Friday
"It's time for group training again." Chaejung said.
"Yeah..." Arim replied with a sigh, lying down on her desk, soulless.
"What's wrong, Arim?" Jaein asked.
"Nothing, just tired." She said.
"That's weird, Arim is rarely tired at school." Chaejung said.
At this moment Bomin entered the classroom.
"Morning, guys!" He first greeted the class with a gummy smile. At the first day everyone was unfamiliar with him, but 3 days in and he had made many friends.
"Hi Bomin." Most of the classmates responded, then Bomin went to his seat.
"Bomin, I thought you hate school." Jaein said, she remember him screaming how he hates school in recess yesterday.
"I still had to go, so why not be happy with it?" Bomin replied, putting his bag down before sitting next to Arim.
"Arim, are you okay? Do you miss me so much?" Bomin put an arm around Arim's shoulder, side hugging her while jokingly said. Arim blushed in an instant.
"Yah yah yah hands off our friend!" Chaejung exclaimed, dragging Bomin off his chair, and he fell on his butt.
"Since when did you two get this close? Donghyun won't be happy with it." Jaein asked, half joking.
"She's my friend, okay? And Donghyun hyung doesn't mind." Bomin groaned and got up.
"Yeah, he actually has a girlfriend. Arim didn't even know until a few days ago." Jaein almost choked when Chaejung explained.
"Oh, that explains why Arim is "tired"." She nodded.
"Aww, Arim why are you still unhappy? I thought you and Minah get along well." Bomin asked Arim, patting her head. Jaein froze at the question.
"M-Minah?" Jaein carefully asked.
"Yeah, Lim Minah. You know her?" Bomin answered.
"She's my best friend."
"WHAT?!"
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They arrived at a venue different from last time, a practice room.
"Wow! Impressive! So early!" Jangjun clapped sarcastically after they reached the door. Everyone else has arrived, but what's special is, there were a few more people.
"We have school." Chaejung rolled her eyes at Jangjun.
Jaein and Minah saw each other, but they didn't speak. They only mouthed words at each other in shock.
"So... everyone is here, we can introduce our production team!!!" Everyone cheered as Daeyeol announced.
"Me first, I'm Lee Mijin, 21 years old. I'm Daeyeol's girlfriend." A girl spoke up.
"Oooh~" Everyone cheered and Daeyeol's face turned red.
"I'm Song Ryu, 96 liner, Jaeseok's girlfriend. Chaejung and I have met before, right?" Ryu said with a smile, Chaejung nodded happily.
"I'm Lim Minah, 18 years old, Arim and I have seen each other before. I'm Donghyun's girlfriend, also Jaein's best friend." Minah said, and everyone widened their eyes.
"Yah! You should've told me when you came back." Jaein scolded Minah. They hugged each other.
"Sorry for not informing you. I was too busy that I even forgot to text you." Minah smiled.
"That was unexpected." Seungmin said.
"And... yeah, that's basically... umm... all of us." Joochan explaining in a stutter, stealing glances at Sungyoon for some reason.
"So, what's our training today?" Bomin asked.
"We'll do some fitness training first. Is everybody okay with that?" Ryu questioned, everyone nodded because they were either wearing pe uniform or sports clothes.
"We'll be doing a training called beep test. You see how big this practice room is? It's 15 meters long." Minah said.
"We'll play a recording, and in every beep sound it makes, you need to run from one side of the practice room to the other." Mijin explained.
"Sounds fun." Sungyoon said.
"The time between the beep sound will get shorter at every round. We'll then record how many rounds you've ran. Once you couldn't reach the point before the next beep for 3 times, you're out." Ryu said.
"I'll die." Jaehyun mumbled.
"How many should we at least run?" Jaein questioned.
"For girls, 32. For boys... 40?" Minah answered.
"Oh geez." Youngtaek said.
"Yeah, first of all you guys need to pair up." Mijin said.
"You guys not included?" Jibeom asked.
"Of course, production team doesn't need to participate." Minah grinned.
"Aish, lazy." Donghyun laughed and pinched Minah's cheek, Arim felt a bit jealous.
"Guys, be quick and pair up." Ryu said and everyone finally started moving.
"Arim!" Bomin smiled widely at Arim, who finally showed a smile too.
"Chaejung you're not going anywhere." Jangjun grabbed Chaejung's arm and winked at her.
"Dude I didn't even move." Chaejung said.
"Let's be partners again." Sungyoon walked to Jaein and just awkwardly puts his hand on her shoulder, Jaein smiled shyly at his cute action.
"Yah Hong Joodumb where are you- ouch! Get off me!!!!" Jibeom looked around and Joochan jumped on him from the back.
"Let's stay away from these people... Donghyun can we pair up?" Jaehyun immediately took a few steps back, then smiled at Donghyun.
"Sure."
The other two pairs were Daeyeol and Jaeseok, and Youngtaek and Seungmin. They simply exchanged looks and formed a pair.
"Now decide the person who'll run first. The other person will be counting." Minah said.
The people who're running first are Daeyeol, Sungyoon, Jangjun, Youngtaek, Jaehyun, Jibeom, Bomin.
"The test will start in 15 seconds, so please line up at the starting point..." Mijin played the recording, and it officially started.
"Gosh it's stressful!" Youngtaek exclaimed and the others laughed.
"The double beep with be played in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, beep beep."
The others started running slowly from one side to the other, it took quite a long time for the second beep to ring. Then the sounds started to get more and more frequent.
"This is the start of level 8." The recording says.
"Holy crap how many is it?" Jaehyun asked.
"64." The others replied in sync.
"I give up." Jaehyun said, going back to lean on the wall.
Soon, the others starts getting tired as well. Bomin had to leave after he reached 70, Daeyeol barely made it to 75. Youngtaek stopped around the same time as Jibeom at 80. Jangjun unexpectedly made it to 90.
"Sungyoon fighting!!!" The others shouted excitedly. Sungyoon is still running in the same pace.
Jangjun stopped running at 92 and went back.
At last, Sungyoon stopped at 107.
"That's an amazing record." Jaein said, her eyes widened. Sungyoon just chuckled.
"Next round." Ryu said.
"Also keep in mind that the results for girls and boys are really different." Minah said.
"Yeah, you guys might be shocked once you do the test." Mijin said with a smile.
The people started running. And they were shocked to see the girls records way lower than the boys records. Jaein and Arim both had to stop at 50s while Chaejung did her best but only got 80.
"T-that was... tiring." Arim said while breathing heavily, leaning on the wall. Bomin passed her a bottle of water.
"We'll play some games after this. Right?" Sungyoon asked, looking at the production team while passing a bottle of water to Jaein.
"Yeah, I'm pretty sure it won't be tiring." Minah answered.
"Duh, if it's tiring we'd all be dead." Jaeseok complained.
"Quit complaining." Ryu lightly pushed Jaeseok and gave him some water.
"Guys, are you good at lying?" Mijin suddenly asked everyone, holding a stack of cards.
"Y-yes! Of course I am!" Jangjun replied. Everyone facepalmed.
"Why? It's related to the game?" Joochan asked.
"Exactly. This game will be about trust, and lying." Ryu said with an evil smile.
"Ah, scary." Bomin shook his head.
"All of you, form into two groups. We'll start the game... now." Minah said.
Everyone quickly moved, and finally sat in two separate circles.
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"Hey guys! I'll be teaching... alone. Expect me to fail badly. Anyone knows the game too?" Minah said, joining a circle.
"Me, how can you forget that?!" Jaein asked, looking at her in disbelief.
"Hehehe..." Minah laughed.
"So basically, we'll distribute the cards to everyone and they'll have to pair the cards up first. Keep the cards to yourself and don't show others." Minah said, splitting the stack of cards in half, passing half of them to Jaein.
"Dude." Jaein looks at the huge stack of cards in her hands.
"We're demonstrating." Minah fought back.
"Just start already!" Donghyun complained while laughing.
"Okay, after we're done pairing the cards, we'll take turns to put the cards out face down while saying what did we put down. For example, I'm now putting down 4 10s." Minah said, putting down 4 cards face down on the floor.
"But you could choose to say the truth, or lie, while Jaein, could choose to trust me or not. This could go a few ways." Minah explained, then took a deep breath due to the non stop talking just now.
"So... I could either say pass, then she keeps putting down whatever she wants. Or I can put down one or two more cards, but it has to be the same card the the one she puts down. For example, if she said 4 10s, I could put down another card saying 5 10s." Jaein explained, putting down another card in the stack.
"Basically you need to call out the total number of cards in the stack when you put down something until everyone says pass?" Sungyoon questioned, and Jaein nodded.
"But if I know she's lying, I could flip her card over." Minah continued her tutorial, flipping the card over, it's a 9.
"In that case, I'd have to take the whole stack of cards into my own stack. But if Minah is the one lying and I flipped her card over, she'd have to take back the cards too." Jaein said.
"So is that all?" Joochan questioned.
"Yes, seems easy doesn't it? Shall we start?" Minah asked.
"Yes!!"
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"Yay I'm not alone, I'm with Mijin!" Ryu cheered, hugging Mijin tightly.
"Let me go!!!" Mijin exclaimed.
Then they demonstrated how to play, basically like how Minah and Jaein played.
"You all understand?" Mijin and Ryu asked in sync.
"No!"
"UGHHHH....."