3 AM is such a familiar time for me lately, it doesn’t even feel like I’m staying up.

Whether it was up late practising dances or staying up to finish writing songs or just one of those rare nights where we went to bed early but I just couldn’t get myself to fall asleep.

Tonight, well technically today, I was up trying to finish the song we had to do for our next monthly evaluation.

Since writing Climax, this was the first song I had to write and nothing was coming to me. It was always easier to draw inspiration from real life experiences to write songs but I felt like I was running out of experiences to use.

I’m 17 years old and I’ve been training here in this company for the last 4 years. Being 17 I already had limited life experiences and spending my last 4 years training, cut the number of my experiences to even less.

After WIN had ended, we were supposed to go back to normal and train as if nothing had happened. But how were we supposed to go back to normal, when we had come so close to debuting? The thought of coming so close to debuting and not being able to haunts me every night. Not only my life, the lives of my five other members, my brothers would be completely different if we had not lost.

Just watching my other members train so hard and it just hurts to think that we’re only training for our next monthly evaluation and not our debut.

Being on that stage for the final battle of WIN made me realise how much I loved to be on stage. Sure, I love music and I’m sure there are whole lot of people in the world who share the same love of music that I do but it’s that thrill of being on stage with my other members that fuels the need I have to debut with Team B.

Without my members I don’t think I would want to debut as much as I do. There is nothing like being on stage with the other guys of Team B. We are all really different people but when we’re up there together, all our differences disappear and we’re like one person moving and singing together as one.

“Hyung, how long have you been up?” Junhoe asked, as he suddenly appeared disturbing me from my thoughts.

“Oh well... I never actually went to bed” I said, scratching my head in guilt.

I was constantly being nagged by my other members to go to sleep earlier as I had a habit of staying up till at least 1 AM practising or writing which always resulted in me being too tired to actually practise or write with my other members.

“Ah hyung, you know how Jinhwan hyung is going to worry if you’re tired again during practise. And you’re probably going to get sick if you keep sleeping for only three hours a day” scolded the too mature maknae.

“Sorry Junhoe, I can’t help but sleep at this time of the day. Especially after losing WIN, I feel like there is so much I have to do for us to debut but there really aren’t enough hours in the day” I sighed.

I felt slightly guilty for opening up to the maknae. Junhoe was only 16 and even though I was only a year older than him, I was more experienced with the life of an idol than he was and it wasn’t fair to burden him with my worries when I was sure he was going through a lot too.

Junhoe was always so quiet, so it was always easy to assume that he didn’t have any worries at all but of course that was never the case, especially for someone as quiet as he was.

“Hyung we don’t blame you for our loss during WIN. If anything, you were the one who helped us to improve so much in that little time. Don’t be so hard on yourself”assured Junhoe. 

 “Thanks maknae. When did you become so mature huh? Shouldn’t I be the one comforting you instead?” I teased.

“Go to bed hyung, before you say something stupid” said the maknae jokingly.

“Ah I’ll go to bed soon. I think I just came up for a song for our monthly evaluation” I said suddenly not feeling very tired as I was excited to get my ideas down.

“If you say so hyung, but get to bed soon. The less you sleep, the more Jinhwan hyung ages”

“You’re one to talk, your dark circles are even worse than mine are!”

Junhoe just poked his tongue out and got up to go to his shared bedroom.

They say you should write what you know about and although I lack in the amount of life experiences compared to normal people my age, I do know other things... Like what it’s like to participate on a TV show which basically publicises all your worries and hardships to get viewers and things like being forced to be in a group with people you wouldn’t typically see yourself with but still somehow growing so attached to them that you can’t even imagine your life if you hadn’t them and even experiencing some of the simpler things like being able to enjoy sunrise after sunrise after sunrise because you’ve been up late agonising over your future.

What can I say, you gotta take the good with the bad? 3 AM comes with its ups and downs but in the end, I think it’s completely worth it.

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Team B's Climax performance, which they performed on the finale of WIN.

This is actually one of the most saddest performances I've ever watched and the only live performance I've ever cried over.

Definitely recommend that you watch it and if you do, turn on the captions because the lyrics really add to the performance.