weightless | idol producer

Chapter 2

 Yanjun banged his fist against the door of the practice room - the locked door of the practice room. "Lin Chaoze, just wait until I get my hands on you!" He heard a self-satisfied laugh from the other side of the barrier.

"Toodles! You two have fun now! We're going to go get some HaiDiLao," Chaoze replied, and Yanjun could practically see the little shit twiddling his fingers. Yanjun slid to his knees, head down and palms flat against the wood. He was defeated.

"Can you please just bring leftovers?" he asked meekly.

"Duh!" Hope rose from the bottom of Yanjun's heart like a beacon of light for sailors on a stormy midnight, dragging him out of darkness. His mouth watered with the memory of savory hotpot, and he lifted his head with words of gratitude on the tip of his tongue. "But, you never know. Us poor trainees are starved and we need nourishment for growth after our endless, difficult, grueling, back-breaking hours of practice, hoping, praying, striving for just an ounce of success... So, the longer you take, the smaller the chance there will be some left!"

He heard the sound of seven trainees walking away, chatting amongst themselves and, the loudest among them, Dinghao chanting "HAI. DI. LAO. I. LOVE. YOU." Yanjun sighed, turning around and leaning his back against the cursed door that separated him from freedom and hotpot. He was alone - well, alone plus You Zhangjing. There he was, sitting a couple of meters away and fiddling with the strings of his hoodie. He hadn't said anything since Chaoze had first locked them in and explained that they wouldn't be let out until they officially made up. Yanjun, to say the least, was pissed. This one boy had given him more trouble in the last two days than he'd ever had since joining the company two years ago. He wished that they had just continued staying on opposite sides of the same room, that they had never ended up in the same hallway, that Yanjun had never heard him sing.

Thirty-five minutes passed, their silence only broken by the gentle whirring of the air conditioner above them. Yanjun was massaging his recovering calves and Zhangjing had redirected his attention to the laces on his sneakers. The former couldn't help but fuel his contempt by frequently glancing at the other, who was surprisingly good at avoiding contact and further catalyzing Yanjun's temper in doing so.

"Are you going to do anything or are you just going to stare at your shoes the entire night?" The silence was making Yanjun itchy; he was used to yelling out his problems, fighting until there was a definite winner. There was no winner in silence.

"What's the point in talking?" came the muted reply. Yanjun's eyes shot to Zhangjing, who was looking at him with indifference. "We're just going to wait it out until someone comes back to check on us, and they'll have to believe us if we tell them we made up since they weren't here." Zhangjing finally broke their eye contact with a shrug and ran his eyes along the walls enclosing them. "And even if they don't believe us, they're going to need to open the practice room tomorrow morning anyway. The girls are taking up the other big one and we have a show coming up."

Yanjun was shocked. How could he be so apathetic about the whole situation? Did he not even want to try to make up? At the same time, did Yanjun even want to try?

"Uh-h, wh-hat about the hotpot?" he stammered lamely. Yanjun wanted to hit himself in the face with a steel bat for choosing probably the most inappropriate response for the situation. Oh no, he might have even just worsened his chances at HaiDiLao if Zhangjing took that the wrong way. "Shit, I don't mean it like that. I mean, I don't mean it like anything. It's just that I really want hotpot - 'cause I'm really fucking starved and practice today was awful - so there's also probably a chance that you want hotpot too, you know?"

Yanjun let out a deep breath of relief when he saw what he could have sworn was the ghost of a smile flit across Zhangjing's face. But, he noted with a tiny bit of what felt like concern, why did the almost-smile look so sad?