KickiPop™ Chronicles #4 Blog – Finding Their Rhythm

By the end of their second full week at Harmony High, the girls realized one thing very quickly: this wasn’t just a school. It was an entire city.

A Campus Like a City

The sprawling campus was truly like its own bustling city. With glass-walled music room, library, gym and sound proof recording booths on one side, a state-of-the-art theater, lecture halls on the other, even meditation rooms in one wing, but who had time for that? Classrooms scattered across courtyards dotted with palm trees, getting from one class to the next was no easy feat.

Catalina checked her schedule one morning and groaned. “Math in the east wing, and then science all the way across campus in five minutes? Impossible.”

Aya shook her head. “I feel like I need to start training as a marathon runner.”

“Forget marathon runner,” Prisha said, tightening her backpack straps. “Try sprinter.”

Miyoshi smiled faintly. “We’ll adapt. That’s what performers do.”

It was true—by the end of the second week, they were already learning the shortcuts: a stairwell tucked behind the dance building, a breezeway that cut their walking/ sprint time in half. Every hallway had its own rhythm, every classroom its own set of demands.

The Workload Reality

Each teacher had made one thing painfully clear: Harmony High students were expected to be the best, and being the best required work.

Catalina’s literature teacher handed out a reading list thicker than her summer journal. Aya’s history class began with a twenty-question pop quiz. Melody’s theory teacher gave them Beethoven's 5th symphony to analyze by Monday, for fun. And that was just the third week.

By the time lunch rolled around, the girls were carrying stacks of syllabi, handouts, and assignments that felt heavier than their backpacks.

“Do they not want us to have a life?” Aya muttered, dropping her binder onto the cafeteria table.

Melody smirked. “Nope. This is our life now.”

“Good thing we’ve got each other,” Prisha said, pulling out her neatly highlighted planner. “If we keep ourselves organized, we can manage it.”

Aya raised an eyebrow. “Planner girl, huh?”

Prisha grinned. “Absolutely. I live by my planner.”

The others laughed, grateful for her steadying presence.

The Lunchroom Roar

The cafeteria was unlike anything they had experienced in middle school. It was a vast, two-story space with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the palm-tree courtyard.

But inside, the noise was deafening. Hundreds of voices overlapped—laughing, shouting, singing, even rehearsing lines from plays.

The five girls huddled at one of the corner tables, Aya and Prisha secured, the girls would take turns putting their hands up to their mouth as if they were forming a megaphone trying to make themselves heard.

“This is insane!” Aya shouted over the roar of the cafeteria.

Catalina leaned closer. “What did you say?”

“I said—THIS IS INSANE!” Aya repeated loudly, causing them all to burst out laughing.

Melody shook her head. “We’re going to have to learn to lip-read if we want to survive in here.”

Despite the chaos, there was comfort in sharing the table. It was their little island in the storm.

Exhaustion and Determination

By midweek, exhaustion had set in. The early mornings, the long classes, the endless running back and forth—it all piled up quickly.

Catalina admitted one night over the phone, “I feel like I’m drowning.”

“You’re not,” Aya reassured her. “You’re just swimming in the deep end for the first time.”

Meanwhile, Melody was already feeling the extra pressure of being the music teacher’s daughter. She knew everyone’s eyes were on her, waiting to see if she’d live up to the McCarthy name. You see exceptional students, needed exceptional teachers and Mrs. McCarthy embodied it, she spent her young adult years performing on Broadway.

“I can’t mess up,” she confided quietly during one hallway meet-up.

“You won’t,” Miyoshi said simply, her calm voice steady as always. “And even if you do, you're only human.”

That was the thing about Miyoshi—she didn’t say much, but when she did, it mattered.

Hallway Check-Ins

Between classes, the girls developed a routine of checking in with each other whenever they could.

“Math is brutal,” Catalina said one day, collapsing against a locker.

“History is worse,” Aya countered. “Pop quizzes already? Who does that?”

Prisha lifted her chin. “Chemistry. Don’t even ask.”

Melody sighed. “Theory class. I think my brain short-circuited halfway through.”

Miyoshi simply nodded. “It’s difficult. But not impossible.”

Their laughter and complaints echoed through the hallways, a reminder that they weren’t alone in this. Even when the workload felt crushing, the friendship made it lighter.

Glimpses of Friendship

One afternoon, as they gathered their things between classes, Aya asked, “Do you ever feel like we were all meant to end up here together?”

Catalina tilted her head. “What do you mean?”

“Well, think about it. Five totally different girls, from different families, with different backgrounds… but somehow we’re all in the same place, at the same time. And look how we gravitated towards each other on the first day. Doesn’t that feel like more than coincidence?”

Melody smiled. “It feels like fate.”

“Or destiny,” Prisha added softly.

Miyoshi nodded. “Something bigger than us.”

They exchanged a look, the kind of look that seals a silent promise. Whatever challenges came their way, they would face them together.

Settling Into the Rhythm

By the end of the third week, the girls were still tired, still overwhelmed, but they were also starting to find their rhythm. They knew which shortcuts to take between classes, which teachers gave pop quizzes, and which vending machines actually worked.

It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t supposed to be. But it was theirs.

And underneath all the exhaustion, there was excitement—because something extraordinary was beginning to stir between them.

✨ To be continued in Blog Post 4: “The Music That Binds Us.”