#sp;here

[rkxeve]

new memories ;

@rkyerim

it’s always exciting to get new sphere trainees. it’s so fun to figure out the “hazing” for this round ( though, to be fair, the things they do are never actually mean or malicious -- hazing is more of a word that’s lost its original meaning for the trainees of sphere ) and to start seeing new faces around training. eve is usually front and center in figuring out hazings and approaching new trainees, but this time she doesn’t have much of an idea of what they decided on. silently she hopes that whatever they pick, it won’t mean that she and luna will have to adopt a new pet -- as much as she loves samuel already, she’s unsure if they’ll have time for another pet on top of him. 

she sees one of the new trainees in instrument lessons, and she spends the whole time trying to decide why the girl looks so familiar. eve is pretty sure she was on the latest mgas, though she didn’t make it far -- eve remembers that she wasn’t eliminated, so she wonders if the girl just left for personal reasons or what. either way, she figures the mgas are probably something the girl is sick of hearing about, especially if the memory isn’t as positive as eve’s memory of her own season, so when she approaches the girl at the end of lessons with a bright smile, she’s careful not to say anything about the show. “hi! you’re new, right? i’m eve, or sooyoung i guess. i go by eve mostly, though! do you wanna head down to lunch together?” she knows that she has a tendency to babble and be a bit too energetic when she’s excited, but it’s hard to help it -- she wants to be as welcoming towards the girl as possible. 

[rkxeve]

down this road again ;

@rkluna

eve should be used to this by now. she should be used to the long days, the grueling lessons, the hard evals. but this week of constant live singing practice came out of nowhere, and despite eve’s relative comfort with singing live, after four days of this even more rigorous schedule she’s really feeling it. they’ve been keeping them late, and eve feels as though she can never eat enough food to really get full at meals -- she always leaves still hungry, but without any time to eat more. 

their independent study time is spent practicing, too, and she hardly notices when the door opens and luna enters, probably wondering if eve’s ready to head home yet -- it’s always more fun ( and probably safer ) to walk together than alone. eve stumbles a bit on a step of the choreography when she sees luna’s motion in the mirror, and she rights herself and looks around at her best friend, blinking her way through the dizziness and spots that appear in her vision. 

she opens her mouth to say something, and maybe luna’s said something too, but eve can’t hear her -- the sound of the song on the speakers and of luna’s voice is garbled in her ears, like she’s listening from underwater. eve stumbles forward the last few steps between her and her best friend, practically falling into her when her balance fails. “fuck,” she says, more on instinct than anything, and she’s surprised when she can’t get her voice to come out louder than a murmur. she struggles to right herself, using luna as an anchor and leaning her forehead on the other’s shoulder, blinking to try and clear the heavy blackness from her vision. 

[rkxeve]

hoi hoi hoi!

@rkluna

their costumes are ridiculous. eve stands in the dressing room next to luna, looking at their reflection in the mirror. they have tiny little hats on their heads, eve’s pink and luna’s blue, each with small netting hanging in front as decoration. their dresses are simple, the same colors as their hats, and they each have an actual cape, just for added hilarity. the capes are pretty stiff and can’t be moved much, but they hang behind them all the same, adding to the comedic effect of their weird costumes to match their weird song. 

“wanna take a picture?” eve asks, pulling out her phone. “the coaches did tell us that we’re encouraged to talk about this online,” she says, already getting in position for a selca, tilting her head so that the tiny hat is easily visible. 

[rkxeve]

strapped to a rocket ;

      --  ; and you wish you could just fly away.

@rkrachel

there’s something wrong with rachel. eve latched onto her for this evaluation -- she doesn’t have any acting experience, and she knows there’s plenty to learn from rachel. besides, since their reconciliation she can’t help but want to be around the other, to laugh and joke with her like they used to. 

( luna is still missing, but eve can’t do anything about that. for now she can settle with spending time with them separately, but she still always feels like there’s something else she could do, a hand she could extend. she knows better than to try. )

the choosing of their scene comes easily -- eve had just rewatched toy story not long ago, and the thought of doing a disney scene makes her feel a bit more comfortable with the whole thing, as it’s more in the realm of things she knows. the scene is emotional, too, and will require plenty of work and practice from her to pull off just how passionate woody is while trying to convince buzz of how great it is to be a toy. 

and buzz is supposed to be depressed and downtrodden in the scene, but that doesn’t mean eve wants to see rachel feeling that way. during a lull between run throughs of the scene, their typed lines already marked up with colorful notes and reminders, she watches rachel, then finally brings up the subject she’s been trying to figure out how to breach for days. 

“what’s wrong, rach?” she asks, her eyebrows furrowed in concern. “did something happen? only buzz is supposed to be sad here, not you too. you don’t have to take the acting that seriously,” she smiles a bit, but it’s a weak joke. she’s only trying to lighten the mood, to show rachel that she’s concerned, but if rachel would rather not talk about it then they can just focus on the scene. 

[rkxeve]

oh love, where did you go ;

@rkrachel

jinri isn’t sure why she’s been avoiding rachel. she’s still a little hurt over the fact that rachel left sphere with barely a word, then came back and didn’t tell her or luna for weeks. it makes her question how important their friendship really was to rachel, but she knows that’s probably irrational. still, with rachel avoiding her as well, it’s hard to convince herself to initiate things. 

the thing is, though, the longer jinri spends time in training with rachel always in her periphery, the more she wants to put everything aside and go up to her. because in all honesty, she misses rachel. she managed to block it out for a while after the other left, but especially since her return to training, jinri can’t help but want things to just go back to the way they were. 

she wants to talk to rachel, to really catch up and re-establish the mutual care and understanding they had in the past. and the longer she waits, the less reason she can find to continue avoiding the other. 

at the start of independent study, jinri finds herself walking by rachel’s regular practice, and through the small windowpane in the door she can see the girl sitting against the opposite wall, clearly taking a break from practice. jinri had been zoned out as she walked, and she wonders if it’s a sign from god to talk to rachel that she happened to pass this room while she thought about rachel. 

before giving herself time to chicken out, jinri opens the door and steps into the practice room, letting the door click softly closed behind her. she sees rachel look up from her phone, and a small moment of what are you doing, she’s been avoiding you too, clearly she doesn’t want to see you makes words choke in her throat for half a moment, but somehow she manages to speak around them. 

“hi. um. can we. hang out?” she speaks with awkward pauses, and runs a hand over the back of her neck as she finishes, but she thinks she got her point across, written in the subtext of her words and across the apologetic and nervous expression on her face. i don’t want to avoid you anymore. i just want things to go back to how they were.

[rkxeve]

work out!

@seungcheolrk

the eval hasn’t started yet, and they’re all just standing around -- the trainers had only just finished talking, so everyone was trying to figure out what group they were in, where they needed to go, where their friends ended up. it’s times like these that make jinri thankful for having the last name that she does -- it makes things like this much easier. 

she finds herself moving out of the way as people exit the room, and she ends up next to seungcheol. “hey,” she says, but is interrupted when a trainer calls for group a to follow her to the yoga studio. she sticks close to seungcheol as they make their way after her, and once they leave the crowded gym behind, jinri turns back to him. she isn’t really sure how to start what she wants to say, so she just jumps right in. 

“congratulations, by the way,” she says. “i haven’t had a chance to tell you yet. it’s really exciting, you know?” she doesn’t elaborate more than that, knowing that they are in the seocho complex and are surrounded by non-sphere trainees. she doesn’t want to be the one to cause the news to leak, not when she knows how important it is to baek jiyoung that it stays a secret for now. 

[rkxeve]

reliance ;

@rkluna

this isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this. 2am hangouts have always been a staple of their relationship, though each one ends up going a little differently. rather than sitting up giggling at movies or old cartoons, luna and jinri have ended up in jinri’s room, the soft light of her lamp illuminating them as they sit in comfortable companionship after so many years together. 

right now the only sound comes from jinri’s phone, playing a gentle lo-fi beat from a live station she found on youtube. the device itself is lying next to her, while she holds one of her throw pillows in her lap and picks at a loose thread on it. luna is sprawled out somewhere closer to the end of her bed, but the silence reigns between them for now, the quiet music managing to fill the spaces in the room. 

jinri breaks it suddenly, but not shockingly. that’s just how these nights go -- they’re both lost in their own thoughts, and then they may share it with each other, knowing that any topic is open for discussion. 

“i keep thinking about the royal show,” she says, fingernails picking at the loosening embroidery on the pillow. “i wouldn’t have done it without you. i think i knew that the whole time i was considering it. is that weird? i feel like i should have made the decision for myself, not because of whatever you were doing, you know?”

[rkxeve]

in the dark for weeks ;

@rkluna

jinri finds her best friend in an otherwise empty practice room in the seocho building, seeming to be taking a break from whatever she was working on as she sits against a wall across from the door. jinri’s feet have simply carried her here immediately after turning her name in for royal’s survival show -- she still hasn’t fully processed what that means, but one thing has finally made itself utterly clear in her mind: if she wins the show, she’ll leave sphere and debut under royal, a company she knows next to nothing about. 

she’s dimly glad it didn’t take her long to find luna, but she can’t think about too many details as she enters the practice room and automatically crosses the space before leaning against the wall next to her friend, allowing her body to slide down until she’s plopped on the floor next to luna. 

the silence holds between them for a moment, jinri staring unseeingly across at the door as it finishes swinging closed behind her. or is it in front of her, now that she’s facing it? she can’t decide which it is, or even which she’d rather it be.

“i signed up for royal’s survival show,” she says, honestly surprised at how honestly empty and tired her voice sounds. she doesn’t know how long she’s felt this tired, this frustrated, this confused -- she just knows that for whatever reason, she’s stopped suppressing it now, and she kind of just wants to go back to hiding behind her usual smiles and teasing jokes.

“i did it almost as soon as i heard about it, without really thinking about it,” she adds, her voice not changing in tone. “i don’t know if i regret it or not. i don’t know if i should regret it or not.”