"You'd be perfect if you were just a little luckier."

The manager probably meant it as a compliment. That's the funny thing about compliments. Sometimes they stay longer with you than insults.

You don't even remember his face anymore. Only the sentence. Human memory is a landfill. It discards entire beings and preserves fragments. Like the color of a stranger's umbrella glimpsed through the rain. A melody leaking from a convenience store radio. A sentence spoken carelessly by a man who probably forgot it before the meeting ended.

"You'd be perfect if you were just a little luckier."

As though luck were a skill. Something measurable. As if you could spend another hour in the studio and emerge with better odds.

The memory followed you into consciousness. It arrived before the sunlight.

Before the ache in your neck.

Before the familiar weight beneath your ribs.

By the time you opened your eyes, the room had already begun to brighten.

The dorm was suspended in that uncertain hour between night and morning, when the darkness had retreated but the day had not yet committed to arriving. The walls were washed in a weak grey. Your hoodie lay where you dropped it yesterday. Or the day before. A water bottle rested beside the desk, half-empty. Or half-full.

You suppose optimism has always been a matter of perspective.

The air tasted stale. The window had been shut for so long you couldn't remember opening it.

For a moment, you stayed exactly where you are. One arm was numb. Your cheek was creased from the pillow. Your mouth was dry in the particular way only mornings seem capable of achieving and the teeth felt fuzzy. Neither dirty nor clean. Just coated in the residue of being alive. It was disgusting when you thought about it.

Sleep was supposed to make you feel better. Most mornings it felt more like an intermission.

The mattress shifted beneath your weight. The springs complained—a tired metallic groan. You knew that noise. You had known it for years.

The same way you knew the stain on the ceiling looked like a non-existent continent.

Knowledge accumulated not through affection but repetition. Knowledge accumulated the way a river accumulates sediment. Slowly. Without permission.

Most people imagined their lives were built from grand moments. The triumphs and the tragedies. The turning points that split existence into before and after. But perhaps people were really assembled from smaller things. The details repeated so often they became part of the architecture of the self.

The room smelled faintly of detergent. The cheap kind the company bought in bulk. Sharp and artificial. Trying far too hard to smell clean.

You knew that smell too. But suddenly that felt unbearable. Not because there was anything wrong with the room. But because you had become fluent in it.

Every nook and cranny. Every smell and stubborn imperfection. As though the dorm had memorized you. Or worse — as though you had memorized it.

A laugh died somewhere behind your teeth. You had spent years trying to become unforgettable. Only to end up knowing the exact sound a cheap mattress made when you sat up too quickly.

There should have been a word for this. For dedicating years of your life to something and still feeling like a guest inside it. For standing in the middle of a dream you had spent so long chasing and realizing it fitted someone else better than you. Perhaps there was.

You dragged a hand down your face.

The digital clock read 7:12.

Somewhere down the hall, a door slammed. Someone laughed. Another swore.

Life continued with the stubborn persistence of a weed breaking through concrete. You considered staying in bed.

Not seriously. Just long enough to imagine it.

People thought quitting arrived like lightning. Most days it was only a passing thought. Gone before you had finished brushing your teeth.

You wondered how many times you had almost quit. Not enough, apparently.

A line surfaced from somewhere in the back of your mind.

Shakespeare.

"I have no spur to prick the sides of my intent, but only vaulting ambition."

You had always thought ambition was misunderstood. People talked about it like it was a virtue. Something polished or admirable. A shining thing. Most of the time it felt more like an old injury. The kind that healed incorrectly. You learned to move around it. You forgot it was there. Until someone brushed against it. Until someone said the wrong thing.

Then suddenly the ache returned.

"You'd be perfect if you were just a little luckier."

The worst part was that he hadn't been entirely wrong. You hated that. Almost as much as you hated the fact that part of you still cared.

The thought lingered longer than it should have. Then vanished faster than it felt.

One moment you were staring at a dormitory ceiling, feeling the thoughts turn in your head like gears. The next—your lungs were burning and the hands on your wristwatch pointed to 10 something.

The practice room mirrors glared back at you from every angle, merciless in their honesty. Overhead lights flooded the room in sterile white. Sweat trickled down the back of your neck.

For a second, you just stood there. Blinking. Panting in rapid and loud breaths.

Your towel hung around your shoulders, damp and heavy. Your shirt clung unpleasantly to your skin. Music reverberated through the floor beneath your feet, bass vibrating through bone.

Someone was speaking. You realized, belatedly, that they were speaking to you (well mostly).

"…and then he told me to shut up. Like the audacity!"

Sharp laughter erupted somewhere to your right. Several people groaned. You wiped your face with the edge of the towel.

"Huh?" It was like the room paused.

The girl, Chae-hwa, stared at you with an unreadable look in her eyes. "Damn."

"What?" you repeated, hands clutching the towel at the sudden attention, the dense loopy fiber suddenly felt course to you

"I've been talking for, like, three minutes." You considered apologizing. Then decided against it.

"Sounds important," you said, turning away from the other trainees with a sigh.

"It wasn't." A beat passed. "That's not the point."

You weren't entirely sure what the point was anymore.

A water bottle arced through the air. You caught it without looking. The movement happened before thought could reach it. Muscle memory.

Most of your life seemed to operate that way those days. The choreography. The schedules. The monthly evaluations—you name it.

The endless cycle of wanting something badly enough that it became indistinguishable from obligation.

You twisted the cap open. The water was uncomfortably warm. The kind of tepid drink that did not quench your thirst after hours of physical exertion. You drank it anyway.

Across the room, someone changed the music. The opening beat rattled through the speakers. Conversation died instantly.

Bodies shifted.

Everyone returned to their places. Like a flock startled into flight. Feet moving to find their marks. Hands lifting. Entire sequences unfolded without permission, as though some quieter version of themselves had taken the wheel.

Including you. Especially you.

Your body obeyed before your mind did.

Burial. Layer after layer of practice pressed beneath your skin until it became instinct.

Left. Turn. Step. Again. And again.

The strange thing about exhaustion was that eventually it stopped feeling like tiredness. It settled deeper than that. Into muscle and habit. Into the space between thought and movement.

Which meant that when the lines blurred, you would realize that you had simply forgotten how to stop.

The music ended mid-beat, and silence rushed in to occupy the space it left behind.

A collective groan followed. Someone collapsed dramatically onto the floor.

You hooked the towel around your neck, offering your throat to the air as you slid down the mirror wall, pulling your knees up to your chest. Your lungs were still trying to negotiate with the rest of your body. You grunted, the sound low, hollow, and utterly spent.

Sweat slid down the side of your face. The mirrors blurred beneath the harsh lights. Or maybe your vision did. It was hard to tell anymore.

"Sunbae." You glanced over.

One of the newer trainees stood nearby. He was tall and looked polite.

The look of a kid who apologized when somebody else stepped on his foot.

"Yeah?" He shifted his weight. He sat down beside you while maintaining a strangely respectful distance. The sort of space anyone barely gave regardless of age these days.

He looked strangely nervous. Then:

"I was just curious about how long you've been here," he asked softly. It didn't hurt. It was just familiar. Like touching a bruise to see whether it still throbbed. A small pause later he added, "it's just that the others said you are the oldest here." Your eyes trailed the maladroit explanation that was demonstrated by alot of hand movement. After a few moments of silence, you replied.

"Six years and a few months. Give or take." His eyes widened slightly. Right on cue. You looked away toward the mirror before it arrived. Because it always arrived.

"But—given your reputation," he paused, as if wondering if he should continue, "given how talented you are, shouldn't you—" He cut himself off, scratching his nape awkwardly.

"Yeah, well, that's impressive." Even more awkward laughter followed. The kind people used to patch over a conversation they had accidentally damaged. Because silence had a way of making people uncomfortable, and you had just handed him plenty of it.

You could almost hear the questions forming behind his eyes.

Persistent. Dedicated. Look how young she is. She spent her entire childhood here?

Nobody said it. Nobody ever did. They let the sentence die before it reached their lips. As though mercy existed in omission.

It didn't make it any gentler. A blade doesn't become less sharp simply because nobody names it.

Your phone vibrated. The screen lit up. For a moment, you only stared at the name

Your tongue darted out to wet your lips—a nervous tic that you had developed over the years. You didn't particularly dislike the sender, but some names became associated with places. Conference rooms. Evaluations. Plastic water bottles arranged neatly across long tables. The slow erosion of expectation.

Your thumb hesitated. Then tapped on it.

Come see me after practice.

Nothing else. No explanation. No urgency. One ordinary sentence.

Your pulse stumbled uncomfortably anyway. The body remembers things the mind grows tired of carrying.

"Everything okay?" The question came from the new trainee, whom you just noticed was still sitting beside you.

You locked your phone. "Probably." Too quick. Too automatic. As though good news had ever arrived in a message that shorT.

Around you, conversation resumed. Life continued with the confidence of people who still believed tomorrow belonged to them. You stared at your reflection. Sweat-darkened shirt. Hair stuck to your forehead.

A face made familiar by repetition. A face you had seen in dressing-room mirrors and bathroom mirrors and practice-room mirrors and elevator mirrors.

A face that suddenly felt temporary.

The thought arrived so quietly it almost slipped past unnoticed. Maybe this is it. Seven years is the pathetic end of the line.

Long enough for seasons to change. Long enough for entire trainee generations to come and go. Long enough for potential to become a question instead of a promise. The idea should have terrified you. Instead—relief. Small, sharp, and sudden, hits. Gone almost immediately.

There was the possibility of an ending. The possibility of putting down something you had carried for so long that you had forgotten what it weighed. Guilt followed a second later, as predictable as gravity.

For those who weren't first in this continuous and endless race, burnout waited at the finish line—if they even reached it, that was. Raw and immovable. Even the most successful ones didn't get the warmth of commemoration nor caresses.

After practice ended, you remained where you were. Still enough for a passerby to think that you were trying to count the droplets of sweat that dripped down from your face to the floor. Your phone felt heavier in your pocket. Five words. Not many people could ruin an afternoon in five words. You sighed, you do that a lot these days.

Moving toward something had always made it harder to pretend it wasn't real.

The hallway outside was colder than the practice room. The glass panels threw your reflection back at you. You looked past it.

The walk should have taken two minutes. You made it take seven. Then eight.

At one point, you stopped to check your phone. Nothing.

No new messages or missed calls. You stared at the screen anyway. Wishing that another notification might appear and spare you from the first.

Halfway down the corridor, a thought caught you off guard.

If they terminate my contract today—who do I tell?

Your footsteps faltered. The answer arrived immediately.

Nobody. Nobody cares.

The words landed with a dull sort of finality. Years ago, there would've been another answer.

Your mother. Before every evaluation. Every showcase. Both of the almost-debuts—those frantic weeks where you had tried on stage outfits, only to pack them back into suitcases when the groups dissolved before the first teasers could even drop. Every tiny victory inflated by excitement into something enormous. You would've called her first

Like a hand withdrawing from a flame, out of motor reflex, you shoved that thought down.

Your thumb hovered over your contacts. Names. Phone numbers. People you cared about. People who probably cared about you. Friends. Former trainees. Some mentors. A dozen conversations waiting to be resumed. People already carrying enough weight. Enough that adding to it made your chest feel heavy.

Yet none of them felt like the person you would call when a life ended. Because that is what this would be. Not your life exactly, just the version of it you had been constructing since you were ten years old. Brick by brick. Practice by practice. Evaluation by evaluation.

You wondered what happened to dreams after they were declared dead. Whether they got buried somewhere. Whether there was a ceremony. Flowers. A eulogy. A polished plaque engraved with something respectable.

'Here lies Potential.'

The thought should have been funny. It wasn't.

You kept walking while the building hummed around you. Managers carrying coffee and employees carrying laptops. People who were all pretending to know what they were doing. You used to think adulthood came with certainty.

Now you suspected everyone was improvising. Some were simply better at hiding it.

The conference room waited at the end of the corridor. The door was closed. You stopped in front of it, and suddenly the hallway felt very quiet. For a moment, all you could hear was your own breathing. Seven years distilled into a closed door and a trembling hand. It was ridiculous.

You curled your fingers toward the wood. But just before your knuckles met it—the handle turned first. The door swung inward. You stepped back automatically. The person emerging did the same.

A near-collision with a man tall enough to classify as a pole. Silky brown hair was pushed back from his forehead with a hairband, and rimless glasses hung from his nose, looking one careless nod away from falling off. He had a black folder tucked beneath one arm.

There was a particular look people wore after spending years chasing something. You had the ability to recognize it immediately.

After all, it was knowledge accumulated not through affection but repetition. You recognized it because you saw it in the surface of every mirror you stood in front of.

The exhaustion sat differently on everyone. On some people, it sags. On others, it hardens. His had settled somewhere behind his eyes.

His gaze landed on you. Briefly. Not long enough to become rude. Not short enough to be accidental. A flicker of recognition passed between strangers who had occupied the same building for too many years. The ecosystem of people perpetually waiting for permission to begin their lives. Perhaps something adjacent to familiarity.

The moment slipped away. He shifted to the side. You noticed the distance he left. Just a few inches. Enough. The space reserved for strangers. Or for people carrying fragile things, there was no in between. His eyes were still on you. Assessing carefully.

"Sorry." His voice was rough around the edges. Overused. Like he had spent hours arguing with someone.

Despite the fact that it was nothing but a careless apology thrown at a stranger, to you, it felt oddly heavy.

You nodded once. The universal language of people who had no intention of having a conversation. The exchange ended there. He continued down the corridor. Long strides. Head lowered slightly. The folder (now lowered) tapped gently against his leg with every step. Then he disappeared around the corner.

The silence returned. You stared after him for a moment. There was something oddly comforting about seeing another person leave a room you were terrified to enter. Proof that survival remained possible.

The conference room waited. The open door revealed only a sliver of the interior. Small plants littered the brightly lit room. They all looked vaguely like plastic.

The office was smaller than you had expected. Not cramped. Just ordinary. A desk. A few chairs. A framed platinum record hanging slightly crooked on the wall. The sort of room where futures were discussed in the same tone people used to discuss lunch.

The man behind the desk looked up when you entered. Mr. Choi. He smiled, motioning for you to sit down.

With your lips in between your teeth, and legs dragging behind you like wet blankets, you did.

He slid a folder toward you, it was yellow. At that moment, you weren't sure why that bothered you so much.

Maybe because yellow was the colour of summer. Children's drawings pinned to refrigerator doors. Bright and happy. This yellow looked tired. Muted by lighting and fingerprints. The color of something handled too many times. The front page read :

CORTIS. An acronym for 'Color outside the lines'.

The words landed softly. That was somehow worse.

You stared at the folder, unblinking, as if maybe by looking long enough, you would wake up from this dream. It felt cold and the bristly texture irritated the tip of your finger.

You had always imagined this moment in your head. Not often.

The future had been dangerous territory when you were a trainee. Most people learned not to visit it too frequently.

Still—sometimes when it was late at night. On the walk back to the dorm. Or perhaps during evaluations.

You had imagined hearing the word debut. You had imagined relief. Excitement. Vindication. The sudden certainty that all those years had been building toward something.

Instead, all you felt was strangely disconnected from your own body. As though the room had shifted half an inch to the left. As though reality had made a decision without consulting you.

The manager continued speaking. Schedules and preparations and training adjustments—you name it. But the words all drifted past. All meaningless.

The manager noticed your expression. "You've worked very hard," he said, then nodded as if he were satisfied with the words of encouragement he had offered. As if they would be the medicine to the sickness that plagued your mind right then.

CORTIS. Everybody knew CORTIS. Not officially. Companies loved pretending secrets remained secret.

A debut rumored to be weeks away. A lineup polished so thoroughly it had practically become fact.

Your gaze lingered on the pages. The concept sketches, recording schedules, and the styling notes; the promo ideas and, of course, the lineup.

Every page told the same story.

Five boys standing shoulder to shoulder. Five shadows cast in the same direction. Five pieces cut to fit together.

Five. Five. Five.

Five boys. CORTIS wasn't a mixed group. It was a pathetic testament to how much effort people were willing to spend making sure everything fit together.

A completed shape.

Your name sat at the edge of it now. New ink on an old blueprint. The realization settled somewhere beneath your ribs. Nothing inside this folder felt new. Except you.

Companies were capable of astonishing things. Apparently, common sense rarely ranked among them those days.

Mr. Choi called your name. You looked up.

"Do you have any questions?" Thousands. None of them useful. None that could be satisfied with whatever answer he would offer.

You thought of the brunette trainee leaving the room. The folder beneath his arm.

The careful distance he had left between the two of you.

The split second of recognition which you had labeled as 'something adjacent to familiarity' You were wrong. Terribly so. The apology made more sense now.

A strange pressure unfurled beneath your ribs.

Your excitement (not really) folded in on itself. Collapsing like a star at the end of its life. The feeling of arriving late to your own life. Because for seven years you had imagined a door opening. You had never imagined walking through it and finding people already seated.

Already comfortable. Already belonging to one another. For years, the future had been simple.

Someday. Everything lived inside someday.

Someday you would debut.

Someday things would make sense.

Someday all the sacrifices would line up neatly beside the reward and balance the equation.

Now someday sat inside a folder with the names of five boys.

Printed and scheduled and painfully real.

The strange feeling stretched further and further into the shape of a question.

One sharp enough to draw blood.

How do you join a future that already learned how to exist without you?

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愛 ──── 𝗖𝗢𝗡𝗧𝗘𝗡𝗧𝗦 ────

01 .ᐟ.ᐟ ──── monkey's paw

02 .ᐟ.ᐟ──── lucky number 6

03.ᐟ.ᐟ ────sign of the times

04.ᐟ.ᐟ──── good people die first

05.ᐟ.ᐟ ────things that go bump in the night

06.ᐟ.ᐟ ──── die your daughter

07.ᐟ.ᐟ ────eternal sunshine

08.ᐟ.ᐟ ────midnight in pixel

09.ᐟ.ᐟ ────tbd

10.ᐟ.ᐟ──── tbd

𝖯𝖫𝖠𝖸𝖫𝖨𝖲𝖳 𝖥𝖮𝖱 𝖳𝖧𝖤 𝖡𝖮𝖮𝖪 ──── : tbd

──── 2026 @cherieviere