By day five of practice, it was clear that Team A had a problem.
Actually, they had several. But the main one was this: they could not get through the full sixty seconds without something going wrong.
Not the same thing every time. That would have been easier to fix. It was always something different: Mika rushing the beat, Yuna shrinking at the wrong moment, the spacing falling apart in the back half, or Sora going slightly off-formation in a way that looked intentional but threw everyone else off anyway.
It was day five and they had nine days left.
This is fine.
This is absolutely fine.
We have nine days.
...Nine days is not that many days.
Aoi sat on the floor during the water break, staring at the ceiling. Next to her, Mika was lying flat on her back with her arm over her eyes.
"I rushed it again," Mika said. Not a question.
"A little," Aoi said.
"How much is a little."
"...More than a little."
"Great. Cool. Love that for me."
( -_-) Mika : *stares at ceiling*
( -_-) Mika : *continues staring at ceiling*
Across the room, Reina was reviewing something on her phone. At the start of practice she'd quietly asked Yuna to record their runs, no explanation, just handed her the phone and pointed at the corner with the best angle. Yuna had done it without question. Now Reina watched the footage twice, rewound, watched again. Her face gave nothing away.
Yuna was in the corner doing breathing exercises. She'd started doing them after every run, which Aoi had noticed but hadn't asked about yet.
Sora was stretching by the window, looking out at the street below like she was thinking about something that had nothing to do with any of this.
We're five people in the same room and we're barely in the same world right now.
— — —
Reina set her phone down.
"I know what the problem is."
Everyone looked at her.
"It's not the timing. It's not the formation. Those are symptoms." She stood up and walked to the center of the room. "The problem is that we're performing next to each other. Not with each other."
Silence.
"What's the difference?" Mika asked.
"When you perform next to someone, you're aware of them the way you're aware of a wall. You adjust around them. You try not to bump into them." Reina paused. "When you perform with someone, you feel when they shift half a beat before they do. You catch each other without looking. It's completely different."
Another silence. The kind where everyone was processing something true that they didn't want to fully admit.
"So how do we fix it?" Yuna asked quietly.
"We have to actually know each other," Reina said. "Not just names and rankings. Actually."
( o_o ) Mika : did reina just suggest... getting to know each other
( o_o ) Mika : emotionally
( o_o ) Mika : reina
"Are you suggesting team bonding," Aoi said slowly.
"I'm suggesting it as a technical solution," Reina said, "not a social one."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive—"
"I'm aware."
Aoi looked at her for a second.
( ^_^; ) Aoi : she said that like admitting it physically pained her
— — —
They ended practice forty minutes early and sat in a circle on the floor.
It was Mika's idea to make it an actual circle. "It feels more honest this way," she said. Nobody disagreed, mostly because nobody had a better suggestion.
"Okay," Mika said, with the energy of someone who had been waiting for exactly this kind of moment. "I'll start. I'm Tanaka Mika, I've wanted to be an idol since I was nine years old, I have two younger brothers, and I stress-eat convenience store onigiri when I'm nervous."
( ^ ^) Mika : *looks around expectantly*
A beat. Then, quieter, like it slipped out after the louder version:
"And I've never produced aura. Not once. Not a flicker. Everyone else on this team had something in the evaluation. I didn't get anything."
The circle went still.
"It doesn't mean—" Aoi started.
"I know what it means," Mika said. Not bitterly. Just honest. "It means I'm not there yet. I wanted to say it out loud so it was real and I could actually deal with it."
Nobody argued.
"Yamada Yuna," Yuna said softly, like she was reading from a script she hadn't rehearsed. "I... used to dance competitively. I stopped three years ago because of an injury. This is my first time auditioning for anything since then."
Nobody said anything for a second.
But Mika reached over and bumped her shoulder gently. Yuna looked surprised, then didn't.
"Sora," said Sora.
Everyone waited.
Sora looked around the circle. Then held up two fingers.
( . .) Sora : *two fingers*
( . .) team : ...
( . .) Sora : *still two fingers*
"Two...?" Aoi tried.
Sora nodded. Then pointed at herself. Then at the group. Then held up two fingers again.
Two... people she trusts? Two things she wants to say? Two years she's been training?
"Two years since you started performing?" Mika guessed.
Sora shook her head.
"Two people you've ever felt comfortable performing with?" Aoi tried.
Sora looked at her for a long moment. Then nodded, once, slowly.
The circle went quiet.
( ; ;) Yuna : sora...
( T_T) Mika : sora that's so—
( -_-) Sora : *already looking at the window again*
"Hoshino Aoi," Aoi said, moving them gently forward. "I wrote my first song when I was twelve. It was terrible. I still have it. I've never shown it to anyone and I don't plan to." She paused. "I came here because I have a lot of songs I haven't finished. And I thought, maybe if I was forced to perform them, I'd finally figure out how they end."
Mika stared at her.
"That's actually a really beautiful reason," Mika said.
"It's a slightly chaotic reason," Aoi said.
"Beautiful and chaotic aren't opposites."
Everyone looked at Reina. She had been sitting very still through all of this, notebook closed for once on her lap.
( -_-) Reina : *long pause*
"Kurose Reina." She said it like it was a formal introduction at a press conference. "I've been training since I was eight. My goal is to debut. That's all."
Silence
"That's... all?" Mika said.
"That's all."
Aoi watched her. There was something in the way Reina said it, flat, certain, and somehow just slightly too controlled, that made it feel like it wasn't the whole truth. Like there was a version of that answer that was longer, and she'd edited it down until only the bones were left.
She's not lying.
But she's not saying everything either.
Aoi didn't push.
But she filed it away.
— — —
The others left in twos, Mika and Yuna walking out together, already mid-conversation. Sora slipped out quietly as she always did, like smoke through a door.
Aoi was retying her shoes by the door when Reina stopped beside her.
"Your reason," Reina said. "For being here."
"What about it?"
"Unfinished songs."
"Yeah."
Reina was quiet for a moment.
"Does it bother you? That they're not finished?"
Aoi thought about it. Actually thought, not just the first answer that came to mind.
"Sometimes," she said. "But I think I'm more scared of finishing them than of leaving them open. Because if I finish them, I have to know what I actually think. About whatever I was writing about."
Reina was looking at her with an expression Aoi couldn't fully categorize. Not the usual flat attention. Something a little more careful.
"That's inefficient," Reina said.
"I know."
"You should figure out what you think first, then write."
"That's not how it works for me."
"Then how does it work."
Aoi smiled a little.
"I write until I find out."
Reina stared at her.
Then, very quietly, she said:
"That sounds exhausting."
"It is," Aoi agreed cheerfully.
( -_-) Reina : *walks away*
( -_-) Reina : *pauses at the doorway*
( -_-) Reina : *doesn't say anything*
( -_-) Reina : *leaves*
Aoi watched the empty doorway for a second.
She paused.
She definitely paused.
What was she going to say.
— — —
The next day's practice was different.
Not dramatically. Nothing clicked into place overnight and nobody suddenly became a different performer. But there was something, small and hard to name, that had shifted between the five of them.
Mika stopped rushing the second beat.
Not every time. But more than before.
Yuna stopped making herself smaller in the back half. She still looked scared, but she stopped letting the fear move her feet.
Sora. Sora did the same thing she always did. But this time, when she went slightly off-formation in the bridge, Mika caught it and adjusted without breaking pace. Like she'd been half-expecting it.
( o_o ) Sora : *continues doing her own thing*
( ^ ^;) Mika : *adjusts. again. she's learning sora's patterns.*
And Aoi, standing two spots left of center,
She stopped trying to not disappear next to Reina.
She just performed. And let whatever it was that happened when she performed, happen.
When they ran it through from top to bottom without stopping, the room went quiet at the end the same way it had gone quiet during her audition.
Reina didn't say anything.
She just wrote something in her notebook and showed it to Aoi.
It said: better.
( ^ ^) Aoi : that's the most praise reina has given anyone probably ever
— — —
After practice, Aoi was washing her hands in the bathroom down the hall when she heard voices outside the door.
Two girls. She didn't know which ones, couldn't see, and the voices were low. But she caught enough.
"—Team A ran it clean today. Did you see?"
"Yeah. Kurose is obviously carrying them."
"I don't know. The one on the left, Hoshino, she's weird to watch."
"Weird how."
"Like... you can't stop looking at her. Even though she's not doing the most."
A pause. Then:
"Sae-san's going to notice that."
"She already did. In the audition."
"Then we have a problem."
Footsteps, walking away.
Aoi stood at the sink for a moment longer than she needed to.
The water had gone cold.
We have a problem.
They said we.
Which means they're on the same team.
And they're already talking about us like we're something to deal with.
She dried her hands slowly.
Seven days left.
Whatever's coming, it's coming faster than we thought.
She walked back to the practice room.
Reina was still inside, running it from the top.
As always.
Aoi pushed the door open and walked back in.
"Again?" she asked.
"Again," Reina said.
Aoi dropped her bag. Took her position.
And they ran it again.