under the same sky | chaekura

Chaeyeon: mad

I spent most of my day trying to figure out whether Sakura's mad at me, annoyed, confused, upset, or genuinely just really quiet. She hasn't talked to Eunbi throughout the entire day either. Sakura has this really good poker face and, whenever she frowns slightly, you can never tell whether she's angry or just really confused at the math problem she's trying to solve. I almost laughed when I tried to explain binomials to her again. For the third time. The last 2 days. 'I don't get math, why do we need to know this?' 'I don't know, but we need to know this if we're going to pass the test next week.' 'Well, it's stupid.' Yes, our math teacher gave us a test on binomials on the 2nd week of the year. That's the only conversation we've had today. I take a seat beside her in our homeroom. Before either of us could break the unbearable silence, Ms. Kim walks in with Jeongmin. She sits down at the teacher's table while he sits on it.

"Alright, let's get this ball rolling. Ms. Kim?"
"We'll need to fill in the particulars before we sign up for the show. I need photocopies of your IDs or passports on my desk by tomorrow's class. I'll also need to fill in some group particulars. So you need to come up with a group name and roughly the type of performances you're going to do. For example: genre of music, style of dance, band, rap et cetera."
"The group name's easy. Let's just use IZ*ONE." Eunbi suggests. She's somehow in a good mood today. Which adds to the continuously running theme of 'What's up with Sakura today and why?'.
"I zone? What's that?"
"I-Z-asterisk-O-N-E. IZ*ONE."
"Yeah, we got that, but what does it mean?"
"It means 12 girls coming together to form 1 team," Wonyoung says.
"Except the 12 becomes IZ because Minjoo's handwriting sucks," Yujin says, smiling like her usual puppy self.
"Hey! It's not my handwriting. It's Yuri's reading." Minjoo hits Yujin on the arm. Looks like there's no more trouble in paradise. That's really good.
"YA!" Yuri pouts. "Anyways, it's a good name, Ms. Kim."
"Yeah, it's good."
"Alright, so genre..."
"Pop, dance, singing..." Yuri continues. "...Rap?"
"LIGHT has a rapper: Go-Ara. And she's good." Yena joins the discussion.
"But nobody here has tried rapping."
"Some of us can practice. I mean, we have a term to the competition. I'm sure we can get something in," I suggest.
"Yeah, let's try that." Jeongmin takes the application form from Ms. Kim and writes down in the description box. "Concept?"
"People like dark concepts nowadays. Look at LIGHT." Yena suggests.
"But we're not trying to BE LIGHT." Ms. Kim stands up. "We're trying to BEAT LIGHT." She's right.
"How about a cute concept? I mean there are a few of us here who'll fit that concept well." Nako says. She has this really cute voice that makes you go 'awwww' whenever she speaks. It's always like we have this little talking puppy around us. But she's right, in that sense, because most of the class here would fit that concept more.
"But the rest of us wouldn't fit a cute concept. The rest of us would fit a girlcrush concept more." Eunbi is also right because there's her, and I, who are bad at aegyo.
"Can we mix both?" Sakura says.
"That's...possible." Ms. Kim looks at Jeongmin for a while. "We can make that work. It'll be good if we played to our strengths."
"Alright, so I'll just put a mix." Jeongmin says, writing down on the piece of paper. "Also, please note that we're going to have these sessions every Wednesday so we need to spread out Wednesday lessons on the other days."
"Which means we need all of you to be even more focused if we want to get somewhere." Ms. Kim says, staring down all of us.
"Wait, Ms. Kim, how are we going to write the songs we'll use?" Chaewon asks.
"I've thought about that too since we're not aiming to be a cover group. So I've asked around the department and some students, and they said they could lend us a hand at making music. Just that, we need to write the lyrics and figure out the rough beat. They can't start from scratch since they have their own competitions outside the school so we need to give them a big picture first and they'll help us do the rest."
"That's good, I can work on composing." Yuri says. Chaewon, Eunbi, Hyewon and I also volunteer to work on composing the music, then we all start to brainstorm of what we want our first song to be about.
"A love song is a good way to start."
"But it has to have a good beat. Not like a ballad or something."
"Yeah, we need foundation to make a dance on."
"We can add some electric and hip-hop on top of a guitar riff."
"We can do that thing where we alter our voices. I've always wanted to try that."
"Yeah, okay, I'll write all this down."

"Saku-chan," I jog after her, finally deciding to man-up. Why do they call it 'man-up'. Girls are easily as confident, if not, more than guys. So I jog after her, finally deciding to woman-up. "Walk with me to the field?" I smile and she surprisingly smiles back.
"Sure." I don't know why she's smiling. I thought she was angry at me. She is so hard to read sometimes. We walk to the field and sit down at our previous spot.
"Are you not angry at me?"
"What?" Wait what? Me? Angry at Sakura?
"Oh."
"Wait...I thought you were angry at me."
"No. What made you think that?"
"You've been quiet towards me the entire day."
"No, you've been quiet towards me the entire day."
"Oh."
"Oh."
We both start laughing and I hit her. "Okay, truce?"
"Truce? We were never fighting." I laugh again. "But, yeah, truce."
"Alright, let's go back," I say, getting up. But before I could pull her up, she pulls me back down.
"You haven't talked to me the entire day, sit back down Lee Chaeyeon." I smile a little before sitting down. "You know, you were hugging me to sleep last night?" WHAT?
"Hmmm?" I try keeping my cool even though I'm in heavy panic inside. One, I don't remember. Two, it sounds like something I would've done. Three, if she's raising this up, does she have a problem with it?
"Yeah, uhm, Eunbi woke me up and you were hugging me, asleep."
"You fell asleep?"
"So you don't remember?"
"No, I don't." I laugh because now she's avoiding my eye contact.
"Oh, well, next time I'll give you a pillow." Oh. Well.
"You and Eunbi have gotten really close." I nudge her in the elbow, still trying my best to smile. I really need to know if Sakura has feelings for Eunbi. It's the one thing that can give me some comfort for now.
"Ehhhh~" Sakura nudges me too. "Are you jealous?"
"Yeah, of you. Eunbi's such a fun person to be around." She hits my back and I laugh again.
"You are really something." Sakura stands up and pulls me up with her. "Let's head back before you hit strike 3."
"I feel like Jeongmin has some secret agenda. He's too nice to all of us."
"Maybe he is just really nice. Was your previous dance instructor nice too?"
"Mr. Kim? He was alright. He was a very technical teacher. Just like Ms. Kim, but he's not as driven as Jeongmin."
"You really think we can win this competition?"
"I think...We just have to work on our strengths, like Ms. Kim said. We do have some pretty talented people."
"Like you." All the blood rushes to my cheeks and I can't help but smile so I shake my head and she pushes me lightly.
"You need to stop that."
"Stop what?"
"Complimenting me. It makes me blush."
"All the more to continue complimenting you." I punch her arm and we enter room 422.

"You like Sakura, don't you?" Eunbi leans on the closed door. I'm back outside the hallway. She doesn't say it like she's accusing me. In fact, she looks worried, if that makes sense. "Look, I'm not trying to out you. I'm actually here to cheer you on." She still says this with a straight face so I'm not sure if I'm reading this wrong. I don't even know if she knows what she's saying.
"Hmmm?" What? Wait. What? She reads the confusion on my face and continues.
"I liked Sakura too. Liked. But then, with everything that's been happening to you, and the fact that Sakura really likes you as a friend already, I decided that-" she stops for a while, catching her breath. "-I decided that our friendship, and my friendship with Sakura: I want to keep that. I'm sorry if I've made you upset-"
"Eunbi, unnie, no, it's okay. I understand. You don't have to apologize." I panic because she looks like she's about to cry. "We all love you. I love you. You're trying really hard, you've always been. To keep the group together. It's okay."
"I just want to let you know that I'm rooting for the 2 of you. It's only been 2 days but it's a beautiful friendship you guys already have." She hugs me and reaches for the door knob but I interject.
"Unnie? How did you know?"
"You'd be surprised." She smirks in her usual Eunbi way. "When are you planning on telling her?"
"I think it's too early for that now. But I'm planning on-" The door opens and Wonyoung's head peaks out.
"Are you guys just going to stay there? It's almost curfew." I hope she didn't hear anything.

I'm planning on telling her before our final performance. I don't even know if we're going to make it to the finals, so I'm just placing my bets on our hardwork. I want to get to the finals. It's not just for me. It's for IZ*ONE. For her.