Boy's Planet added contestant: Bae Sangwon

We witness emotional damage

authors note

I'm basing the order of their performances off the episodes so jellyfish team first hoetaek last. also i'm not gonna write a lot of Sangwon's reactions since he's not very reactive.

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Sangwon was pulled away for a quick interview about K vs G groups before the performances began. He clearly didn't give the answers Mnet were looking for because the producers let him go with no comments and bored expressions.

The first group to perform was from Jellyfish. They gave a great performance but were still demoted from their all star rating. Everyone knew the standards were high and became more nervous.

After a strange introduction where Min somehow resembled JYP for a second (was it just me who saw this) from WakeOne G group, they rehearsed and performed Glitch Mode by NCT Dream.

'Oh the dreamies' egos are gonna be inflated... great.'

Thus came the first judge certified all star trainee, Haruto. Sangwon thought it was well earned.

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A few performances later and Sangwon thought he was going to die. 'It's been what, 3 hours? They seriously didn't put clocks in here...'

YueHua's K and G groups performed after the break, performing the same song, Kick it by NCT 127.

'What's with everyone performing NCT songs? They're going to be so annoying when I meet up with them.' Sangwon could already picture them asking why he didn't perform one of their songs and him splashing water in their faces to shut them up.

Young and rich tall and handsome will definitely haunt Ricky for the rest of his life, at least that's what Sangwon thinks. At least it's not that bad a phrase.

Zhanghao definitely impressed Sangwon. His pronunciation was clear, his vocals were good, his dancing was clean and his violin skills definitely gave him an edge with voting.

Seungeon performed as he expected; great vocal techniques and he kept up with the choreography. Sangwon was proud of him, they could've became really good friends if they knew each other longer.

He was also impressed with Han Yujin, a 15 year old who'd only been dancing for a year apparently. He was a little jealous that he could dance so well with that little experience. He also felt a little old when he said he was born in 2007, to him anyone born that late was a fetus.

And finally after like 7 K group performances, K group got their first all stars.

In his humble opinion, K group vs G group was stupid and rigged, a few trainees, especially from G group, were robbed of their stars and the whole YueHua family feud was so so stupid since he's pretty sure he saw them interacting like best friends.

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There were of course some... less than stellar performances. Sangwon tried not to laugh but sometimes he had to bite his lip to hide his amusement. He was also quite disappointed, he thought Mnet purposely picked some trainees who weren't very good to come and humiliate themselves. It was a low blow to deal. He could already see Mnet editing the embarrassing bits to repeat over and over again, basically destroying the shreds of dignity these trainees had left.

"Bae Sangwon!" He was snapped out of his daze by a staff member calling him backstage. The people closer to him bid him good luck and the rest clapped, as they did with the other trainees. Sangwon stood up and went backstage to warm up.

Even from the back Sangwon could hear the master's disappointed remarks at the trainees' generally poor vocal skills. There was a team already backstage when Sangwon walked in, they were from G group. Krystian, Jianyu, Yugeng and Yechen. They did exchange greetings but didn't talk to each other after that, just nervously warming up.

It was starting to dawn on him. He's going to perform in front of 100 or so strangers and it's being recorded for the whole world to see. He tried shaking his arms to get rid of the nerves but it didn't help much.

'Ok calm down you'll be fine. You know you're skilled and you've been evaluated a thousand times before this, what's one more.' Sangwon tried to reassure himself and he felt more confident after that.

Just then, it was time for the quartet next to him to go on stage. They wished each other a quick good luck and Sangwon was alone.

Well not for long because a sunshine boy with a sunshine smile walked in. Seok Matthew was very bright and cheerful, qualities not normally associated with Sangwon, so when Matthew tried to strike up conversation with him, Sangwon tried to end it quickly. It didn't work.

"Are you nervous? I'm nervous, everyone before us danced really well, and that's what i'm good at." Matthew said, he was somehow very lively which puzzled Sangwon.

"Yeah I'm nervous but I'm just going to treat it like any other evaluation." Sangwon said quite monotonously, clearly drained from having to watch so many evaluations and hearing all the criticism.

"You look really good, like pretty but also handsome? Has anyone ever told you that? You've probably heard it before." Matthew was now considered a chatterbox to Sangwon and he didn't really know how to answer the question.

"Uhh... " Sangwon kind of just trailed off that conversation, leading it to nowhere.

The awkward silence was saved when EXO's Call Me Baby was played. Sangwon and Matthew watched in silence. The performance was average to Sangwon, the nerves probably getting to them and making them mess up. They received their critiques and got off stage, and a few minutes later it was time for Sangwon to perform.

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authors note

that's chapter 2 with almost 900 words, next is Sangwon's performance

thanks for reading