As the holiday season crept closer with the warm, unhurried inevitability of something everyone had been waiting for, Foca's calendar was doing what Foca's calendar always did — quietly becoming everyone's problem.
Because it wasn't just Christmas and New Year to prepare for. It was Jonathan's wedding anniversary celebration — his eldest brother and sister-in-law's annual affair that had long since graduated from family event to full high society staple. The kind of celebration that required preparation, presence, and the specific kind of energy that only comes from genuinely loving the people you're celebrating.
And then of course — the Bread Music Year End Party.
Three celebrations. Stacked. Back to back. Each one significant in its own right.
For Foca, this time of year was sacred in a way that had nothing to do with schedules or obligations. This was the season when his family — brilliant, scattered, each one operating in their own orbit of excellence — actually gathered. Not for a day. Not for a rushed dinner between commitments. For a real, extended, genuine stretch of time. No companies. No titles. No industry. Just the people who had known him his whole life, catching up, being present, being exactly what they were to each other.
Foca cherished it in the quiet, specific way he cherished everything that mattered — without announcement, without performance, just deeply and completely.
LEAVEN, meanwhile, had been given the gift of a proper break.
Every trainee sent home. Back to their families, their beds, their mothers' cooking, their own particular versions of rest and recharge. The island quieter for the first time in months.
And back in California — the debut lineup had finally seen, settled into, and collectively short-circuited over their new accommodations.
Dorms was the word that had been used in official communications.
Dorms was doing an extraordinary amount of heavy lifting as a descriptor.
Because what the debut members of LEAVEN were now living in were, in the most technical and deeply insufficient sense of the word, houses. Except houses the way that the Sistine Chapel is technically a ceiling. Luxury villas, each one sitting comfortably within Foca's extensive real estate portfolio — gifts, all of them, from his family, because that is simply the kind of family the De Clairmontins were and not a single dime of Foca's own money had been spent on any of it.
Each sub-unit had their own separate accommodation.
Pandesal Fac7ory. Salt x Bread. MelonBun House. 4 of Scones. Jeweled Macaroons.
Five units. Five villas. Each one the kind of place that causes the brain of any normal, reasonable, middle-to-lower-class human being to simply — stop. Reboot. Ask several questions about the nature of reality and whether this is actually happening.
Bobby and Lili, as a separate case entirely, were settled into one of Foca's luxury condo units. Because of course they were.
The short circuiting was universal, immediate, and completely understandable.
But even with the holidays approaching and the villas doing whatever villas do to the human psyche — nobody in the debut lineup got lazy.
Which, honestly, said everything about who these people were.
Because here is the truth about discipline in any craft — it is not a switch you turn off and on. It is a living thing. It requires maintenance. An artist who goes stagnant doesn't just pause — they begin, slowly and then all at once, to rust. The body forgets. The muscle memory softens. The sharpness that took months to build starts to dull at the edges.
And this doesn't only apply to artists. Athletes. Chefs. Linguists. Anyone who has built a discipline knows the feeling — the dangerous comfort of stopping, and how much harder starting again becomes.
So they trained. Not at the expense of rest or celebration or actually being human during the holidays. But consistently, intentionally, with the quiet understanding that dreams don't pause just because the calendar does.
Foca, for his part, had always believed in the balance.
Work hard. Play hard. Every unit of effort met with equal reward. His artists had the freedom to live their lives — with the obvious and clearly contractually stated limitations of bars, excessive drinking, smoking, and the full catalogue of things that were simply not negotiable for anyone in his care.
Dating was its own chapter.
As he had told Bobby, and as the contracts reflected — they could. Of course they could. They were human beings with hearts and he was not in the business of managing hearts. But the moment a relationship began affecting the work, the craft, the passion, the drive — that's when consequences entered the room. And not punitive ones. Just the natural, contractually outlined reality that this dream they were all building together required the people building it to actually show up for it.
Most of them had signed that clause without a second thought. Because most of them weren't thinking about relationships right now. The dream was too new, too precious, too hard-won to risk for something that could wait.
Bobby and Lili were the obvious exception. Eli and Jordan — potentially heading in a direction that everyone had clocked and nobody was officially acknowledging yet.
Both cases manageable. Both relationships contained within the Bread Music family, which Foca could work with.
The outside world, though? Outside relationships, outside entanglements, outside complications?
That was a different kind of mess entirely. The kind Foca would very much prefer to deal with never, or at the very least — later.
Much, much later.
****
And so, while training continued its steady rhythm across the various luxury villas that were definitely just dorms, Foca put out a call.
The 4 of Scones — Nox, Leo, Isaac, and Nikola — were summoned to the Bread Music HQ.
Now. The Bread Music HQ.
It always smelled like a bakery.
Not as a coincidence. Not as a side effect of something nearby. Deliberately, intentionally, staying-true-to-the-brand like a bakery. Because right next door — sharing a wall with the HQ in a relationship that felt less like coincidence and more like destiny — sat the Bread Music Bakery.
Which was, at almost any given hour of any given day, absolutely packed.
Not just with fans, though the fans were certainly there and certainly devoted. With locals. With tourists. With people who had wandered in because something smelled extraordinary and had stayed because everything tasted exactly as extraordinary as it smelled. The Bakery had built a reputation that extended well beyond the LEAVEN connection — on the merit of its breads, its confectionery, its cakes, its coffee, its tea, and yes, its cocktails. And perhaps most importantly, on the radical and deeply appreciated decision to price everything fairly.
Not cheaply. Fairly.
Based on the ingredients used. Based on the labor of love that went into each item. No brand tax. No you're paying for the name markup. Just honest prices for genuinely excellent food.
Which was, in the current landscape of brand-adjacent cafes charging fourteen dollars for a mediocre croissant, practically revolutionary.
That was why it became a hotspot for basically everyone.
However.
For those of a certain tax bracket, the Bakery also offered a separate tier of experience entirely.
The luxury artisan range.
The items that lived in a completely different conversation from the regular menu. The ones that required a moment of silence before discussing the price. Take, for example, the signature luxury croissant — approximately six hundred dollars per piece, which sounds offensive until you learn what goes into it.
Almas caviar. White truffle. A5 Kobe beef Wagyu. Ayam Cemani chicken eggs — from the rarest breed of chicken in existence, completely black inside and out, including the bones. Bordier butter, cultured and hand-rolled by one of France's most celebrated butter makers.
If you don't recognize most of those ingredients — that is completely normal and no reflection whatsoever on your worth as a person. These are ingredients that most people, by the simple virtue of operating in the same economic reality as the majority of the planet, have simply never encountered. The Bakery was not embarrassed by this. It offered both tiers with equal pride and zero condescension.
Affordable excellence for everyone. Obscene luxury for those who specifically sought it.
The coexistence, somehow, worked beautifully.
But the thing that truly set the Bread Music Bakery apart from every other celebrity-adjacent establishment in the city?
The members of LEAVEN dropped by regularly.
During breaks. After training. Whenever the mood struck. And the Bakery had built a careful, specific, thoroughly enforced set of rules around these visits — rules designed to allow the members to enter, order, sit, and interact with whoever happened to be there like completely normal human beings having a completely normal day.
It worked. Beautifully, mostly.
Until it didn't.
Because there are always, in any crowd, people who look at a carefully constructed peaceful environment and interpret the rules as a suggestion rather than a requirement. The entitled ones. The ones who decided that their desire to grab a member's arm or invade a personal boundary outweighed the rules everyone else had agreed to respect.
Those people got ejected.
Not asked to leave. Not gently redirected. Ejected. Because some people, when asked politely, demonstrate very clearly that politely is not the language they respond to. Force, in those cases, became necessary and was applied without apology.
And then — blacklisted. Permanently. From the Bakery entirely.
If said ejected parties then took to the internet to post malicious content about their experience?
The Bakery's loyal Patrons had receipts. Always. Ready. And they were not gentle about deploying them.
Which was the other remarkable thing about the Bread Music Bakery.
It had developed its own community. Organic, fierce, and operating on a surprisingly diverse set of motivations.
Some protected it because they loved the artists and wanted to preserve the rare, precious thing of being able to exist in the same space as them without chaos.
Some protected it because the sourdough was genuinely life-changing and they refused to let anyone ruin it.
Some protected it for reasons that fell somewhere between both.
But the common ground — the one thing every regular, every Patron, every person who had claimed a table in that space as something worth defending — agreed on completely?
The peace of the Bread Music Bakery was not to be disturbed.
Full stop. Non-negotiable. Enforced with enthusiasm.
****
Anyway — back to the 4 of Scones.
They entered the Bread Music HQ with the easy, unhurried energy of people who belonged there and knew it. Passing employees greeted them with warm smiles. They greeted back with the same. The kind of wholesome, genuine back-and-forth that this building seemed to produce naturally — something in the air, or possibly the perpetual smell of fresh bread, that made everyone just a little warmer than they might otherwise be.
They reached the front desk.
Hannah looked up and her face did the thing it did when something genuinely pleased her — bright, immediate, completely unfiltered.
"Wassup guys — y'all are looking extra fresh today." She looked them over with the appreciative eye of someone who had opinions and was not shy about them. Her gaze landed on Nox and stayed there approximately one beat longer than strictly professional. "Especially you, Nox. That shirt is hugging your figure in all the right places. I'm genuinely surprised no underwear has hit the floor the moment anyone saw you walk in."
"One poor employee already made a break for the nearest restroom the second she clocked him," Leo offered helpfully. "Full sprint. On those heels. I don't know how she didn't break an ankle. Those shoes are deadly weapons and she was running in them."
Nox said nothing. Because Nox was Nox. But the faint, barely-there tinge of color that arrived on his cheeks said enough.
"Well," Nikola said, the soft smirk settling onto his face with the ease of something that lived there permanently, "we have to look fresh if we're meeting the big boss, now don't we."
"For SURE," Hannah agreed, the finger snap arriving on instinct. "Now be dears and sign in for me." She passed the tablet and stylus across the desk.
The guys signed. Isaac returned it last, handing it back with that smile — the one that existed in its own category, warm and open and completely unguarded, the Alabama sunshine of it landing full force on Hannah.
Hannah received it.
Looked at it for a beat longer than the situation required.
Then looked at Isaac with the calm, matter-of-fact energy of someone about to deliver important information.
"Has nobody ever told you that smile of yours is a deadly weapon, sweetheart?" She asked it conversationally. "Because if not — I'm telling you now. Be careful who you flash those pearly whites at. People will fall in love with you on the spot and you won't even see it coming."
She then looked back down at the tablet like she hadn't just said that. Checking the signatures. Completely composed.
Isaac turned the color of a ripe tomato.
His three groupmates collectively lost it — quiet, delighted, the suppressed laughter of people who had just watched something happen in real time and were thoroughly enjoying every second of it. Pats landed on Isaac's back from multiple directions.
"Alright, you're all set," Hannah said brightly, as if the preceding thirty seconds had been completely unremarkable. "Sir Foca's in his office. You all know the way?"
"We're big boys, Hannah," Nikola said, with that same cheeky energy that seemed to be his default setting. "We can manage."
"Cheeky," Hannah said, "but I like it." She waved them off with the efficiency of someone who had a desk to run. "Go on then — can't keep the big boss waiting."
"Thanks Hannah!" Leo called back.
"See you later, Hannah-bells!" Nikola added, already moving.
Nox raised a hand in a quiet wave. Isaac — still somewhat tomato-adjacent — waved with a smile that he was very carefully not making too wide this time.
And the 4 of Scones headed toward Foca's office.