And so. After the artificial rain. After men lifting men during squats. After the disaster that shall henceforth be known simply as The Pinky Up Incident and referenced in hushed tones for years to come —
The crew looked at each other.
And said — why stop at rain?
Because apparently artificial rain was just the appetizer. The main course was industrial fans. Multiple of them. Brought in specifically to simulate storm conditions on a stage where people were actively trying to perform, breathe, and maintain their dignity simultaneously.
The electricity bill wept.
This author, not being in Foca's tax bracket, has chosen not to engage with that particular financial reality. It is above this author's pay grade. Literally.
Now. The team that received the wind challenge had, for their second performance, chosen Stand By Me by Ben E. King.
Which. In theory. Beautiful choice. Timeless song. Emotional, resonant, the kind of classic that earns respect just by existing.
In practice —
🎶 Stand by me— 🎶 cough cough cough
The industrial fans had opinions about breath control. Specifically, that it should not exist. The wind hit throats dry, snatched breath mid-phrase, and turned every sustained note into a negotiation between the singer and the atmosphere.
And simultaneously — because the universe has a very specific sense of humor — it kept trying to physically remove them from the stage entirely. Every step forward required active resistance against forces that had other plans for their location.
In their collective internal monologue, running continuously throughout:
Bitch. How am I supposed to stand by ANYONE when I can barely stand by MYSELF.
The irony of Stand By Me being performed by people fighting for their lives against wind strong enough to yeet them toward the golden brick road was not lost on anyone. Least of all the people being yeeted.
They finished. Upright. Barely. But upright.
We salute them.
And now.
After the artificial rain, the human barbell squats, the Pinky Up catastrophe, the attempted stand-by-me-while-not-being-blown-away —
It was time for the final performance of the night.
Liam. Zen. Mikko. Taylor. Lemon. Fahad.
The group that had started the week with a shouting match, a temporary unconsciousness, a 9.99 secret teaching method, and Liam's shattered streak.
The group that had somehow, against reasonable odds, become exactly that — a group.
Their turn.
****
The six of them took the stage.
Crescent formation. Stand mics. The kind of simple, clean staging that puts the focus exactly where it belongs — on the people and nothing else.
A single spotlight came up.
A brief breath.
And then —
Nothing.
Not the dramatic kind of nothing. Not the intentional kind. Just — nothing. The music wasn't starting. The opening bars weren't coming. The room waited, and the room kept waiting, and still nothing arrived.
The six on stage started exchanging looks. Subtle. Careful. The kind of communication that happens entirely in the eyes and the slight tension around the mouth when you're trying very hard not to let an audience see that something has gone wrong.
Because something had gone wrong.
A voice came through their in-ears. Apologetic. Quiet. The voice of someone delivering news they genuinely wished they weren't delivering.
"Hey guys... really sorry to tell you this, but we don't have your music track. It's gone."
Six pairs of eyes went wide simultaneously.
The subtle communication became slightly less subtle.
In the audience, the confusion was spreading like weather.
"What's happening?" Johnny murmured, brow furrowed, to nobody in particular.
"Fuck — fuck — fuck—" Yen's hands had balled into fists in his lap, knuckles tight, the words barely making it past his teeth. His immediate seatmates could just catch them. "Zen don't panic. Stay calm. Stay calm—"
The atmosphere tilted. The comfortable anticipation of a final performance beginning to slide toward something more uncertain.
And then —
Zen was already typing.
Phone in hand, fingers moving fast, the focused calm of someone whose brain had already assessed the situation and arrived at a solution while everyone else was still processing the problem.
He finished. Held the phone out to Mikko.
Mikko took it. Read it. Looked at Zen with the expression of someone who understood the words individually but wasn't sure about them collectively.
Zen's response was immediate and entirely nonverbal — eyes widening, head jerking toward the audience, finger pointing at the phone, then at Mikko, then at the audience. The full choreography of read this out loud, right now, to them.
Somehow, perfectly, completely, Mikko received every word of that.
He had his reservations. He had them visibly. But he looked at Zen, looked at the audience, looked at the situation — and decided that doing something was better than doing nothing.
He leaned into his mic.
"Sooooo..." Mikko started, with the easy, unbothered tone of someone who had decided to simply commit to this. "Apparently our music track has decided to go completely MIA tonight. So — in the spirit of this week's challenge, which is to adapt to whatever comes your way — we're bringing you a significantly more intimate version of our performance."
The murmur that moved through the audience was immediate — confused, curious, leaning forward.
Mikko handed the phone back. Zen gave him a thumbs up and a smile so bright and so certain that it made his teammates look at him differently.
He has a plan.
That thought moved through all five of them at roughly the same moment.
Zen pocketed his phone. Started moving the mic stands — creating space, clearing the center of the stage. He grabbed his mic, motioned for the others to do the same. Then took Mikko and Liam gently by the wrist and guided them toward the center. Sat down on the stage floor. Looked up at the rest of them with that same bright, excited, completely convinced expression and motioned —
Sit down.
They sat. All of them. On the floor of the stage, in a loose semicircle, mics in hand, looking at each other and then at Zen and then at each other again.
Zen held his phone up so everyone could see the screen.
"Just like how we first practiced this song."
Now. Here is something that needs to be said about Zen and this song.
When Zen had first suggested Gravity to the group — the stripped back, intimate, just-voices second performance — he hadn't just suggested it and left it at that. He had taken over. Quietly, completely, and without apology for the first time anyone in that group had seen him do anything like it.
He had printed sheet music. Handed it to every single member of the team. Told them — through his phone, through Mikko, through whatever means of communication was available — that they were learning this song acapella first. Raw. Just voices. No track, no backing, nothing to hide behind.
And he had not taken no for an answer.
It was the first time the group had seen Zen assert himself. Really assert himself — not through words, which required the phone and the app and the synthetic voice, but through something more immediate. Presence. Certainty. The quiet authority of someone who knew something and needed the people around them to trust that.
Trust me on this, his phone had said.
And maybe it was curiosity. Maybe it was the way he said it. Maybe it was just Zen, standing there with that soft certain face, asking for a chance.
Whatever it was — unspoken, unanimous — they gave it to him.
And he took that chance and ran.
Back on stage, Zen set his phone in the center of their semicircle.
The steady, patient tick of a metronome filled the silence.
And then Zen began finding the pitch — moving through his teammates one by one, sounding the note, waiting, adjusting, the quiet focused work of someone setting a foundation before building anything on top of it.
At the coaches' table, something shifted.
Robin sat up.
Her brows lifted — slowly, involuntarily, the physical reaction of someone whose instincts had just been activated by something they recognized. The metronome. The pitch finding. The six of them sitting in a circle on the floor of the stage with nothing but their voices and each other.
Her heart rate, if she was being honest with herself, had picked up.
Because she knew what this was.
What this could be.
Live. Raw. Stripped completely down. Acapella.
No safety net. No track to lean on. Nothing between the voices and the room.
Robin clasped her hands together in her lap and said nothing.
But her eyes were bright and her breath was slightly shorter than usual and the anticipation sitting in her chest was the specific kind that only arrives when something real is about to happen.
****
Everything was set.
Zen looked around the semicircle at his teammates — one face at a time, steady and certain — and raised his hand.
Counted to four.
1... 2... 3... 4—
A single snap.
And something began.
🎶 Something always brings me back to you... 🎶
Lemon.
Just Lemon. Just his voice, landing in the silence of that stage like something placed there with intention. The room held its breath without deciding to.
🎶 No matter what I say or do— 🎶
And then Fahad came in underneath him, and the two voices found each other in that single line — one line, just one — and the shivers that moved through the audience were immediate and involuntary and collective.
🎶 I'll still feel you here 'til the moment I'm gone— 🎶
Lemon finished the verse. Not quietly. With everything the line deserved.
And then the chorus opened up.
And if the verse was a breath —
The chorus was the exhale everyone had been holding.
🎶 Set me free, leave me be— 🎶
Taylor, clean and clear, carrying the melody like it was always his.
🎶 I don't wanna fall another moment into your gravity— 🎶
Six voices. One chord. Tight — genuinely, almost uncomfortably tight in the best way — the kind of harmony that doesn't just sound good but feels like something. Like pressure releasing. Like something clicking into place.
Mikko took the highest register and lived there like he owned property in it. Because he did — opera trained, classically built, the kind of voice that had been forged somewhere that took years and meant it. The fact that this voice existed in the same human being as the one who taught choreography using the word "aura farm" and accidentally knocked himself unconscious was, truly, one of life's great gifts.
Ultra talented people need a few screws loose to balance things out.
Exhibit A: Mikko Tan.
Zen took the high part just beneath him — not competing, complementing, filling the space between Mikko and the middle voices with something warm and precise.
Liam sat in the baritone blend, grounding everything, the foundation the higher voices were building on.
Taylor held the melody steady.
Fahad and Lemon took the lower architecture and held it firm.
🎶 Here I am, and I stand so tall, 🎶
Mikko soaked it. Completely. The vowels, the resonance, the sheer size of what came out of him filling the space from the floor up.
🎶 Just the way I'm supposed to be— 🎶
At the coaches' table, Robin's hands found the armrests.
Both of them.
Gripping.
The song moved forward. The single spotlight held its circle. Six young men on the floor of a stage, no backing track, no safety, no distance between their voices and the room — and the room receiving every note of it like something it had been waiting for.
Zen had promised intimate.
He had delivered a masterclass.
And then the bridge arrived.
🎶 I live here on my knees as I try to make you see,That you're everything I think I need here on the ground— 🎶
Zen sang it.
His teammates' heads turned — subtle, controlled, because the harmony couldn't stop and they weren't going to let it — but the surprise was there. Because during every rehearsal, every run-through, every practice session — that had never been Zen's part. It was Liam's.
And yet here he was. Singing it. Beautifully. Exceptionally. With a voice that had been kept quiet for so long in so many rooms that hearing it now, opened and placed in a song about gravity, felt like something more than a performance.
Everyone kept their parts. Nobody stumbled. The harmony held.
And then —
🎶 But you're neither friend nor foe,Though I can't seem to let you go,The one thing that I still know— 🎶
Liam.
Eyes closed.
Singing the part that wasn't supposed to be his either. It was Zen's.
Because a few minutes ago, in the quiet of preparation, Zen had shown him his phone.
"You take the high part in the bridge. That part is for you."
Liam had looked at him. "Are you crazy?" Mouthed, not spoken, the disbelief entirely genuine.
Zen had typed without hesitation.
"Trust me. Trust yourself. Trust your voice."
The encouraging nod that followed was so simple and so certain that Liam had run out of argument before he found one.
And so —
🎶 Is that you're keeping me dooooooooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwn — 🎶
Liam's voice soared.
It went somewhere none of his teammates had heard it go before — not in rehearsal, not in training, not in any of the months they had all spent in this program together. The note climbing and climbing and staying there, held with the full force of someone who had finally, completely, decided to stop holding back.
The room gaped.
Not metaphorically. Literally. Mouths open. Eyes wide. The physical expression of people whose ears had received something their brains needed a moment to process.
His teammates harmonized around him and supported him and watched him with the exact same mix of shock and pride sitting on every face.
Zen — who had known. Who had heard something in Liam's voice during rehearsals that Liam himself hadn't been listening for. Who had given him the part anyway and told him to trust it —
Zen couldn't contain himself.
The smile that broke across his face was so full and so unguarded and so completely told you so that it required no phone, no app, no synthetic voice.
Liam caught it. Finished the note. Let out a breath.
And gave Zen a look that said everything in the exact same wordless language.
...Thanks. I guess.
The final chorus rang out. The last note landed. And the performance simply — stopped.
Six beaming faces looking at each other on the floor of a stage.
Just that. Just them. For one more second, still inside it — still in the feeling of rehearsal, of the studio, of the first time they'd sat in a circle and sung this song raw and found out what it could be.
And then the applause arrived.
Thunderous. Immediate. The kind that startles you even when you're the one who caused it — and all six of them jumped, genuinely, the sound yanking them back from wherever they'd been and depositing them firmly in the reality of a room full of people who had just heard something.
This performance would go on to be one of the most talked-about moments in LEAVEN history.
Six voices. No track. A metronome and a snap and a circle on the floor.
The sheer audacity of performing an entire song in full acapella, with harmonies that tight, on a global livestream — the kind of thing that could have gone catastrophically wrong and instead went the other direction entirely.
It could make anyone combust.
In multiple senses of the word. 👀
****
PS- The song featured in this chapter is "Gravity" by Sara Bareilles