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21. Joon and Milla

TWENTY-ONE

In another partof the dorm, Kim Joon can't sleep. He checks his phone and doesn't see any new messages. It's the middle of the night, and the rest of his members are all sleeping.

He knuckles at his eyes and sits up in bed with a yawn. He can tell, even without trying, that he's not going to be able to fall asleep again. The light from his phone switches off, and he reaches out a hand to tap it again, lending the room a gentle illumination that's enough to see by.

Joon had slept in a clean pair of practice clothes. He slips on his shoes by the door and pockets his phone, finding a clean black hoodie and dragging it over his head. The lights in the hallway are bright and exposed after the cool, dark solitude in his room.

Joon yawns again and makes his way to one of the practice spaces provided by the Gleam production team.

Joon swings the door open and finds that the room is already occupied. The music blares, and the polite thing to do would probably be to close the door again and find somewhere else to rehearse. The boy's dance catches Joon's eye, though.

He slips inside the room and lets the door close behind him. He leans against the wall and watches.

His dance is very good, and Joon finds himself quietly enjoying it. He stays silent and off to the side so he doesn't disturb the person performing. He's someone Joon knows by name and by face, if he's not anyone that Joon's ever talked to personally. He recognizes him from the first and second stages. He's someone from Revolution, the dancer who had stood out that first day on the stage, the one called Milla. Joon had heard members of his team calling him ‘dance rocket,' and he could easily see why.

The practice rooms in the Gleam facility are all very well constructed and soundproof. Although Joon couldn't hear the music at all from outside, in here, it's very loud. It echoes and reverberates off the walls, increasing itself and drowning everything out. Still, Joon can just make out the sound of heavy footfalls under it.

The dancer is very good. All his hits are sharp and explosive. He flows from one move into another, blending krump and popping. His control is incredible, and even in the middle of the night, his full-out motions are full of energy.

But as Joon keeps watching, something starts to seem off. He grows more and more apprehensive, and he frowns as his pure enjoyment of the dance becomes tainted with something else.

The way Revolution's dancer's knees move, bending inward unprotected, yanked with sudden torque?—

"You can't dance like that," Joon interrupts after he's been watching for a while.

His members all know him to be quiet, and he is. He has no problem pitching his voice to be heard, though, so he knows he is. Heard, that is.

In the center of the room, Milla ignores him, and Joon only waits and doesn't call again.

Milla flies through the air, going through a succession of dazzling leaps and bounds. His hair flies in his face, and he yanks the hat on his head, tossing it to the corner of the room without missing a beat. He sees his choreo through to the end. Their eyes meet first in the practice room mirror before Milla turns around.

"Do you know why I let you watch?" Milla asks, breathing hard. He uses a towel to mop up the sweat that's pouring down his temples. His hairline is soaked, the black hair sticking together in clumpy patches. He tosses the sweat towel to the corner of the room, where it joins his forgotten hat.

Joon watches him without answering, unaffected by his posturing or the vehemence lurking inside it.

"It's because we'll win," Milla continues, unprompted. "You can't beat me, even if you know our routine."

Joon frowns, and Milla leans back, satisfied.

"Give me a second," Joon says.

He needs a moment to collect himself.

He taps the fingers of his left hand against the air, humming the refrain of the song lightly under his breath. He can visualize it, the routine that Milla did. He closes his eyes as his brow furrows together, and Milla is just about to speak when Joon starts moving.

He moves without music, and Milla only gets to wonder what he's doing for a split second before he realizes, and then his eyes widen. Of course he'd recognize his own routine. It's his own routine, but not. Joon is a different kind of performer, and he brings his own casual, almost sickening grace to it. He's a cheerful mimic, though, copying Milla's explosive power and sharp, almost jerky movements.

He makes changes here and there, though, feather-light. He twists the movements that seemed most likely to cause harm into their kinder counterparts. Somehow, he doesn't sacrifice any of the impact. Each hit still seems sharp and shocking, and his face—not as handsome as some of the others in their line of work or even in his group; Joon knows this, and accepts it with as much grace as he can. Even his face seems transformed with a kind of honed sharpness that makes people call him handsome, especially when he dances.

He finishes the piece to the sound of silence, only his last footfall echoing in the quiet, enclosed room and the sound of his own slightly labored breathing. He's only a little rusty after being pulled out of his bed, and now his muscles feel pleasantly warmed as he's managed to work up a light sweat.

He brushes his hair out of his face and turns to Milla.

"How's that?" he asks.

He doesn't know what he was expecting—probably he had no expectations at all. He was just wandering in the throes of some light insomnia, to be expected brought about by the subtle nerves of this place and this competition, thinking to exchange some ideas with a colleague.

Probably, he wasn't expecting the ugly way that Milla's mouth twists.

"What, trying to prove that you're better than me? Good job, but you're not."

"No," Joon says, the corners of his mouth pulling down into a habitual frown. "Not at all?—"

"Save it," Milla sneers.

He's hungry and impatient. Unlike Joon, he hadn't woken up in the middle of the night and decided to come out here. He's been practicing since the afternoon, since their group rehearsal had let out and Johnny had mentioned that Milla ought to work on the middle section after the chorus to keep up with the rest of them—there was one passage that he kept messing up, over and over, no matter what he did.

Milla is tired and harried and at his limit, and in waltzes this prodigy, this person for whom everything is easy.

He can't help it. The cameras aren't on them right now. There's no one here alone in the room with them except the two of them. Milla sneers and lashes out.

"Some of us can't coddle ourselves. Some of us can't be nice to our bodies because we actually want to win, and that's the cost."

"You can still do well," Joon says, brow furrowed. "Just train harder. Don't take shortcuts. You're going to end up hurting yourself."

The word ‘shortcut' makes Milla's eye twitch, setting him off again.

"Thanks, but I didn't ask for your advice. Look, we're in the same industry and on the same game show. I don't want to be rude to you, but get out of my face."

Joon blinks for a second, taking the sudden rebuff in.

"Fine," Joon says deliberately, with a stiff bow. "Please enjoy the rest of your rehearsal. I'm going to find an empty room to practice in."

He nods to Milla and leaves him to it. He's not up for a fight. It's really not his style, to push his beliefs or opinions on others; he said his piece. Moreover, he knows anything more wouldn't be welcomed. After all, his input wasn't welcome in the first place.

Joon is unusual in his temperament. According to many, he's a diamond among coal. He's easygoing and knows how to work hard, but he also knows how and when to take certain things lightly. That kind of temperament is the sort of thing that endless media training classes and etiquette lessons can't teach. They can train young idols how to respond to dangerous questions and how to protect their image in public, but they can't change people's nature or bolster weak mentalities.

Joon doesn't always know how to make himself friends, because it's easy for people to misinterpret him.

As he retreats out of the room, with the heavy door closing soundly behind him, Milla feels wrongfooted, and the feeling only makes him feel angrier and more irritated, fueling his gnawing, heavy dissatisfaction.

"Fuck," he curses to the empty room, the expletive just as explosive as his moves in the dance. He runs a hand vigorously back and forth through his hair, the motion agitated, before he jerkily bends down to retrieve his hat and yank it back down over his head.

He kicks at the air uselessly.

He'll practice harder. He'll be up all night if he has to. Fuck that smug son of a bitch with his easy, dreamlike movements. Milla will show him what it looks like to really want to win.

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