Behind the Mask

~Chapter 29~

~Jimin's POV~

Just a few hours after Lisa left the house, heading to her first career-changing audition, I decided to do something productive as well after the gym session from this morning, so I thought I should practise the couple dance with Rosie for a bit. Truth be told, the deadline was in two weeks and we had barely moved past the first two eight counts!

I couldn't feel too worried, though. I knew that the others hadn't practised much either, as we all had other things on our minds, and Sensei had been pretty understanding about it, as well. This past week, he set the bar lower at vocal practice as well as our workouts, giving us some time to fix our problems before dedicating ourselves wholeheartedly to the task in hand.

And I had to admit, right now, the biggest problem we had was probably with Kook and Tae. While I was glad that they finally sorted out their misunderstandings and got along better, changing the chemistry of the entire group, I didn't exactly approve of the new way they behaved around each other. All challenging and on the edge, as if waiting for the other to make a move... It was tiring just to watch them.

The way they kept tensing whenever the other would sit down next to them on the couch, or how they threw nasty remarks at each other just to pick up a fight (this was mostly on Jungkook's part, because apparently, he didn't have any other tricks up his sleeve to get Taehyung's attention).

This morning, when Kook told me he would ask Tae to hang out with him after gym, I didn't think he'd mean anything serious, because come on, this is Kook we're talking about, he wouldn't do anything reckless when it comes to the people he cares about.
But once he proceeded to take off his shirt in plain sight, exposing his body and causing Tae to choke a little on the bike he was pointlessly trying to pedal, I realized that he was talking business. We'll have to see how the 'hang-out' will go after that...

I didn't really mind watching this little game between them unfold as long as they played nice. We didn't need other fights right now, especially after what Namjoon told us just a few days ago, that he received the opportunity for a solo career that he actually considered before finally declining. That set out an alarm that maybe things weren't going as great as we thought.

Over the past two months, the idea of us disbanding came into discussion pretty often, because we were just now discovering the kind of music we wanted to make and it didn't always match everyone's wishes. We argued about concepts, lyrics, what message we wanted to send all the time, and it sometimes turned into worse fights about each other being selfish, self-centered, not caring about what the others wanted and the possibility of us missing our full potential because of their stubbornness.

Because before people, we were artists, right? We had to put out the best of us for the world.

Still, the tension loosened up a bit after our move-in with the girls. We now spent less time trying to come up with songs as a group, but instead decided that we should work on our own and brainstorm in the end; maybe that way, we would get the best out of everyone's ideas. Or maybe it would all be a huge mess, who knows. So far, Yoongi has been the only one seriously working on new beats. Namjoon and Hobi would just lock themselves in the studio for hours some nights, but when they came out with worn out looks on their faces the next morning, we all knew they didn't come up with anything good.

But I did hear Jennie once saying that Yoongi's new songs were a musical revolution, so I was looking forward to listening to them, to say the least.

Soon enough, Rosie stepped inside the practice room and casted away my thoughts with a determined smile - we had a job to do! Together, we did some stretches, a quick warm-up and then, we began to study the next moves for the dance. They weren't too difficult in all reality, they only appeared so to the public, I'll give them that. Sensei had chosen the choreography well.