What We See, What We Forget

Part 13

For a moment, I felt like I was on top of the world, that I was unstoppable. It was nothing but celebratory fireworks blasting in my head. Until then, that was my first practice session, which was scheduled to begin on Tuesday after the inauguration party. Per the contract, practice will always be held from 4:00 P.M. till 9:00 P.M. With thirty minutes of lateness tolerance. I was okay with all of that; my school day ended at 2:00 P.M., And traffic was not heavy by that time, so I had very few, if not any, reasons to worry about the practice time. The contents of the practice, however, were a completely different story. They had me running around an impromptu obstacle course like I was in the military! It was exhausting; better yet, time moved slower during practice. I checked my watch to see that it had only been an hour of practice. This will be my continuous daily struggle for the following years. Suddenly, I felt unprepared for the whole idol thing, but if I'm already doubting myself now, I don't know what I would be thinking about myself in the following stages of my career as an idol; surely there would be something sweet to complement all this pain of training. And I'm right; at the end of today's session, we were all bunched up together, and the choreographer announced that starting tomorrow, we would be practicing for our debut as trainees. We were all happy and scared since that would be our first performance in the theater. The fans and media would be there, and it would be the first time the nation would see us publicly.

This entire idol thing had mixes of old-school and modern things. You see, they won't broadcast who the trainees were up until three days after our debut, so all the fans and media outlets must keep their ears open during the debut because they will announce our names one by one. I like that they're still doing it the old-fashioned way. The debut would not occur until another three weeks, which meant three weeks of non-stop practice. It wasn't as wearing as I thought it would be, probably that's because I was starting to get used to the entire practice scheme along with all the choreography. It should be a walk in the park when we appear on stage. We tested our trainee uniforms during the practice held a week before the debut! It was similar to the uniform that the members were wearing, but they added an orange sash that indicated that we were trainees. I was pumped when I first wore it. To me, wearing this outfit symbolizes the first step in becoming an idol. We were given two sets of uniforms, and in the following practices, we would be wearing the second set to get ourselves used to performing in those uniforms. Then came the day we practiced on the theater stage; it was only the second time I've been up there; the first time was during my audition.

I had the songs covered the choreography covered, and I memorized everything. But when the stage lights turned on and the surround sound speakers started blasting the music, it all left my brain. I wasn't the only one stumped because when I looked to my left, I saw my gemmate standing and not moving. The choreographer yelled to the audio and the lighting operator to stop everything. He then angrily asked us why we had lost it. We apologized, and he restarted the setlist. We did better than our first go, but our choreographer had different opinions. He told us that we would be performing directly in front of our future fans, and if we wanted to be someone's oshi, we'd better pick up our performance.

"We are 33 Degrees! Not some random anime convention invitee group! We must be better than them! Show me that we are the best!"

That's right, we are 33 Degrees, and I did not go through all that to not give my future fans a mediocre performance. On the second to last set of songs, I made sure to give it all I had, and before I knew it, it was already the last song on the last day of practice. We all huddled in a circle to pray for tomorrow, then Mdm. Evelina stepped in to wish us good luck, and she had a surprise announcement. She walked and stood before us all to deliver it, our generation's leader! We had no idea of this, and we figured that the leader was to be picked with a fan vote, but no, the entire Liquid team had been monitoring our performance throughout our practices, and after their observation, they passed the result to Mdm. Evelina, who happily announced that I WOULD BE THE LEADER! My jaw dropped to the ground when I heard that. What kind of dream am I currently living in? Just three weeks ago, I entered as a trainee to 33 Degrees, and now I'm this generation's leader. This is unbelievable! I was just about thinking of going on one heck of a good night's sleep after this practice, but after hearing that, my heartbeat spiked as if I was going on a sprint. My genmates congratulated me for becoming the leader, but I still could not understand what happened after the practice ended. Mdm. Evelina called me over to have a little chat. She congratulated me for being picked and told me one thing that I would never forget: