With all the trainees separated in their own company building, at the end of June 30th, there were a total of 5 grand winners of the Running Man competition. Congratulations to all the winners seen below!
ROYAL ENTERTAINMENT ----- MANOBAN LALISA
NOVA ENTERTAINMENT ----- QIAN KUN
TRC ENTERTAINMENT ----- JEON WOONG
KT ENTERTAINMENT ----- SEO YOUNGHO
SPHERE ENTERTAINMENT ----- CHOI YERIM
By becoming the winner of the first and most probably last Running Man competition, all of them will be awarded... bragging rights! Now get back to practice!
this evaluation gets worse and worse the more he thinks about it. well, not worse-- but stressful. there's so much to consider, so much to focus on. yoongi feels himself likely to be stretched thin throughout the rest of the month. he doesn't know the first thing of trying to be funny, or acting or anything of the like. "improv..." he mumbles to himself, teeth worrying his lower lip as he rakes a hand through his hair.
it's a pretty simple concept. you're give a scene, and you act upon it. you go with the flow and think of things on the spot. yoongi understands that, gets it-- but he knows he's gonna choke at some point, even if everyone makes it seem so easy.
"you think they're gonna make us do somethin' too?" he mumbles, leaning over to juyeon a bit to be heard. his lips purse as he gathers his thoughts, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth as he grumbles. "ah...i can't improv for shit."
he left the building last night without saying a word to anyone. no one had tried to pry, maybe knowing sungho better than to try to dig into his personal life and decisions, but it was morning when he was called into that office and the meeting had taken all of half an hour for the terms to be explained and the paper to be signed and initialed in all the right places. sungho had left the building knowing that he had re-signed as a kt entertainment trainee, but no one else knew that. no one save for the ceo herself and whatever staff or lawyer had to file away that document until the next two years came up.
only two people had gotten text messages from him that night, though partially because he only saved their numbers of all the yet to debut trainees he works with. sunwoo and taemin. not because he likes them in particular (maybe he does, but the admitting it part is what he balks on), but because he knows they'll be the most interested in his decision and news. and maybe he'll actually admit that he likes sunwoo; the boy's heart is in the right place and he meets sungho where he is, speaks his language, instead of trying to make him into something he's not.
the man walks into the kt entertainment building early that monday morning, tired but excited for the week to come. a week's worth of unpaid vacation time.. he has jeonghan talking about new zealand already. despite not really wanting to travel far, he's a little bit excited about going somewhere where no one knows his name, his story, or anything about him and just living.
but in the meantime, there's almost a week of training to survive and probably a bombardment of questions from other trainees to avoid. why did you stay? maybe he dreads that one the most. even now, he's not entirely sure.
not once does sungho realize his mis-type in the messages he had sent out. how crucial one little dash is in changing the meaning of a word. resigned versus re-signed, opposite words and only one character apart. he doesn't realize that his presence might be a shock when he enters the practice room, looking for a place to rehearse for the weekly evaluation. he sees sunwoo already here, and for once he's in a good enough mood to call out to him first.
"what are you practicing?" he asks, only the slightest smile on his face.
tag. a game he is familiar with. yes hyunjoon has seen many episodes of running man in his years of watching this stuff. he knew exactly what they would be doing and he was more than siked to get going. he’s always wondered how he would fair in a game like this, considering he feels like his height would have him at an advantage for hiding. and when the game started his first goal was to find somewhere to hide for a bit. at least until it seemed more people were out. his plan was stalled as he skidded to a stop moments from running into someone. “noona...” he starts, hesitantly. half crouched in a i’m ready to run away position. “it’s too early in the game to betray anyone.” he says quietly, calmly. thinking maybe he could get sowon to align herself with him. a temporary alliance.
if jiwon was being completely honest, she had thought the random play dance was stressful -- she, as terribly short-sighted as she could be, could not have prepared herself for the stress and manic she felt during running man. if anything, the entire month of june, itself, was stressful and jiwon was having none of it.
she finds herself making hopeless promises at the beginning of the game. she’s not a good runner and making alliances was always smart, right?
and while jiwon wasn’t the smartest crayon in the box -- she did have some brain cells that still operated like they did. her first goes to @rkxhyunjin, a quick handshake that turns on her fast. the moment the whistle is blown and everyone is running for their lives she quickly sees what it means to keep your enemies close and your friends closer. because fingers are pushing at the planes of hyunjin’s chest fast as she turns away from him, suddenly realizes the faults in a supposed truce all while running as fast as her short legs could take her away from hwang hyunjin.
one friend: down.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
sometime between now and then, she remembers the look in @rkljhyun eyes and she feels the immediate terror fill her. something about it didn’t quick fit the friendly tone she usually felt when around him. it’s this gut-filled instinct that has jiwon running whenever she hears one of the other trainees uttering his name.
there was no way she was taking the chance of running into him here or there, or anywhere.
with the length of her legs versus jaehyun’s volleyball toned limbs, she had no chance. it was better safe than sorry, jiwon thought.
all her true alliances began to slip between her fingers and jiwon knew she wasn’t safe if she were to ever cross paths with him. this only left her with one option:
it was then, and now, that she began to run for her life.
another friend: down.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
her tale of woes doesn’t end, though. she’s trying to find a place to hide, direly. footsteps are quick and heavy as she’s running, haggard, in every way direction she can find. only to realize all the spots are either taken and/or unaccessible. and jiwon can’t take the chance of being so out in the open.
she finds the sides of the vending machine around the corner and is about to wedge herself in when she realizes, belatedly, that it’s already taken.
albeit, rather than taken -- she realizes that @rkiny is instead stuck. “ah, unnie, do you need help?” despite the time and the place, jiwon feels bad and her hands are quick to help the other.
at least, among the others who were frantically trying to rip the tag pinned to her shirt, she had a feeling nayeon wasn’t one of those.
not with the way she was currently sandwiched between the two metal logs. “here, one and -- two!” the other is pulled free but not without its consequences.
this jiwon sees almost immediately and feels the apologies fall just as quickly. eyes tearing away from the other as she makes a quick escape, yelling her long-winded apologies as she bolts away from the crime scene.
I’M SO SORRY NAYEON UNNIE !
she was on the run, and still, there was no time to look back.
last friend: eliminated.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
15:01 -- park jiwon has been caught, albeit defeated as she lays in a fetal position at the feet of the victorious, lee jaehyun.
this month sort of sucked. well, evaluation-wise, anyway. mingyu loved having fun just as much as the next person, but this was just stressful. maybe if he was more confident in himself and his talents this wouldn’t appear to be such a terrible thing. he was better off when they were just meant to perform senior artists songs, but then it turned into a game and it transcended into this. as if he didn’t have enough pressure on him already with packing and tying all loose ends that were required for them to move into their new apartment. now, he was being told that it was a variety month and he needed to prepare a... special skill?
“i don’t have any quirky talents. i’m quirkless.” he frowned, though it was more of an endearing pout that anything that was caused by any deep rooted sadness. “help me, won. what are you going to do? are there any rules against two people doing the same thing? can you teach me?” mostly he was kidding. he really was clueless, but he had no intention of knowingly showing up and displaying the same exact talent as someone else, even if it was his boyfriend. “i don’t want to be a disappointment. what should i do?”
it was sort of monumental, in a non-grand way their first evaluation all together as royal girls. or she supposes at least it was their first for her. she feels elated, knowing that this isn’t turning out to be one of those things were she has to go around, asking people if they can take her into their group. jisoo’s glad with the change of environment, and the opportunity to get to know their troupe better.
situations like these makes her eternally grateful that she was friendly enough to have never harbored bad blood with anyone of the girls. initially, she had thought her high strung personality might stuck a wrong chord, causing a fallout that would be inevitably unavoidable and she’s relieved that it has not been the case in over the one year that she has been around. in fact, she has managed to forge strong and reliable friendships beyond those that she already has prior to being a trainee. one of these friendships she values is definitely the one she has with shiah.
“christ, you have to help me.” she says a little dramatically, falling onto the available seat. after one too many attempts at mastering one of the three choreographies they have to learn in just one week, she feels ready to lay low and gather all the help she needs. not one to admit when her shortcomings are at bay, she reaches for the girl whom she knew could assist her best. “is luxe known for having hard choreography or am i just really terrible at picking this up?”
at first, the reason why they're all gathered in the gym isn't really apparent to him. it's hard to guess what they could all be brought in for; maybe the coaches thought they all needed extra gym time today or they wanted to gather the trainees for some kind of announcement. it wouldn't be the first time something like this has happened and it certainly won't be the last.
it takes half a second for him to understand what's happening when he's passed a vest and he hears the news and suddenly it all clicks. the reason why they were told to work harder during gym practices and chastised for slacking if a coach saw them going easy was because they were supposed to be doing a running man exercise.
this should be interesting considering that there are a lot of them still learning their way around the building. but hongjoong can't keep the grin off his face - this is different. this is fun. it's something out of the ordinary considering their usual schedule is rinse and repeat, day in and day out. his head turns to see who is next to him before it begins, and he bumps shoulders with kangjoon. " hey, you excited??"
