하루토 • to my star

3

13:40
10th June 2020

We were sitting in the van it was one of the ones I used to see in the parking lot when I was a trainee they were big and could fit four people with a lot of extra space.

I was sitting in one of the back seats, with Junghwan next to me and Haruto in front of me, Hyunsuk on the other side of him.

Hyunsuk had headphones on, Haruto was on his phone, Junghwan was sleeping and well I was just staring into space.

My phone rang and I looked down ~Jichu~ why was she calling me again she already called me not even an hour ago? I sighed and answered the phone putting it up to my ear.

"Didn't you just call me an hour ago?" I said shaking my head at her protectiveness, she would check up on me every other day or so when she wasn't busy but she was overdoing it because of the fact I moved in with a new group and have officially started working after all the hard work of being a trainee.

"Yeah, but can't I be worried for my younger cousin?" She answered her voice going higher into a cute aegyo voice that made me cringe.

"Aren't you busy? You know being who you are and all." The line went silent but she soon came back with a more hurried voice.

"I'll come to see you later but for now I've got to go, the manager wants us in the practice room."

"Wait don't-" The line cut off and I sighed leaning my head back and closing my eyes.

"How come I haven't seen you around?" The random question came from Hyunsuk who had taken his headphones off and they were now dangling around his neck.

"Oh, since I was going to be in a co-ed group I didn't train with the boy or the girl trainees so I didn't really have any schedule." He nodded finding no need to keep the conversation going and putting his headphones back on.

...

The van got darker as we drove down the slope to the underground parking we'd normally just enter through the front but since I was in the car they couldn't risk people seeing me get out with them.

"I can't believe we're going to debut this year." Hyunsuk said pulling himself out of the door each of us following behind afterwards.

"I know, it's been so long. By the way Nao, what position are you?" Jeongwoo asked being the first one to walk out of the second van.

"I focus on dance." They all nodded walking in a weird messed up horizontal line through the automatic door to the building, our manager trailing behind us on his phone.

"I'd be the bravest for sure." Jaehyuk continued. I looked over to him with a 'really' look and he looked back at me offended.

"Hey, hey, hey. What's with the look." He started pointing at me with his inner English coming out.

"Are we forgetting that you cried over onions." I laughed pushing his shoulder at his sad attempt of helping a few nights before with dinner.

Trying to regain his pride he pushed me back laughing just as hard getting into an unspoken play fight of lightly pushing each other well I say lightly that was before I pushed him a little too hard into one of the employees working at the cafe we were walking past.

"Guys stop it." Hyunsuk said vigorously bowing down and apologising to the employee who just shook her hands saying it was fine.

"You're way too competitive." Everyone went silent soon ending up in fits of laughter at Junkyu's blatant analogy.

...

We waited for the other dorm to arrive sitting in one of the artist rooms and when they did let's just say it was awkward as they tried to wrap their heads around the fact that I'm a girl probably not as bad as the first time since I had the other members with me.

But now we were all sitting at a long table in a meeting room, Junghwan who looked a lot more lively now than he did in the car was on my left in contrast to Junkyu who was lazily blinking at the screen on my right.

They talked about the fans interest in the secret member speculating who he could be, which was far from right since I was a 'she'. There were other discussions on promotions and rough positions in the group about how the leaders would be two, one being Hyunsuk, and the other being Jihoon, from the few days I had been with Hyunsuk he seemed like the right choice he always looked out for us and he always talked to us. Jihoon was the same I could see it even in the hour that I had met him.

We ended the meeting with them saying that for hyping up the new member (me) they would do a dorm treasure map episode and it was going to come out faster since they didn't want the hype to die down.

...

15:15

Finally, it was over, the agonizing hour of sitting in a room going over the same things. I went to our manager asking where an empty practice room was that I could go into because, whats better than dancing to get out of mental exhaustion?

So I played Maria starting from the beginning to end. Hwasa was one of the people I looked up to as a female crush and inspiration. She always seemed so strong and didn't let being a female hold her back.

I suddenly heard claps when I went over to stop the song turning around and seeing my sister that I hadn't seen in so long.

"Jisoo!" I smiled running up to her and giving her a hug one she returned.