My I「Junhao」

2.2

I was dying.
Well, not on the outside, it was more like I was dying on the inside.
But, you get the point.

We were sat on a bunch of mismatched chairs on the stage before we were to perform. Because we had made it through the first round, the judges and supporters of the competition had to know the names of the people who had shown enough talent to make it through. We had to organise a team introduction and then introduce ourselves, but then, on top of that, the judges had a few questions from the first round that they get us to answer.

The only thing about this introduction was that Seungcheol had forgotten about it, as did Jihoon and Soonyoung, so when we saw something about it on an advertisement on the way to the competition venue, they had told us to think of something. Yes, you heard right. We had to come up with an entire introduction an hour before round two of the competition was set to begin. Crazy, if you ask me.

So that's the reason why I was dying inside. We had started off with our group intro, hastily put together using the starting lyrics of our song we had organised for if we passed to the next round. "Say the name!" Seungcheol started us off, as the leader. "Seventeen!" We chorused. We introduced ourselves in age order and then sat down in the seats provided for us, which is where we were now, waiting for the judges questions to be passed to us.

"The first question, Judge 'Q' asks 'how long have you all known each other? You're an awfully large group and you work so well together.' Well Judge 'Q', we're actually two different friendship groups who have combined because of Jun and Minghao. They've been friends for over 10 years. Those of us from my school have been friends for six years and those from the other school...?" Seungcheol spoke, trailing off and looking at the others. "Five." Wonwoo confirmed quietly, before the others had even finished counting it mentally (or in Seungkwan's case, counting on his fingers and holding up the number once he finished counting).

"So technically the fourteen of us have only been close for a little more than six weeks, but we've been acquaintances of each other for just over two years. And that's that." Judge 'A' asked us how long we've been involved with music and whether we make our songs and choreography ourselves. "Okay Jihoon, Soonyoung, why don't you cover the second part. I'll start off the first one. I've been practicing rapping for a few years now." We went through our age order, briefly mentioning when we started becoming involved with music, then Jihoon took the microphone and started speaking.

"I, with the help of a friend who produces for Pledis Entertainment, and occasionally the other members, create our songs and we all partake in the lyric writing process, so yes, all of our songs are created by ourselves." He passed the microphone to Soonyoung, who grinned. "Our choreography is fully created by our members, we have our 'Performance Team' as you'll see soon enough, and the five of us often gather outside of normal meetings to come up with choreography for all of our performances."

The microphone was then passed back to Seungcheol who read the last question with a bright smile. "This last question is from Judge 'S'. They ask, have any of you given up something big to attempt to make it in the kpop industry once you start auditioning? Jun, I think this one is a good one for you to answer." He passed it back to me and I blinked with wide eyes because I was not ready to answer this.

"Ah, well, I actually gave up my acting career in China to come over here and do auditions to hopefully make it in the kpop industry. I was a child actor for five years before we moved here." I confessed. Feeling nervous under all the judging stares, I passed the microphone back quickly and covered my face. "That's all, thank you. Please support our performances tonight and give your love to our vocal, performance and hiphop teams." The lights dimmed and those of us who didn't need to be onstage left the stage with our chairs.