Hana went into this week within higher hopes than the last. Last week, her outlook had been weighed down by her drop in rank, but this week, back at number two and within the top four, she felt ready to take on the world. She’d had a wake up call, had worked her ass off to get back where she wanted, and now she was raring to go to make sure she stayed there.
She was excited to hear that this week’s tracks, rather than being existing group covers, would be songs created especially for the show, and was even more excited when they brought out the producers who would be helping the trainees. Those she recognised, she admired, and those she didn’t she assumed were good, or they wouldn’t have been asked. With people like Shrines up there, they evidently were not scraping the bottom of the barrel with the producers they had chosen.
When it was announced that her group mates for this week would be Hyunjoo and Raekyung, Hana felt pleased. She got on relatively well with both of them as people, Raekyung being a, though Hyunjoo was also good company when he wasn’t hitting on every girl in sight, too. They were also both talented and at a similar level to her, having been usually in a similar rank in the boys ranking as she had been in the girls. The fact that between them, they covered all three main training disciplines (vocals, dance, and rap) was an added bonus, as was the addition of Ghost as their producer. Although Hana knew him better as a vocalist than as a producer, she respected and admired him as an artist, and she figured that anyone who had made a living as a producer and writer for so long before debuting as an artist had to be good at their job.
Hana went into the studio brightly optimistic, but she found her high hopes somewhat dashed when she heard the song the were supposed to be putting lyrics to for the first time. It was very poppy and reminded her somewhat of an Aura song, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing, just not really her style. She expressed this to their producer at the end of a particularly long session trying to figure out lyrics, who in turn admitted that he’d been commissioned to produce a beat in this style, and that it wasn’t really his favoured style either, but if the group worked hard then they could all make the best of it. After this, she decided to give her all to make the song as tolerable as possible, and threw herself into helping write and learning what they’d written as quickly as possible. Their theme, though a little cheesy, was something she could get behind, and although Hyunjoo likely wasn’t all too pleased with the lacking choreo, Hana was pleased there wasn’t a lot of dance to learn.
By the day of the performance, Hana was feeling fairly confident - if not wholly in the song, at least in her ability to execute it well. They’d practised not stop, and worked really well as a team, to the point where the work they’d put in and how they’d made the song fit them to the best of her ability actually made her like it better. She encouraged both her teammates before the performance, particularly Raekyung as he had seemed somewhat nervous during the week, and to her surprise, Hana found herself actually enjoying the song as they performed it, an unforced smile on her face the whole time. Somehow, the song had grown on her more than she had realised.
Overall, she was happy with their take on the week’s challenge. It hadn’t been the best week for her, but it also wasn’t terrible, either, and that was always a good thing.
