And so — Yen, Louie, Jeremiah, Toma, the still-unnamed leader who needs to do better, and their sixth teammate took the stage.
Now. Something had changed for the second round of performances.
The waiting rooms were empty.
Because the LEAVEN trainees were no longer watching from behind closed doors on a TV screen — they were there. Seated in the amphitheater-style audience seats, a real live crowd, their fellow trainees cheering for them with the particular loud, invested energy of people who understood exactly what it cost to be standing on that stage.
The shock on Yen's team's faces when they walked out and saw them was immediate — but the good kind. The warm kind. The kind that fills your chest unexpectedly and makes your shoulders drop half an inch.
Yen scanned the faces until he found the one he was looking for.
Zen. Front and center. Eyes blazing. Mouthing the words clearly, deliberately, with his whole face behind them —
You can do this.
Yen smiled. Couldn't help it. Didn't try to stop it.
As they moved into position, Yen and Jeremiah both clocked it at the same moment — little holes, dotted along the edges of the stage. Small. Numerous. Suspicious.
They exchanged a look.
No time to discuss it. The music had already started.
The techno-EDM-tron-tastic beat filled the space like it was always meant to be there, huge and electric and immediately contagious. Their leader stepped forward —
"LEAVEN — y'all ready to PARTY?! LET'S GO!"
The crowd lost it. Immediately. The energy spiking before the first note even landed.
🎶 Stepped out of a movie scene,Feels like you are my wildest dream... 🎶
Their teammate came in strong — clean, confident, the kind of opening that sets a tone and dares the rest of the performance to match it. And it cascaded. One by one, the team finding their footing, the confidence building on itself the way it does when things are actually working.
The pre-chorus arrived.
Jeremiah stepped forward.
Like he owned the stage. Because he did. Because he always did.
🎶 Tick tock, the clock is talkin',Don't think too much... 🎶
🎶 Don't think too much— 🎶
Toma and Yen came in on the echo — and something happened in that blend. Something that made a few people in the audience sit up slightly straighter. Not quite Corsair and Ryu type harmony. Not yet. But close enough to make you feel the potential of what it could become. Close enough to be genuinely exciting.
And then.
A single drop.
Tick.
On Yen's shoulder. He blinked.
Another.
Tick... Tick...
The whole team felt it simultaneously — that specific confused pause of people processing something that should not be physically possible. The roof was closed. It was an indoor venue. It was—
Tick tick tick tick tick—
The drops became a drizzle. The drizzle became a shower. The shower became — fully, completely, gloriously, artificially — rain. Pouring down on the stage from above, real and cold and absolutely drenching everything in its path within approximately thirty seconds.
The audience watched with their mouths open.
Now. Rain as a challenge. Is it technically a mishap?
Debatable.
But is it an uncontrollable, unknown, absolutely-did-not-see-that-coming variable?
Oh, absolutely. One hundred percent. Full marks.
Because here's the thing about outdoor concerts — and every artist who has ever performed at one knows this in their bones — sometimes you are up there giving everything you have, the crowd is fully alive, the energy is perfect, and the sky simply decides that today is a great day to rain. Not because it's malicious. Not because it has a personal vendetta. Just because weather is weather and nobody consulted you about it.
And the show goes on. Almost always, the show goes on. Because the money has been spent, the investment has been made, the people are there — and unless the sky is being genuinely, dangerously unhinged about it, you perform wet and you perform proud.
LEAVEN had simply recreated that scenario. Indoors. With full budget commitment and zero warning.
The budget was absolutely, magnificently budgeting.
Within thirty seconds, every single person on that stage was completely, thoroughly, helplessly soaked.
The audience — their fellow trainees, dry in their seats, watching this unfold — erupted. Not with sympathy. With the delighted, slightly hysterical energy of people watching something happen that they are very glad is not happening to them.
On stage, six very wet performers had approximately half a second to decide who they were going to be.
The little holes on the stage edges that Yen and Jeremiah had clocked during setup?
Made complete and total sense now.
****
The artificial rain came down.
And on stage, amid six completely drenched human beings, Jeremiah looked around at his teammates.
And smiled.
Not a nervous smile. Not a what-do-we-do smile. The full, unhurried, I-was-born-for-exactly-this diva smirk — bright and certain and completely without fear.
That was all it took.
The team looked at that smirk and made a collective, instantaneous, fully committed decision.
What the hell. Make the most of it.
Because here's the thing about water and stage lighting and bodies that have been through months of LEAVEN training — the physics of it were, objectively, working in their favor. Clothes clinging. Muscles visible. The whole situation giving water bomb festival but make it a cinematic music video with dramatic rain and everything. The sex appeal was not theoretical. It was present and documented and the audience was very much aware of it.
And Louie?
Louie looked at this rain and saw a gift from above. A blessing. An opportunity delivered personally to him by the universe as a direct apology for how the first performance went.
He stepped forward for the chorus.
Made a decision.
The shirt came off.
🎶 I want out of my — I want out of my head— 🎶
The audience erupted. Not politely. Not with restrained appreciation. With the full, physical, roof-testing energy of people who had not been prepared for that and were delighted about it. The cheers hit like thunder — which, given the artificial rain situation, felt almost too appropriate.
And as the chorus built and the rain kept falling and the team kept performing — something became very clear to everyone watching.
This was not a mishap anymore.
This was a performance.
The rain wasn't something happening to them. It was something they were using. Every splash deliberate, every movement amplified by the water, the whole stage transformed into something that looked less like a training evaluation and more like a very expensive, very wet, extremely compelling music video that nobody had planned but everyone was going to remember.
The energy was high. The air was electric. The water bill was someone else's problem — specifically Foca's problem, and honestly, rich people have rich people things to worry about and this author is not losing sleep on his behalf.
And then the rap section arrived.
And the room, which was already standing, somehow found another gear entirely.
Because here is where a background character looked at his own background status, assessed it, decided it was not going to work for him anymore, and did something about it.
Timothy. Timmy, to those who knew him. Now officially named, officially promoted, officially here.
He stepped forward.
And rapped like he was personally, deeply, spiritually starving.
🎶 Come on, come on, hey, don't walk away,Sometimes what's scary is worth all the pain,Pressure from stone, build it like diamonds,I'll be the king of all of our islands— 🎶
He devoured it. He left nothing. He looked at every lyric, every beat, every moment and said mine — and then took it, completely, without apology.
The background character era? Over. Finished. Concluded.
He and the still-unnamed leader — who remains nameless, yes, because he has not yet earned it, the huddle incident lives on in infamy — traded verses with the combined energy of two people who had decided simultaneously that this was their moment and were not sharing it with hesitation.
Leader, you stay unnamed. You know what you did.
And while Timmy and the leader rapped their hearts out at the front — the rest of the team behind them did not, for a single second, slack off and ride the momentum for free. Oh no. Absolutely not. Every arm, every body, moving in sync, the choreography hitting with an intensity that sent water spraying in all directions — dramatic arcs of it catching the stage lights, splashing off the floor, turning every eight count into something visual and physical and genuinely spectacular.
At some point, it became necessary to acknowledge:
The artificial rain was performing.
Genuinely, actively, committedly performing alongside them.
Your honor, the rain was a paid actor. The evidence is overwhelming. The court will please consider the water bill as payment for services rendered.
****
And then the bridge arrived.
And then everything happened.
And by everything, this author means everything.
Jeremiah walked forward.
Slowly. Deliberately. With the full, unhurried confidence of a man who knew exactly what he was doing and had been doing it since birth. The rain coming down around him, the dramatic lighting doing what dramatic lighting was born to do, the atmosphere sitting at exactly the right temperature.
🎶 Can't help how you race through my mind— 🎶
On the coaches' side, Dora sat up straighter.
"Yeeesss ma'am," she said, to nobody in particular. "Absolutely. Miss ma'am. Yes."
And then.
From behind.
Toma.
Who had spent the last ten minutes of this performance quietly, internally, making a decision about himself — and had apparently decided that the best place to seek answers was right here, right now, in the middle of a globally livestreamed evaluation in artificial rain.
Balls of steel. Genuinely. Medically impressive.
His hand came around and found Jeremiah's waist. One smooth, deliberate motion — pulling him back slightly, just enough for Jeremiah to feel exactly how solid and present Toma was behind him.
🎶 Race through my mind— 🎶
Toma's echo came low and close, and he looked at Jeremiah with an expression that had absolutely made its decision.
Jeremiah — because he was Jeremiah, because he had never in his life let an opportunity like this simply pass — leaned back into it. Completely. Comfortably. Like this was always where he was meant to be standing. His left hand came up in a slow half loop and landed softly against the drenched side of Toma's head.
🎶 And fill my dreams with the sweetest desires— 🎶
Jeremiah sang it looking up at Toma with an expression that was soft and sweet and somehow more devastating than anything loud could have been.
🎶 Sweetest desires— 🎶
Toma echoed it. Eyes never moving.
And then.
And then.
And then.
Yes. It requires three and thens. This moment demands them. They are non-negotiable.
They turned to face each other. Faces a foot apart. Rain falling between them, around them, on them. Toma's hand stayed warm on Jeremiah's waist. Jeremiah's fingers gentle against Toma's face.
And together —
🎶 Didn't think I'd fall in love this way— 🎶
The audience ceased to function as individuals. They became one single organism experiencing one single feeling at maximum volume.
Dora had already thrown her notebook. It was somewhere on the floor, abandoned, irrelevant. She was on her feet. She was screaming. She was gagged, gooped, and operating approximately three seconds from a full fainting situation — jumping, hands in the air, the physical manifestation of someone whose body could not contain what they were witnessing.
It was the fruitiest thing that had ever occurred on the LEAVEN stage. Bar none. No competition. Jeremiah and Toma had not simply brought fruit — they had brought the entire fruit salad, with champagne on the side and a margarita chaser, garnished with a little umbrella, served at the perfect temperature.
The chemistry was not just there.
The chemistry was chemistring.
The rain, the lighting, the eye contact, the hands — this was for every fujoshi, every yaoi lover, every person who had ever looked at two devastatingly attractive soaking wet men standing very close together in dramatic lighting and thought yes, this is what I am here for. This was made for you. You are seen. You are understood. You are welcome.
And then there was Yen.
Standing to the side.
Singing his third part of the harmony.
Pointing directly at the moment happening beside him.
Looking at the audience with the wide, clear, fully transparent expression of a man communicating one singular message without words:
I was not informed this was happening.
The laughter that came from the audience was the kind that happens when comedy and romance occupy the same moment simultaneously — which is, historically, the rarest and most perfect combination known to humanity.
Nobody had planned a romcom.
They had accidentally made one. In the rain. During an evaluation. On a global livestream.
And yet — and yet — despite all of it. Despite Toma's impromptu identity journey happening in real time on a global livestream, despite Jeremiah being fully, completely, unapologetically himself in the most spectacular way possible, despite Yen standing there being the world's most expressive third-part harmony while actively pointing at the situation happening directly beside him —
The three of them hit those high notes.
Together.
Clean and blended and fully committed, like none of the preceding chaos had happened at all.
🎶 It's crazy how you make me say— 🎶
****
PS - The song in this chapter is "Out of my Head" by Bini.