellow looked tired. Muted by lighting and fingerprints. The color of something handled too many times. The front page read :

CORTIS. An acronym for 'Color outside the lines'.

The words landed softly. That was somehow worse.

You stared at the folder, unblinking, as if maybe by looking long enough, you would wake up from this dream. It felt cold and the bristly texture irritated the tip of your finger.

You had always imagined this moment in your head. Not often.

The future had been dangerous territory when you were a trainee. Most people learned not to visit it too frequently.

Still—sometimes when it was late at night. On the walk back to the dorm. Or perhaps during evaluations.

You had imagined hearing the word debut. You had imagined relief. Excitement. Vindication. The sudden certainty that all those years had been building toward something.

Instead, all you felt was strangely disconnected from your own body. As though the room had shifted half an inch to the left. As though reality had made a decision without consulting you.

The manager continued speaking. Schedules and preparations and training adjustments—you name it. But the words all drifted past. All meaningless.

The manager noticed your expression. "You've worked very hard," he said, then nodded as if he were satisfied with the words of encouragement he had offered. As if they would be the medicine to the sickness that plagued your mind right then.

CORTIS. Everybody knew CORTIS. Not officially. Companies loved pretending secrets remained secret.

A debut rumored to be weeks away. A lineup polished so thoroughly it had practically become fact.

Your gaze lingered on the pages. The concept sketches, recording schedules, and the styling notes; the promo ideas and, of course, the lineup.

Every page told the same story.

Five boys standing shoulder to shoulder. Five shadows cast in the same direction. Five pieces cut to fit together.

Five. Five. Five.

Five boys. CORTIS wasn't a mixed group. It was a pathetic testament to how much effort people were willing to spend making sure everything fit together.

A completed shape.

Your name sat at the edge of it now. New ink on an old blueprint. The realization settled somewhere beneath your ribs. Nothing inside this folder felt new. Except you.

Companies were capable of astonishing things. Apparently, common sense rarely ranked among them those days.

Mr. Choi called your name. You looked up.

"Do you have any questions?" Thousands. None of them useful. None that could be satisfied with whatever answer he would offer.

You thought of the brunette trainee leaving the room. The folder beneath his arm.

The careful distance he had left between the two of you.

The split second of recognition which you had labeled as 'something adjacent to familiarity' You were wrong. Terribly so. The apology made more sense now.

A strange pressure unfurled beneath your ribs.

Your excitement (not really) folded in on itself. Collapsing like a star at the end of its life. The feeling of arriving late to your own life. Because for seven years you had imagined a door opening. You had never imagined walking through it and finding people already seated.

Already comfortable. Already belonging to one another. For years, the future had been simple.

Someday. Everything lived inside someday.

Someday you would debut.

Someday things would make sense.

Someday all the sacrifices would line up neatly beside the reward and balance the equation.

Now someday sat inside a folder with the names of five boys.

Printed and scheduled and painfully real.

The strange feeling stretched further and further into the shape of a question.

One sharp enough to draw blood.

How do you join a future that already learned how to exist without you?

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[cherieviere]

fpt supporters i'm terribly sorry for the delay my draft got deleted and well- i am rewriting the whole damn ch 1 so thank you for your patience !! i was supposed to post the first ch today :( fml

[cherieviere]

ik I shouldn't be greedy and finish fpt first, but hypothetically if I were to make one

What's your thoughts on james (cortis) x older male! reader?

HELL YEAH!!

idk maybe not

Voting ended onJun 11

I dunno I feel like writing doomed yaoi lmao

[cherieviere]

𝙁𝘼𝙆𝙀 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙎𝙏𝙄𝘾 𝙏𝙍𝙀𝙀𝙎 ── ❝ 코르티스 ❞

❝ 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙧𝙤𝙤𝙩𝙨 𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙧𝙚𝙖𝙡, 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙣 𝙞𝙛 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙩𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙨 𝙬𝙚𝙧𝙚 𝙣𝙤𝙩 ❞

𝗳𝗲𝗮𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 : cortis × female! sixth member reader

𝘀𝘆𝗻𝗼𝗽𝘀𝗶𝘀 : for seven years, you've been almost everything — almost chosen, almost debuted, almost enough. long after your mother's death, long after friends left and opportunities disappeared, the only thing that remained was the stubborn refusal to quit. then a last-minute decision places you in CORTIS, a group built without you in mind, and suddenly the future you've spent years chasing is within reach. but resentment has a way of lingering in crowded rooms, and belonging isn't something that can be assigned by a company. especially when you're the sixth chair at a table set for five.

𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲 : contemporary fiction, idol Industry, drama, coming-of-age, found family, slow burn, miscommunication, slightly character driven, comedic at times

𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 : these are real people therefore mischaracterization is possible, HEAVY MATURE THEMES ~ grief and loss of a parent, burnout, slight suidcidal ideation, emotional distress, themes of abandonment, unhealthy work culture, anxiety, strong language, conflict between friends/team members, discussions of death, depictions of exhaustion and pressure within the entertainment industry, READER IS ARROGANT AND SLIGHTLY TOXIC IN HER OWN WAY but so are the other cortis members, complex characters, secondhand embarrassment, reader is preferably 17-18-19 whatever you are comfortable with but not the youngest/oldest

𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁 : comment or dm to be added!!!

𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝘂𝘀 : ongoing

cherry 🍒 speaks : turns out i excel in anything that starts with a 'mis'. mischaracterization, miscommunication, misunderstanding, mis-whatever. also why is my warning list bigger than my synopsis lmao. don't be a silent reader :p this is a heavy story if you're not comfortable with anything mentioned in the warnings please click away. read at your own discretion

愛 ──── 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦 ────

01 .ᐟ.ᐟ ──── monkey's paw

02 .ᐟ.ᐟ──── lucky number 6

03.ᐟ.ᐟ ────sign of the times

04.ᐟ.ᐟ──── good people die first

05.ᐟ.ᐟ ────things that go bump in the night

06.ᐟ.ᐟ ──── die your daughter

07.ᐟ.ᐟ ────eternal sunshine

08.ᐟ.ᐟ ────midnight in pixel

09.ᐟ.ᐟ ────tbd

10.ᐟ.ᐟ──── tbd

𝖯𝖫𝖠𝖸𝖫𝖨𝖲𝖳 𝖥𝖮𝖱 𝖳𝖧𝖤 𝖡𝖮𝖮𝖪 ──── : tbd

──── 2026 @cherieviere

[cherieviere]

Do we want a cortis fem! sixth member story or not?

HELL YEAH

idk don't feel like it

Voting ended onJun 9

[cherieviere]

some people are genuinely so desperate and burning in horny hell that they have to read/write smut about a literal child. a 17 year old is almost universally considered a CHILD!! that is exploitative and inappropriate, my dude. anyone sexualizing a real minor is wrong. does not matter if it's being consumed by a minor as well or not. these are real people. have atleast a pinch of decency.