The stage lights dimmed.
And the anticipation? Rose like something alive.
In the waiting room, Zen had completely abandoned his thesis. Laptop still open, paper still unfinished, deadline still very much existing — none of it mattered right now. His eyes were glued to the TV screen, hands clasped together, silently, intensely, desperately cheering for his brother with everything he had.
He was, objectively, more nervous for Yen than he was for himself.
Which was adorable in that specific Zen way — quietly, completely, without making a single sound about it.
As the music started, everyone held their breath.
Verse. Pre-chorus. Everything seemingly fine. Everyone still holding said breath. Still waiting. Still bracing. Anticipating the mishap that Cat had told them was coming, that was definitely coming, that could arrive at literally any moment—
And here is where the irony of the whole situation revealed itself, sharp and a little cruel.
Because here's the thing about mishaps. A real mishap — the kind that happens in an actual performance on an actual stage — you don't see coming. You're not bracing for it. You're just performing, giving everything you have, fully present in the moment, and then something goes wrong, and then you adapt.
But telling the trainees in advance that something was going to go wrong?
That was a completely different animal.
Because now, instead of performing, they were waiting. Bracing. Every nerve tuned not to the music but to the incoming disaster they'd been promised. The anticipation playing absolute mind games with every single one of them in real time — tightening shoulders, constricting breath, pulling focus away from the performance and toward the imaginary disaster that hadn't even happened yet.
And Yen's group had the additional misfortune of going first.
Guinea pigs. The opening act of a psychological experiment nobody had fully signed up for. The group that everyone else — sitting in their own waiting rooms, watching with wide eyes — would use as a reference point for what to expect when it was their turn.
Which, predictably, did not help anyone.
It showed. Not catastrophically. Not in a way that made the performance fall apart entirely. But in the small, specific ways that trained eyes catch — a note hit slightly flat, a breath slightly too shallow, a moment where someone's focus visibly slipped for half a second. The cracks in the foundation, small but present.
Yen pushed through it. Kept his footing. Did his quiet, steady best to hold the team together when he could feel the collective morale wavering in real time — because that's just who Yen is. The pillar. Not because anyone assigned him the role but because it was simply already in him, built through years of being exactly that for Zen.
Jeremiah? Jeremiah could not be more unbothered if he tried. He was up there living his absolute best life, performing with the relaxed confidence of a man who had shown up, done the work, and even — commendably, impressively, genuinely worth acknowledging — turned down the hypersexual energy for the sake of the team. For Jeremiah, that was practically a spiritual achievement. He knew he'd done what he was supposed to do. He was good.
Louie, though.
Louie was the one who felt it the hardest.
Which made complete and total sense, if you thought about it for even a second. Because this was his second chance. He'd left. He'd come back. The weight of I cannot afford to fuck this up was sitting on every single note, making him rigid where he needed to be fluid, constricting the breathing that singing requires to be free. The overthinking was visible if you knew where to look — and the people watching knew where to look.
In the waiting rooms, trainees winced at the missed notes with the particular sympathy of people who were experiencing their own version of the same psychological trap.
Everyone was off their bonkers. Collectively. Equally. Magnificently.
When the performance ended, the disappointment settled over most of the team like weather.
They tried to mask it. Smiled through it. Stood straight through it. But the eyes don't lie, and their eyes were saying everything their faces were working hard to hide.
Except Jeremiah, who was fine. Demonstrably, peacefully, annoyingly fine.
In the waiting room, Zen had gone very still.
"Yenny..."
Barely a sound. Barely even a whisper — more like the shape of a word than the word itself, breathed out quietly into the waiting room air where nobody could really hear it.
But it was there.
His brother's name, said in a voice so small and so private that it was really just Zen's heart talking out loud.
And then — the twist that made everything land heavier than it already had.
There was no mishap.
Not a single one.
The whole performance came and went without a single technical failure, a single rogue confetti cannon, a single mic cutting out. Nothing. The stage had behaved itself completely.
The team had spent their entire performance bracing for a disaster that never showed up — and in doing so, had created a smaller, quieter disaster entirely of their own making.
The irony was not lost on anyone.
Yen stood on that stage and felt it land in his chest — the specific weight of I should have done more. Not as the leader. He wasn't the leader. But as the person who is always, automatically, constitutionally the one who holds things together when they start to slip. He'd felt the team slipping and hadn't been able to catch it fully. And that sat with him.
Loudly.
In the other waiting rooms, the surviving trainees watched all of this unfold with the wide, slightly haunted eyes of people who had just watched the psychological trap spring on someone else and were now very aware that they were standing directly in front of an identical one.
Oh.
Oh no.
We're next.
****
The critiques came.
And honestly? Nothing the evaluators said was surprising. Just disappointing in the specific, heavy way that confirmed what everyone already knew in their gut.
"Telling you about the mishaps ahead of time really did a number on all of your heads," Robin said, with the measured, honest tone of someone who genuinely respected the people she was talking to too much to sugarcoat it. One of the most trusted vocal coaches in the industry, and one of LEAVEN's own — her words carried weight precisely because she never wasted them.
"In a way," Dora added, "knowing about the impending mishaps was its own kind of challenge. A test of mental fortitude, not just performance ability."
"Truthfully," Lorelei said — rapper, vocal coach, LEAVEN's rap coach, and someone who had the particular gift of being direct without being cruel — "we thought giving you advance warning would help. We genuinely never anticipated that it might be the very thing that tripped you up. That's on us as much as it's on you."
"What I will say," Robin continued, "is that I commend every single one of you for finishing. You are all painfully, acutely aware of the mistakes that happened — I can see it on your faces — so we're not going to spend time cataloguing them. You don't need us to."
"What we DO want to do," Dora said, and her whole energy shifted — "is give credit where it is absolutely due." She turned. Her face lit up. "JEREMIAH. BABY."
Jeremiah caught the energy like it was always meant for him — blew her a kiss, added a wink, completely at home.
"You were the ONLY one up there who genuinely performed. You didn't think about the challenge for a single second. You just LIVED on that stage and it showed in every moment. You did wonderful, baby."
"Thank you!" Jeremiah said, bright and genuine.
His teammates clapped for him — genuinely, graciously, even through the weight of their own disappointment sitting fresh on their shoulders. Whatever else was happening, nobody in that group was small about it. That said something.
"I also have to give a very specific commendation," Lorelei said, "to Yen."
In the backstage waiting room, Zen's head snapped up.
Internal fist pump. Immediate. Fierce.
"YES," he breathed, barely audible, just the shape of the word — but every bit of it meant.
On stage, Yen looked genuinely startled. The kind of surprised that doesn't perform itself.
"You seem shocked," Lorelei observed, genuinely curious. "Why?"
"I just..." Yen paused, honest the way he always was. "I think I could've done more. To support the team when things started slipping."
"Yen." Lorelei looked at him with the fond exasperation of someone watching a person be unfair to themselves in real time. "Yen, yen, yen. You were so focused on what could've been that you completely missed what actually was." She shook her head lightly. "You carried that performance on your back. I was genuinely checking to make sure your spine was still intact after. Without you holding things together up there, this performance doesn't land as decently as it did. Give yourself the credit you earned. Please."
Yen stood there and took that in. Stunned. Still. The kind of stillness that happens when something true lands somewhere you weren't expecting it.
His teammates, freed from having to be gracious about someone else's praise, were loud and happy about this one. Fully, genuinely cheering for him.
"Thank you," Yen said quietly, to the coaches. Meaning it completely, even as the bittersweet of it settled — being lifted up while knowing his teammates were still carrying their weight.
"Now." Dora's voice shifted again. Warmer. More direct. Her eyes finding Louie specifically. "I know every single one of you is currently kicking yourself. But I'm talking to you especially, Louie."
The tears that had been holding on finally let go.
"I know how much you want this," Dora said, and she said it simply, without performance or pity, just plain truth delivered with care. "I know what it cost you to be here. I know what it means that you were given a second chance and that you showed up for it." She paused. "I'm not going to tell you that performance was great — because it wasn't, and you deserve honesty more than you deserve comfort right now. But it was one performance. One. You have another one tonight. And after tonight there will be more, and after those there will be more still." Her voice steadied into something firm and warm at once. "Pick yourselves up. Dust yourselves off. Keep going. That's what this industry is. You learn, you grow, you keep living inside it. You hear me?"
Louie nodded. The other OG trainees nodded.
The kind of nod that means received. Understood. Working on it.
Yen's team bowed, thanked the coaches, and Cat sent them off with the grace she brought to everything.
They were halfway back to the waiting room when Jeremiah stopped walking.
"Okay, y'all." He turned around to face the group with the energy of a man who had assessed the situation and made a decision. "Don't sweat this too hard, yeah? Because we are about to go back out there and absolutely DEMOLISH our second performance. Whatever they throw at us — mics cutting, confetti in our faces, the stage literally catching fire — we are going to make it the best thing these people have ever seen in their lives." He pointed, sweeping it across the group. "So. Wipe the tears. Do some push-ups. Sit-ups. Anything. I don't care what it is, pick something — just anything other than standing here crying and looking like that."
He paused.
"Because y'all are making the most delicious faces right now and they are just begging to be dominated."
The tears stopped.
Immediately. Completely. Like Jeremiah had reached into the room and personally turned off a faucet. The crying simply refused to continue — as if every tear in the vicinity had heard what he just said, assessed the threat, and collectively decided absolutely not, we're done here.
Everyone just. Stood there. Staring at him.
Blinking.
The grief of five minutes ago, temporarily but effectively evicted from the premises.
And in fairness — full, genuine, honest fairness — Jeremiah had just done something real. Unconventional didn't even begin to cover it. Unhinged was closer. But the result was the result, and the result was that his team's heads were up, their minds had shifted, and the weight had lifted just enough to breathe again.
Who needs conventional when you can be Jeremiah.
Nobody. That's who.