“We’re on in ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes, Jesus, is everyone even ready?”

“I think Leia is still doing her makeup…”

“We can’t start without Leia!”

“Oh god, oh god-”

“We have to push the event back-”

Your head shot up from the clipboard you were holding in your hands. Your fingers tightened around it and your mind raced.

Push the event back? Push it back? After all of the planning, you had done? All the effort to make sure that everything was in line legally, that your fans knew exactly when the event would be? After spending day after day stressing over promotions and preparations, and you guys had ten minutes and someone wanted to push the event back?

Your heart stopped beating in your chest. It must have because you went completely numb. Sure pushing the event back wasn’t a huge deal but-

“And is there even enough space for us to perform here? It might be a little small.”

It wasn’t small. You had measured it.

Countless times you had walked back and forth across this square to make sure that you guys had enough space to perform. Not everyone had agreed that this spot was good for the event so you had gone above and beyond to ensure that it would work out just fine. It was a smidge larger than your practice room. It was in the center of a busy square, so there would be many passerbyers and it was a popular busking location. It was, dare you say it, perfect.

“Where did Destany go? Is she missing? What are we going to do? She’s in the first dance.”

“Guy’s Chloe is having a panic attack in the bathroom.”

“What if we changed locations? We can still do that right? This location never made much sense anyway.”

If the location didn’t make sense then why did they put you in charge of everything? If they were just going to try to move the event why did they chose you to plan it? You still couldn’t move, couldn’t bear to speak. Maybe if you just kept your mouth shut they would come to their senses. If everyone could just calm down then maybe…

“I think it’s supposed to rain today anyways.

“That’s it, we have to call it off. We can just do it tomorrow if need be.”

“No!” You blurted. Everyone seemed surprised by your sudden outburst. In fact, the entire room went quiet in order to look at you… To pay attention to what you had to say.

Honestly, you hated that everyone’s eyes were on you. You may enjoy being in charge of things, and love being depended on, but even on your best day you hated being the center of attention. Still, you couldn’t keep quiet and let this one slide.

You guys couldn’t change a date that you had established so far in advance because of things that might happen. You knew what Chloe was like. She always had anxiety problems right before big events. Destany was probably just holed up in a corner watching videos and the rain probably wouldn’t even come. It was only a 30% chance of rain after all.

You pressed your lips together, trying to keep yourself calm, but your chest was in hot knots. Did they really think that they could just change this event completely? After all the work you had all gone through? What did all of the hours of practice mean? Nothing? Was all of the pain that everyone had gone through to be ready for this event mean so little that they could just cancel it? You had watched the other kids in the program stress themselves to tears because of the anxieties of preparing for this dumb event that was supposed to be for fun. What was the point of all of that if they weren’t even going to end up doing it?

“We can’t just cancel it,” you stated firmly, your voice a bit more aggressive then you meant for it to sound. “Look, Paige, go talk to Chloe. Ali, do you mind looking around for Destany? She’s definitely close by. Roger, can you help Leia with her makeup? We aren’t canceling this event. We aren’t pushing it back. We have eight whole minutes. That’s an eternity in our world.”

“But the rain-”

“It won’t rain.”

“Do you want to risk it?”

“Hell yeah,” you blurted back. “Jesus, we addressed the possibility of rain weeks ago, and we all agreed that we wouldn’t mind dancing in the rain. In fact, you said that anyone not willing to dance in the rain clearly wasn’t dedicated enough to the group.”

Kaylin looked at you, her eyebrows furrowing at the accusation. Oh, of course, she now oh so conveniently had forgotten that guilt trip. The heat in your chest just built. It felt like your body would explode you were so mad. You tried to keep it contained.

“Look, we don’t have time for this. Get your shoes on. Eight minutes Kaylin. Eight minutes till go time. No matter what.”

Kaylin clearly wasn’t happy with your decision, and you understood why. You sounded like a bit of a tyrant. You didn’t like to make orders. You liked to leave things up to interpretation. You liked to let others decide what they wanted to do. How they wanted to get things done. You hated making decisions for other people.

God, you hated yourself. You really, really did.

“Clock is ticking everybody,” you said loudly, pushing down that hot feeling in your chest. You did your normal rounds. You went up to everyone in the group, making sure they were all feeling some semblance of okay.

They all seemed to be alright. Paige got Chloe feeling okay in minutes. Ali found Destany in seconds. You thanked God when Roger brought Leia around the corner perfectly ready for their performance.

You pressed your eyes shut, pinched your nose and then, with one minute to go, waved everyone in the program close.

They all huddled around you, eyes wide with anticipation.

“Not our first busking event,” you stated softly. “I can’t imagine it will be our last either. Just give your best performance, and everything will go fine. And don’t forget to have fun, okay guys?”

“Infinity on three?” Julia suggested. You glanced at her and smiled with a nod. Caitlin was the first to put her hand in the center. Everyone else followed.

“Hana, deul, set!”

Your fingers gripped the microphone tightly, but you didn’t let anything else show how nervous you were. You walked across the stage and waved to the crowd.

“Hello!” You called out. You repeated that again in Korean and then repeated it in Japanese. “Welcome to the Infinity Idol’s first concert in Japan!”

The crowd went wild, and you waited for them to quiet down before continuing. You thanked God for the minimal Japanese you knew because it was getting you through this introduction fabulously.

The order of Mansae and Happy Ending had been switched. You put Mansae as the opening, and Happy Ending as the closing. Thanks to your arrangements everyone got their chance to be in the center. You guys started off with everyone and ended with everyone.

“We’re going to start off with a little bit of a celebration… All of us from Infinity are so excited to be here. So happy that we had all of these fans come out to support us. So our first song is a testament to that. All we can do is walk around and say..”

Everyone from the exchange program walked up behind you, getting into their starting positions and once you knew they were ready you raised one open hand into the air and winked at the crowd.

“Mansae!”

Four of your fingers curled down, leaving you standing in the center of the stage, your index finger pointed towards the sky. You held that for a moment, and the lights that you guys had set up to flood the square went dark. You rushed into your spot on stage, and the lights turned back on with the start of the music.

Starting off the busk with this dance had been a risky decision. The choreography itself wasn’t really that complicated, but the dance was very high energy.

Your arrangement of the dances was to make sure that everyone got the proper break they needed between dances. It had been difficult, so you ended up having to arrange it so that only you had to do any back to back dances.

You had practiced everything back to back a million times to make sure you could handle it, but that was just practice.

You always pushed yourself ten times harder when you were actually performing. Even though you knew you didn’t have to. Even though you were no professional. Even though you knew that, in the end, a part of you wanted to always put on the best performance. To be to someone in that crowd, what so many idols were to you.

Besides… There was a chance… A chance that Jihoon was out there watching, and if he was, while you were following his part? Then you definitely had to do better then you had ever done before.

With each dance, with each song that came on, with each moment that you came behind the mic with others to segue to the next song, you were losing a little bit of your sanity.

Kaylin was still mad at you and at any given moment, no matter how tired you were, she came over backstage to give you grief for it. To remind you that any small thing that went wrong in her opinion was your fault.

You just endured it. You went on stage when it was time to go on stage, and you tried to keep yourself calm offstage while you were offstage.

The most important thing was, of course, to keep your mood steady, and make sure you were conserving as much energy as possible while you weren’t performing.

If you were to give the best performance you could, you had to give the same amount of energy for Happy Ending that you had given to Mansae, and the same amount of energy to every dance in-between.

That meant that every time you went offstage and couldn’t do anything with your nervous energy but half dance to other choreographies that you weren’t even doing today, you were being extremely stupid.

God, you knew how dumb it was… But even still, you were practically standing offstage doing a four times sped-up version of Gfriend’s Time for the Moonnight in-between every performance.

Where was this energy coming from?

You got back on stage and you weren’t even winded. You were smiling, and singing and performing just as you always would.

“Well, I guess that is it for the night!” You announced into the microphone. “Pack up your bags, and restore the square to what it used to be because that’s all!”

The crowd all made sounds of disappointment as you pretended like you were walking off the stage. You stopped and looked back at them.

“What? You don’t want it to be over?”

There were screams of no erupting from the audience and the distinct sound of someone laughing. You didn’t know for sure why that noise struck you… It sounded kind of like…

“Everything has to end my friends,” you said pleasantly. “But I guess we can just try to make this a bit more of a…”

You trailed off as everyone filed back on stage. You did a quiet count in your head, trying to ensure that everyone was in fact there.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 ,13, 14, 15, 16, 17.

“Happy ending.”

You slid back into place and the music began.

You had practiced the Happy Ending choreography so many times in the past week that you didn’t even have to think anymore to do it.

Your head moved from side to side, your body swayed to every beat. Your movements were so fluid it surprised even you. You kept a good expression spread over your face as you took center for your part and then just as easily fell back into the background with everyone else.

By the time the song was over, you could barely breathe. You could hardly think. You felt… Nothing.

“This has been the Infinity Idols thank you and goodnight Japan!”

The lights went off, returning the street to its natural lighting. Your entire group began to hug each other. They were smiling so widely, and you dropped down to the ground, unable to say anything smart, or even smile at all.

You couldn’t feel happy about this. You couldn’t feel good about all the arranging you had done, about all of the work you had put into this performance. Not even as people came up to tell you all what a good job you had done. Not even when team members came up to thank you for all your hard work.

You got up, and you gave them that fake smile, and you thanked people for coming out and supporting everyone and everything, but you couldn’t in your right mind feel good about all you had done.

Not even as people asked for pictures with you, or claimed that you had looked like you belonged on-stage.

You were living your dream, but you couldn’t feel happy because…

“Well, it would have been perfect if we had just waited, but nope, y/n couldn’t wait to have her precious performance go exactly the way she wanted it.”

You knew that Kaylin didn’t always think things like this through. You knew what it was like when she was mad at you. You were more than used to her making you feel bad for making a decision she didn’t like. It had already happened a lot in your short time here in Korea.

But that didn’t mean you still didn’t feel it.

You were , the worst to exist. You never should have gone against her, you should have just let her do what she wanted, because now… Now you were public enemy number one, and there was nothing you could do about it.

“Well, that was quite the performance.”

You didn’t respond right away. Your back was to the person speaking to you. There was something about their voice that made you want to address them… Their Japanese was awful.

“I’m so glad you enjoyed,” you autopiloted, turning around to face the stranger. “We really do appreciate all of the sup-”

You interrupted yourself when you laid eyes on the speaker.

Eyes hid beneath the visor of a black hat, mouth and nose hidden beneath a face mask. A tuft of dark brown hair peeked out from beneath the edge of the hat near the stranger’s ear.

You wanted to cry.

“Jihoon.”

“Hey.”

You pushed yourself forward with a passion you didn’t realize you even still had and wrapped your arms around the idol’s body tightly squeezing him close to you.

Suddenly you couldn’t imagine being with anybody else, in any other situation.

Why did Jihoon have to make you feel so much better so easily?

It was like when you had your arms wrapped around him, you could suddenly feel again.

Air was easily leaving and entering your mouth, each inhale and exhale sharper and sharper than the last. Your fingers dug into the cloth of Jihoon’s jacket, and you tugged him closer to you, afraid to speak because you didn’t want to know what your voice would sound like if you dared to let anything escape your lips.

“You couldn’t tell you know that right?” Jihoon mumbled softly into your shoulder. Your eyebrows furrowed slightly.

“Tell…” Your voice didn’t sound too bad. It was steady. You cleared your throat. “Tell what?”

“Tell that you were dying inside,” Jihoon responded. “In fact, I think that if you forget whoever said something to you that made you want to hate yourself, you’ll find that deep down, you had a really, really good time.”

Your eyes were warm as tears pricked at the back of them. The thought of crying hung over you, but you pushed it down immediately.

“What makes you think I’m dying inside?” You asked. “I’m feeling perfectly fine.”

Jihoon tried to press you back, presumably so that he could look at you in the eyes, but you wouldn’t let him do it. Instead, you swallowed thickly and tightened your grip on him. Jihoon chuckled.

“Because if you were perfectly fine, you wouldn’t be hugging me so tightly,” he responded. “What is it that one of your favorite tv characters once said? Never trust a hug, it’s just a way of hiding your face?”

You allowed yourself to push back out of the hug, and your expression turned into one of pure confusion.

“Okay, explain how you know that one,” you stated. “I know I didn’t tell you about it.”

“How about instead we go get a bite to eat?” Jihoon suggested. “Soonyoung tells me you aren’t eating after all.”

You fully pulled off of Jihoon and faked ignorance.

“Eat?” You asked dumbly. You opened your mouth more widely and pointed at the sky. “What… What on Earth is that?”

“Ha ha,” Jihoon deadpanned. He reached forward and took your wrist in his hand. “Come on.”

He began to drag you forward and you half-heartedly protested.

“Hey! I have to like say goodbye and-”

Jihoon actually rolled his eyes and glanced around at the crowd of people. Like he was looking for something. He must not have found it because he then turned back towards you, tugged you close and pressed his lips to yours.

You pulled back so fast you almost fell over.

“Are you crazy-”

“I haven’t seen you in weeks, and nobody is looking,” Jihoon responded. You could almost see the large contagious smile that was spread over his lips. It made your lips quirk upwards as well.

“I guess it’s okay to be a little crazy then,” you mumbled shyly. He laughed and shifted his grip so that he could clutch your hand instead of your wrist and began to direct you through the streets.

“Anyway, how have you really been since I left?” He asked softly. “Not overworking yourself or anything are you?”

“I could ask you the same,” you retorted in annoyance. “I’ve seen how tired you look in the most recent pictures.”

“We’ve been-”

“Busy? You better hope so considering how you have looked recently.”

You flicked him on the forehead gently, and he caught your other hand and kissed you again on the lips. You smiled against his lips, unable to help it.

“Hey,” You mumbled. “Don’t distract me.”

“I can’t help it, you’re distracting me.”

You found it increasingly odd that he was so happy. You hardly ever saw him this happy, and to imagine that it was because of you…

He seemed to have the same line of thought as you because he looked away from you for a moment and when he looked back, he wasn’t smiling as widely.

“You know when I became an idol, I gave up on the idea that I would befriend a girl,” he mumbled. You glanced at him.

“Yeah, I can understand that,” you agreed. He nodded, and his gaze trailed away from you.

“No but really. Meeting someone like you is a dream.”

“I feel the same way,” you agreed softly. “When I got over my last crush, I had completely given up hope on getting anyone to fall in love with me, and then I fell for you and I thought that this was all hopeless.”

“You fell for me?” He asked. You froze.

Geez, you’d never said it out loud to his face before had you? Why were you saying it now? Just because it had been so long since you last saw him? Were you crazy?

“Hey don’t let that one go to your head, it’s not like I like you or anything,” you scoffed. Jihoon laughed.

“Oh trust me I know you don’t,” he responded firmly. His grip on your hand tightened slightly. “And in case you are confused, I don’t like you either you know?”

“I wouldn’t even imagine it,” you responded shaking your head confidently. “We’re just…”

“Yeah! We’re just…”

Neither of them could fill in the blanks, so Jihoon cleared his throat.

“Alright! Here’s the place I wanted to take you to!” He declared triumphantly. He gestured towards the restaurant in front of him… It looked like a sushi place, and you happily took the change in conversation.

“Looks nice,’ you stated. You opened the door for him and waited for him to walk into the restaurant, but instead, he came up behind you and nudged you forward with his knee.

“After you y/n.”

Your face reddened and you nodded, dipping into the store shyly.