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━━━ " 📂  " ‍..⃗. ༉

𝙍 𝙀 𝙈 𝙀 𝘿 𝙔

! chapter two ─── ʚĭɞ

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The painted grey door swung open into the practise room and then closed again, a boy holding  a plastic coffee cup with a beanie pulled low down down over his hair. "Just to be clear I'm here because Dae asked me to come." He began, eyes waltzing over the scene in front of him.

"Nice of you to join us Kenji." Chanmi was on her feet in seconds, blonde hair sweeping over her shoulder and standing by the Japanese boy, reaching up to pull his beanie off of his head and throwing it into one of the corners where the rest of their coats were pilled.

Half the group were in hoodies of varying colours, the hoods pulled up over their heads, iPads carefully placed all around (they were usually used for learning lyrics or choreography, but Kai seemed to be using it to watch some form of other video), as well as scattered sheets of paper.

"If anyone else was asking me to.." Kenji once more as Chanmi led him towards the circle of trainees, his gaze landing in the centre. "Is that pizza?"

"And we've picked the olives off of a couple of slices for you." Hyunwoo pushed the open box towards him. "By 'we', I mean Kai. She's the only one who wanted to."

"You're welcome." Kaien sat up from where she was laid against Maiya, head balanced on her thigh. "Nobody actually knew you were coming, but I did it anyway."

"You see, Kai has this innate perception that you will turn up every time Daehwan asks you to." Chanmi continued off of that, turning to the pair beside her. "Miyeon suggested we should all gather together."

The Hwang girl nodded happily. That seemed to becoming one of the things she suggested often, and she supposed it linked directly to her longing to act like other people her age, gathering to eat and just enjoying the company of one another without the pressure of practise or trainee life.

And it wasn't often that she managed to get everyone into it together, sometimes Seojun might be missing, or Chanmi or Kenji, depending on who asked him.

"How did you get it up here then?" Kenji asked as he sat down besides Daehwan, the younger boy sliding the pizza box towards him. It had always been like that between them - almost.

When Daehwan arrived in Seoul he had been defensive and outspoken, always trying to push people away and make sure they knew nothing about him. Something clearly had happened between Kenji, Daehwan and Miyeon one night, because since then, he had always been a little more open with them. And then got comfortable with the others and settling into his personality and new life.

"Mr Baek helped up sneak it in." Maiya spoke up, using the wall of mirrors to pin her hair back with butterfly-shaped hair clips. "I'm sure Heekyung saw us with it.. but she didn't say anything."

The Japanese boy shook his head and began to eat, Miyeon sitting back on her elbows. A nudge in her ribs caused her to almost slip backwards, and an arm slipped under her back to hold her.

"Woah there." Seojun smiled down at her, pulling her back up into a sitting position. Whilst he was good friends with all of the group, he was never good in such social settings still.

"Do you do that on purpose?" Miyeon's words were accusatory but she was smiling, gently shaking her head. "Doesn't matter - did you read these lyrics from earlier?"

And so, for the next hour or so, Seojun and Miyeon spent it leaning over each others' laps, several sheets of paper in hand as the other six trainees ate pizza and spent the hour simply existing in each other's presence.

As it neared midnight, they began to clean up the place. Chanmi and Hyunwoo took the rubbish, Kai joined Maiya, Seojun and Miyeon in wiping the floors and mirrors (they had already sent the cleaning crew on their way), and the boys organised the mess of stuff that had gathered in the corners.

"Well we did a pretty good job of that, right?" Hyunwoo had a grin on his face as he tugged on his jacket sleeves. The eight were gathered by the door, beanies, bags and coats all assembled over their bodies.

"Of course we did." Kai had slipped her arm under Miyeon's and was leaning on the months' older girl's shoulder. "It's getting late though.. and we're supposed to be here early tomorrow."

Murmurs of agreement flooded through the group and within seconds they had trailed out of the practise room, beginning down the corridor. The lights would be turned off in the room by the box by the elevator - Seojun had been given the key and it only took him a second before the doors opened, the group piling in.

"Good to see you kids finally going home." Mr Baek was holding his pass down and opening the gates as the trainees flooded through. "Everyone ate the pizza, right?"

"Yes, thank you so much for helping us, sir." Chanmi sounded as grateful as anyone could ever be, and the group simultaneously thanked him in a chorus of words, waving goodbye as they came down the front steps of the Move Entertainment building.

Then, they began their way home.

And now, home was their dorm; two apartments right next to each other. One for the boys, one for the girls, four rooms in each and then a communal space - consisting of a kitchen, living area and a studio - for the both of them.

It was different to usual entertainments, but that was what drew people there. Move Entertainment didn't follow usual training program, and although the girls and boys were technically seperate, they did have that closeness and were more like a group of friends then anything.

That seemed to be the glue tethering them to their trainees life, holding them through the hardships of going through that sort of program even if it didn't conform to the usual methods.

"Come on, in we go." Maiya ushered them through into the apartment building lobby, the group smiling and bowing at the people they passed. "Shhh, quietly." She instructed, finger held up to her lips. She had always been like this, the older sister to a group of such different people.

"Yes mom." Came Kaien's jokes, a small tittering of laughter flooding through them as they began up the staircase. A hand tangled with Miyeon's at the back of the group.

She didn't even need to ask who it was, just knew by default. And if she didn't figure out it was Seojun simply because of his touch, she would've known by the rings scattered across his fingers, or the scar across the centre of his palm that had come from that one motorcycle accident that she had berated him over for at least half an hour before descending into tears and being comforted by him. Yet again.

"I'll arrange a chance for us to go with Sooa and Chorong and everyone." Seojun said, their combined pace slowing them down from the rest of the group, quite a gap between the two and Daehwan and Kenji at the back.

He had been thinking about it since hearing Miyeon's almost complaints about trainee life. It wasn't that she hated it - in fact she very much enjoyed it - but there were missing pieces to it, a normalcy that would be even harder achieve upon debuting.

And so, he wanted to help her. Not just that, but he wanted it as well. They barely got chance to see any of their friends - other than Jugyeong at odd times of the day and mostly only in passing. She worked under Move Entertainment, but rather for the group of trainees who were yet to need to makeup-artist abilities, she worked for Chen.

Who, admittedly, none of the trainees particularly liked.

"Thank you." Miyeon was going to tell him that he didn't need to - but that never seemed to go the way she was hoping it to go. And so she would just accept his offers, advice and promises without a question.

Even if he hadn't needed to, it meant that Miyeon could go to sleep anticipating that time, and that was enough to get him to do it for her.