Although their parents were the ones who had initially given their agreement for both of their sons to sign contracts as trainees, they were also now the ones who thought that they were doing too little together as a family. Vacation plans now cancelled as neither of the two could get time off, it seemed that they were especially affected now that the summer break was less than a month away. So once the boys had got home from their weekend practice, they had entered straight into an emergency family meeting where even Jiyoo seemed to be judging them.
Daehwi was mainly confused at the extra special family dinner that had been prepared and while he did enjoy it, he found his mother’s insistence to eat more kind of annoying. ‘You’re way too skinny!’ she’d say to him, but it wasn’t his fault that he was constantly moving around and had trouble gaining weight.
After dinner came game time, and with game time came Daehwi getting absolutely owned by Dowoon in Mario Karts. Eyebrow twitching as he fell over the edge of the road in Rainbow Road for probably the twentieth time that lap, a sour glance was shot towards the older. “Hey. Hyung. How come you’re so good at this? Maybe it’s the controller?” And with those words, he lunged out to steal his brother’s controller and totally not to sabotage his winning streak.
「 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.
When he had heard about this month’s evaluation being dance focused, Sungmin was somewhat excited. It had been some months since he had last properly danced. Sure, he’d danced for evals before, but he also had to focus on his rapping. This time was different. This was a dance evaluation, and Sungmin was ready to breeze through this month.
Or so he thought.
The only problem that he had was the choreography he had chosen. It was nothing like he had imagined it to be. He had initially chosen it because it seemed easy and it was unique considering it involved heelies. The one thing he wasn’t expecting was how bad he was going to be at balancing. As soon as he put the shoes on for the first time, he regretted his decision. He couldn’t work out the right balance and placement of his feet to avoid rolling around and falling and he hated it.
The fact that Haruto was easily skating around the practice rooms only made him feel more frustrated and embarrassed. The teenager had quickly gotten the hang of the shoes and often skated around, making Sungmin feel dizzy. The only thing that made things slightly better was that he wasn’t the only one struggling. Dowoon seemed to be having trouble with the shoes as well which made him feel somewhat more at ease with his own progress.
Still, they had a lot of work to do and choreography to learn and master. Sungmin had decided that even though he couldn’t master the shoes yet, it wouldn’t stop him from rehearsing. The first week or two had involved a lot of crashing and falling of Sungmin and he often left the practices sore and bruised. He practiced using the shoes at home as often as he could until he was finally able to master them enough to be able to dance without falling over (he hoped).
By the end of the month, the group had somehow managed to learn the routine thoroughly and were able to perform it with ease. He still struggled from time to time with the wheels on his shoes, but Sungmin was more or less prepared for the evaluation day.
When he arrived at Seocho, Sungmin felt uneasy. He was worried about their dance and whether or not they would be able to perform it right. Once he was settled, he placed his heelies on and ran through the choreography in his head until they were called to the room.
When the staff announced their bombshell, Sungmin grew even more nervous. He had barely been able to learn how to dance in his shoes and now they wanted them to dance to an entirely different song?
The music began and even though he felt uneasy, Sungmin danced. He played the original song in his head as he tried to ignore the song that was currently playing. Despite his best efforts, Sungmin was still a newbie when it came to heelies which, when mixed with the distraction of the new song, meant that Sungmin found himself fumbling once. He quickly fixed his mistake and continued as if nothing had happened.
The entire experience was torture and Sungmin was glad once it was over.
this was definitely one of the workshops that seongwu had been looking forward to the most. he’d always had an interest in this kind of work within the industry and really looked up to tv show hosts who sat on panels in talk shows or even the more active shows like running man and such. he’d always watched them faithfully with his family and he appreciated the introspective conversations that guests were able to have with the hosts. so to be able to learn skills directly related to that and spending time doing what he enjoyed doing most -- connecting with his audience -- was a class that he had put himself down first before all else.
there were cards they were handed that were not unlike the ones he often saw music show hosts holding along with their large microphones and on them were a set of lines that were obviously intended to be memorized and performed entertainingly for the audience. there was a bit of scrambling to find who had the same script among the class attendees and seongwu joined the bit of chaos until he spotted the same purple highlighter that was on his card drawn upon someone else’s.
“hey...” he started, holding up his card as he approached the other male with a smile that was always friendly and inviting. “i think we have the same set of lines, no? did you want to partner up?”
Today was not his day to say the least. Throughout the entire thing he felt as though he should have just gone with what he was good at, what would be easy for him, and yet here Youngjae was, holding a guitar and trying to keep track of his fingers. The piano class later in the weekend was different -- although not proficient in the instrument, at least he had dedicated a month of his life to try and play something decent even if that was all back when he had been a trainee. On a guitar he was a hopeless newbie.
Worst was that he was making a fool of himself in front of a familiar face. Certainly they had made amends, but that didn’t mean that he wanted Dowoon to see him and how horrible he was at this thing. He was expecting laughter and mockery if only out of habit, but somehow it seemed that the other was equally bad as him, if only a slight bit better.
Although he had started to be able to read nodes thanks to said month, there was a huge difference between the keys of a piano and the strings of a guitar. “These chord notes make no sense at all,” he complained with frustration in his voice, looking at the papers that should supposedly help them with playing simple chords. Head tilting towards Dowoon, he let out a scoff. “I swear whenever I use more than one finger it feels like I’m just getting tangled up in this stupid instrument.”
Jongsuk wouldn’t stand for stealing. The young man was always working so hard on his gardens at the trc farms that he just couldn’t bear to see someone stealing his precious fruits and veggies. It was the whole reason he had initially requested the area, so that he may bring the joys of good food to everyone. And here was a thief, stealing. He huffed a bit in annoyance and went after the supposed thief with his best weapon: a shovel. He adjusted the sunhat on his head like a warrior and went off to battle the unknown.
“Hands up! You’ve been caught!” he exclaimed, pointing the shovel at whoever was stealing. Upon closer inspection, he breathed a sigh of relief and set the shovel down. “I could have killed you, Dowoon.” he stated. “Let me know next time you decide to sneak in and stow your stolen goods. Honestly, one of these days, you’re really gonna get yourself into trouble and I will also get in trouble! as an associate!” he gasped, pouting a bit and glaring at the other boy.
Why he was here Eric honestly wasn’t sure about. When he had heard about the speak up project he was more than honoured to be pulled aside for an offer to help out with one of the classes, and in a sense he still was, that wasn’t the problem. Just... Why hapkido? He hadn’t the faintest clue on where to even begin with martial arts although his sunbae had been kind enough to introduce him well to the plan and the schedule leaving him with a feeling that maybe he might be able to do this after all. No, there was never any doubt about that. He was Eric Sohn and he could do anything his mind was set to.
There was just one little thing. When he had bragged about being picked as assistant, his brother had insisted that he’d go to that particular class. And he had definitely kept his word. All throughout the introductions and demonstrations Eric could feel Dowoon’s amused glance on him. He’d definitely get him back for this somehow.
As it was time for the students to form pairs, Eric saw his cue as Dowoon was messing up the pose he had just been instructed in. “Yah, Yoon Dowoon ssi!” he called out to the other, trying to keep his face strict but unable to hide the amusement completely. “Your posture is all wrong. Like this you might fall when your partner attacks.” Clearing his throat, he took up the mentioned pose that he had been carefully instructed in and repeated until perfection so that he may show it without issues should it be necessary. “You have to be more like this. Get it?”
