Chapter 30: Please Teach Me… By Touching

“Jae-seo, sorry.

I’ll help you again later.”

Having suddenly lost two trainers, Jae-seo stood there with a blank expression.

Lee Chan-seo cautiously approached him.

“Jae-seo hyung, if you don’t mind, shall I teach you?”

As if grasping at a lifeline, Jae-seo desperately grabbed Lee Chan-seo’s wrist.

Today was dance training day, and if someone didn’t touch him—no, help him—he would have to show the trainer and the viewers beyond the cameras that same comical figure from earlier.

“Please, I’m begging you.”

He must have seemed too desperate, because Lee Chan-seo looked rather flustered but nodded eagerly in response.

“Where are you having trouble?”

“Here.

Earlier Jun-jae said my leg was either bent too much or straightened too much.”

Watching Lee Chan-seo nod again as if he understood, Jae-seo began a difficult internal struggle.

Will you teach me with your body?

Can you teach me by touching?

No matter how he tried to phrase it, everything sounded weird, and he frowned.

Seeing this, Lee Chan-seo’s eyes widened as if asking what was wrong.

“Uh, well….”

“What is it?

Feel free to say it.”

“Um, well, would you… teach me by touching?”

Ah, really….

After he blurted it out, his brain belatedly started working properly.

Asking if he could grab his leg to teach would have been somewhat better.

He suspected this too was a trick played by this crazy perverted psycho game.

“Ah, yes.

I’ll do that!”

Fortunately, it didn’t seem to sound that weird to Lee Chan-seo, who nodded earnestly with a casual expression.

Was I overthinking it because I’m too fixated on the 19+ aspect?

Phew.

As he exhaled deeply, Lee Chan-seo bent down and reached his arm toward Jae-seo’s leg.

And the moment Lee Chan-seo’s hand touched his thigh—

“Haak!”

At the sensation traveling up his leg, Jae-seo involuntarily jerked his leg up.

This caused his body to momentarily lose balance and stagger.

Lee Chan-seo quickly reached out and grabbed his wrist, but the fact that Lee Chan-seo was crouching down presented another problem.

“Oof!”

With Jae-seo’s weight added, Lee Chan-seo also lost balance, and eventually the two of them sat down hard with a thud.

Fortunately, they avoided the misfortune of toppling onto someone else’s body like yesterday, but instead, their faces were so close they were nearly touching noses.

…Ah, so this was the goal.

I thought minors were excluded from targets?

He mentally demanded answers from some unknown entity while urgently pulling his body back.

Lee Chan-seo, belatedly flustered, blinked slowly.

“Sorry.

I’m a bit ticklish.”

Doing his best to act nonchalant, he said he’d try to endure this time and asked Lee Chan-seo to teach him one more time, then stood up.

Following him up, Lee Chan-seo carefully placed his hands on Jae-seo’s thigh and calf to adjust the leg position, then quickly removed them.

Seeing through the mirror that Lee Chan-seo’s ears had turned red, Jae-seo muttered under his breath, chewing on his words.

This crazy perverted psycho game.

***

There was no time to be awkward with Lee Chan-seo, as Yoon Ji-heon soon called them together.

They were practicing formations and coordinating the choreography as a group ahead of dance training when, seemingly before they knew it, dance trainer Eum Yu-sol opened the practice room door and entered.

They immediately stopped the music that had been playing, formed ranks, and greeted him.

Eum Yu-sol gestured with his hand and sat down on a chair.

“Wow, I’d heard rumors, but what kind of combination is this?

Who picked the team?”

When Seo Jun-jae raised his hand, Eum Yu-sol made an “Ahh” sound as if understanding.

“So this is the center privilege!

Right, you have to pick members like this for it to really be a privilege.”

Smiling as if amused, Eum Yu-sol looked over the paper handed to him by a staff member, and soon a complicated expression appeared on his face.

“Hmm…

You decided to do ‘July Snow’?”

In a voice that openly expressed regret, he scanned us briefly, then shook his head to erase that expression and clicked the pen in his hand a couple of times.

“Let’s see it first, then talk.”

At Eum Yu-sol’s words, they all moved in unison to form the starting formation for ‘July Snow’—a straight line—and waited for the music.

Soon the intro began playing loudly, and watching the people in front pop out left and right to the beat, Jae-seo bit his lip tightly.

No matter how he thought about it, this was too embarrassing a move for grown adults to perform with a straight face.

At least his position was at the very end, so he could maintain the popped-out posture for a shorter time compared to others—that was fortunate, if you could call it that.

Should I thank Seo Jun-jae for making me take sub-vocal 2, even if late?

He was thinking this when, following his cue, he popped out to the right, then immediately moved his leg widely to shift to the left end and extended his arm.

The next move was the one he’d first learned from Seo Jun-jae—bending his elbow at a right angle.

At that moment, he turned his head and made eye contact with Eum Yu-sol.

The trainer stared intently at him as he nervously moved his arm, then soon shifted his gaze to other team members.

Jae-seo breathed an inward sigh of relief and continued with the choreography.

As he danced for three minutes and thirteen seconds, despite some rather embarrassing incidents occurring, he felt it was a good thing he’d learned from Seo Jun-jae and Lee Chan-seo.

Because whenever the moves he struggled with came up, Eum Yu-sol happened to look his way—whether by chance or another trick of the game, he didn’t know.

Even during the most problematic moves—the chest thrust and the half-bent left leg—Eum Yu-sol made a not-bad expression and turned away.

Near the end of the song, they gathered in a circle in the final formation.

Beyond his catching-his-breath teammates, he heard faint applause.

Dispersing from the formation and lining up, he saw Eum Yu-sol clapping his hands together with a satisfied expression.

“The choreography matches well, the formations are good—you’re the best among the teams I’ve seen so far.”

His sharply slanted eyes curved gently, and a pleasant laugh flowed out.

“Young-bin.”

“Yes!”

“I was most worried about you before seeing it, but I can see you worked hard.

Well done.”

“…Thank you!”

As Jang Young-bin bowed deeply, his voice trembling as if on the verge of tears, Yoon Ji-heon beside him reached out and patted his back lightly.

Praised for the dance he’d always lacked confidence in, he finally burst into tears.

Seeing Jang Young-bin unable to raise his head from his bow, Eum Yu-sol’s eyebrows drooped as if he too felt a lump in his throat, and he added another compliment, saying he’d really done well.

Only after a long while did Jang Young-bin seem to calm down, raising his head with reddened eyes and repeatedly shouting his thanks.

Eum Yu-sol nodded with a warm gaze and shifted his eyes sideways.

“Jin-woo, as I’ve said before, you have a habit of letting your movements trail off at the ends.

Compared to last time, you’ve improved a lot, but….”

Clicking his pen as if pondering, Eum Yu-sol sucked in a breath and soon continued.

“There was a solo part in the second verse, right?

Try dancing that part.”

Flustered for a moment at the instruction that hadn’t been given in previous rounds, Ha Jin-woo soon began singing that part and dancing.

Just before Ha Jin-woo withdrew his extended hand at the end, Eum Yu-sol shouted “Stop!”

“There, after you twist your wrist and extend!

You have to fully articulate to the fingertips before bringing your arm in.”

Eum Yu-sol demonstrated by moving his own arm as he continued explaining.

“You do well up to the twist, but the movement collapses when you extend.

I saw that in several places, so keep it in mind while you practice, alright?”

“Yes, understood.

Thank you!”

Eum Yu-sol gestured with his hand in lieu of a reply to Ha Jin-woo’s thanks, then scanned the team members before stopping his gaze on Jae-seo.

Meeting those sharp, upturned eyes, Jae-seo’s throat went dry with tension.

“Next is… Jae-seo?”

Eum Yu-sol clicked his pen again and looked down at the paper in his hand.

“I don’t know if I should say this, but Jin-woong hyung praised you so much before.”

As he spoke, Eum Yu-sol lifted his head.

His sharp gaze shot straight toward Jae-seo.

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure about it?”

The sharply angled eyes then softened.

“But today, I think I get it.”

Staring blankly at Eum Yu-sol, who broke into a broad smile with a satisfied expression, Jae-seo felt a tap on his right side.

Coming to his senses, he hurriedly bowed and blurted out his thanks.

“I definitely remember you not being good at dancing, but you’ve improved a lot.”

“Thank you.”

“How did you improve so quickly?”

At Eum Yu-sol’s rhetorical question, Jae-seo involuntarily turned his head to the right, searching for the reason.

Feeling his gaze, Seo Jun-jae turned and made eye contact.

Then he smiled, his eyes curving, and amazingly, it seemed genuinely happy.

Flustered by how different this was from usual, Jae-seo blurted out an answer.

“Seo Jun-jae helped me a lot.”

At the same time, he felt sincerity in the low laugh from beside him, and his eyes blinked wide.