This was it. The moment we had all been working towards—our first performance in front of the judges and a live audience. But I couldn't shake the feeling that something was going to go wrong.

As we stepped out onto the stage, I could feel the bright lights bearing down on me. I looked over at Gunwook, who gave me a reassuring smile, but even that couldn't calm me down.

We started our performance, and everything was going well at first. But then I messed up. I stumbled on my words, and I could see the disappointment in my groupmates' faces.

I could feel my face turning red with embarrassment, and I wanted to crawl under a rock and hide. But I had to keep going. We had to keep going.

As we finished our performance, I could feel the weight of our failure bearing down on me. We had put in so much time and effort, and we had let ourselves down. I had let my team down.

But then Gunwook stepped forward, putting his arm around me, and said, "Don't worry about it, Gio. We'll get them next time."

I looked around at the rest of the group, and they all nodded in agreement. Briar and Ara gave me a reassuring smile, and Allison gave me a pat on the back.

Jiwoong said, "We all make mistakes, Gio. The important thing is that we learn from them and do better next time."

I felt a wave of gratitude wash over me as I looked at my teammates. Even though we had just failed, we were still a team, and we were in this together.

As we walked off the stage, the room fell silent around us. Other trainees couldn't look us in the eye. That was bad... real bad.

I felt like I'd let everyone down, especially Gunwook, who had been counting on me. I hung my head in shame, not wanting to make eye contact with anyone.

But Briar spoke up, trying to break the tension. "Well, that was a disaster," she said, "but hey, at least we all messed up together." That was nice of other to say, but it was me who had forgotten lyrics, which had never happened to me before.

I never had pressure like this before either. Yet, they didn't know about the sword of Damocles dangling above my head if I failed this competition.

Gunwook gave her a small smile, but I couldn't bring myself to join in. I was too angry at myself.

Allison rolled her eyes. "I can't believe I'm stuck with you losers," she said with a laugh, clearly meaning it to be a joke, but it fell flat. Nobody laughed. Making it all the more clear Allison was the odd one out in our group, despite Jiwoong really liking her somehow. He moved in closer to her side and hugged her to him in reassurance.

Jiwoong tried to diffuse the tension. "It's okay, guys," he said, "we'll get 'em next time."

Jay patted me on the back. "Don't worry about it, Gio," he said, "we'll practice harder and come back stronger."

I nodded, grateful for the support, but still feeling like a failure.

Yujin let out a snort. "As if we have any chance against Lux and her group," he said, "they're basically already famous."

Ara spoke up, a hint of jealousy in her voice. "Well, at least we don't have to worry about Choonhae and Yujin sabotaging us like they tried to do with Lux's group."

Her eyes found our backstabbing teammate and Yujin gave her a dark scowl. Those rumors had swirled and taken on a life of their own. Even Ricky had been dragged into it, and I had no clue how that had happened.

Matthew shot her a look. "Hey, watch it," he said, "Choonhae's my friend." And Yujin not so much. It was evident from the way he said it.

I let out a small laugh at the awkwardness of the entire situation, feeling the tension ease a bit. "Well, at least we have each other," I said sarcastically at those two, "we'll do better next time."

I was still feeling slightly down but better, yet Gunwook stepped up and took me by the arm. "Come on, let's go get some food," he said, "we can't let one bad performance ruin our appetite, jagi."

Briar and Ara nodded in agreement, and we all walked out of the studio together, trying to put the bad performance behind us.