#chrxsrk

as the end of the month came around, yuzu was confident in her groups and her own skills to perform well. despite a million things swirling around in her mind; from worrying about gahyeon and her both making it into heartz, over how the other royal girls would feel once they found out they had auditioned to how this could be her last eval under royal and dowoon was the only fellow trainee she worked with for this potentially last month.

being a usually loyal and honest person, she almost felt like she was cheating when she kept her audition to herself from the boy who had gotten in trouble along with her. 

she made sure to push all these thoughts away though as she prepared for her performances. while q&a was technically her baby, she made sure to invest equally as much time into preparing for both performances, even when her own chosen song was the harder challenge for the triple threat. hitting these high notes and mirroring the vocal strength to match her own raspy voice was something she had to work with a lot of confidence to pull it off. 

the boys had been nothing but sweet during their rehearsals though and even while she performed with them, she was glad to have won them over for this eval. chris and vok were both in sphere and she couldn’t help but wonder if she were to see them more often in the future months to come.

waiting for results really wasn’t her strongest skill. 

on the other hand performing with seokwoo felt almost easy, granted the two had been friends for so long. it made dealing with her guilt towards dowoon almost easy. calming her mind with the thought she didn’t want to wake sleeping dogs, the female let herself go through that vocal performance easy as well. the added dash of rap a welcome change to mix things up. not getting to dance for this month again was a bit of a bummer for the girl who wanted to improve the steadiness of her vocal performance while dancing but at least that way she could confidently deliver without having to worry about any wavers in her voice.

at the end of the day yuzu was satisfied with both her performances. only a few days now till she’d find out if that would be her last eval under royal. 

Of course, he never intended on losing during the MGAs either. But as their group is called forward, he firmly pushes any thoughts out of the competition of his head. Making their way to the stage, he smiles easily at the judges, laughing internally at the thought that they must be sick of him appearing in front of them like this. He even manages to not avoid Hyun Bin’s glance. (Mostly.)

Then the music starts and they fall into their roles. It had taken them less than a day to decide on CONVEX’s version of Egoistic, with Chris and Daniel adding their own twists to the song. While Moonbok felt a little guilty in not being able to contribute to the actual arrangement of their piece, Sungmin promised him he was doing the group a huge favour by taking a vocalist position instead of a rapping one.

(Personally, however, Moonbok still thinks that Sungmin is too harsh on himself.)

But you become the center anyway.  But you shouldn’t do whatever you want.  

And Moonbok has to admit, he enjoys it much more than he’d thought. And even compared to when they’d all worked together at the start of the year, this performance felt even better than that one. As though they’d become more in tuned with each other and their strengths and weaknesses. (In fact, he almost regrets the fact that they don’t have to dance for this performance. Almost)

I wanna do whatever I want.

As he sings the song’s final line and their performance comes to an end, Moonbok is grinning and he pushes his hair back from his face. Hopefully, they’ve done enough to win, but even if they haven’t, it’ll just be a disappointment.

Because he’s not going anywhere. Not for a long time to come.

i’m your satellite, revolving around you but that doesn’t mean you’re the sun

moonbok follows him up: a fact that shook him for much of this month. moonbok singing. moonbok, inarguably a stronger rapper than him, likely a stronger dancer than him, singing, and working daniel out of bohyung’s lines. daniel was left with narae’s, whom he personally knew as a weaker vocalist, but-- upon listening to the song they were covering multiple times, he learned to let it go a little. everyone in spica was just about equally talented, just like the boys in this group. (it’s what he tried to convince himself of, anyway-- always a battle of daniel and his anxieties.)

things are flowing your way don’t hurt me

sungmin leads the way with his reliable rapping next, and in this moment, daniel is lucky enough to only focus on the performance, and the enjoyment of it (not the insecurity, not the rampant knowledge that sphere doesn’t need him, because in all of his talents, there is someone better than him.)

the backtrack builds up, instrument upon instruments, up to the chorus, and then it drops out, only leaving bare bones instrumentation and daniel to sing.

i’m always all about you you you you you’re always about me me me me

it’s not a song he particularly relates to, nor does he want to. he doesn’t want to be angry and bitter, but deep down, a part of him is-- angry to be left behind so often, angry to be criticized and put down and taken advantage of so often. maybe he can channel a little bit of that into the song, or maybe he just wants to have fun performing in front of like-minded people again. it’s a competition, sure, but he’s mainly excited to see the talent all of the companies have up their sleeve (and probably inevitably compare himself to them regardless.)

he gets to finish off the chorus too.

do whatever you want, ay

he doesn’t sing again until the next prechorus, but in the meantime, he works his way around the stage, making eye contact with the other trainees, trying to make the performance fun and engaging in the lack of their dancing.

even if i get mad, that only hurts my lips

in comes another chorus that daniel lends his voice to, and then the slightest bridge. he gets the line that transitions them into the next prechorus, and also the only full english line, always beloved in daniel’s heart.

i’m ready to go on my way

their last chorus is more explosive, with a thicker instrumental, fuller and closer to the original while still staying true to the new sphere boys arrangement. they reach the end, and he sings his final line in a round of echoes and harmonies:

having to worry about just one performance was usually enough to stress him out completely, but having to think about two in one month? it was surprising that he didn’t just have a complete mental breakdown the moment he heard the news, somehow managing to hold himself together for long enough to actually worry about what he was going to do. the dream concept was easy enough, just something he pulled up from his memory from dancing a bit of it back during the mags. 

it was the worst concept which was the problem and in the end, jeongguk ended up dragging him into his group with some other trainees to do a cute concept. at least it was something he could agree with - cute was really not something he was very good at. while a lot of people seemed to think he was a cute person, haruto really didn’t like that notion. he also never acted cute, so at least the group and song choice would actually work out being a concept he really didn’t want to be performing. 

the whole month was spent completely focusing on his two groups and trying to get everything to an acceptable level to perform. so, when performance day finally rolled around, haruto was at least confident enough that he wouldn’t end up putting a foot wrong. though he could never completely get rid of his nerves, the wriggling feeling of eels in his stomach as he thought about every little thing that could possibly go wrong. not to mention how he had been roped into being a rapper again for his worst concept. 

it seemed he was ending up more and more in groups that needed a rapper and he was the only one to fill that spot. not that he supposed he was really complaining about it, but he could almost see himself completely becoming a rapper more than a vocalist. ideally, he would still want to do both, but there were far fewer rappers out there then there were vocalists and groups were always going to need a rapper. at least he wasn’t going to have to do it by himself and he had sungmin to be a second rapper. because having to do all the rapping by himself would just be a little more than overwhelming. 

the best concept was up first to perform and haruto was as relaxed as he could be about the whole thing. he trusted dongmin and chris to do a good job as well and it was rather comforting to be performing in a group instead of solo. that meant everyone wouldn’t just be staring right at him the whole time, which did sort of help with the niggling stage fright and nerves eating away at him from the inside out. they had practiced hard for this performance, going over it over and over again and practicing the steps and the positioning until they were all aching and sweaty. 

all in all, he did have to say it went pretty well, every step was careful, making sure that he didn’t accidentally trip over or slap someone in the face with his fan. and while his vocals could have probably been a little better and no doubt he was going to get critiqued on it later, the only thing he really cared about was the fact he had managed to say all the right words in the right order. and now he could worry about the second performance. 

at least there were more people for him to hide behind this time. in his opinion, the more people in the performance with him the better off he was going to be about the whole thing. and while the song and the concept were all still completely horrible to even think about performing, he knew they had practiced this and at least they were all in the same boat. not one of them actually liked this concept and they were all struggling through it together.  and haruto liked to think that bond they shared helped things run a little smoother. 

There were really only two concepts that he felt most comfortable doing – band and hip hop. Of course, neither involved dancing, which was one of the requirements for this month. Of course he had to pick the two hardest concepts. He really hated himself sometimes. When it came to his ‘horror’ concept there was only one thing that sprung to his mind; cute. If there was anything Choi Sungmin couldn’t do, it was act cute.

He really hated this month.

Preparations for both concepts were interesting. For Bang Bang Bang, he was working with Daniel once again in a band, which brought back mixed emotions within him (and he was sure Daniel was experiencing the same thing). Somehow, they had to incorporate dancing in their performance, which was not easy. Still, they had somehow managed to work it out. He didn’t know the other two in their group, but they were both talented and the group worked well together, which was all that mattered.

Beautiful Target, however, was a completely different story. While he was ecstatic to be working with Jungkook finally, the circumstances were beyond ideal. Neither male enjoyed the concept which made things easier. Sungmin felt like a fish out of water whenever he performed the song. It wasn’t that the choreography was hard, it was that he had to act cute. It physically hurt him to act cute.

The month seemed to fly by and performance day came. For once, Sungmin felt uneasy. He was dreading performing Beautiful Target which only added to the pressures he felt whenever evaluations rolled around. He let out a deep sigh as he waited for his turn.

The rapper always struggled to ascertain how well evaluation performances went. The staff were hard to read and all he could use to tell was how well he performed. Bang Bang Bang was easier for him since he was in his element standing behind his keyboard. As long as Sungmin was able to rap, he knew he could ace any performance, at least vocally. He had moved as he played, trying to find ways to ‘dance’ while he played the keys.  Of course, they had a small choreographed piece that they had performed. It had been a fun performance.

it was not even a song he had been familiar with before agreeing to take the parts, but over the past month he was confident that he could rap his parts without even thinking about it very much. for the most part, he was simply pleased that he had managed to find himself a group in the first place and wasn’t struggling to slip into somewhere at the last second. it was not like he knew a lot of collaboration songs to begin with, and not really any he thought anyone else would actually like to do with him. so, haruto wasn’t complaining all too much and was happy to keep his head down and just get on with things. 

the whole thing was just a lot easier than the previous month had been. a lot less stressful as well which was something he was rather thankful for. and the people he was working with were nice enough as well so he didn’t have much to complain about. it was better than spending the whole month complaining and disagreeing with everything. so, when evaluation day finally rolled around at the end of the month, the teenager was feeling particularly chill about everything and not in the least bit worried. 

and the performance itself was actually surprisingly easy and he more or less breezed through it. while rapping was still not something he was 100% confident on, the amount of practice he’d been made to do on it was rather helping. and he supposed he had brought it on himself this time as there was nothing telling him that he had to take a rap part. he could have gone and done a singing part if he had wanted to, but in the end, he’d picked rapping. he didn’t really know why, but he supposed it was just extra practice and keeping the coaches trying tp push him into being a main rapper happy. 

when all was said and done, the boy was feeling quite happy with how he had done. he hadn’t done anything horribly wrong and he had thought their group had performed well as a unit. nothing to worry about in the slightest. it was a nice change of pace compared to how he had been feeling about everything a month ago. and sure, things were not perfect and he still had many issues at home, especially now his mother’s baby bump was starting to get more visible, but training was actually helping take his mind off things.