#sp;here

@rkyerim

it’s always exciting to get new sphere trainees. it’s so fun to figure out the “hazing” for this round ( though, to be fair, the things they do are never actually mean or malicious -- hazing is more of a word that’s lost its original meaning for the trainees of sphere ) and to start seeing new faces around training. eve is usually front and center in figuring out hazings and approaching new trainees, but this time she doesn’t have much of an idea of what they decided on. silently she hopes that whatever they pick, it won’t mean that she and luna will have to adopt a new pet -- as much as she loves samuel already, she’s unsure if they’ll have time for another pet on top of him. 

@rkluna

eve should be used to this by now. she should be used to the long days, the grueling lessons, the hard evals. but this week of constant live singing practice came out of nowhere, and despite eve’s relative comfort with singing live, after four days of this even more rigorous schedule she’s really feeling it. they’ve been keeping them late, and eve feels as though she can never eat enough food to really get full at meals -- she always leaves still hungry, but without any time to eat more. 

their independent study time is spent practicing, too, and she hardly notices when the door opens and luna enters, probably wondering if eve’s ready to head home yet -- it’s always more fun ( and probably safer ) to walk together than alone. eve stumbles a bit on a step of the choreography when she sees luna’s motion in the mirror, and she rights herself and looks around at her best friend, blinking her way through the dizziness and spots that appear in her vision. 

@rkluna

their costumes are ridiculous. eve stands in the dressing room next to luna, looking at their reflection in the mirror. they have tiny little hats on their heads, eve’s pink and luna’s blue, each with small netting hanging in front as decoration. their dresses are simple, the same colors as their hats, and they each have an actual cape, just for added hilarity. the capes are pretty stiff and can’t be moved much, but they hang behind them all the same, adding to the comedic effect of their weird costumes to match their weird song. 

      --  ; and you wish you could just fly away.

@rkrachel

there’s something wrong with rachel. eve latched onto her for this evaluation -- she doesn’t have any acting experience, and she knows there’s plenty to learn from rachel. besides, since their reconciliation she can’t help but want to be around the other, to laugh and joke with her like they used to. 

( luna is still missing, but eve can’t do anything about that. for now she can settle with spending time with them separately, but she still always feels like there’s something else she could do, a hand she could extend. she knows better than to try. )

the choosing of their scene comes easily -- eve had just rewatched toy story not long ago, and the thought of doing a disney scene makes her feel a bit more comfortable with the whole thing, as it’s more in the realm of things she knows. the scene is emotional, too, and will require plenty of work and practice from her to pull off just how passionate woody is while trying to convince buzz of how great it is to be a toy. 

and buzz is supposed to be depressed and downtrodden in the scene, but that doesn’t mean eve wants to see rachel feeling that way. during a lull between run throughs of the scene, their typed lines already marked up with colorful notes and reminders, she watches rachel, then finally brings up the subject she’s been trying to figure out how to breach for days. 

@rkrachel

jinri isn’t sure why she’s been avoiding rachel. she’s still a little hurt over the fact that rachel left sphere with barely a word, then came back and didn’t tell her or luna for weeks. it makes her question how important their friendship really was to rachel, but she knows that’s probably irrational. still, with rachel avoiding her as well, it’s hard to convince herself to initiate things. 

the thing is, though, the longer jinri spends time in training with rachel always in her periphery, the more she wants to put everything aside and go up to her. because in all honesty, she misses rachel. she managed to block it out for a while after the other left, but especially since her return to training, jinri can’t help but want things to just go back to the way they were. 

she wants to talk to rachel, to really catch up and re-establish the mutual care and understanding they had in the past. and the longer she waits, the less reason she can find to continue avoiding the other. 

at the start of independent study, jinri finds herself walking by rachel’s regular practice, and through the small windowpane in the door she can see the girl sitting against the opposite wall, clearly taking a break from practice. jinri had been zoned out as she walked, and she wonders if it’s a sign from god to talk to rachel that she happened to pass this room while she thought about rachel. 

before giving herself time to chicken out, jinri opens the door and steps into the practice room, letting the door click softly closed behind her. she sees rachel look up from her phone, and a small moment of what are you doing, she’s been avoiding you too, clearly she doesn’t want to see you makes words choke in her throat for half a moment, but somehow she manages to speak around them. 

@seungcheolrk

the eval hasn’t started yet, and they’re all just standing around -- the trainers had only just finished talking, so everyone was trying to figure out what group they were in, where they needed to go, where their friends ended up. it’s times like these that make jinri thankful for having the last name that she does -- it makes things like this much easier. 

she finds herself moving out of the way as people exit the room, and she ends up next to seungcheol. “hey,” she says, but is interrupted when a trainer calls for group a to follow her to the yoga studio. she sticks close to seungcheol as they make their way after her, and once they leave the crowded gym behind, jinri turns back to him. she isn’t really sure how to start what she wants to say, so she just jumps right in. 

@rkluna

this isn’t the first time they’ve done something like this. 2am hangouts have always been a staple of their relationship, though each one ends up going a little differently. rather than sitting up giggling at movies or old cartoons, luna and jinri have ended up in jinri’s room, the soft light of her lamp illuminating them as they sit in comfortable companionship after so many years together. 

right now the only sound comes from jinri’s phone, playing a gentle lo-fi beat from a live station she found on youtube. the device itself is lying next to her, while she holds one of her throw pillows in her lap and picks at a loose thread on it. luna is sprawled out somewhere closer to the end of her bed, but the silence reigns between them for now, the quiet music managing to fill the spaces in the room. 

jinri breaks it suddenly, but not shockingly. that’s just how these nights go -- they’re both lost in their own thoughts, and then they may share it with each other, knowing that any topic is open for discussion. 

@rkluna

jinri finds her best friend in an otherwise empty practice room in the seocho building, seeming to be taking a break from whatever she was working on as she sits against a wall across from the door. jinri’s feet have simply carried her here immediately after turning her name in for royal’s survival show -- she still hasn’t fully processed what that means, but one thing has finally made itself utterly clear in her mind: if she wins the show, she’ll leave sphere and debut under royal, a company she knows next to nothing about. 

she’s dimly glad it didn’t take her long to find luna, but she can’t think about too many details as she enters the practice room and automatically crosses the space before leaning against the wall next to her friend, allowing her body to slide down until she’s plopped on the floor next to luna. 

the silence holds between them for a moment, jinri staring unseeingly across at the door as it finishes swinging closed behind her. or is it in front of her, now that she’s facing it? she can’t decide which it is, or even which she’d rather it be.

“i signed up for royal’s survival show,” she says, honestly surprised at how honestly empty and tired her voice sounds. she doesn’t know how long she’s felt this tired, this frustrated, this confused -- she just knows that for whatever reason, she’s stopped suppressing it now, and she kind of just wants to go back to hiding behind her usual smiles and teasing jokes.