Morning arrived on the island with birdsong, soft light, and the immediate resumption of chaos.
"Guys." The Taylor Swift trainee sat up with the energy of a man who had spent his sleeping hours reaching a conclusion. "I slept on it. I thought about it deeply. And I am more convinced than ever — we should do 'Look What You Made Me Do.'"
"Too Taylor Swift," Mikko said, without looking up. "Next."
"IT'S BY TAYLOR SWIFT, THAT'S THE WHOLE—"
"NEXT."
"Okay, okay — hear me out," the same trainee pivoted with the resilience of someone who had not come here to give up. "Imagine. All of us. Simultaneously. 'I'm the shit! I'm the SHIT!'"
A beat.
"Gnarly by KATSEYE?" someone recognized.
"The vision is THERE—"
"I," Liam said, with the calm, unshakeable confidence of a man fully at peace with his own excellence, "am not going to stand on a stage and sing about being the shit, when I already know that I am."
The room absorbed this.
"Humble much?" one of the OG trainees said.
"Just spitting facts," Liam said smugly. Annoyingly, completely, unrepentantly smugly.
He turned around.
The trainee behind him had already raised a hand — the instinctive, fully committed motion of someone who had been pushed to their limit —
Liam turned back.
The hand was suddenly running through hair. Casual. Natural. The picture of a man who had simply been tending to his appearance and nothing else whatsoever.
Liam narrowed his eyes slightly.
The trainee maintained eye contact with the middle distance and continued grooming hair that did not need grooming.
The moment passed.
"What about 'Thank You, Next?'" someone offered. "Ariana? It's iconic, it's performable, it's—"
"Most of us here," Mikko said, with the measured authority of a man consulting statistics, "do not have even half the number of exes required to sing that song with any credibility whatsoever." He shook his head. "Nope." A beat, perfectly timed. "Thank you. Next."
The room groaned and laughed simultaneously.
The Taylor Swift trainee put his head in his hands.
The debate, faithful and relentless as ever, carried on.
****
Half the day had already been sacrificed on the altar of indecision.
With no agreement in sight and the very real threat of being completely unproductive hanging over their heads, the group made the executive decision to table the song debate and go rehearse their first performance instead. At least that way the day wouldn't be a total loss. Their first performance was, after all, far from perfect and very much in need of the attention.
Lunch happened. Bodies were refueled. And then everyone reconvened in the studio, sat themselves down in a circle on the floor, and put their serious faces on.
Relatively.
"Alright," Liam said, scanning the circle with the energy of a man presiding over a council of disasters. "We are halfway through the day and we still don't have a song. Mostly because everything suggested has either not landed or has been completely wack."
He did look at Taylor when he said this.
"HOW," Taylor said, sitting up straighter, "is Taylor Swift wack. Like, be for real right now."
"How many exes have you had?" Mikko asked, with the measured calm of a lawyer approaching the stand.
Taylor opened his mouth.
"...None."
"Your honor," Mikko said, turning to the invisible court, "the case rests. No further questions."
"SHIT HEADS." Liam's voice cut through the proceedings. "Heads in the game. Right now. Be serious. I would genuinely rather check myself into a mental facility than walk onto a stage unprepared."
"Angy," Lemon said, with the gentle sincerity of a man who meant well and also absolutely did not, "I genuinely think that might be for the best."
"Would you like to be the first one in?" Liam growled.
"DADDY." Lemon pivoted immediately, taking shelter behind Fahad with the practiced ease of someone who had performed this exact maneuver many times before. "Angy is angy again."
Now. Fahad.
Fahad, who Lemon calls daddy — and before any further confusion sets in, the explanation is simply this: Fahad is built. Hella ripped without tipping into overwhelming. Handsome. The kind of presence that rearranges a room just by entering it. And he very much plays for the other team, which is a whole layered thing considering he is also a devout Muslim navigating that with the quiet, personal complexity it deserves.
He and Lemon are roommates.
Historians would note that they are very good, very close "friends."
How close? This author will leave that conclusion entirely to you. Just know that "friends" is doing considerable heavy lifting in that sentence, and everyone in the house is aware of it, and nobody is saying anything, and somehow that's exactly right.
And while we're here — Liam, Lemon, and Taylor are absolutely daddies in their own right as well, just across a beautifully multifaceted spectrum. If you need a visual — think Powerpuff Girls, boy version, make it sexy. Taylor is Blossom. Lemon is Bubbles. Fahad is Buttercup. And Liam is Professor X, if Professor X had anger management homework and was working through it publicly.
You are permitted to thirst. Z would agree with you wholeheartedly and without shame.
Anyway.
While the debate continued its natural cycle of going nowhere, Mikko's peripheral vision caught something.
Zen. Sitting quietly in the circle. Hand raised. Had been raised, actually, for a little while now. Waiting. Patient in the way Zen was patient about everything — without resentment, without urgency, just simply there, available, whenever someone was ready to notice.
Mikko noticed.
"EVERYONE SHUT UP." The room shut up. "Zen has something to say."
Every head turned.
Zen turned to Mikko and mouthed a quiet thank you.
Something moved in Mikko's chest — warm and certain and quietly significant. A mouth moving. Words shaped, even silently. It wasn't the voice yet, but it was facing the right direction.
The promise, still intact.
Zen's phone spoke for him.
"I've been thinking — our first performance is very heavy on dance and spectacle. So what if our second performance is the complete opposite? Strip it back. Make it intimate. Just us, standing there, and our voices."
The circle went quiet in the way it does when something lands properly.
"That actually makes sense," Lemon said, nodding slowly.
"I'm with it," Fahad said. "We don't have to build a whole second set of choreography, and we get to show a completely different side. Smart."
"Not gonna lie," Taylor said, head nodding with increasing conviction, "that's kind of genius."
A beat.
Then Liam, which made everyone in the circle go slightly still with surprise —
"What song did you have in mind?"
****
Zen, practically vibrating with quiet excitement, grabbed his tablet and held it up for the group.
The circle went silent.
Not the contemplative kind. Not the impressed kind.
The stunned, wide-eyed, should-probably-look-away-but-physically-cannot kind.
Several seconds passed. Nobody spoke. The expressions around the circle ranged from mildly traumatized to deeply conflicted about what they were currently reading.
"Olaf." Mikko's voice came out very carefully, the voice of a man choosing his words with surgical precision while clearly processing something. He looked, genuinely, like he needed a moment. "I know you and I are both a little messed up in the head. But some things we keep to ourselves, yeah?"
Zen blinked. Tilted his head. Looked at the tablet.
Looked at what was actually on the screen.
"...Oh."
Not through the phone. Just — oh. Small. Quiet. The sound of someone understanding exactly why the room looked the way it did.
On the tablet, plain as day, was a document containing research notes that included phrases along the lines of — something something alpha... something something omega... pheromones... knotting...
For those of you who know, you know. Congratulations on your slightly chaotic reading history. You are not alone and this is a judgment-free zone.
Zen grabbed his phone immediately, ears presumably very warm beneath that serene expression, and let it speak for him.
"Sorry. I was doing research on omegaverse for a thesis paper that's due very soon."
"...For what purpose, exactly," Mikko asked, "are you researching that."
"Most relationships depicted in omegaverse fiction are built on Stockholm syndrome, manipulation, and coercion — dressed up in romantic framing," Zen's phone answered, with the composed academic tone of someone who had clearly thought about this at length. "I'm writing about how the genre uses literary and romantic aesthetics to normalize those dynamics. It's for my psychology thesis."
A beat.
"Wait." Lemon sat up. "You have a thesis due. You're still in school?"
Zen nodded. Phone up.
"Final year of psychology. My university was kind enough to let me do online classes while I pursue my dream here at LEAVEN."
"The— what?" Liam stared at him with the expression of a man whose brain was doing emergency calculations. "How are you managing both at the same time? Training here is hell on its own."
"It's manageable," Zen's phone said.
Simply. Completely. As if that was a full and sufficient answer.
The circle sat with that for a moment.
And then Zen, without further comment on the matter, scrolled to the correct tab on his tablet and held it up.
There it was. Written cleanly across the screen.
Gravity — Sarah Bareilles
"Sarah Bareilles?" Taylor said.
"Who's that?" Lemon asked.
"Was she famous?" Fahad added.
Mikko turned to look at the three of them with the slow, pained expression of a man receiving difficult news about the state of the world.
"How old are you three?"
"Nineteen," all three answered. Simultaneously. Without hesitation.
"Ah." Mikko nodded. Once. The nod of painful realization and reluctant acceptance. "That explains it. That song came out the year you were all born."
"Bro," Lemon said, with zero hesitation, "if you know that song that means you're basically ancient."
"Has anyone ever told you to stop talking?" Mikko asked. "Like, permanently?"
"Always, actually," Lemon said, with the serene pride of someone who considered this a compliment. "What can I say? I was born a yapper. It's a gift."
"Lemon," Liam said, pinching the bridge of his nose with the exhausted patience of a man who had been dealing with this for months and had accepted it as his cross to bear, "that is absolutely not the win you think it is."
****
PS-
Lemon's actual name is Lamentations.
Also, a little added info for you:
Lemon — Canadian 🇨🇦
Taylor — American 🇺🇸
Fahad — Indian 🇮🇳
Liam — Malaysian-Polish 🇲🇾🇵🇱