it feels strange: on one hand, nayoung is a very small celebrity, basically winning a survival show and becoming a trainee through both the public and the judges’ approval. on the other hand, she gets paid minimal from her trainee work, so she needs all the money she can get whenever she can squeeze ways to earn it in. sure, she could ask for money from her grandparents, surely, but she is going to be 23 this year and the last thing she wants to do is burden them when she should be able to take care of herself.
luckily, the convenience store hasn’t fired her yet even though she can only work weekends; more like just sunday, but still. at least it’s something. in some ways, she feels like working here is below her stature, but she mostly knows she just needs to swallow her pride and make money, no matter how embarrassing it may be to meet a potential fan here of all places.
she’s going in for her sunday morning shift when she spots cam, looking quite sleepy behind the cash register. she pauses in the doorway. she somehow hasn’t seen him since next gen, to the point that she wonders if he’s been avoiding her on the schedule on purpose.
she wouldn’t blame him. they were in similar boats going in, after all, with her a former trainee with multiple failures under her belt and him a failed idol. she told him, near the beginning of the competition, that it would be embarrassing if they didn’t succeed, and well...cam didn’t. nayoung doesn’t feel remorse too often, but she does feel a little bad for that. in her eyes, cam isn’t lacking much of anything. maybe the audience just found him boring or something.
she enters the building properly, then strides up to the counter. “hey,” she greets him casually. “i think i’m supposed to be relieving you of your duties, unless our shifts are overlapping today.
he’s not quite sure what had happened or how he had ended up here. but he and cam had made plans to get together to drink away their sorrows for a night, and allow themselves one (1) night of self-pity which would probably follow with a hangover but haneul thinks they deserve this much.
to be in the top rank for the last challenge only to drop so much to not get even a contract offer is something that apparently the entirety of team frost had experienced. he’s not quite sure how they had received such high praises, from being said that they could be an idol group debuting soon, to not a single one of them getting anything from the show aside from exposure. but exposure didn’t secure any dreams, nor did it pay any bills.
whatever.
he had picked up a few beers and a few bottles of soju from the convenience store near cam’s place, not having wanted to carry it all the way from his own and he texts his friend to let him know he’s outside. at least he gained a lot of friends on the show, and that’s not something he’s mad about. he had grabbed some fries from the nearby mcdonald’s as well, just wanting them to have something small to snack on while drinking. he hadn’t really thought it through though, thinking belatedly maybe he should’ve grabbed something else to eat too.
when the door opens to a familiar face, haneul lifts the bag in his hand wordlessly and they exchange a solemn nod. perhaps its fitting that they’re drinking together, considering both of their past experiences. it couldn’t have hit either of them harder, to give them a more devastating result, to be so close and then to drop all the way to the bottom. and to see the people closest to them move on. without them. it hurts.
“we should order food,” he comments, toeing off his shoes and stepping inside.
nayoung has some questions, but she doesn’t have the time to ask them. maybe later, she’ll run into cameron moon and have the chance, but practice is far more important than her curiosity, or maybe...longing for camaraderie.
it just turns out her coworker at the convenience store she recently started working at is more than meets the eye. then again, so is she. maybe along the way, he figured out she was a trainee once upon a time, but how did she not know he was a former idol? she thought she kept a close eye on the industry, but apparently not close enough.
she only found out when she watched the first episode of next gen herself. it was shocking enough to see him in the contestant lineup at all, let alone to learn that much. who knew they had so much in common? it’s a strange coincidence. she knows multiple people on this show already though, which is also strange; thousands of audition tapes sent in, and what are the odds of so many people that know each other gathering together in one place?
nayoung isn’t a conspiracy theorist, but if she was, she might think next gen was some social experiment by the government. they tracked them and their phone and internet activity, finding out who shared friend circles and enough talent to feasibly make it on a “show” like this. she doesn’t know what it’s a social experiment for, but she figures pitting a bunch of people that already know against each other for a goal they can’t all achieve makes for better television than a bunch of strangers. probably, anyway.
she doesn’t really believe in fate or god or anything of the like either, but the amount of coincidences are far too fucking strange, especially when she returns to her favorite practice room after a bathroom break only to see cameron moon himself.
she almost says you’ve gotta be fucking kidding me, but if nayoung knows anything it’s how to be aware of cameras. he looks like he’s just warming up, and nayoung is already taking a break, so...it’s not a bad time to talk, is it?
“hey,” she greets him first, and falls into some familiar stretches herself, even if she’s already been practicing for a couple hours. it just feels better to be doing something opposed to just standing there. “you were an idol before?” she doesn’t beat around the bush. she’s not really one for small talk anymore. “they said on the episode,” she clarifies, just in case he forgot and thinks she’s weird for knowing, let alone asking about it on camera.
the songwriting camp is winding down, and honestly, thank god. nayoung is so sick of spending her afternoons learning about lyrics and production and composing instead of practicing something actually useful to being an idol. she misses spending her days dancing and singing and rapping. if she's learned anything from this camp, it's that this sort of thing is way better off left in the hands of people that are actually good at it and enjoy it.
she wrote some lyrics and called it a day. maybe, if she's bored one day, she'll compose and produce a beat for it. she thinks she's capable of it, if she wanted to. she knows plenty of music theory thanks to playing cello, and she's far from an expert on production, but she learned enough and is good enough at doing research to be able to find her way through something simple enough.
she still has no intentions of reciting her lyrics at the "talent show." she's enjoyed listening to her peers with more expertise in this area, as well as the people that write shit lyrics but are brave enough to take them to a stage anyway, though.
she's hungry, so she wanders over to the snack table, which she's glad still exists despite the intensity of trainee diets sometimes. it would be a shit party without it.
cam is standing there when she approaches. cam, coworker twice over, and maybe a friend of a sort. they ultimately have so much in common, but they don't really talk about it. they just sort of exist alongside each other.
she grabs a plate, and walks over to him, pausing beside him. he's in the way of what she wants, so she extends her plate in front of him. "get me a few radish wraps," she requests, more of a vaguely playful demand than anything else.
kou would like to think that he's got a pretty good rapport with the other members of dead calm. even though he'd joined the band pretty late, and pretty ... unusually ( is that what you'd call it? figuring out you were accidentally a part of band two weeks into actually rehearsing with them? ), he'd still gotten along pretty well with most of them.
joomi is joomi – kou's old neighbour, and someone he'd bother from time to time for the fun of it. and kian is kian, sweet sweet kian who kou had the biggest soft spot for ( his favourite! something kou didn't bother to hide ). and yejun was well, yejun was yejun and kou understood that. but with cam, he'd never actually gotten the time to build a sort of closeness with him that he had with the others.
so this has to be some sort of opportunity. kou and cam, not only trainees under axis label, but under the same company. and cam was more or less a sunbae here, which gave kou all the more reason to turn to him for help. particularly, when he found himself in less than ideal situations.
"i don't even know how it happened. i was thirsty so i decided to get some soda before training today. and then i dropped the bottle so it shook and rolled a little... and when i picked it up, the whole thing just... spilled all over me," he sighs, staring at his now soda stained shirt. "sorry hyung, but do you have an extra shirt? the only extra shirt i have with me is the one that says you gotta be kitten me, and i don't feel like wearing that right now."
A LETTER
moon saea reads a letter written to her grandmother
after hearing that the next task that she had to do was write a letter to someone, she has a little bit of a hard time thinking of who to write to. she has a few friends on the show, and even her brother there. she also has friends who have been eliminated, and she thinks of the friends she had made who had also been eliminated. stevie, haein, matthew. she wants to write letters to them all.
but, after thinking about it for a while, she realizes she has someone she wants to write a letter to. someone who used to be her biggest supporter and had turned into her biggest critic, as well as the person who seemed to not support her dreams at all.
“i feel like i’m being petty,” saea admits to the staff when she sits down to read her letter out loud, wondering if she’s going to regret reading this letter to the world. she’s not sure if they’re going to air the entire letter, but she can’t really take back anything that she’s written down once she’s said it aloud.
part of her now wishes she had maybe written to cam or to stevie, because at least both of those letters would’ve been cute or heartful, thanking them for being good friends to her. she could’ve told cam that she hopes he debuts again and she could’ve told stevie that she cried for hours after he was eliminated because she had no one to fool around with anymore and that she hoped he didn’t feel too down and would bounce back. she could’ve written any of those things and yet ...
“this is to my grandmother,” saea says, and she doesn’t think anyone knows about how the relationship between her and her grandmother had deteriorated over the years. she doesn’t even think cam knows how bad it’s gotten. he would probably blame himself though, and she doesn’t need him to think that his past failure was the reason for this.
“halmoni,” she starts, pausing and she decides that it’s now or never.
“you used to be my biggest fan when i was younger. you told me that i could be a star, that i was born to be loved by more than just the people who knew me. you were front row seat at all of my dance performances when i was younger, even when i was barely even in the ensemble because i was so young. you used to brag about the granddaughter you had who loved to dance.
“but then, as i grew up and my love for dance grew, you changed. your expressions turned sour to downright disapproving whenever i mentioned i had gone to dance camp. or if i had mentioned i was performing. what changed? you used to be my biggest supporter and then you became the person who disapproved of my choices the most.”
she takes a deep breath, trying not to sound like she’s accusing her grandmother of anything aside from what she’s already mentioned. “well, i want you to know that i’m here now. i’ve succeeded in making it this far on next gen. you’re probably not proud at all, you’re probably scoffing at me for even auditioning to get onto the show in the first place. but, i hope that somewhere deep down, you remember how you used to watch me dance when i was younger. when you still supported my dreams of being the ‘best dancer in the world’ and when you told me i had to choose between that or being a fairy princess ... and i still chose dance. you always used to say that you would support me in all my endeavors, but then you stopped. i hope that i can make the grandmother who used to support me all the time proud.”
pausing again, she stops and looks up from the notebook she had written her letter in and makes eye contact with the camera lens. “i’ll make you believe that i can make it as a dancer, and as a performer again. thank you,” she ends her letter there, taking a deep breath.
tears well up in her eyes and she has to take a moment to calm herself down, not having realized how much this had meant to her until it was all out in the room. she can’t decide if she wants her grandmother to watch this or not, but she guesses she’ll cross that bridge when she gets to it.
a high jump starter for @bexcam
taking place at the goyang sports complex
when she had agreed to go try the high jump, she hadn’t thought that she would even get past the first one. there’s a lot of tall guys on her team, and sporty guys too, so she’s not too sure of how she’s going to hold up next to them. the other team is also really competitive, while she’s not really feeling that way at all. maybe she’s never really been the type to be sporty so she hadn’t had that experience of really wanting to win. with sports at least. don’t get her started on her dance competitions.
it probably has something to do with the fact that she’s never really been that athletic, aside from trying cheerleading a few times. but that never really had any real stakes in it, as she had never been on a team for that either. either way, saea had only tried to do the high jump to be able to say that she had done it before. it wasn’t really for bragging rights or anything, but more so wanting the actual experience itself.
what she hadn’t expected was to do decently well?
she had managed to make it over the first one and moving onto the second one, she was pretty nervous. she’s actually pretty sure this is all just beginner’s luck and also the fact that she’s running purely on adrenaline. so she goes to line up for her turn, and she’s hyper-focused on just jumping. maybe she’ll fail and this will be the end for her, but she hopefully won’t.
and she doesn’t. the utter surprise on her face as she clears the bar probably makes it too obvious she wasn’t expecting to do so at all and she turns to stare at it in shock. it takes a second before she’s on her feet again, rushing to her team excitedly and probably to no one’s surprise, cam’s arms are the ones she jumps into in celebration.
