*. ☆ september — the new boy in town (mentioned: @rkvok )
Hosung hadn’t known what to expect when they were all gathered together but he certainly wasn’t expecting that. A ton of emotions rolled through him: surprise, disbelief, anger, stubborn disapproval. How dare they replace Hugo on such short notice? He had barely just left, the wound still fresh in all their hearts, and now they were just going to add someone new and pretend that their dynamic would still be the same. Yeah, way to go, CEO, well thought out plan right there.
It wasn’t the new kid’s—Moonbok—fault that he was being thrown into the deep end. Hosung was sure the room dropped by 10 degrees when he was introduced, the rest of the members to stunned to really say anything. Not that they could say anything other ‘okay, thank you’. It just felt so... disrespectful.
Too soon.
The atmosphere in the dorm was awkward to say the least and he was glad that he wasn’t sharing a room with the newbie. Hosung did feel a tiny (teeny tiny really) twinge of guilt as he gave Moonbok the cold shoulder, barely even looking at him the first few days. He just got so irrationally annoyed every time he saw him. How was he supposed to replace his best friend? He really hated how everything had been handled, his stomach feeling like it become the Gordian knot every time he thought about the whole situation, which was unfortunately rather often.
“You’ll never be Hugo.”
As soon as those words rolled off his tongue, Hosung felt a wave of guilt crash over him as he could see the pure hurt on the other’s features. Fuck. This wasn’t who he was. When had he become so bitter and mean? Hugo would definitely not want him acting like a complete and utter prick. But words could never be unsaid. He knew that Moonbok was struggling with the dancing and adapting to being on a team full of strong characters, and here he was making his life even more difficult.
Despicable.
Towards the end of the second week Hosung relented, determined to patch things up and let his misplaced anger go, so he quietly invited Moonbok to join him at their local convenience store. He treated him to some ramen and a drink, apologising for his behaviour as they ate, “I’m really sorry and deeply embarrassed to have acted in such an asshat manner. Also... I want you to know that I don’t want you to be Hugo, I want you to be PER_SE’s Moonbok, to find your own place in the team...” He smiled gently at his new teammate before leaning in to place a quick kiss on his cheek, a grin break across his features.
it hadn’t really been too much of a surprise to him when they’d announced that per_se would have a new addition. with how rap heavy some of their songs could get, it wasn’t as though haknyeon could carry them alone, so it made sense to him that they’d add another rapper.
the other members, admittedly, weren’t quick to open up, and haknyeon understands that. truth be told, he’d been a little distant in the beginning as well, but haknyeon’s never been the kind of guy to stay that way for long. they were going to be a team, and teams had to work well together to succeed. the last thing he wants is for moonbok to feel out of place for simply being new, and simply being picked as the new addition. he’d attempted to get closer to moonbok, invited the boy to rap practice sessions and to have meals together, after all, it was the least he could do to give him a warmer welcome.
he’d invited moonbok to practice a few verses with him in the practice room once again, claiming that synergy between the two rappers would be important. it’s when they take a short break does he walk towards his bag and pulls out a tangerine.
“hyung!” he says, turning to moonbok. “i remember you mentioned the tangerines before... so i asked my mum to send me some to share with you,” he says, taking a seat beside the older boy. he unpeels the tangerine for moonbok before offering it to the older boy, “here, for you,” he smiles. he takes a bite of his own tangerine and turns to look at moonbok. “is it hard?” he asks, voice gentle. “i know some of the other members haven’t quite open up yet,” he continues, “if they’re ever being too tough on you, you can come to me and i’ll scold them okay? give them some maknae fury,” he says jokingly, an attempt at lightening up the mood. “but really, they’re nice guys, i promise,” he smiles.
it’s been awhile since she’s met with any of the other trainees aside from the girls in heartz. after all, heartz is their own brand of poison, a snake that’s constantly biting them and releasing its venom, refusing to let go. there’s just been too much drama for her and not enough reward: from the beginning, sua knew that heartz would be a warzone. thankfully, it doesn’t seem as if any of the other girls are being bullied as badly as eunbi was; hopefully she did enough to put a stop to it for good when it came to the girls that came after them. but it’s still enough to make her blood curdle that they were in this situation anyway.
for a moment, she wants to escape it.
lunch is really the only place that sua can talk to just about anyone else, though. she sighs as she scans the tables and finds an open seat across from moonbok - perfect enough. she sets her tray down gently on the table, sitting on the chair with a sigh. “ is it all right if i eat lunch with you?” i need a break.
「 Be My Last 」
⇢ Royal Eval June 2k20 | +3 CH ; +2 DB ; +1 Wk High Notes
⇢ Yuzu branching out once a mothereffin’ gain [ Q & A | Peppermint Chocolate ]
“ once again she signed up for two projects, not knowing she would be working on a third. ”
as the end of the month came around, yuzu was confident in her groups and her own skills to perform well. despite a million things swirling around in her mind; from worrying about gahyeon and her both making it into heartz, over how the other royal girls would feel once they found out they had auditioned to how this could be her last eval under royal and dowoon was the only fellow trainee she worked with for this potentially last month.
being a usually loyal and honest person, she almost felt like she was cheating when she kept her audition to herself from the boy who had gotten in trouble along with her.
she made sure to push all these thoughts away though as she prepared for her performances. while q&a was technically her baby, she made sure to invest equally as much time into preparing for both performances, even when her own chosen song was the harder challenge for the triple threat. hitting these high notes and mirroring the vocal strength to match her own raspy voice was something she had to work with a lot of confidence to pull it off.
the boys had been nothing but sweet during their rehearsals though and even while she performed with them, she was glad to have won them over for this eval. chris and vok were both in sphere and she couldn’t help but wonder if she were to see them more often in the future months to come.
waiting for results really wasn’t her strongest skill.
on the other hand performing with seokwoo felt almost easy, granted the two had been friends for so long. it made dealing with her guilt towards dowoon almost easy. calming her mind with the thought she didn’t want to wake sleeping dogs, the female let herself go through that vocal performance easy as well. the added dash of rap a welcome change to mix things up. not getting to dance for this month again was a bit of a bummer for the girl who wanted to improve the steadiness of her vocal performance while dancing but at least that way she could confidently deliver without having to worry about any wavers in her voice.
at the end of the day yuzu was satisfied with both her performances. only a few days now till she’d find out if that would be her last eval under royal.
once she was alone to herself, standing in front of the royal building the female sighed. perhaps all her worries would be for nothing and she wouldn’t get chosen but it sure did feel like a goodbye regardless.
✞ MAY EVALUATION
* VOCAL PERFORMANCE ; EGOTISTIC x
with SPHERE BOYS ( @rkvok @rksungmin @chrxsrk )
june 1st, 2020
may is a difficult month. he starts it in the gutter, heavy with his hardest goodbye yet and failure in the prior month’s evaluation. he can’t help but feel sorry for himself and marinate in pity at first, paralyzed by grief and self-doubt once again, as he always seems to circle back to. was he really good enough to be a trainee? was he good enough for someone to stay? was he good enough for anything? (he kept circling back to the same answer: no.)
if he learned anything from the mgas, it was to not let his own feelings get in the way of the success of the group. one of the sharpest memories in his mind is yeji and jinyoung’s frustration with him, their scolding and scalding comments as they tried to force him off the floor into something more useful to their team. the last thing he wanted was to go back to that time, and to burden the few boys that were in sphere with the same daniel when they needed him.
so he chokes it back; he smiles, and puts on a chipper air, and if they can tell a difference, they don’t question him. besides, there is something a little genuinely uplifting about making a new arrangement for a song by one of their sunbaes, highlighting different instruments, recording a new backtrack. there’s something sincerely exciting about performing in an auditorium in the seocho complex instead of just a practice room, in front of a crowd and the ceos.
he tells moonbok it’s funny that they’re competing against trc’s boys when trc’s concept was the other daniel had to exemplify in the mgas, and it is. funnier still is the fact that this setting isn’t so unlike the mgas without the cameras: competing audience, ceos watching from afar, ready to make their judgments. something in daniel clicks despite all of his insecurity-- some sudden determination. maybe it’s the experience falling into place, like second nature now, his mindset already shifting into what it needs to for success in a competitive setting. maybe it’s just that familiar desperation to prove he’s gotten better. maybe he wants to perform in front of the ceo judges and make them regret rejecting him for two seasons in a row.
eventually, as the month and practices stretch on, and he gets to focus on the aspects of music he likes the best, his smiles aren’t so rehearsed. he convinces himself of them, and he feels lighter. maybe part of it is woong’s reminder that god never gives you more than you can handle, and his own realization that comes hand in hand: there are still so many blessings left.
one of them: a group of creative, talented boys he really likes singing with. it’s hard to spend time with them without thinking of the ones that left, all people he considered friends, maybe moreso than those remaining, but there’s still them. they’re still here together, and preparations for the evaluation are fun, and for as scared as he is to get used to this, he knows he could.
surprisingly, when it’s their turn to set foot on stage, he doesn’t really feel nervous. if he thinks about it, however, the nerves are right below the surface, with his ever-lacking confidence, so he doesn’t think about it. instead, he thinks about empty enigma shows, and cameo, and how much he could use him now to put on the best performance he can.
they don’t dance, even when the music begins. instead, they hold their poses, the acoustic guitar and bass of the self-recorded backtrack ringing out in the auditorium. daniel makes sure his stare is intense, hopefully captivating, hopefully lacking in nothing.
he starts them off.
i’m your satellite, revolving around you
but that doesn’t mean you’re the sun
moonbok follows him up: a fact that shook him for much of this month. moonbok singing. moonbok, inarguably a stronger rapper than him, likely a stronger dancer than him, singing, and working daniel out of bohyung’s lines. daniel was left with narae’s, whom he personally knew as a weaker vocalist, but-- upon listening to the song they were covering multiple times, he learned to let it go a little. everyone in spica was just about equally talented, just like the boys in this group. (it’s what he tried to convince himself of, anyway-- always a battle of daniel and his anxieties.)
things are flowing your way
don’t hurt me
sungmin leads the way with his reliable rapping next, and in this moment, daniel is lucky enough to only focus on the performance, and the enjoyment of it (not the insecurity, not the rampant knowledge that sphere doesn’t need him, because in all of his talents, there is someone better than him.)
the backtrack builds up, instrument upon instruments, up to the chorus, and then it drops out, only leaving bare bones instrumentation and daniel to sing.
i’m always all about you you you you
you’re always about me me me me
it’s not a song he particularly relates to, nor does he want to. he doesn’t want to be angry and bitter, but deep down, a part of him is-- angry to be left behind so often, angry to be criticized and put down and taken advantage of so often. maybe he can channel a little bit of that into the song, or maybe he just wants to have fun performing in front of like-minded people again. it’s a competition, sure, but he’s mainly excited to see the talent all of the companies have up their sleeve (and probably inevitably compare himself to them regardless.)
he gets to finish off the chorus too.
do whatever you want, ay
he doesn’t sing again until the next prechorus, but in the meantime, he works his way around the stage, making eye contact with the other trainees, trying to make the performance fun and engaging in the lack of their dancing.
even if i get mad, that only hurts my lips
in comes another chorus that daniel lends his voice to, and then the slightest bridge. he gets the line that transitions them into the next prechorus, and also the only full english line, always beloved in daniel’s heart.
i’m ready to go on my way
their last chorus is more explosive, with a thicker instrumental, fuller and closer to the original while still staying true to the new sphere boys arrangement. they reach the end, and he sings his final line in a round of echoes and harmonies:
Namjoon made his money on time. Time was quite literally money in his line of work. Every farm to be taken over was written on his list and his personal assistant made sure that his orders were carried out. He made his way down the lists. Orchards, dairy farms, vegetable farms...everything was to be wiped and he had to have everything done by the end of the week. Time was truly money. After all, there were multi billion dollar contracts involved. He didn’t care for what he was destroying. His only goal was the investments. The money in the bank was all that mattered.
But of course, someone had to be so bold to stand up to the power hungry executive bent on takeover. He had shooed away his assisstant when he saw the other boy approaching him. “Oh, look, a poor soul has come to fight,” he stated, checking his list. “You do realize Sphere Dairies is on the list.” he stated, recognizing the other as a former friend. “I’m sure you can step aside for that, eh, Moonbok. After all, my time is money.”
There was one thing he had expected about this class, and that was for it to be full of girls. While it held true that those of the female sex far outweighed those of the male, Eric was genuinely surprised to see how many guys actually cared for their appearance beyond what was normal for the general populace. It made him somehow happy and excited. Perhaps he could find a few friends here.
One thing however he hadn’t anticipated and that was for a familiar face to be amongst the long haired individuals. Some people he might have been able to foresee come here but not this guy. On the other hand it should have been obvious that Moonbok cared about how he looked from how well maintained his long hair was. But somehow... the guy just gave off a different aura from everyone else in the workshop.
That however didn’t stop Eric from approaching him. “Hyung!” he exclaimed with obvious surprise to see him. “I didn’t know you cared about make up?” Somehow Eric just couldn’t picture the guy with proper idol make up in the face, even though he had seen him lightly pepped up for the MGAs they both had appeared on. He then squinted. “Do you even know how to put it on?”
