June was now back in their dorms and was determining what his new upgrade meant.
At first, he thought that his stats would only go up to an A+, similar to a school grading system. However, it surpassed his expectations; and now, almost all his stats were at the S-tier.
It seemed like it still wasn't over, though.
What was X supposed to mean?
"X?" he muttered, wondering if it was a good thing or not. He tried asking Fu over and over again, but the pesky system didn't reply.
He locked his door and opened the window before whipping out his phone and pressing the record button.
He sang a little bit of 'Luster' to see if there was a difference in his vocal skill. However, as he played back the recording, he didn't find any changes at all. In fact, he could hear a bit of fatigue in his voice due to singing three songs in the past few hours.
"What the heck?" he asked himself.
"What does this mean?"
***
One week later.
"Wake up! Everybody rise and shine. It's the day of our comeback!" Akira cheerily knocked on all of his teammates' doors.
June got up with a small frown. He glared at Akira while the latter merely stared at him with innocent eyes.
"What?" Akira asked.
"It's…," June glanced at the wall clock. "3:30 in the morning."
"Yeah…," Akira trailed off. "So, what?"
June sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.
At that moment, the other members also started going out of their rooms, all of them in grumpy dispositions like June.
"Akira!" Zeth exclaimed. "I was having my beauty sleep."
"I was only about to sleep," Jisung sighed. "You woke me up just when I was feeling myself falling asleep!"
"What are you even doing at this time?" Ren asked.
Jisung sheepishly smiled. "Playing games."
Ren shook his head in amusement. "Kids," he muttered.
Jaeyong slapped his cheeks awake while subtly glaring at Akira.
"What the heck did you wake us up so early for!"
"It's our comeback day!" Akira excitedly said in a sing-song tone, skipping around the room.
"We know that," June deadpanned. "Now, I'm going back to sleep."
Akira clicked his tongue and held onto June's arms. "You don't look excited at all! Where's the spirit?"
"We'll have the spirit earlier," Sehun said, yawning. "Let us rest, Akira. We still have a schedule later."
"Exactly!" Akira exclaimed. "We're going to have our comeback live and wait for the release of the music video along with our fans."
"Yeah…," Ren said, holding onto Akira's shoulders and crazily shaking him. "At 5 PM! Our music video is going to be released at 6 in the evening!"
"Oh," Akira said, covering his mouth in shock. "It wasn't 5 AM?"
The members sighed collectively before wordlessly going back to their rooms.
Akira pursed his lips and held onto Jisung's arm. "It was an honest mistake?" he said in an unsure tone.
Jisung shook his head in disappointment before going back to his room.
"We could still bring up the fighting spirit! The earlier the better! Right, guys?"
Akira was met with cricket sounds.
"Guys?"
***
Fortunately, Akira didn't bother them throughout the day, so they were able to get proper sleep before their comeback livestream commenced.
They were in one of Azure's large conference rooms, where it was decorated similarly to their music video.
The staff members busily prepared everything while the cameramen and sound team set up their equipment.
Meanwhile, sitting in the middle of the room in beanbags were the members of EVE, looking like a bunch of lost chicks in the busy atmosphere.
"Should we help?" Sehun guiltily asked.
"Nah," Akira shook his head, eating the snack that the production crew had prepared for them. "Us not moving is helping them. We should just stay still."
"Yeah," Ren said, nodding in agreement.
Meanwhile, June was silent throughout their conversation.
"Are you okay?" Jisung asked, nudging his shoulder.
"Huh?" June asked, snapping out of his thoughts. "Yeah, I'm fine."
"No, you're not," Jisung said, narrowing his eyes suspiciously. "You haven't talked all day!"
The other members, too, exclaimed in agreement with Jisung's statement.
"I don't normally talk a lot," June deadpanned.
"Yeah, but you haven't spoken a word! Not a single one throughout the day except when I annoyed you this morning. At this point, your saliva is going to rot, and you'll have bad breath," Akira said.
"June's breath will never smell!" Casper defended.
June shook his head, finding their conversation ridiculous.
"Shut up. I'm just—I'm nervous, I guess," June said the statement really quickly, so it was hard to decipher his words.
Casper, however, understood it right away.
"You're nervous?" Casper exclaimed.
The other members gasped in shock.
"June's nervous?" Akira asked. "I'm not nervous at all! Should I be worried?" he asked.
June sighed and leaned against his bean bag.
It was true that he was nervous. In fact, he was actually even more nervous about this comeback compared to their debut album. They had broken so many records in their last album, so he felt like they would be very difficult to top. Moreover, they actually participated in writing a song for the album this time, which added to his nervousness.
"Don't be nervous!" Casper said. "We're here."
"It's not that," June responded. "I'm nervous about the results of the comeback."
Jaeyong pursed his lips. "Now that you've said it, I'm quite nervous too. I still feel pretty hesitant about the title track. For some reason, it still doesn't feel like 'us.' Still, it's much better than the first version we've heard, so I'm thankful for that."
"The company sucks ass," Akira said. "Luster should have been the title track. Nonetheless, everything is finished now, so we can't really do anything about it. Instead, let's do our best and enjoy this comeback. If we enjoy things, then it's bound to be great, right? That's what you told me before, June."
June smiled at Akira's sentimental statement.
"Yeah," he said. "Let's just enjoy it."
"Are you boys ready?" Jay asked, interrupting their conversation.
The crew members cleared out the table of their snacks and prepared to start the livestream.
It was a livestream with the fans, designed for them to countdown to the time the album dropped, which was an hour away from the current time.
"We're ready," Jaeyong responded for the team.
"Good," Jay said, showing them thumbs up. "We're going live, boys!"
"In three…two…one…"
