And so the performances continued.
And oh boy. OH BOY.
The other teams were absolutely, categorically, in for a ride.
Some had the exact same experience as Yen's group — bracing the whole way through for a mishap that simply never materialized. In those cases, they fared slightly better than Yen's team. Slightly. Were they great? No. Were they watchable? Sure. Would anyone be rewatching voluntarily? Absolutely not. But decent enough that nobody needed to avert their eyes, and sometimes that's where you are and you accept it.
The other teams though?
The mishaps came. Oh, they came. Just — not necessarily in the ways anyone had pictured.
Some had mics cut out mid-line. Some got ambushed by the now-legendary rogue confetti, popping out of absolutely nowhere like it had a personal agenda. Standard chaos. Expected chaos, almost, at this point.
But some?
Some got something else entirely.
One team took their positions. Lights dimmed. The atmosphere pulled tight with that particular pre-performance electricity —
The music started.
They started moving.
And then every single person in that room — on stage, in the audience, in the waiting rooms, watching the livestream from every corner of the world — processed simultaneously what they were actually hearing.
🎶 Never gonna give you up! Never gonna let you down! Never gonna run around and desert you! 🎶
Complete and total silence for approximately two seconds.
The team on stage stood frozen. Deer in headlights doesn't even cover it. Full system shutdown. The kind of stillness that happens when the brain receives information it genuinely does not know how to categorize.
And then — across every waiting room, every livestream, every coach's chair, every single person present in any capacity —
"...Did we just get Rickrolled?"
Simultaneously. Universally. With one voice.
The tension that had been gathering over the entire evening — that dark, heavy, hovering cloud of collective anxiety and disappointment and pressure — cracked open and let the light in.
Just like that.
Because nobody, and this author means nobody, can maintain existential dread in the face of being Rickrolled. It is physically impossible. Rick Astley will not allow it.
Now. The origin story of this historic moment.
There was an intern. Recently hired. Young, enthusiastic, possessed of the specific brand of audacity that only the newly employed have before reality sets in. During the mishap brainstorming session, this intern had thrown out the suggestion of a Rickroll as a joke. A bit. A casual what if tossed into the room expecting nothing.
Nobody said no.
And so here they were.
The intern, watching the whole thing unfold on a monitor somewhere, eyes going progressively wider as the magnitude of what he had accidentally set in motion became clear — grabbed his phone. Opened TikYin. And with the energy of a man planting his flag on the moon, proudly, breathlessly announced to the entire internet that his suggestion was responsible for one of the most unhinged, most unforgettable moments in LEAVEN history.
No shame. Zero. Thriving.
The internet, predictably, was in absolute shambles.
@SirenangGabun: WAIT. STAPH. STAPH STAPH STAPH. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS?!?!?!
↳ @Queen114: getting Rickrolled by a K-pop adjacent survival show evaluation was NOT on my bingo card for this year and yet here I stand. What a time to be alive. What a genuinely extraordinary time to be alive.
↳ @somally_Aaa: 🎶 never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye, never gonna tell a lie and hurt you 🎶 HONESTLY?? I LOVE THIS SONG. I don't even care that I got Rickrolled. I would get Rickrolled Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday. Every day of the week. Twice on Sundays. Rick Astley UNDERSTOOD the assignment and everyone else is still catching up.
↳ @SirenangGabun: I need the name of the intern. I need to send them a gift basket.
↳ @404BrainNotFound: the intern is on TikYin RIGHT NOW taking full credit and eating every second of it
↳ @Queen114: as they should. as they ABSOLUTELY should. icon behavior.
↳ @chunchunMaroo: LEAVEN hasn't even debuted yet and they've already given us a Golden Disk performance for the ages AND a Rickroll for the history books. What are they going to do when they actually debut. What are any of us going to do. I'm not ready.
↳ @RatGirlSummer: the coaches' faces when it started playing 😭 they were NOT expecting that either
↳ @somally_Aaa: nobody was expecting it that's the BEAUTY of it
↳ @NoodleSoup: the intern said "I just work here" and accidentally made history. living the dream honestly.
****
It took one full, complete, unabridged chorus of Rick Astley delivering his magnum opus — you know the words, we all know the words, they are permanently embedded in our collective consciousness whether we consented to that or not — before the Rickroll finally, mercifully ended and the team's actual music began.
And when it did? They performed. Confidently, fully, with everything they had — the relief of the mishap being over fueling something genuine and committed. They built momentum. Real momentum. The kind that carries a performance forward on its own energy.
The mishap is done, they thought. We survived. Now we perform.
Oh. Oh, sweet summer children.
This is LEAVEN.
Nothing is ever as it seems.
They were in the middle of the chorus — jumping, krumping, spinning, fully alive in it — when Rick Astley looked at his watch, decided he had unfinished business, and made his triumphant return.
The music stopped.
Record scratch. Clean and merciless.
The team faltered — just slightly, just for a fraction of a second — but the momentum they'd built held them upright and they kept dancing through the silence, pushing forward on pure muscle memory and sheer will—
And then.
🎶 Never gonna give you up— 🎶
The reaction was global and immediate and magnificent.
People fell. Literally, physically fell. Facepalms landed across multiple continents. Heads made contact with hard surfaces in what could only be described as a voluntary and deeply felt protest. People watching at home nearly launched their phones across rooms, stood up, nearly flipped tables, screamed into pillows with the muffled fury of people who had been got and knew they'd been got and were furious about it and also kind of couldn't stop laughing.
It was funny the first time.
The second time was just blatant, glorious, completely committed rage-bait.
@Arreis_Dreamer: if I had a nickel for every time I got Rickrolled by LEAVEN I'd have two nickels. Which isn't much. But it's weird that it happened twice.
↳ @hells_swarm: COUNT YOUR DAYS whoever planned this. I am coming. I don't know where you are but I am COMING.
↳ @somally_Aaa: tell me that intern's name RIGHT NOW. I just want to talk. I will give them the biggest hug of their life for playing Rick Astley a second time. 🎶 never gonna tell a lie to hurt you 🎶 I LOVE THIS MAN—
↳ @MariahChickenCurry: I instinctively checked my calendar to confirm it was not April 1st. I needed it to be April 1st. It is not April 1st. Getting Rickrolled twice, completely unprovoked, on a day that is not April Fools, is a form of psychological warfare and I will not be recovering from this. My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined. 😭😭😭
↳ @DefinitelyNotRickAstley: LEAVEN has excellent taste in music.
↳ @Rumi: real talk? I'm kinda jaded at this point. I've seen everything. Nothing surprises me anymore. Rick Astley twice? Fine. Sure. Whatever. This is fine.
↳ @404BrainNotFound: the way @DefinitelyNotRickAstley appeared the MOMENT he was played twice is sending me into orbit
↳ @DefinitelyNotRickAstley: I don't know what you're talking about.
To Rick Astley, wherever you are in this world —
We love you. We genuinely, sincerely love you and your one ageless, eternal, inescapable song. You are an icon and a treasure and your commitment to never giving us up is noted and appreciated.
But our trainees are suffering out here, and we would like to formally, respectfully, with great affection request that you give them a break.
Sincerely, An author who genuinely only knows the one song from you, but knows it very well at this point. 😘
The team, Rickrolled for the second time, hit a wall.
The momentum they had clawed back — carefully, painstakingly, against the physics of a full stop in the middle of a performance — came to a screeching halt. And anyone who has ever tried to rebuild that kind of energy mid-performance knows exactly how brutal that is. Ten times harder than building it from scratch. Because the first time you're running on adrenaline. The second time you're running on spite and prayers.
Inertia, as a concept, suggests that a sudden stop results in a crash. Something catching fire. Sirens. Yellow tape being stretched across the remains.
For this team, it was almost that.
Almost.
Because somewhere in the months of brutal, unrelenting, LEAVEN-grade training that these kids had survived — something had been built that held. Not perfectly. Not without visible damage. The scorch marks were there. The stumble was real.
But they finished.
Upright. Together. Scorched and slightly limping but upright.
And sometimes that's exactly enough.
****
The coaches, to their absolute credit, were gracious. Genuinely, warmly, human-ly gracious.
"Y'all," Dora said, shaking her head slowly with the expression of someone who had witnessed something that would stay with them, "I do not envy you one single bit. Hand to God, if that were me up there getting Rickrolled the first time? I would've walked off that stage with my whole chest and zero apologies. The second time? They would not have seen me for dust. You are stronger than me. For real."
The team laughed — tired, relieved, the specific laugh of people who had been through something and were only now being allowed to feel how absurd it was.
"What you did at the end," Robin said, with quiet sincerity, "trying to claw back that momentum after a full stop — that was commendable. That was genuinely, specifically commendable. You just had the misfortune of going up against Rick Astley himself. And Rick Astley," she added, with complete seriousness, "is not a fair opponent."
"I want to be fully transparent with everyone," Lorelei said, leaning forward slightly. "We did not know there was a second Rickroll coming. We were not informed there would even be a first." She looked at the team with the direct, honest warmth she always brought. "You fought valiantly until the very end. I mean that."
It was bittersweet. But the team left that stage a fraction lighter than they'd arrived — because knowing that even the coaches would have struggled up there? That was something. Not a trophy. But something.
And as the evening rolled on, it became increasingly, impressively clear that whoever had planned the mishaps for this evaluation had thought things through with considerable creativity and zero mercy.
One team got a stage invader.
The real kind — or at least, the extremely convincing kind. A professional stage actor, hired specifically for the occasion, who came screaming out of the audience with the unhinged commitment of someone who had fully prepared for this role. Security rushed the stage. Tackled him. The whole theatrical production unfolded in real time while the team tried — with varying degrees of success — to keep performing like there wasn't a full physical altercation happening six feet away from them.
Trying being the operative word.
Because how. HOW does one simply continue performing while security is tackling a screaming person onto the stage floor beside you. The answer, it turned out, was: with great difficulty and a lot of visible internal screaming.
And then there was June's team.
June — the returnee. The one who had lived an entire industry arc before coming back. The one who knew things the newer trainees didn't yet know, because experience teaches what training can't.
His team's mishap wasn't a rogue confetti cannon. Wasn't a Rickroll. Wasn't a stage invader.
It was a crew member. Standing at the side of the stage in the heat of the lights and the crowd energy, wobbling slightly. The kind of wobble that a trained eye catches and a less experienced one misses entirely.
June's eye caught it immediately.
He kept performing. Kept checking. Peripheral vision doing double duty — the performance in the front, the crew member in the corner. When the wobble got worse, when the stumble came, June made a decision with the speed and certainty of someone who had already made it before he consciously realized.
He stopped.
Mid-performance. Full stop.
His team's heads snapped to him with the immediate, unfiltered fury of people who had been in the zone — actually in the zone — and had been yanked out of it without warning or explanation. The looks on their faces could have stripped paint. They were, in the politest possible framing, extremely not okay with this.
June didn't hear a word of it.
He was already moving toward the crew member.
"Hey — are you okay?"
No answer. Another stumble. The body doing what bodies do when they're done cooperating.
June climbed down from the stage without hesitation, got himself under the crew member's arm, took the weight.
"Can I get a medic here, please!"
The medic came. The stretcher came. The crew member was taken care of.
June climbed back onto the stage. Faced the coaches. Bowed with the clean, unhurried respect of someone who had done what needed doing and was ready to continue.
"I apologize for the interruption. May I ask if we could resume from where we left off?"
The proud faces of all three coaches were not subtle. Not even slightly.
"Of course," Robin said. Simply. Warmly.
June's teammates, meanwhile, were still processing their grievances internally — because you absolutely cannot curse someone out on a global livestream and maintain any kind of professional future, so the feelings stayed exactly where they were. Locked up. Simmering. Very much present.
They performed the rest of the set still mildly furious, not yet understanding what had actually happened, not yet seeing what the entire watching world had seen clearly —
Which meant that when the critiques came?
They were not prepared for what was coming.
June was.