A Year to Change Your Lives

Chapter 13

One day the house was full of listless and idle bodies, moping and snoozing and then the next day it was back to work.

Although the boys didn't need to rehearse as such – their last show had only been 11 days ago and their next would be in another 7 – but they still had work to do, least of all picking up on Reader's much neglected formal training.

Within the next few weeks, they were assured, the shape of the new songs which Reader would be helping the boys to perform would be made available for them. Yoongi and Namjoon and some of the others would be adding to the music with Raps of their own composition and deciding at that point whether they'd be writing Reader in or out of these sections. Although the final pieces wouldn't be laid down in recording for a few months yet, they would be the foundations for the whole show and Reader was looking forward to seeing what she was up against.

Although the tour had meant being able to practice in the world of stages and stadiums, Reader knew she hadn't been working as hard as she could have been on other aspects. She hadn't had a singing lesson with Tae and Jimin for weeks now.

So now the boys were back to work with an only slightly light schedule, and she was a regular feature on it. As expected, Jungkook took up their daily runs and training sessions again but he was her personal fitness coach and nothing more during this time. She left him every morning and afternoon feeling tired and heart-sick.

She and Hobi started working on the choreography for mic drop which was harder than any she'd undertaken before. This coupled with her lack of practice meant she was more sloppy than usual. But J-Hope's name was not for nothing and he had endless cheer, even for her most dismal run-throughs.

Because she'd had so much exposure on the tour, there was little reason for Reader to spend formal time with Jin. She was now publishing regular updates from her own public account. The profiles controlled by the HYBE had such a massive following, Reader felt like she was playing with someone else's phone. Reader knew it was very important to show love to ARMY in imitation of the boys, and to be loved by them in return but she couldn't say she felt a strong connection with them yet. In fact if she had taken the trouble to look a little deeper into the comments section and to watch the fan-generated videos as often as she should, she would see that she was beginning to cultivate her own fans with or without her more talented bandmates!

Even if she had needed Jin's help, she would rather not have asked him for it. His sulking was becoming morose. It had been masked when they were all in their post-tour fog but with the return to work, he was still moody and bed-bound for as often as he was allowed to be. Reader didn't know how clued in anyone else was but she had been illuminated by Laura and knew that Jin was worrying about his own future in the band, and feeling unable to be with the person he wanted to be.

She worked intermittently with Jimin and with Tae on learning entire parts of their songs – Jin's ON, Jungkook's Fake Love and so on. Her natural singing ability was standing her in good stead for these lessons which often felt more like a practice for all three of them rather than them just telling her what to do as Hobi did.

As their respite time wore on, Reader thought more and more about the possibility about moving away from the boys. It seemed a little late to pull out of the second half of the tour but she knew she could always come home early. Before she did anything, we wanted to speak to Namjoon and also to Laura to see how they felt about it. Namjoon was the leader of the group and even though this was her life, she felt a deference to him because of the massive amount of work he did for everyone. She wanted to speak to Laura to prepare her for the idea that they might not live with Jin anymore, and furthermore that Laura wouldn't need to live with Reader. She resolved to find a quiet moment with each of them when they were out of the country again and see what they had to say.