IDOL SURVIVAL - Chapter 8 (EARLY ACCESS) (Patreon)

HERO

At the end of the second day, a familiar face was peering into the practice room through the window in the door. Sami smiled and Sopa waved, beckoning her outside. She left her group to continue practising and slipped out to chat in the corridor.

They made small talk, Sopa sounding a little like a textbook although her Korean was definitely improving, and then a silence fell. After a few moments, it was becoming awkward.

"Was there something you... needed from me?"

"Yes," Sopa answered, her voice had dropped to a whisper.

Curious, Sami tilted her head closer.

"I am in the group with AeRi," Sopa divulged, as though this in itself were a crime. Sami nodded. "And I am... thinking... maybe... she is practising without the group."

"You're not all together?"

Sopa shook her head. "We are. She is not. She is saying... we are good." Sopa frowned. "We are not good."

"Why would she practice without you?" Sami questioned aloud. "Either she wants to practice or she doesn't, and what is the point of practising alone? What abut positions?"

"She... maybe thinks we are very good and she is not?" Sopa suggested.

Sami shook her head. "I've seen her dance, I think she's pretty naturally skilled."

"But... problem... is coming when the others also are thinking we are very good."

"They believe her?"

Sopa nodded.

"That's insane!" Sami's words were hissed despite her intention to murmur. "There is no reason not to practice at a time like this. Even if you were all perfect, you should still keep going!"

Sopa nodded obediently and Sami felt like a schoolteacher. She sighed.

"Sopa... I don't know if AeRi has just become deluded with positivity as a result of... everything. But don't let her stop you or the girls from making it, okay?"

Sopa nodded again with a sad smile. Sami gave her a one-armed hug and returned to the practice room. She had her own team to be thinking about, let alone worrying for someone else's.

They ran through the dance once more at regular speed and once more at double speed before bed. Some of the girls were doing well. Sami was worried for Chyou. And it worried her that she was worrying because Chyou is so physically weak that the chances of her lasting... it already hurt to think about it. The more attached she got, the more painful it would be when... if... it happens.

It's so hard not to gravitate towards her, though. For all her meekness and frailty, she's got a personality that infects the group with warmth. Sweet and kind and selfless. Last week had been painful for all of them to watch their tiny, sunshine-filled friend deplete into a shell in her bed. Now that she was back, they hovered around her and fussed over her despite her complaints. Scared to lose her even briefly again. If Sami was the leader, Chyou was the mascot. The tiny puppy adopted by a sports team. The plush toy handed out by a corporation as merchandise. Precious and pretty despite the hack job that Sami had done to her hair.

It would hurt to get attached, but Sami was already hooked. Yu Jun had hurt, and she barely knew the girl aside from her fangirl gushings.

The final day’s practise was tense. Every mistake felt like the drop of a guillotine. Sami’s attention kept drifting to Chyou. It wasn't fair on the other girls that needed her. But Chyou needed her most, she could tell. Minji must have felt the same way, she hovered around Chyou like her carer, but they couldn’t prop her up once the challenge began for real. It was every girl alone, despite dancing within the group.

That was another problem that they had no way of preparing for. With the storm simulator stage, they had booming thunder and music to drown out the gunshots. In this performance, they had no idea how it would affect their ability to dance if even one girl went down. You could doom your friend with your death.

For the last few practises, Sami had them dance to the track turned way down, so as to learn the dance as a list of movements rather than as reactions to certain parts of the song.

It boosted her confidence in some, and reduced it in others.

They practised until the absolute last minute, when the production assistants were barking at them to get to hair, make-up and costuming. Each group was dressed in the colour of their box from the selection stage. Unfortunately for Sami’s group, that meant lime. It didn’t suit any of them except Myeong, and they voiced as such. Cracking nervous jokes as they awaited their turn from backstage.

Backstage was dark, in stark contrast with the main stage ahead with its burning bright lights, built seemingly solely out of reflective materials. The only reflective materials backstage were all the glittery outfits, each bedecked in their team colour.

Lime were second in the line-up, and each group would perform in front of a live audience, their first time doing so since the show began. Sami hadn’t performed in front of anything that could be called a real audience in years. Production teams didn’t really count. Her show entrance ‘audition-style’ performance didn’t either, her audience then had been her peers. Now, they would dance for the public. It was an entirely different experience. Those that survived would return from the other side of the curtain. No matter the group, Sami prayed for as many as possible to return.

The first group, Blush - the very group that seventy-two hadn’t wanted to join, filed up the stairs with the cheers of the backstage girls behind them, and their song began. Lime group clutched hands and squeezed their eyes shut, willing away the sounds of guns.

A bouncy pop song with an unpredictable tempo boomed from the stage speakers. Sami hoped it was loud enough to drown out any deaths.

Within the first thirty seconds a gunshot shook every backstage girl into perfect posture. They glanced amongst themselves, hope quickly fading from their bright eyes. The first group was unknowingly setting the expectation for the other survivors.

A minute or so passed, and bunched shoulders were dropping, confidence rising in the girls dancing for their lives on stage. The song had to be almost over at this speed. As the chorus repeated for hopefully the final time, another shot rang out, and this time a wet thud followed. How hard the girl would have had to fall to the ground for them to hear it.. Sami pushed her breath out through her nose and squeezed her eyes shut against the thought. They were next, she couldn't get spooked now.

The song ended with a cymbal crash.

Four girls returned down the stairs. They stumbled down every step on shaking legs, their sparkling pink outfits were speckled with blood. One had a red-soaked pigtail. The backstage girls flocked to them, buzzing with questions and supportive words. Blush were unable to respond, but they clung to their friends and accepted sips of water.

A few minutes of clean-up time passed, and Lime were called up by The Host. Sami clutched all her girls close in a firm hug and they ascended into the bright lights.

Sami blinked a few times to adjust to the new lighting, and lead her girls to their starting positions. Confidence. It made a difference to have confidence in yourself and your team. They had done the best they could. She had done the best she could. There was no more time to worry or regret or second-guess. Hundreds of eyes were watching from behind the row of camera equipment, filled with anticipation. Sami looked away, they were not important right now.

The song began. A beautiful violin opened the song, but at double speed it sounded distorted. The music didn't matter, the routine was everything.

They started strong, and Sami even found herself smiling at how well they were doing. The transitions were smooth, each girl passing her gracefully as they danced to their positions back and forth on the stage in alternating criss-cross patterns. The difficult dance break in the centre was coming and she had assigned it to herself.

In one... more... hook repetition-

Sami threw herself forward and hit the air with with flat palms in an intricate windmill-like move. At double-speed, it didn't appear nearly as elegant as it did in the original choreography. But what mattered is she hit every mark. While she was front and centre, she couldn’t keep an eye on her girls and their movements, all she could do was listen for shots. Either her blood was pounding too loudly in her ears, or none had rung out.

She hopped backwards, wary of the floor behind her possibly having become wet. Not a drop met her sneakers, no slipping or sliding. She smiled brighter as her girls bounded in front of her to create a perfect pyramid-like formation. She counted every single one and felt an explosion of relief in her chest that almost staggered her dancing. They were hitting every beat in perfect synchronisation.

Just a few more seconds left of the song.

They hit their finale position and as soon as the song finished, Sami let loose hysterical laughter. They had all made it. She couldn’t believe it. She had believed in them, of course. But that possibility was always there, at her back. Now it was gone and she could breath deeply, the weight removed.

Sami was stood in the centre, with Chyou and Minji knelt in front. Chyou’s blonde fluffy hair shook on the top of her head and Sami ruffled it as she laughed. Through tears, Chyou was beaming. The girls pulled each other close, forming a tight huddle, and jumped up and down together until they were given a reminder from the production team to get off the stage with small hand waves.

In the moment before they left, Sami allowed herself to take in the crowd that was cheering behind the cameras and crew. If Sami hadn’t just passed the challenge with all of her friends intact, she might ask how they could clap and holler at something so sick and twisted. But in this moment, they were cheering Lime’s victory, and that was perfectly fine with Sami. She threw a fist in the air and cheered too, a laughter-filled bellow, before a Chyou-sized hand pulled her to the stage exit.

The girls backstage cheered them too, although the girls in pink held weary smiles as they did. Sami nodded her understanding to them. They weren’t given long to celebrate their small win, the next groups were hurried on to the stage one after the other.

Indigo. A hiphop beat with rebellious lyrics. Two shots.

Cerulean. An R&B classic, remixed by one of the newest generation's idol groups. One shot.

The backstage girls winced as a collective with every bang.

Last was Sopa’s group: Ivory. Sami gave her friend a hopeful smile. Sopa returned it with a thumbs up. AeRi led the group to the stage.

From the first beat, a gunshot sounded.

The backstage girls gasped and jerked back, then glanced amongst themselves with wide eyes and wider mouths. A mistake that fast had to have been positioning, or a wardrobe malfunction, or... something. There simply wasn't enough time for it to have been an actual choreography slip.

It was quickly followed by more. The rock of pure horror knocked Sami back a step as she struggled to count the shots. They must have missed, must have. There weren’t even this many girls on the stage and the song was still going.

The sugary-sweet pop ballad came to a close with the fade of a few piano chords and the silence afterwards held the backstage girls in a painful grip, squeezing around their chests. No one breathed. Some clutched their hands to their throats or collar bones. In the light filled exit, a figure appeared. A soft collective gasp sounded. AeRi loped down the stairs, exhausted, and was instantly surrounded by girls asking her a thousand questions. What had happened? How had it happened?

Behind her, a lumpy creature also brought a shadow to the exit. Staggering down the first step was a mesh of three girls. None of them were Sopa. The two girls either side were shouldering the weight of the middle one. They weren’t just covered in the blood of the dead, the centre girl was injured, her leg streaming dark red liquid onto the steps.

“I didn’t make a mistake!” she babbled, her face soaked in tears.

“We know,” the girl on the left assured her, breathless and blood-sprayed. “It was their mistake-”

At the word mistake the middle girl began sobbing and repeating over and over that she hadn’t made a mistake. Her good leg gave out from under her with the force of her cries.

“She needs medical assistance!” Sami shouted. Looking to all nearby staff, she realised they weren’t going to do anything. “She’s bleeding!”

Myeong brushed past her, removing the decorative belt from around her waist, and tied it just above the wound as tightly as she could. The other girls continued to prop the distressed girl upright. Sami took a lunge up the stairs before the production team could get in her way and ran back onto the stage.

“There’s an injured girl back here!” she yelled to anyone who would listen. Her feet skidded in partially congealed blood. “She needs medical attention!”

“Thank you, number Sixty-Six,” The Host cooed with a condescending smile. “But we are currently reviewing the footage to ensure that number Seventeen did not in fact fail the challenge. Please be patient.”

“She is bleeding!”

“Number Seventeen was grazed by a bullet, and once it has been determined whether or not she passed the double speed dance challenge, she will receive the appropriate treatment.”

The appropriate treatment if she failed being a second shot, this time to the head.

“What about the others?” Sami demanded.

The Host gave her a tight smile, clearly displeased with being questioned.

“Numbers Seventy-Four, Fifty-Three and Nineteen did not pass the challenge.”

Sopa’s number was Seventy-Four. The number seemed to slice itself into the skin of her chest, searing pain knocking her back a step. The Host's smile salted the wound. Sami tried not to let herself crumple right there on the stage, but her body gave way as she fought to make it backstage again. At the top of the stairs she dropped to her knees and let herself cry with her back to the crowds, the cameras and the cruel Host.

Arms encircled her, multiple sets. Sami leant into them and cried harder. If they weren’t so weak from the previous week… Sami shook her head and tears dripped off her face and onto her friends' costumes. No, there was no point in pulling apart the whats and the whys. The challenge was done. There was no bringing anyone back. Now only number Seventeen hung in the balance.

All surviving girls were called back onto the stage once it had been cleaned. Number Seventeen was carried by Myeong and Minji. Sami wished she could help, but she felt shaken down to her very tissue. Like her muscle was peeling away from her bones.

"Thank you, dear audience, for your patience while our team of experts reviewed the footage of Ivory's performance." The Host's voice was so sleazy, Sami wanted to retch at him. "We can now reveal that, in the case of number Seventeen..."

A long pause, for disgusting dramatic effect, broken only by the girl's sobs.

"No mistakes were made!"

The audience cheered like their team had scored a point in a sports game. The girls couldn't manage the same blind enthusiasm. Most simply cried with relief for the girl, and for themselves. Seventeen wailed a 'thank you' into Myeong's hair, her blood slowly leaking into Minji's shoes.