UNDER PRESSURE || HUENING KAI

12. Dance Practice

Y/N—

The title track was a fun, upbeat song about lifelong friends. There were a lot of positive messaging in it, which both groups worked on when helping create the song. It had a very uplifting vibes in general, the perfect vibe for summer.

At first, dancing with 5 new people was nerve wracking, and it felt overcrowded and messy. But we eventually eased into things and practices were going pretty well. We were spending brutally long hours in the studio, not really helping my current state, but I didn't really have a choice. I kept falling asleep during our 15 minute breaks, which was embarrassing, and was living off of coffee and energy drinks to basically stay alive.

Usually Kai would try and talk to me before practice started, during breaks, or after we finished. He was constantly quietly lingering around me, making it really obvious that he wanted to talk to me. I found it a bit silly, I kept seeing the 15 year old him in this current form—his awkwardness and nervousness that came out every once in a while, his lack of social cues, etc,. In my head I kelt thinking that he was just a loser just stuck in a hot body, and it amused me greatly.

Despite his consistent advances, I'd done a good job of keeping my boundaries fixed. However, I no longer had the energy to shoo him off all the time, instead entertaining him little by little until he was satisfied and would finally leave me alone.

"Agh, this is so tiring. I want to go home." I heard Kai say. We were on a break when I heard him come up to me and sit next to me. I didn't open my eyes, the light had been bothering me all day and I had a big headache at the moment—my condition today was worser than usual.

"Do you want this?" He asked.

I kept my eyes closed and shook my head.

Kai chuckled. "You didn't even see what it was."

I opened one eye, seeing a bottle of chocolate milk dangling in front of me. "I don't accept drinks from strangers." I mumbled.

"I'm not a stranger."

"Okay, then I don't accept drinks from men."

"Oh." Kai said, sounding disappointed and pausing. "Was that a joke?" He smirked.

"No."

"Sounded like one."

"It wasn't."

"Mkay." He replied, and I heard him set the drink down beside me before wandering off. I sighed and finally opened my eyes, watching him leave to go bother some other people. I was thirsty, so I opened the chocolate milk and took a sip. It was sweet.

"Alright, back to work!" Our instructor yelled. I sighed, sitting down until the last possible minute before getting up and joining everyone else. I was at a point where I was just constantly in a state of brain-fog due to my exhaustion. Dancing was so tiring, and I felt incredibly weak today. And my headache. The gods really decided to test me today.

I was losing focus, trying my best to keep up. It reached a point where I couldn't even remember the steps I had been doing a second ago, like someone was controlling my body like a puppet. While transitioning to a different position my foot caught onto someone else's, and my mind snapped back to reality as I stumbled. I felt like I could be sick, halting and resting my hands on my knees while trying to catch my breath. I heard people calling out my name, some were annoyed with me, but everyone's voices were mushed together. I had to focus on waking up, because I knew I was close to passing out.