Chapter Text
I love corn. And I mean, really love corn. The other members of my K-pop group, Tomorrow X Together, often tease me for eating corn almost every day, and my parents would marvel at how often their toddler asked for corn on the cob for dinner. According to the fans of TXT, one of my defining traits is my obsession with corn.
Up until today, I never thought corn could betray me. I was wrong.
“I need food,” I complained, dramatically grabbing my stomach.
“No, you need to run through the song one more time, Mae,” my fellow group member Yeonjun corrected. His pink hair clung to the sides of his face and neck and his cheeks were rosy with exertion.
“Ughhhh,” Huening Kai, the youngest member, grumbled from the floor. He was laying down, limbs splayed in various directions and eyes closed against the bright fluorescents.
“We’re almost done, Kai,” Taehyun, another group member, encouraged from the back of the practice room. The large space meant that all six of us could spread out while we caught our breath from dancing.
Our group leader, Soobin, said nothing, silently standing up and shaking out his legs. His pastel blue hair made him look childish, but I knew under that hair dye he was one of the most responsible and mature people I had ever met.
Pushing my hair off of my face in vain, I groaned and stood up. My legs protested in anger, muscles aching, while sweat poured off my body in rivulets. Sighing, I stretched out my arms and walked to my starting position on the end next to the final group member Beomgyu.
“I’m so getting dumplings after this,” Beomgyu said. He bounced on the balls of his feet and rolled his neck, ready for the song to start up again.
“Take me with you,” I said. My stomach growled loudly in agreement. “And I’m getting a corn salad on the side.”
Beomgyu chuckled and shook his head at my corn obsession just as our choreographer Daeho counted down from three for the beginning of the song. I faced forward and readied myself to practice dancing to our new song “Blue Hour.” The first notes played, a magical twinkling sound filling the air, and my group members and I launched into our seventh practice for this session.
Breathing hard, I forced my limbs into the dance. My body knew what to do, following muscle memory from a few weeks of practice, but everything in me resisted the movement. Sweat stung my eyes and I blinked it away, nearly stumbling over Soobin as I moved around him. He gave me a confused look, but I didn’t have time to explain as I spun around and jumped to the front for my line.
“Ahh!” someone exclaimed from the other side of the room. I turned to look. My body hesitated as I took in the scene: one of our company’s new boy group members on the ground, rubbing his elbow. What was his name again? What was the group’s name? En…hyphen? Why was this guy in here? And on the ground?
An elbow jabbed into my side just before someone—Taehyun, from the flash of bleached hair I glimpsed—ran into my side. I stumbled forward out of the complicated move I had been in the middle of attempting. My left foot bent to the side as I went down, falling flat on my face.