One hundred and nine - Practice until she wore holes in the ground

Stacey sat up in bed, heart racing and gasping for breath. It had been an old nightmare. A familiar one, or so she felt. During the nightmare, she had remembered who she was and where she was and why she was here but as the nightmare faded from her memory, so did those things that she had remembered. All she knew was that she had been chased in her dream. Why and what for though, she wasn't able to recall.

In the dark, dim light glimmered through the drawn curtains of the window from the street lamps below. There were distant night sounds of stray animals fighting over scraps in the distance, the screech of tyres on the road, a wailing siren. Somewhere in the night, a baby cried, a couple argued and a drunkard sang an old Tadpole war song.

Everything felt so familiar and yet unfamiliar at the same time. Stacey didn't know what was wrong. In any case, she couldn't sleep. So she got up and dressed in casual clothes to creep out of the room with her things.

These few days, word had gotten around that Stacey was bad luck and was being targeted. Anyone who got close to her wouldn't do well in the upcoming challenges on the weekend, would be investigated or scrutinised by government officials. This had led to many trainees taking a step away from her out of fear.

Stacey had warned them as well, passing on Thieren's message. It had resulted in most people distancing themselves from her, except for the groups that had already agreed to let her join them. Even then, in some groups, team members had left so that those who were left were at a disadvantage.

There was nothing Stacey could really do. She could only suck it up, pull up her socks and get on with things. She studied and practised. Practised and studied. She didn't have time to catch up on the classes she had already missed unless she cut out more of her free and sleeping time. Anyway, she was having trouble staying asleep these days. Her sleep was full of nightmares that she couldn't remember upon waking.

Her days were full of going between the five performance groups she was working with to go over things after classes were over. In some groups, their only hope was to be creative and individual enough that they would get a few more votes, because Stacey knew that in almost all the groups, she would be the weakest link.

For the individual artist stream, although those performances were meant to show the uniqueness of one individual, they had been told to work in teams of two. Stacey wasn't too worried about that performance. It was the stunt work performance she was concerned about. There were so many elements involved in the fast paced comedy fight scene. Stacey had trouble keeping up.

Then for the acting group. Stacey felt she was always being berated as lacking a soul. She just didn't understand what they wanted from her in that scene. It didn't help that she didn't quite understand the background or Tadpole vocab involved. In fact, she was wondering whether that team was keeping her ignorant on purpose. People changed the topic or distracted her whenever she tried to get someone to explain to her what the scene they were acting out involved. As if to make her stand out and make it seem like she didn't know what she was doing.

In the dancing group, Stacey couldn't keep up with the standard expected or the speed. Although she'd improved a lot, it was no where near good enough. It was as if the others were trying to make her look bad on purpose so that she would be singled out. If that was their strategy, she hoped it worked the way they were hoping. She didn't want to pull them down with her.

For the group singing and dancing performance, Stacey was relieved to be with her own roommates. All her performances, except for the individual duo performance, were very physical. In addition she still fatigued easily, Stacey felt her involvement in her roommates' team was unfair on them. In order to be less of a burden, she could only try and sneak in more practice. Extra practice.

She would practise until she wore holes in the floor. Practise until…

"You need to stop pushing yourself to the point of collapse," Dr Jin scolded her. "This is the third morning someone has found you unconscious in the practice room. You're going to ruin your health permanently if you keep this up. If we count up the number of times you've passed out since you came back from hospital, the number exceeds the number of fingers I have on my hands. At this rate, for your own safety, I'm going to recommend that Lord Huo pull you out of this program altogether."

Stacey stared at her bare toes and wriggled them in embarrassment. She could feel the stare of the camera on her. AJ and her guards were the ones who had been keeping her the most company these days. AJ had come to an agreement with her bodyguards or something. Somehow, he always knew when she had gotten out of bed and was already waiting for her outside her bedroom door with his camera by the time she stepped out of the room.

"I know you're under a lot of pressure," Dr Jin sighed, "but you still shouldn't be doing this to yourself. Your latest brain scan has shown that there's been some intermittent new bleeding. Your neurologist is concerned. He said if there's any more on your next scan, you will need to stop participating in this program."

Stacey looked up at the doctor for a moment and then back down at her toes.

"Alright," she said in a low voice. "I'll try be more careful. Do you mind, Dr Jin? My teammates are waiting for me to go practice."

"Go, go," the doctor waved her away with a sigh of surrender. He couldn't exactly stop her while she was a part of the program, anyway.

"Thanks," Stacey gave the worried doctor a quick smile and then slipped away.

It didn't matter what anyone said. While she was a part of the program, she was going to have to do her best. She couldn't do anything besides her best otherwise it'd be unfair for her other teammates. Even if she dropped out of the program, it wasn't the end of the world.It wasn't like she was desperate to be a part of the program like so many other people mistakenly thought. At least she still had her husband to help take care of her daily needs.

The ranking challenge was tomorrow. After this weekend, she would deal with whatever came next. What else could she do but take one step at a time?