The moment they arrived back at the dorms and said goodbye to the other contestants, Ari took his suitcase and commandeered one of the two-bedroom rooms with Jamie, since the production team didn’t particularly know where they roomed at this point.

He quickly changed into his Otterly adorable tracksuit, threw his fur hat on to hide his hair color, and made his way to their assigned practice room, and began stretching and looking through the preloaded tablet while waiting for the rest of his teammates to trickle in.

The first to arrive was Jamie, who carried his laptop in one hand, his guitar in the other, and somehow held a half-eaten protein bar and a protein shake in his mouth.

"Mmhrhoph?"

"Don’t talk with your mouth full. And probably still changing? Or maybe the PD grabbed them. I’m looking through the songs right now. So start setting your things up." Ari replied absentmindedly as he continued flipping through the tablet.

Apart from the song they were supposed to create with the help of one of the judges, all the contestants would be performing two new songs.

One was called "Unique Qrew," a song by Jelissa with a hip-hop-style vibe mixed with Brazilian funk, trap, and pop beats.

It wasn’t a vocally strong song; instead, it had a lot of rap parts, but Ari really liked it since the vibe was quite cool and very different from anything he had performed so far.

Additionally, it seemed that the production team was quite inspired by the faux rap battle that occurred while they were busking, so the song was split in half, with Kim Youngwoo choreographing one half and Jaywalks the other, and the two of them coming together to choreograph the third portion.

Each team would pick a section of the song, perform half of the song while the opposing team danced and mirrored them, then switch places before coming together to perform the last part.

Afterward, the audience would vote for the team they thought performed better, with the members of the winning team receiving a small number of votes to help boost the votes that would determine their ranking.

As Ari looked at the choreography done by Jaywalks and then by Kim Youngwoo, he was already tired just staring at the number of jumps, level changes, powerful moves, and formation adjustments.

Were these two people just mindlessly adding as many choreography moves into a song as possible, as if each move were an attack on each other, and they forgot that the contestants had so many other songs to perform, not just this one?

Where was the time to breathe?

Even if you weren’t singing or rapping, because of the way the teams were split, you couldn’t even slack off because everything would be visible in a 7-person formation.

How tiring.

The second song all the contestants had to perform, "Just Do It," was written by Selena and Larry Jackson and was meant to be their closing song, encouraging voters to vote and ending the show with a bang.

It had a much calmer vibe, more vocal parts, and thankfully far less choreography than Unique Qrew, which was nice.

But looking at the schedule of things they had to do and perform during finals day, Ari really only had one thought.

For the song Jamie wants to make and perform-

Simplify. Simplify. SIMPLIFY!

No matter what, the song needed to be simple.

There was already so much to learn within the next two weeks that making a complicated song with multiple parts, vocal layering, and extras was completely out of the question.

Someone was bound to forget or mix something up, and there was only so much time to practice.

If they weren’t being graded on the song’s quality, then cheat and make it simple.

As for the choreography?

Scrap it completely.

If they couldn’t scrap it, simplify it!

As much as Ari wanted to put on a show for people who had spent so much money and time to see them perform, he cared more about making sure his performance was as perfect as it could be, and he would rather execute something simple perfectly than something complex sloppily.

With all the new material they had to learn in such a short amount of time, it wasn’t that he didn’t believe in the skills of his teammates; it was just better not to test fate.

Besides, since Jamie wanted to do a creative type of performance, even if their choreography was minimal, as long as the song was good and the crowd work was on point, Ari thought it would work in their favor.

Especially if they could come up with simple moves that the audience could do as well.

Well...

He could have as many ideas as he wanted, but at the end of the day, since it was a democracy and Jamie was the team leader, it would depend on his teammates’ votes.

As Ari put the tablet down and continued stretching, slowly everyone trickled in, starting with Daniel, then Rei, Justin, and Vishal, and finally Benjamin, waving a piece of paper.

"Got the script from the PD. She said she’ll swing by in a bit with the judges, so let’s try to get some things done before then, innit?"

"Thanks."

As they all sat in a loose circle, a cameraman entered and parked himself in the corner of the room, and gave them a thumbs up to get started.

Then they all sat in silence.

5 people stared at Ari, Ari stared at Jamie, and Jamie also stared at Ari. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

The cameraman, reading the vibes, zoomed out to make sure he captured the dynamic perfectly.

Ari: ಠ_ಠ

Why the heck are you staring at me?

"What?"

"Aren’t you going to get the meeting started?" Jamie asked as he stared at Ari expectantly.

"Why would I start the meeting? You’re the team leader. It’s your concept. I’m just the secretary who will take notes." Ari waved his sticky note pad and pen around.

"But you’re better at talking than I am."

"And Benjamin is better at talking than me, so should he do it?"

"I’m fine with that." Jamie nodded.

"Absolutely not," Benjamin interjected, but Ari just pretended like he hadn’t heard him.

"Cool. Let’s vote on whether we want Benjamin to be the leader. Does anyone else want to nominate themselves as team leader? No? Cool, then it’s Jamie and Benjamin on the ballot. Those voting for Jamie, raise your hands."

Ari, Benjamin, Daniel, Justin, and Rei raised their hand. Vishal and Jamie abstained.

"Cool. That’s the majority. Congratulations, Jamie, on becoming the leader. Get started with the meeting." Ari said he ignored Jamie’s sulking expression as he clapped enthusiastically.

"Now, team leader. What’s our plan of action?"

"Mmmm..." Jamie looked like a wilted flower before perking up, "As the team leader, I order you to run the meeting in my place."

"You wanna die?"

"I humbly request that our secretary list out what we need to discuss today and help facilitate the meeting."

"Lazy."

"My brain is working hard on making adjustments to multiple songs right now? Don’t you want to help me and ease my burdens so my genius can flourish?" Jamie asked innocently, his blue eyes sparking as if he had never done a wrong thing in his life.

It was hard to believe that this was the same person who had been frustrating Wilford Forbes until his face almost turned purple.

After staring at Jamie for a while, Ari simply sighed.

"Fine."

He took the sheet of paper from Benjamin, scanned it, and then quickly summarized.

"We can knock out the easy stuff first, starting with picking which half of Unique Qrew we want and choosing parts, so let’s watch the video. If both groups want the same part, it’s a dance off, so I propose sending our strongest dance warrior, Daniel, to secure us victory if needed. Daniel, are you ready for war?"

"Aye aye, captain. I will dance and bring great honor to our team!" Daniel immediately sat up straight and saluted as if he were in the military.

"Alrighty. Let’s watch the video."

After watching the video and loosely choosing their parts, they moved on to Just Do It and chatted about other things until they finally reached the meat of their discussion.

"The song that Jamie has to make."

Fwip!

Benjamin quickly raised his hand.

"Yes, Benjamin?" Ari pointed his pen at the British boy.

"What were the two of you cackling evilly about on stage? It seems like you lot already have a plan? Or a song?"

"Something like that. Jamie, would you like to talk?"

"Sure." With a deft motion, Jamie quickly opened his laptop screen as he began his explanation, flipping through the brief PowerPoint he had made.

"While we were in Korea, Ari and I came to the realization that the production team is extremely cheap. They never want to spend more than they have to, and they’re always looking for ways to minimize costs or pass them on to the contestants. You can tell this by looking at the music production kits they gave us, which were mostly free samples and other details that I won’t get into right now. We both figured that, since they asked contestants to produce songs in such a short time, if it was successful, they would probably make us do it again for the finals, because "self-producing" is a great marketing tactic in the music industry. So to get ahead of the game, when we had time, Ari and I would spend some time making samples of different songs that we could perform in the finals to cut our suffering in half." Jamie concluded while Ari picked up where he left off.

"Et voilà, the production team did exactly what we thought they would do, so it’s good that we were prepared."

As Ari rolled his eyes with his back turned away from the camera, Daniel raised his hand like he was in class.

"Yes, Mr. Kim. What’s your question?"

"So you already have a song made?"

"I think Jamie has a collection of around 5 full songs? It’s all we could squeeze out during that time. But since this is a team activity, it’s best to get everyone’s feedback on what type of song they want to perform for the final, so Jamie can make modifications to any of the ones he has in stock or come up with a new one." Ari explained with a nostalgic expression.

Looking back on his time in Korea, he truly suffered day in and day out.

"How did you manage to make five additional songs when we were in Korea? I know what your schedule was like. Where did you find the time?" Benjamin asked incredulously.

He knew how hard his team practiced and how hard Ari’s team practiced, and still couldn’t figure out where Ari and Jamie had found the time to do all these extra things in the background.

What kind of broken stamina was this?

"If you sacrifice sleep and minimize time spent on eating, anything is possible. Besides, I told you I was busy. Did you think I was kidding?"

"No wonder you’re so skinny and constantly losing weight," Benjamin muttered.

Ari: ಠ_ಠ

What does that have to do with anything?

And I’ll have you know that I’ve actually gained and kept on 2kg, thank you very much!

"ANYWAY! What type of song were you all thinking about performing in the finals?"