CHAPTER 212: I SAW IT IN A DREAM (2)

"Sleep well? You look terrible."

"Had a weird dream about fish, and pirates, and mermaids, and kept waking up with it on my mind," Ari confessed, rubbing his eyes tiredly as he walked to the practice room with Benjamin, who was surprisingly still in his pajama pants and was wearing his glasses with a bandana tied around his head.

He fully expected the British boy to be properly dressed since he usually went to the gym at 4 am.

"Awww, dreaming about your namesake under the sea? A little too on the nose, innit?"

"Har har har, very funny," Ari replied sarcastically, but Benjamin just winked while throwing his arm around his shoulder.

"I try. It’s part of my charm."

"Get off. You’re heavy."

As the two of them entered the practice room and sat down, they saw Rex standing at the front, Justin lying on the ground groaning, and Levi sitting against a wall with deep eye bags, clearly indicating he would rather be sleeping.

Both Jerome Tyler and William were missing, and Rex looked slightly upset about it.

"Aren’t you in the same room as Jerome? Why didn’t you wake him up and bring him along?" Rex asked as he looked around the sparsely populated room before turning to Ari.

"...why should I do that? He knew what time we were supposed to be here, and my alarm went off in the room. I don’t see you asking Levi why he didn’t bring William." Ari asked, wondering why he was the one being singled out while ignoring the dirty look Levi shot his way.

It’s what he deserved for trying to nominate him as team leader yesterday.

Rex opened and closed his mouth several times before speaking slowly, "...it’s still common courtesy. It would make my life easier if you could bring your roommate along."

"To be honest, I don’t have much courtesy for someone who is constantly making snide comments toward me, especially when you don’t say anything to stop it as the team leader." As Rex’s expression tightened, Ari continued in a lazy tone, offering the best compromise that he could. "If I’m there, I’ll try to wake him if we have a meeting, but if it’s going to make me late, I won’t wait for him or drag him here. That’s on you and him."

"...fine. Wait here. I’ll go get the two of them." Rex grumbled before leaving the room.

Not willing to waste time, Ari began doing his crunches while he waited, and after a moment, Benjamin joined him, completing the exercises at a faster pace than he could.

After about 10 minutes, Rex finally returned with the missing team members, and Justin reluctantly dragged himself upright while scrubbing his eyes.

William strolled in wearing baby blue silk pajamas and slippers, and a silk eye mask on his head, while Jerome wore cartoon pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt.

The two took a seat close to each other, and Rex clapped to get everyone’s attention.

Clap, clap!

"Good morning. Let’s get started. Did anyone find a song, or shall we just use what we selected yesterday?"

"Yeah, Ari and I found a few songs, and there’s one that is our top pick. It needs some work to fix the spacing, but it has three rap verses, two of which are pretty aggressive, which was the major request. It’s also not too high, so no need to lower the key. All in all, I think it’s solid."

"I sense that there’s a big but in that statement," Rex spoke up, looking suspiciously at Benjamin, who gave him a small smile.

"You deeped it. For one, it’s a Korean song, so if we’re doing it, we either need to learn to pronounce the words correctly or transpose the lyrics to English in a way that makes sense. That’s on you to help us if that’s the case, big man. Secondly, it’s a song that came out last year and was quite popular, so there’s quite a bit of recency bias to it. If our performance is too on the nose or is terrible, we’ll be dragged."

Benjamin shrugged before continuing, "I’m fine with choosing another song if it’s better, but I like the vibe of this one and Ari’s pretty adamant on it, and as you know, he’s the one with the good musical ear and good performance ideas."

"Cough- fraud."

Ignoring William’s not-so-subtle jab at Ari, especially after Ari had called him out earlier, Rex continued to stare at Benjamin.

"Oh? Then let’s hear it. What’s it called?"

"Neverland by Teenz."

"Oh, I know that song. It was pretty popular when it came," Rex began humming the chorus as he pulled the song up on the tablet and performing some of the choreography.

Boom boom chk boom boom chk!

An intense intro of drums and trumpets that sounded like the theme song of an action or adventure film filled the air.

Then a sea chanty-like chorus was sung before transitioning into a fast-paced rap that was entirely in Korean.

On my-my way modu bal-eul majchugo

On my-my way hana dul hamyeon ttwieo

As the song alternated between the verses, the chanty chorus, 2 fast-paced rap sections, before the dance break, and final chorus, Ari watched the expressions of the rest of his teammates.

For the most part, they seemed pretty amenable to the song, with even Levi nodding along during the rap section.

When it was done, it was silent for several seconds before Rex broke it.

"I like the song. What does everyone else think?"

"Solid." Levi gave a one-word response mid-yawn.

"I like it. The beat has that oomf feeling for a good performance. I remember thinking all the stages for the song were cool." Justin added as he slowly slumped to the ground.

"It’s not bad."

Seeing that everyone agreed, Rex sighed in relief, glad that one decision was done.

Now for the next one-

"Then let’s switch to this song. Since you found the song, did you happen to think of a concept as well, or did you plan on using the one we decided on yesterday?"

"I didn’t. How about you, Ari?"

"I did."

Rex finally turned to face Ari after avoiding eye contact with him.

"What is it?"

"After listening to the song and our concept request, I thought that we could maybe have some type of sea pirate/sea creature concept? Themes like a mermaid or a pirate are inherently tied to water. There are parts of the song that give off that vibe, and we could draw inspiration from a couple of movies regarding styling. We could also easily accommodate everyone who wants to be shirtless or not. I’m not sure if it will be sexy or of any further details, but I think that’s a good start, and can help us avoid recycling old ideas from previous performances."

"Heh. You want to do a sea concept? With pirates and mermaids? Took your name a little too literally, didn’t you? Where did you get such a childish idea that’s not even finished?" William sneered at Ari.

"I saw it in a dream, so obviously it’s not fully fleshed out. But childish? In the song’s video, they’re dressed as adventurers following a fairy to search for treasure. Are you calling them childish? Wow. How bold of you."

At Ari’s blunt statement while he clapped sarcastically, William glared at him before looking away.

"Anyway. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I don’t think we should use everything from my previous Warrior performance. We should try to come up with something new and unique instead of taking the easy way out. But as always, it’s a team event. If you want to think I’m just being difficult and just don’t want my old performance idea used, then go for it. I just thought it would be better to try another option that needs input from everyone on the team and make something that truly represents us."

"Well, thank you for your idea. Let’s take a vote. Should we continue the water floor performance idea using the new song and start the choreography today, or start planning a pirate and or mermaid themed performance from scratch? Please keep in mind that we haven’t decided if we’re translating the song into English, learning to sing it in Korean, or any other small details."

As Rex laid out their two options, the tired contestants who were forced to be awake before the sun rose thought through their options.

"Those who want to continue with the water floor performance, hands up for the first option, please?"

Several hands were raised into the air.

And the result-