Day 1 Practice(1)

I slowly opened my eyes, as my vision gained focus, I noticed that it was still dark. I groaned as I tried to move my body to sit up but the feeling of soreness hit my arms and legs. I tried to sit up again to get out of bed but I gave up as it hurt too much.

Having nothing else to do, I decided to check my status window out of habit which caused me to raise my eyebrows.

[Name: Kwon Sunwoo (Kang Juwon)]

Age: 19

Potential: ???

Vocal: A

Dance: B-

Rap: D-

Visual: A

Skill Points: 0

Attribute: Limitless, Become An Idol Or Die!

Skills: All Eyes On Me! 

Somehow, my dance skill had risen by one rank in the span of a day, I leaned over to check Eunho's status window to see that his dance skill had also risen. I wondered if it was thanks to Dohyun and Daeho's tutoring as I mentally thanked them in my head.

I then clicked on the [Missions] tab and was surprised once again as new missions had popped up.

[MISSIONS]

Gain two new friends(Complete!)

Reward: 1 Skill Point[press to claim reward]

Receive the mentors' approval and rank up during the signal song evaluation(In Progress)

Reward: 1 Skill Point, 1 Roulette Spin

Gain 10,000 fans(In Progress)

Reward: 1 Skill Point

Upgrade all skills to A Grade(In progress)

Reward: 1 skill point, 1 Roulette Spin

For some reason, the friend mission felt somewhat insulting, even though it was true that I was a loner due to only studying in school. It also seemed like Junwoo was Sunwoo's only friend from his memories. I shook it off as a reward was a reward and claimed it. 

I thought about it for a moment before adding it to my dance grade. It'd probably take a long time to get all of my skills levelled up so I decided to put the upgrade mission on the back burner.

Shortly after, I looked at the clock which showed that it just turned 7 A.M. Luckily, I didn't wake up that early as a second later, the signal song started to blast through the halls once again. I mustered up my strength to sit up, wincing as it felt like every single strand of muscle was screaming for help.

I didn't think we practiced that hard yesterday but I guess it was just the after effects of dancing the whole day. I limped my way over to the bathroom, deciding that I'd take a warm shower to loosen up my muscles. Dohyun and Aidan were definitely heavy sleepers as after about 10 minutes, I had already left the shower and only saw Eunho awake, waiting for me to leave. 

"Oh, why are those two not up yet?" I casually asked Eunho while pointing at them.

Eunho gave a big yawn before saying, "They were playing another board game when I went to sleep." 

I nodded as Eunho slowly made his way to the bathroom. After my shower, I felt much more refreshed, my muscles were still sore as hell but at least I could somewhat move around properly now. Also, I had thought Dohyun and Aidan were just heavy sleepers but they must've just stayed up last night and the night before...

After I finished dressing up, I decided to wake them up myself before they end up being late. Dohyun looked fine as usual, walking to the bathroom to get ready as soon as I woke him up to tell him he was gonna be late. Aidan, however, definitely had a tougher time waking up, he looked like he could barely bring himself to open his eyes.

After awhile, I noticed that Aidan was sitting on his bed, seemingly unable to move, so I asked him, "Aidan are you okay?"

He looked at me for a moment before saying, "Hyung... I'm scared that my legs are gonna fall off if I move them." 

I laughed and told him, "Don't worry I felt the same, but I feel fine now after a shower"

He dejectedly looked down as I heard Dohyun leaving the bathroom, now dressed up in the training uniform. I helped Aidan make his way to the bathroom as he complained for every of the 6 steps that he had to take. 

After that situation was over, I told Eunho about the new missions as he checked his status window and confirmed that he had gotten the same missions. I wondered why the system always gave us the same missions but I didn't thinking about it too hard as it was nice to grow at the same pace.

Dohyun asked, "What's up with him?" as I made my way back, turning his head to the bathroom. 

"His body's just sore, mine is too actually." I explained.

I looked toward the ball of hair that was on the bed and said, "I think Junwoo's body is sore too"

Dohyun seemed to not understand what the deal was as he shrugged and left the room to move toward the gymnasium, which the staff had also announced to us to go to on the speakers.

I decided to wait for Aidan to get dressed while massaging Eunho's shoulders. He complained for a bit that I was pressing to hard but he eventually just sat still. As I saw Aidan leaving the bathroom, now dressed, I stopped my free service and hardly patted Eunho on the shoulder, causing him to groan in pain. 

I quickly left the room before I could hear his complaints and walked to the gymnasium. It looked like they were just gathering us to make an announcement as there was a staff member on the stage. I stood next to Dohyun who I quickly spotted, as I asked whether I had missed anything to which he shook his head to.

Shortly after, Aidan and Eunho appeared beside me. I was looking at Eunho who was glaring at me while rubbing his shoulder but the sound of the staff member entered the microphone got my attention. 

"Ah-ah test. Okay, good morning trainees, I'm here to assign the groups to the practice rooms you'll be using." She then started listing out the star ranks and what floor and room they'd use. Luckily, the 2-stars practice room was just on the floor above us so we wouldn't have to wait for the elevator. 

The staff member then continued, "Additionally, the mentor training will be tomorrow around dinner time, so you'll have a day and a half of individual group practice. Apart from that, that's all I have to announce today, you guys may leave now." The staff member then bowed and left the stage.

Eunho and I then bid goodbye to Dohyun and Aidan as we left the room, making our way to the stairs. On the way to our practice room, we met up with Haru and Riku who had caught up to us. We reached the room and sat down in the center, waiting for the rest of the 2-stars to reach. 

Eunho started to make small talk, "So, hyungs, do your body's hurt too? I felt like a snail when I woke up!" 

Haru and Riku quickly nodded, before Haru spoke, "I didn't think that I'd be in this much pain but we did practice hard yesterday."

As we continued conversing, the first person after us quickly entered, I had remembered their name being Minho and I greeted him, asking him to join our incomplete circle we were starting to make. He awkwardly said hello as he sat down beside us, the room turned silent as it was the first time we were meeting. 

However, Eunho quickly turned the mood over as he introduced himself to Minho, prompting all of us to exchange greetings. I remembered that there were 25 total people who were 2-star rank, so there were a whole 20 more people to wait for. 

Thankfully, the room quickly filled up as people entered one after another, causing a somewhat comedic event of continuously introducing ourselves and being interrupted by someone new entering. 

In the end, when we had all gathered, we each introduced ourselves. 

"Hello, I'm Sunwoo, and I'm 19 years old, I'm looking forward to working with you all." I said, being the last person to introduce myself despite being one of the first people to enter. 

After our greetings, I felt like our practice was going to be pleasant, everyone seemed nice and I could feel that they weren't too dejected about their star grade. 

After a moment of silence, I decided to step up and speak, "So, would you guys like to pick the leader for our group."

I could feel heads turning around the room but they all ended up on me, to which I said, "Ah- well if no one else wants to become the leader I don't mind doing it!" 

With no objections, I stood up and started speaking, "First of all, I think it'd be good to have a dance and vocal leader as well, considering that there's a whole 25 of us. If you disagree please raise your hands." 

As I took a minute or two to let the group discuss, I started the vote which ended unanimously in favor of my idea. 

After the vote, I spoke again, "Before we pick the dance and vocal leaders, I'd like to ask if you guys think it's a good idea to split into two groups when we practice. We can have one group practice vocals and one group for each of the two leaders."

"Wouldn't that take too long? We're already going to perform in front of the mentors tomorrow" Minho said.

"I guess you could say that, however if we exclude meal time and sleeping time, we still have about 15 hours of practice time if we take minimal breaks." I replied. I then continued on, "I also think it'd be better if we can focus on one thing at a time considering the intensity of the dance and vocals for the signal song, we might not be able to keep up if all of us do everything at the same time. I think we'll be able to help each other better if we split up." 

I was hoping that this would convince the group as our group probably wasn't skilled enough to not be having errors to fix at every moment.

A few minutes later, a vote was called, and surprisingly, the vote for my plan was unanimous. I thanked everyone for trusting my decision and we moved on to voting for the vocal and dance leaders. 

After a few minutes of voting, two trainees, were picked out. Min Sunghoon, who was complimented by Aki, was the Dance leader, as well as Jung Jiho who had been the best during the group practice yesterday was the vocal leader.

We then split up into two groups, deciding to split in order of whatever the person felt stronger in. With that, Eunho, Haru was in the Dance group and Riku and I were in the vocal group. 

As there were 12 of us in the vocal group, we decided to do a run of the song in groups of three, taking a little under less than a minute for each person to sing. While we sung, Jiho would write notes for us which we would then work on as he moved onto the next person. 

I naturally teamed up with Riku and Minho as we had been the first few people to enter. As we were waiting for our turn, we decided to take turns singing the parts we had trouble with. Riku went first, singing the fast-paced lyrics that he had difficulty pronouncing. 

"You're my star, I'm you're star the shining reflection each of us sees." 

Although he stumbled on the pronunciation, his vocal skill was definitely visible, his experience as a Japanese idol shone through. Minho and I helped him to improve his pronunciation by comparing it to Japanese words and the syllable separations. 

"Wow~ but Sunwoo, your Japanese is pretty good?" Riku told me after we had finished going through his problem areas. 

"I learnt Japanese when I was younger when I watched anime." I sheepishly said, remembering the days as a kindergartener when I would run around spewing words I learnt on TV.

Shortly after, Jiho called us over before we had the chance to move onto the next person. We then starting singing our parts, which Jiho had split earlier. After we ended, Jiho gave us his notes and nodded.

We then went back to our corner to continue practicing. As I read the sheet, I was surprised, he had noticed little habits I had built up without even knowing. He even pointed out parts that I furrowed my eyebrows or lost my volume.

"Should we work on our notes separately for about... 30 minutes?" I asked my two teammates, who nodded in response.