Vishal looked down at the boy squatting on the ground in front of him with sympathy.
Having had a long day as well, it felt annoying to come back to this when all he wanted to do was shower and go to sleep.
"Don't worry, I'll handle it this time."
Speaking softly to the silent Ari, Vishal began banging on the door.
Bang bang bang!
Bang bang bang!
But nobody inside the room responded.
Bang bang bang!
Bang bang bang!
"Hey! This is Vishal, open the door!" Vishal banged on the door again and could faintly hear snickering and things rustling.
"Snicker, are you alone or is that masked weirdo with you?" Ian's muffled voice could be heard behind the door, and Ari just made himself smaller while tucked on the ground.
"…It's just me. He's still practicing." Vishal lied smoothly, although he was upset at how Ian referred to Ari.
"Really? Then say please, and I'll let you in." The door opened a crack, and the light from the hallway partially illuminated Ian's face.
Before Ian could say anything else, Vishal jammed his foot in the crack, and Ari began shoving the door open from the bottom.
With it being two against one, Ian was quickly overpowered and fell to the ground with a stunned expression.
Vishal looked down at Ian before shaking his head in disappointment.
"Whatever game you guys are playing is not very funny, Ian, so stop it. I'm going to shower."
He then grabbed his toiletries from beneath his bed and went to the bathroom.
Ari just looked at Ian with a blank expression and gave him his final warning,
"That's two. I'm done playing around with you. If you lock the door a third time, just know you'll regret it."
"Is that a threat?" Ian asked aggressively, but Ari just ignored him.
He honestly couldn't understand why Ian kept messing with him, but after the day he had had, he was just sick of dealing with people's nonsense and wanted to sleep.
Fervently counting down the days until the room could be changed, Ari took his duffel bag to the hallway bathroom to wash his clothes and put them in the dryer.
By the time he returned to the room, Vishal had finished his shower, so he went in, bathed, then re-applied his makeup, put his mask back on, and went to sleep.
The next morning, after chugging a bunch of hot tea at breakfast, Ari had a good vocal class with Jelissa before being released to prepare with his group for their presentation in front of the judges.
Despite the troubles from the day before, mentally, Ari had resolved himself to not care about anything today.
The day's motto was peace and serenity.
He planned on staying calm, cool, and collected and hoped a good night's sleep had refreshed everybody's mood.
Unfortunately, that hope was a fleeting dream.
Ari was the last person to enter the practice room, and when he walked in, there was a clear divide and tense silence as three different groups were in a standoff.
Caleb stood on one side of the room, Vishal stood alone in the middle, and Michael stood on the opposite side with the remaining class members.
Both Caleb and Michael were glaring at each other, and the rest of the contestants didn't look too pleased either.
Vishal just looked like he had a headache and didn't want to be there.
Ari sighed to himself while glancing at the recording camera on the side before clapping his hands to get everybody's attention.
"Morning, everybody. Hope you slept well. And as fun as this looks, we don't have time for this; we need to practice. Caleb, did you apologize to everyone?"
"I'm the leader, and the leader doesn't have to apologize when they didn't do anything wrong." Caleb shot out while glaring at everybody.
"Great." Ari just skipped past Caleb's nonsense and changed the topic, "Moving on, let's practice the choreography and singing as a group. We need to be ready in two hours, and I don't want to be embarrassed out there. Let's all start warming up while Caleb watches the formation video that Selena recorded."
Michael and the rest of the class still looked a bit frustrated, but everyone began stretching and warming up appropriately when they thought of how embarrassing it would be to be unprepared compared to others.
Ari handed the tablet, opened it to the correct video, and shoved it into Caleb's arms.
"Watch and memorize it as quickly as you can."
"You are not the leader here. I am." Caleb replied in a frustrated tone. He felt that nobody was taking him seriously, and his authority was being stolen away.
Especially by the boy in front of him.
He didn't like it one bit.
"Okay, leader." Ari shrugged, grabbed another tablet, and began doing the warm-up that Jaywalk had taught them.
After the warmups were done, they began trying to perform the choreography with the formations that they had been given.
Unfortunately, half of the contestants remembered the formations but not the choreography, while the other half remembered some of the choreography but couldn't keep up with the formations.
Almost everybody, including Ari, struggled to keep their voices stable while dancing and moving around the practice room. He found that he needed to take deeper breaths and manage his breathing more when dancing the difficult choreography.
Apart from the stability issues, most of the other contestants were off-key, as if they had forgotten everything that they had learned yesterday.
And to top it all off, Caleb kept getting frustrated because he was hidden in the back, except for when it was his turn to sing, so he kept trying to step into the center role, which kept tripping and messing everybody up.
As an hour was wasted away just like that with no visible progress being made, when the music ended, Ari raised his hand to speak.
Seeing Caleb ignoring him, Ari spoke out anyway, "I think we should scrap the formations for the performance for the judges and just focus on getting the choreography and singing on tune. It's better to nail one thing well than do a bad job on everything."
"I agree." Vishal added while wiping his sweaty face.
"No way."
"Absolutely not."
Both Caleb and Michael spoke out at the same time, and Ari looked at them in surprise.
"Why not?"
"All the other teams are definitely going to show off everything they've learned so far, so we don't want to be the odd man out. They might accuse us of taking the easy way out and not trying hard enough," Michael spoke first, although he had a strange look on his face as he stared at Caleb, who agreed with him.
"Exactly." Caleb agreed with a nod
"So you're both confident that we'll nail the choreography and formations to an acceptable level in…" Ari glanced at the wall clock, "forty-five minutes?"
At that, the room was silent for a moment as the contestants glanced over at their neighbors.
"Why are you doubting the skills of your teammates? Don't you have faith? I believe in them?" Caleb replied cockily and Ari had to stop himself from shaking his head and yelling.
'No! I don't have any faith, especially not in you.'
Instead of revealing his true thoughts, Ari smiled a wan smile before speaking, "Let's vote on it then. Those who are for continuing practice like we are right now, eyes closed, hands up."
When everybody opened their eyes, the vote was 7:4 to continue the formation practice and present it to the judges.
"We'll be doing it my way," Caleb smirked at Ari, who sighed once more before standing in his spot at the front of the formation and staring at himself in the mirror.
"Okay. Then let's try to nail it this time. Please."
The remaining hour passed quickly, and Ari, along with the rest of the contestants, walked to the presentation area of the dance studio where they had sat the first night.
It had been rearranged, and their 6 trainers, who were acting like judges, sat in front of a special table set up while the contestants sat against the walls in groups wearing matching shirts.
The cameramen were spread out in the room's corners, and the MC, whom they hadn't seen since the second round, was there.
The MC, Ryan Leary, was dressed in a black suit and held a microphone in his hands.
Spotting them coming in, he smiled widely and began to speak, "Well, well, well, look at our contestants. Don't you all look so cool in your matching group shirts and fun badges? I'm feeling a bit left out right now. Judges, can I have a shirt too? Please??"
As the MC gave them a pleading look, all of the judges made an X with their arms while Jelissa burst out laughing.
"Aww, I've been rejected. That's too bad. Well, we don't have a lot of time today so, shall we get started with our first midterm evaluation performance for the judges? I'm sure you're all dying to show off your skills."
Wooooooooooooo!
Some of the contestants cheered energetically while others cheered half heartedly.
As he was pretending to clap enthusiastically while looking around, Ari made eye contact with Ian, who was smiling at their group with a smug smile.
Rolling his eyes at the boy, Ari turned his gaze to focus on the MC.