After the briefings, the production assistants herded us into separate makeshift practice rooms—converted storage spaces with mirrors hastily mounted on walls and tape marking crude boundaries on concrete floors.
Nothing like the polished training rooms back at the studio.
"This is it?" one of our teammates muttered, surveying the cramped space.
Haejun ignored the complaint, already warming up in the corner. "We make do."
Unlike the midweek evaluations, thick black curtains blocked the doorways. No peeking allowed. No psychological warfare through observation.
Smart move by production—keep the surprises hidden until showtime.
But the isolation couldn't muffle everything.
As we ran through our opening sequence, muffled music leaked through the thin walls.
The sweet melody from Team A drifted from the left, but something sounded different. Sharper. The sound was more complex than the simple tune we'd heard during evaluations.
They'd added something.
