Chapter Text
It was the burn of his skin sliding against the dance room’s floor that woke him up from the trance he had been in for the past hour. Mingi hissed through his teeth as he pulled his sock over his ankle once again, it had slid down again during one of the run throughs. It wasn’t bleeding, luckily. He was far too distracted and disengaged to actually tend to it if it had been bleeding. When he pulled his sock back over it, his loose and burnt skin moved against the fabric sending pain throughout his nervous system.
Mingi had stood up quickly, waiting anxiously for the music to be turned back on as he noticed Seonghwa shooting a quick glance at the nasty sound of skin sliding over the floor. He stood sternly, waiting for Seonghwa to break his stare. They had been repeating this part for at least fifteen minutes, everyone was having a hard time with this particular set of steps in the middle of the choreography, Mingi was no exception. Not to mention he had actually been struggling with most of the dance, none of it being logical, every step contradicting and confusing. He was annoyed with it, although he didn’t and couldn’t blame anyone but himself as he refused to let anyone help him.
Most of his friends were still sprawled on the ground, trying to find the energy to get up and do the whole thing over again. Mingi realized that he might have looked too obnoxious, standing up that quickly. Guilt ate at him for a split second, before the music was turned on by Hongjoong once more, trying to motivate his members to get up and do something by playing the track, to stand up and be in time for the combination they’d been working on.
Before Mingi had realized, everyone had stood up once more and was waiting for their queue to start the difficult sequence in the song. Everyone was in position but him, and he got there as quick as he could, trying to catch up to the count that he was already six counts late on. His entire (still faulty) dance sequence had, even though he tried, been multiple counts late in contrast to his group, who had started to nail the whole thing.
Not that it was all too bad, he was in the left corner of the whole formation, having switched parts with Jongho, which he suggested, as he wasn’t able to nail the whole sequence before this either. Jongho had agreed with no energy to argue left in him. Mingi simply hoped that no one noticed his fuckup of multiple counts if he stood in the back, and that they would carry on without him.
The training carried on for at least another hour, with Hongjoong forcing multiple water breaks upon them, and Mingi only engaging in the maximum of two, by his own standard. The relief he had felt when he nailed one of the parts was greater than two water breaks combined, his chest finally feeling less constricted than it had before. He was almost certain that if he opened his mouth to speak, his voice would not break. Though he was not out to test that fragile theory.
Seonghwa had clapped for him as he finished the whole dance himself while the rest was on their fifth or so water break, which in Mingi’s opinion was a third one too many. The clapping didn’t feel too great either, if he was honest. It felt like Seonghwa was doing it out of pity rather than actually being proud. But he chose to push that feeling down as far as he could.
He had finally allowed himself to stand still, his muscles relaxing more than they had for the first time in at least three hours or something, maybe, he wasn’t really keeping track anymore. Everything felt numb, his whole body was running on very little energy and a lot of stubbornness and adrenaline.
Mingi could see San out of the corner of his eye, while he was loosely rehearsing the dance once more, trying to convince Hongjoong to finish up the dance training in a sarcastic voice. Mingi was unsure how good San’s convincing tactics were, but Hongjoong was standing up. So it must’ve done something.
“Alright, we’re gonna go one more time from the top, trying to do it spotlessly, if it goes wrong we can carry on but anyone who wants to stop can.” Hongjoong spoke, turning his head to the right of the room, where most of the members were sitting sloped against the mirrored wall. Apparently San’s negotiating had worked to some degree?
Everyone dragged themselves upright, Wooyoung and San for some reason trying to drag eachother up with “the loudest possible dab-up”, Mingi was not totally sure if hundred percent of the loudness was coming from their hands colliding, or if it was the music in the room, his mind was very slowly starting to blur things together. He had started to notice it around only an hour in. He blamed it on not having slept enough for the past three weeks, but some heavy dehydration might actually be playing into it too. The heavy headache that was causing him was probably the cause he wasn’t going to outwardly say to anyone.
“Alright everyone, let’s go.” Hongjoong’s tired encouragement didn’t sink into Mingi’s mind at all if he was asked to be honest.
The song played from the beginning once more, his mind fighting to remember what the beginning was in the first place. He naturally caught on as everyone started moving, he wasn’t doing all too much himself, he let his instincts and all the active memory left do the most work. His vision wasn’t totally perfect, it was slightly hazy, feeling like he had to squint to see well, which only worsened his already present headache, so he had opted for blurry vision instead.
Everything flowed over in each other decently, his mind dull, as he did every move ever so slightly offbeat. He felt a buzz on his watch, he knew the rhythm of the buzzing, it was warning him once again that his heart rate was getting “too high” and that he would have to “calm or sit down”. Bullshit, Mingi could not remember one single instance in which he had listened to the annoying nagging buzzing of his watch. It frustratingly enough did break him out of his trance right now. Fucking his moves up once more, one damn count behind, and he was struggling to get back on to the beat.
After what felt like an eternity of being dragged through hell, the song finally ended. San and Yunho both found comfort in the cold floor as soon as the song ended, Seongwha, Yeosang and Wooyoung trying to finish it as comfortably as possible while not plummeting over from adrenaline. Jongho was aiming for his water bottle almost before the song had ended. Walking towards the dressing room to fill it up once more.
Mingi chose to follow him, being so done with the whole training at that point. He rounded the corner in some vague jogging matter, his heart rate still near feral. He lowered his pace in front of the opened door grabbing the door handle to open the door, to allow him to walk in less uncomfortably.
His knees suddenly felt impossibly heavy, his whole body collapsing in on itself in the matter of seconds. He suddenly grabbed onto the side jamb of the door, his arms almost holding the weight of his entire body as his legs totally gave in, he waited for a second, the world still spinning, slowly stabilizing himself, trying to not absolutely crash into the changing rooms. His vision had become even more blurry than before when he looked forward, he actually needed to take time to be able to see properly again.
He took several seconds before trying to let his hands go from the side jamb and the door handle. It worked in some sense, he unsteadily walked over and sat down next to his bag on the bench, scouring in it for his water bottle, which he had not even gotten out of his bag the whole time. He twisted the cap off the bottle and chugged it in the matter of seconds, was it good for his health? Probably not, no.
He noticed agonizingly slow, how his heartbeat was punching against his chest less and less, dizziness fading away too, hearing the other’s approach him too. His head still tilted back against the wall, trying to calmly breathe with his eyes turned up, looking at the ceiling.
Wooyoung and San calmly walk through the door, looking at the disheveled person that was Mingi, sitting uncomfortably on the bench, looking like he’s actually fighting for every breath he was taking. “Are you alright Mingi-yah?” Wooyoung tilted his head slightly while looking at Mingi, still trying to get the sweat off his face with his shirt.
It took him several seconds of empty staring into Wooyoung’s eyes to decipher what he was saying. His mind was still muddled by the lack of adrenaline rushing through his veins. “Ah, I’m good, just tired.” His throat scratched multiple times in the same sentence, it hurt. But there was more pain in the knowledge that he was probably getting sick.
Everyone in the room shot brief glances at him in all kinds of disbelief, which was moderately confusing to him, he was doing alright. He knew he was because it was his own body, and he was doing fine. If he ignored all of the pain alerting his body, he was fine.
-
Mingi’s dancing was alright too.
A simple thought that he had always used to explain his own skill within dance. Just fine. Not the greatest, nor the absolute worst of the people he had ever met.
But in his group just fine was not enough to his standard. It had to be better. And although some of the breakdance aspects of dance were something he was able to nail quite well, and his dance break parts in their songs were always received well, the rest was just hell. He struggled with many of the different dance influences in their choreographies.
When Mingi had started to doubt himself too much he would always fall back on the thought of everyone collectively agreeing that his body control in dance was outstanding. It always felt selfish to keep his own sanity and self worth by bringing up a thought that he was better than people. And the best part was the fact that he couldn’t even convince himself of it.
“Mingi, you should pay attention to your arm while doing that third sequence, it seems like you’re neglecting it quite a bit.” Wooyoung pointed calmly with his free hand as he downed his bottle of water, looking upwards to the ceiling and speaking as he took the bottle away from his mouth.
An exhausted sigh left Mingi, acknowledging the fact that he heard what Wooyoung said. His self esteem sinking through the floor down lower then when he started. Shaking his limbs, getting ready to do the whole thing over again. Paying close attention to every move he made.
“Sorry to make it sound contradictory now, but you’re trying too hard.” He knew that Wooyoung didn’t intend to make it sound insulting, but to Mingi it definitely did. “If you keep overexerting parts of songs, it starts to look very forced. Try to find the fluency that you can see so well in your dance normally.” The small compliment that Wooyoung added to the end of his sentence did not make him feel any better, to him it was more like a remark of how far he’d fallen.
But he was not one to complain, so he rolled his shoulders backwards, trying to loosen up once more, his joints feeling like they were scratching over each other, the feeling was very unsettling. Wooyoung started the music over once again when he nodded towards him in the mirror.
The dance went fairly well in Mingi's opinion. Although his eyes were blurry without having any tears obstructing them, his mind was hazy, breath gone, a stabbing ache in his chest and throat every time he took a breath in, but the satisfied smiles on his friend’s faces as he finished the dance dramatically enough satisfied him to a degree, not enough to make him able to ignore all the pain shooting through his body though.
San motioned for him to sit down beside him on the floor. As Mingi did, San grabbed a bottle of water from beside him and motioned it loosely towards Mingi, but he denied it with a shake of his head and a slight hand movement as he adjusted himself on the cold floor, which did not make him feel any less nauseous than before. Mingi knew that if he was going to drink any more water he would probably end up throwing up. He already felt like dying, water was not going to make that any better.
“Are you sure you don’t want water?” San looked at him, hesitating to put the bottle back beside him.
Mingi contemplated talking, his throat feeling thick as he swallowed nothing but air on his dry mouth. Maybe he needed some water to answer that question in the first place, but he persisted. “Nah I’m good, just a little warm though.” His voice sounded scratchy as he spoke, San picked up on it, but assumed that Mingi was good enough at making his own decisions and put the water away again.
“Do stay hydrated though, it’s important for all the dancing we’ve been doing for hours.” Mingi simply nodded as he stared forward emptily, Yeosang and Yunho bickering together hunched over one of their phones, trying to get to an agreement over some part of the choreography. His eyes couldn’t fully focus on what they were trying to do, but he was convinced that he could hear Yeosang telling Yunho that he was wrong numerous times.
“Should we all run though the song together once more before we quit for the day? The concert is almost here and I reckon it’s better to take as much rest as we can before falling back into all the schedules.” Hongjoong reasoned from across the room, everyone turning their heads to listen to him.
Mingi slowly lifted his head from where he had been resting it against the glass mirror behind him. Dragging himself upwards one more, waiting for the others to take position wherever, so he knew where he should cut in between them.
Multiple beats of silence passed before San’s recognizable vocals passed through the whole studio, filling the room with energy. Everyone moved accordingly to the choreography they’d been beating on for a while. It went by easily, at least he tried to convince himself.
Ignoring the multiple missteps that he made in the dance, once almost ending up on the wrong side of the formation, fully disoriented, his head spinning as he tried to find his place. And the only thing he ended up catching were the concerned and also slightly annoyed looks of Yeonsang and Seonghwa as he stood in their way basically unmoving.
“Are we all alright?” Seonghwa asked as he tried catching his breath with his hands on his knees, exhaustion written over his face.
“Yeah, it went quite well, I'm convinced that the performance is going to go well.” Jongho said as he essentially drowned himself with his water bottle.
They all lingered around the dance studio for a while until they collectively decided to go back to the dorms and rest for the remainder of the day. And Mingi could not be more grateful for that because the headache that had been hammering into his face for the entire time was becoming unbearable, pressure around his eye, nose and forehead was making him miserable and he just wanted to sleep for years.
-
“We should really let Mingi sleep longer, he looks like he has been through it by the looks of those eyebags.” Yeosang said as he and Hongjoong lingered around Mingi sleeping soundly on the couch.
“Yeah he does, and we need him to have enough energy on the concert tonight, we’ll probably be able to let him sleep for like, an hour, maybe?” Hongjoong considered, as he looked between Mingi and Yeosang several times.
“Yeah I think we can.” Yeosang smiled faintly as he pulled out his phone and sat next to sleeping Mingi. “Give him all the rest he can get.”