And so, for the next three hours, Johnny taught June the choreography for the entire signal song.
Now, you may say that for professionals such as these guys, three hours is more than enough to learn a whole-ass choreography for a four-minute song, right?
Well, considering June's past experience in the industry, I'd say that would be a pretty reasonable assumption, with a few minutes to spare.
That is to say, if this signal song were your typical signal song.
But here's the thing.
We have already established this many times before.
The signal song isn't just your typical signal song.
The song had four major types of dance.
Starting off with jazz funk, then hip-hop with different styles blended together, followed by ballroom, a freestyle section, contemporary, and finally, the last chorus, which was basically the glorious amalgamation of every single style they'd learned.
So... yeah.
There you have it, folks.
A signal song that wasn't only technically demanding in singing, but in dance as well.
"Five, six, seven, eight!"
Johnny clapped his hands, his voice echoing through the very large dance studio.
"This is who we are... ka-ka-ka, turn. Pump, two, three. Up, up, up... cross, and six, seven, eight..."
Johnny demonstrated the steps slowly, making sure June was following along and getting each movement right.
"Ba-da-da-da-da, reach! Step, da-da-da-da, reach!"
"Hand a little higher. More. Yep, that's perfect!"
"So, ha. Ha. Ha. Ba-ba, seven, eight."
By the end of the first forty-five minutes, June had mastered the final chorus.
But not without considerable effort.
I mean, forty-five minutes to master an entire chorus made up of multiple dance styles was pretty damn impressive, but June felt like his lungs were already on fire.
He was panting heavily, hunched over with his hands braced against his knees.
"Who in the world choreographed this?" June wheezed.
"I know, right?" Johnny couldn't help but laugh because he remembered feeling the exact same way when they first started learning the choreography. "It's one hell of a brutal choreo. I mean, Sir Foca was the one who made it, so I guess it's only natural."
"Ahh..." June straightened slightly, still trying to catch his breath. "Now it makes sense."
Although June had past experience in the industry, he never really felt like he had an advantage over the others.
Because LEAVEN made him do things he had never experienced back when he was an idol.
Like ballet.
Mandatory ballet training, to be exact.
The concept of training in ballet was completely foreign to him because the industry he'd come from had never required anything like that.
And so June panted as he felt his muscles burn.
Muscles that he normally never heard scream at him were now screaming like they had a personal vendetta.
Apparently, they had been waiting all this time to file a formal complaint.
Johnny started teaching the final chorus first because every single trainee would be part of it. It was just a matter of who would be placed in the front and who would be relegated to the back.
After running through the final chorus once again, Johnny moved on to the hip-hop section, where he already knew it would be a walk in the park for June.
And what do you know?
After just twenty minutes, June had already mastered and memorized the entire section.
"Dude, what even are you?" Johnny asked, looking over at June with genuine concern. "Is there nothing you can't do?"
June chuckled.
"Oh, trust me. There's a lot."
And there was.
A lot indeed.
Jazz funk proved to be more of a challenge for June because of the quick transitions between hard, sharp movements and soft, graceful ones.
But June being June, he managed to learn and master the choreography in thirty minutes.
And then came the real challenge.
Ballroom.
"Three, four! Cha-cha-cha! And step, front, back, front, back, and flick! Turn, and three, four!"
Johnny patiently taught June the steps, going slowly and repeating the sequence until June could memorize it.
Which, to June's credit, he did.
No problem.
Only if it were that easy.
Yeah, June managed to learn the entire sequence. Every step was perfectly mapped out inside his brain.
The problem?
His brain and his body apparently weren't on speaking terms.
He knew what he was supposed to be doing.
His body, however, had apparently received a completely different memo.
June watched himself in the mirror as he danced, and the longer he watched, the more his frown deepened.
Why did Johnny look so good doing it?
And why did June look like someone had replaced his skeleton with a broomstick?
He and Johnny ran through the section a few more times, and with every run, June somehow looked progressively more awkward than the last.
"Ahhh... Why doesn't it feel right when I do it?" June groaned, frustration thick in his voice.
"Well, for one, I think you feel awkward because you're not really comfortable with hip movements yet," Johnny explained. "Since we're doing a lot of Latin ballroom in this section, there's a lot of hip movement. It's basically a standard part of the style."
"I don't know. Why aren't my hips moving the way I want them to?"
"C'mon," Johnny said encouragingly. "Let's loosen those hips."
Johnny moved behind June and placed his hands on June's hips.
June immediately stiffened and flinched at the unexpected touch.
Their bodies were close enough that June could feel the heat radiating from Johnny's body.
And then, slowly, Johnny guided June's hips.
"Don't move your whole torso. Just the hips," Johnny said.
June could feel Johnny's warm breath against his ear.
"That's it."
"That's it."
"Slowly."
"There you go. Now you're getting the feel of it."
To anyone watching from a third-person perspective, this looked like an extremely intimate scene.
But it wasn't.
It was just one bro teaching another bro how to do the eight hip movements known to be used in practically every Latin ballroom style.
Completely innocent.
Entirely educational.
Nothing to see here.
Absolutely nothing.
Meanwhile, outside the studio, Kitty was minding their own business, casually scrolling through their phone as they walked down the hallway.
They passed the dance studio.
Then froze.
Kitty slowly turned their head.
They had heard something.
Kitty took one step backward.
Then another.
No.
Surely not.
They were not hearing things.
There were soft, muffled sounds coming from inside the studio.
Kitty's eyes widened.
They carefully leaned their ear against the door.
Their eyes widened even further.
Then they slapped a hand over their mouth and gasped dramatically.
"What do you mean, 'that's it'?!"
Kitty's whisper came out scandalously loud.
"What's going slow?! What do you mean 'getting a feel of it'?!"
Their eyes practically bulged out of their skull.
"Oh my God!"
Kitty looked around the hallway as though they had just stumbled upon a federal crime.
"There's actually people with the audacity to do it in the dance studio?! Out in the open?! In front of my salad?!"
Kitty paused.
Then remembered they had finished their salad at the cafeteria an hour ago.
"...Wait."
A beat.
"Never mind."
From inside the studio came another sound.
"Ah, fuckkk... Why is it so hard?" June groaned.
"Don't worry, you're getting the hang of it," Johnny chuckled.
Kitty's soul nearly left their body.
Their eyes bulged so far out of their sockets they were practically trying to escape the building without them.
"Biiiiiiiiiiittttttcccccchhhhhh!"
Kitty hissed, clutching their chest in absolute scandal.
The hallway remained silent.
The universe remained silent.
Somewhere, God was probably reconsidering giving Kitty free will.
****
And so, in their ever-dramatic fashion, Kitty decided to GTFO of there ASAP.
Unfortunately, in their desperate attempt to escape the scene of the crime, they tripped over absolutely nothing.
Nothing.
Not a bag. Not a shoe. Not even a suspiciously placed water bottle.
Absolutely. Fucking. Nothing.
"Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"
Their scream echoed throughout the hallway, loud enough to make Johnny and June jump in surprise inside the studio.
"The hell was that?" Johnny asked, looking toward the door in confusion.
"It sounds like someone's dying," June said, already rushing toward the door.
The moment he opened it, however, it became very clear that no one was dying.
It was just Kitty being Kitty.
Johnny stared down at Kitty, who was sprawled across the floor in a position that somehow looked less like a fall and more like they were posing for Vogue's annual 'Most Dramatic Person Alive' issue.
"Kitty, are you okay?" Johnny asked, concern creeping into his voice.
"No, I am not okay! Okay?!" Kitty hissed. "I tripped!"
"Y-you tripped?" Johnny repeated.
"Yes! I did, in fact, trip!" Kitty said dramatically. "On what, you might ask? Well..."
Kitty dramatically lifted a finger toward the ceiling.
"I tripped on life!"
June blinked.
"You tripped... on life?"
"Yes! Because both of you nasty, horny motherfuckers can't keep it in your pants and decided to do the nasty in the dance studio!" Kitty accused, pointing at June and Johnny. "How am I ever supposed to dance in that studio again?!"
"Huh?" Johnny and June said practically in unison.
June stared at Kitty for a moment before the realization finally hit him.
"Wait, Kitty, I think there's been a misunderstanding."
He approached them, reaching down with the intention of helping them up.
Kitty immediately hissed like an angry cat.
"Stay away from me!"
They brandished their long, pointy acrylic nails like tiny, glittering weapons.
June immediately stopped.
"Okay, okay..."
He slowly raised both hands in surrender.
Kitty scrambled to their feet, dusted themselves off, and then turned their full, accusing glare toward June and Johnny.
"Not a single thing will be said about what has transpired here," Kitty declared. "And I will not tell a single soul about what you two nasty fuckers did in this studio. Are we CLEAR?!"
Neither June nor Johnny had even managed to formulate a response before Kitty spun around and started sashaying down the hallway, their eyes already glued back to their phone as though they hadn't just accused two innocent men of committing a felony against dance etiquette.
June and Johnny simply stared at Kitty's retreating back.
"What in the world just happened?" June asked breathlessly.
Johnny watched Kitty disappear around the corner.
"I think Hurricane Kitty just passed."
A beat.
"And, as per usual, nothing makes sense."
And so, after a few minutes of attempting to digest what had just happened and epically failing, June and Johnny decided to head back inside the studio.
They moved on to contemporary.
Which, by the end of it, left June's entire body aching.
Every.
Single.
Muscle.
Why did June decide to learn every section, you might ask, when he could simply focus on the sections he was already good at?
Well, the answer was simple.
It was the same for everyone.
The more sections they could perform, the more opportunities they had to appear on screen in the music video.
And if there was one thing June understood about this competition, it was that screen time was basically currency.