Trainee Ch.49

Chapter 49: Second Performance (4)

After that, Jin Xiheng finished teaching all the sections of choreography he had prepared, then pulled Lai Yudong aside for some one-on-one coaching. The rest either continued arranging the unfinished parts of the dance or started practicing at their own pace.

Jin Xiheng gave the first instruction: “Dance through the intro once.”

“Okay.”

Although Lai Yudong had attended many of the “Gold Class” dance lessons before, those were always in groups—sometimes just over a dozen, sometimes dozens of people together. This was the first time he was being personally guided one-on-one by a genuine, professional dance instructor. Inevitably, he felt a little nervous.

When he finished a round, he waited uneasily for feedback.

“Hm.” Jin Xiheng rubbed his chin. “If we lower the standards, it’s… passable?”

Lai Yudong: “……”

So he does know how to talk, huh.

Which basically meant—by normal standards, not so okay.

“I can see you memorize moves quickly, which shows you have talent.” Jin Xiheng echoed Su Junzhe’s earlier opinion. “To save time, I won’t go into the positives. Let’s focus on a few issues.”

He slipped into teaching mode: “First problem: there’s no sense of connection—your movements aren’t smooth enough.

Your dancing feels like going from point A to point B, then from point B to point C. To others, it comes across like a stop-motion animation—frame by frame. Even if you get more skilled, you’re just raising the frame rate, not transforming it into a smooth video. It’s like singing: you can’t spit out one word at a time, you have to sing it like flowing water, continuous and complete.”

Lai Yudong humbly asked for guidance: “How should I fix it?”

This issue had been mocked by bullet comments many times before—calling him things like a robot, a high-frame-rate PowerPoint, with all kinds of savage comparisons. He had tried to correct it, but the results were minimal.

“Your fundamentals can’t be improved overnight, so I’ll point out a few things you can work on. Later, be conscious of them and make corrections.” Jin Xiheng raised one finger. “First—don’t drag things out. Movements need to be clean. Finish them and stop.”

He raised a second finger. “Second—understand the dance. The reason your dancing looks frame-by-frame is probably because you memorize it frame by frame. You need to understand the connections—between one move and the next, and between the moves and the dance as a whole. You can’t just rely on rote memorization.”

Lai Yudong felt a pang of guilt.

That was exactly how he had been learning all along—relying on his good memory to cram the moves, just like back in kindergarten when he could recite the Three Hundred Tang Poems by heart, but couldn’t explain a single line if asked.

Jin Xiheng went on: “You should be able to feel it yourself. Even though you’re working really hard, the result isn’t that great.”

Lai Yudong nodded. “Yeah, my moves feel scattered.”

“That’s a common beginner’s mistake. Which leads to the second problem: you haven’t learned how to control your strength.” Jin Xiheng patiently explained, “Dancing should have tension and release, give and take. Not just brute force without any technique—you’re not doing a radio calisthenics routine. If you keep dancing like this, no matter how much force you put into every move, people will just think you’re doing military drills.”

Finally, he smiled as he summed up: “Actually, those two problems are connected. It all comes down to controlling your strength and understanding the music. So? Doesn’t it make dancing seem not all that difficult?”

Lai Yudong: “……”

Not really.

Hearing it sound simple and actually doing it simply are two completely different things!

With the problems pinpointed, the one-on-one coaching became much more targeted.

With Jin Xiheng’s wholehearted guidance, Lai Yudong clearly felt his practice become far more efficient. Before, he could spend an entire day nitpicking the details of a dance of similar length, and the results still weren’t guaranteed to be good.

“As long as you make sure not a single second is wasted, there’s no need to practice until dawn without finishing,” Jin Xiheng said.

As Su Junzhe and Huang Yueru’s roommate, he had heard about the situation of Peppermint Group A, and naturally knew about Lai Yudong’s schedule during that time.

In his view, for a total beginner with zero foundation in dance to figure things out to that extent on his own—just not going insane was already a miracle, let alone managing to get on stage and even save the performance.

“It’s not that you can’t work hard, but you have to use your time where it counts. Right now you’re young enough to stay up all night and still keep going, but in a few years, when you’re my age, even if you could practice until dawn, you’d probably end up sleeping until the afternoon. And chronic lack of sleep can kill you suddenly.”

“Then in our group we’ve already got a few sudden-death candidates,” Mo Li joked.

Lai Yudong nodded solemnly: “We’re all comrades-in-arms, life and death together.”

[Just realized it’s the three of you again]

[Add Su Su to the mix, and you’ve got the Death-Defying Trio]

[Even Black and White Impermanence would call it human wave tactics if they saw you]

“You guys are hardcore.” Jin Xiheng gave a thumbs-up in admiration. “Let me say this in advance: I can’t stay up until four in the morning. Not because I want to slack off, but because my body just shuts down at a certain time—I’ll doze off no matter what. Forcing it would be inefficient. But I pick up choreography fast. You guys don’t need to worry about me—we can either set a fixed time to practice together, and the rest of the time we each train on our own.”

“Then how late are we practicing today?” Lai Yudong asked.

He needed a rough idea of the training hours so he could pace his stamina, and also plan whether to stay after dismissal for extra practice—and if so, how to schedule it.

Jin Xiheng answered instantly: “We’ll finish when Bai Xuanhe finally stops dragging his feet. Once he’s done choreographing, we’ll call it a day.”

The corner of Bai Xuanhe’s mouth twitched. “What, you’re guilt-tripping me now?”

…

According to the original plan, today’s task was for everyone to finish choreographing their own parts. Tomorrow, they would integrate them and refine the rest.

As it turned out, because the group atmosphere was so good—discussing and helping each other when problems came up, cracking jokes to relax when they were tired—the entire choreography process for Bloody went so smoothly and addictively that they actually managed to finish the whole routine in one go, stage positioning and all.

Even Jin Xiheng, who had claimed he couldn’t pull all-nighters, fought on until the very last moment.

“I’m done for… it’s been so long since I stayed up this hard…” Jin Xiheng flopped onto the floor without a care for his image, his voice so weak it sounded like he could fall asleep any second. “The breakfast stalls must be open by now, right? Ahhh, I’m dying of sleepiness… I’m definitely sleeping until the afternoon before I wake up again…”

Bai Xuanhe lightly nudged his waist with the tip of his foot. “Wake up. If you fall asleep here, no one’s gonna bother with you. At most we’ll just switch off the lights.”

“And lock the door,” Mo Li added mercilessly.

Jin Xiheng wailed: “That’s cruel!”

[How did the Bloody group end up finishing earlier than me, a corporate wage sl*ve just about to head to work?]

[Ever think maybe… they never actually left?]

[As a college student rushing to finish a thesis overnight, I can confirm—we were basically pulling an online all-nighter together. In the end, I won.]

[You only “won” because you still haven’t finished your thesis.]

[I just want to know if there are still fans outside waiting for them to get off work.]

[Word is, Mo Li’s fansite master went back to the hotel, slept, and came back again.]

Lai Yudong silently lifted his head to look at the wall clock. The hour hand was pointing at seven.

A few hours earlier they’d concluded that staying up late too often could kill you suddenly—yet now, their dismissal time was later than any day before. Even his latest practice session had only gone until four or five in the morning, which he’d jokingly call “barely morning.”

But this time, it really was morning.

“When are we meeting up?” Su Junzhe asked through a tired yawn. It was rare to see him looking less than energetic—even downing an iced Americano hadn’t been enough to sustain him through an all-nighter of choreographing.

“It’s seven o’clock now. Subtract all the miscellaneous stuff…” Mo Li counted on his fingers. “Two in the afternoon?”

“Two!?”

Jin Xiheng shot up from the ground like a carp springing from water, startling Lai Yudong into a shiver.

[Teacher Jin’s core strength is no joke]

[That was such a clean sit-up, hahaha]

[Guess he’s not that sleepy after all]

“If we go back, shower, tidy up, and grab something to eat, it’ll already be eight before we get to sleep. Then when we wake up, we’ll need to eat and digest a bit—so at best, even waking up an hour early, we’ll only get five hours of sleep.”

Jin Xiheng calculated the time with painful precision. Frowning miserably, he tugged on Mo Li’s sleeve, pleading for his sleep schedule: “Little brother Mo Li, your Brother Che and I—one’s twenty-four, the other’s twenty-five—we’ve already reached the age of soaking our feet in hot water and drinking goji berry tea. Couldn’t you cut us a little slack?”

Mo Li was merciless: “I’ll listen to the captain.”

Su Junzhe smiled slyly. “So what does our twenty-five-year-old captain say?”

“……” Stabbed twice in a row by the age gap, Zhang Mingche gave a dry cough and forced a serious face. “Jin Xiheng, you gather at one in the afternoon. The rest of us, later.”

Jin Xiheng: “Hey! How can one person be called a gathering!?”

[That’s what you get for bringing up the captain’s age! Regret it now?]

[But Su Su brought up his age too, and that was even worse, lolol]

[Teacher Jin = officially group b*lly victim]

In the end, after Jin Xiheng’s round of noisy protests and wailing, the meet-up time was set at four in the afternoon.

At their current rocket-like pace, even starting late in the day, they would definitely be able to finish learning everything in one day—by midnight at the latest, not on a 24-hour schedule.

The plan was to practice for a full day the day after, then ace the course check the day after that with no problem. In the few days remaining, they would reinforce their practice and record an audio track. Finally, on Thursday, they would film the second performance stage.

This was what could truly be called more than enough time.

Of course, members who wanted extra practice could arrive at the studio earlier, but when it came to the official meet-up, not a single second of lateness would be allowed. Anyone late would have to accept a punishment.

“What kind of punishment?” Zhang Mingche pulled the cap off a marker, ready to write the penalty beneath the word Bloody posted on the practice room door.

Bai Xuanhe was the first to suggest: “Ten laps around the dorm building?”

Mo Li made an “X” with his arms in front of his chest. “No, that would affect practice efficiency.”

Bai Xuanhe tried again: “How about they’re in charge of pouring water and picking up food for the whole group that day?”

Lai Yudong exclaimed in horror: “Then what about me!?”

[Baby, wake up]

[You’re an idol trainee! Not a food service management intern!]

[Suddenly thinking Yu-baby’s personality really suits being a captain]

[You’re not alone]

After a full five minutes of discussion, with Jin Xiheng nearly falling asleep standing up—his head resting on Lai Yudong’s shoulder—Zhang Mingche finally put pen to paper and wrote down the punishment suggested by Su Junzhe.

Latecomers would have to sing and dance the theme song in the dormitory hallway.

One full performance for every minute late.

[? Truly worthy of you]

[Who says the C-ent industry has no stage? No stage? Then make a stage!]

[Looking forward to Bloody Group’s first hallway show]

[Especially Teacher Jin’s first hallway show]

[Jin Xiheng: ?]

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