Sakura's POV:

We woke up early as usual as we got ready to order food for breakfast. Today is the last day of our stay in Clark, Subic. Later tonight, we'll be travelling back to Pampanga, City of San Fernando to join Skylar Unnie's family. The four of them, Chaeyeon, Kwangbae, Eunbi Unnie and Duck spoke with Skylar Unnie's family before coming here. Chaeyeon said that it was better to ask Unnie's family first, before going, cause they might not want the performance we were planning to do for Skylar Unnie. The pain in her unsure voice, a week after she and Minju was practicing the ten songs over and over. Was something I don't know how to ease away from her, I was the one who suggested talking to Skylar Unnie's family first and if they don't want the performance, we can just go at a later time to perform. The family was delighted to hear that Skylar's Team mates all seven of them had debuted already and would like to celebrate the life of Skylar with them. They made arrangements for us and tonight we were supposed to have dinner with them at our hotel in Pampanga.

Chaen was just quietly sitting at the veranda of our suite as she waits for food to arrive, we've ordered room service. The rest of our kids are still sleeping, still too tired from yesterday. I joined her briefly after pulling up the blanket Wonyoung has over her body, it has slightly fallen down, so I pulled it up for our Maknae before going to sit with Chaen. I approached her and sat beside her, I felt her put her arm around me, tucking me in with her. Silence filled us both as we both looked out the sea. The calmness of the waves sounding along with the beating of our hearts. I was calm all my life, having been surrounded by the seas and mountains of Kagoshima, similar to this place, we watched the majestic sun rise from the dark skies. All her troubles are now slowly dissipating into nothingness, I can see her changes, surprising for the nine of them who has been training with her.

But for me she was always a fan of me, she was always nice in my eyes, despite all her issues in life. The fact that she came to see me back then, meant she wasn't really losing everything all together. She managed to come the first year since her two unnies had passed on. Though she looked lost and out of it, her demeanor quickly changes to that of pure bliss and joy. If I would've known what happened that year, I would've treated her better, offered some consoling words and support for her. Heck, I would've gotten her email and write her letters from the Star to her Fan. I would've consoled her and boosted her strength. My Fans are always treated like they were my friends. Like they are an indispensable part of who I am, like my blood flows through out my body because of my fans, my fans are my heart, they're all so friendly and warm people with the exemption of course of the 22 year old and up men, who ualizes me, those can off to the end of the world, but my fans like Chaeyeon, the younger or same age ones, they're the indispensable parts of me.

We've forged a stronger bond over time, for every thousand bad comments, my fans would drown them with one hundred thousand more lovely comments. They are the sole reason why I exist in this industry, when I could've stopped all together and went to Uni and become a doctor. One who saves lives but could also kill someone. The silence of the morning, just before the chaotic ten gets up was always a welcome treat for me. I don't speak, it's too early to talk about anything, I enjoyed her quiet self, not the consistently angry one. I know, she's thinking of the things we might encounter tomorrow, all the what ifs and what nots, it must be noisy in her mind, but I let her be, as long as she's not screaming and shouting madly at everyone. As long as she's calm like this, I have nothing against this comfortable silence we are having. Only when the doorbell of our suite sounded, did I leave her side and answered the door, I was greeted with a good morning by the Hotel Staff as she pushed the carts of food I ordered for twelve and laid every dish on the living room table of the room. She bows in front of me and told me to enjoy the food, I smiled and bowed back at her and handed her a one hundred peso bill in the Philippine Currency as tip for her service, she bows again, wide eyed and seemingly grateful. She shows herself out the door and I went to our room to wake up every one who was still sleeping.

Minju was first to wake up Wonyoungie, she was already up even before I entered our shared room. She wakes up Kwangbae after Wonyoung got up. I nudged Eunbi Unnie lightly as well as Nako and Hitomi. Hi-chan shortly woke up and woke Ducky next up and Yujin. Nako as usual was bargaining for five more minutes. My Hi-chan already acclimated to the Korean Members' daily lives, she wakes up almost every day earlier than I do sometimes. Nako is same old Nako. This kid loved to sleep, but despite that she hasn't grown an inch taller, Nako is my smol baby. Yujin often teases her height, doing things like using Nako's head as an arm stand or often adjusting her height down to Nako's level when they are talking, causing some banters between the two. Yujin was a jokester much like Ducky. Ducky was already up and woke up Yuri and Chaewon who were entangled together into each other's arms, the two sleeps as if the other one will vanish from the face of the Earth in the middle of the night. Chaewon was up, she was still groggy from sleep. A stupid looking smile plastered on her face as she begins to pepper kisses on Yuri's face, making the latter of the two wake up, whining more like it.

"Breakfast is here, get up in five or never eat breakfast. I'm serious and wake Yujin up." I told everyone in the room.

Chaen appeared inside the room from the veranda. She looks at me and smiles at me.

"You heard, Eomma, C'mon, get up and moving." She shouted excitedly at our kids.

"Yeah, Yeah, Yeah. We're about to go Appa." Yuri replied to her.

Everyone got up from their beds, there was three beds in the room, two double beds and one king sized on the other side, six of us slept on the king sized bed while the others slept on the double beds. I waited for them to come in the living room, Chaen sat on my right. I gave her a bowl with some of the food already in the bowl. She received her bowl with a smile. She's really a silly woman. We're having the usual silog meals, fruits and other proteins. The kids sat on the wrap around couch one by one, everyone got to the living room and one by one, everyone of them got their own bowls, chopsticks and finally sat down with us, last to get out was Nako. The poor kid was so groggy from sleep. She looks like a zombie walking out of our room her eyes still closed, she's making cute groans. She's like Mini Chaeyeon who gets up exactly like this during weekends, today is technically a workday for us, cause it's the weekdays, so Chaeyeon doesn't have any problems waking up early on weekdays but her demeanor changes when it is the weekend like when we went to Japan and spent time in our hometowns. Nako is really a cutie, she didn't grow taller than 4'9 and her cute face which had a dimple which she got from her Momma as she would say, was cuter when she's happy and it is why Chaen always surprises Nako, especially when Nako is doing a great job in practice.

After Breakfast, we got to practicing the ten songs again. Which was divided to twelve of us and we had this posted on our schedules.

1. Hope Not performed by Yujin, Chaeyeon, Chaewon, Minju and Yuri.

2. Written in the Stars performed by Minju and Chaeyeon.

3. Downpour performed by IZ*ONME Members

4. Kapit performed by Chaeyeon and Sakura

5. Rainbow performed by Yujin, Yena, Hitomi and Nako.

6. Crying Season performed by IZ*ONME Parent and Unnie Line. Parent: Chaeyeon, Eunbi and Sakura, Unnie: Kwangbae, Ducky and Chaewon.

7. I GUESS I'M IN LOVE performed by Kwangbae, Yuri, Yujin and Chaeyeon.

8. Negaigoto No Mochigusare performed by Sakura, Nako and Hitomi.

9. One Last Time performed by Minju, Wonyoung and Eunbi.

10. Love of my Life performed by Chaeyeon, Kwangbae, Ducky, Chaewon and Nako.

The instrumental arrangement of the songs were created by Minju, Kwangbae, Eunbi and I. Everything was in a note higher version, to show off our vocals to Skylar Unnie. Everything was either in Guitar or Keyboard too, it took us a month to finalize the arrangement. We resumed practicing the songs after all the arrangements were done. The whole performance was meant to highlight our members' vocals, it was a sentimental vocal performance with songs that capture one's hearts, we didn't have any of these songs, so we borrowed from other artists. Save for one song which was I GUESS I'M IN LOVE was a love song, that tackles a love that saves you from downfall, a young type of love, one that makes your world go round and round, a patient and wonderful love, how the simplest things a lover does could actually save you from your thoughts, a love that eases all your worries and being cautious from years of heart breaks, it was saying that the singer was so in love with his current partner.

I was the one to do the arrangement for that song in a higher note pitch. Chaen assigned this to me and to say that I was flustered at first was an understatement, I was reeled into oblivion, cause as an instrumental arranger you also need to consider how the lyrics will be sang, so I looked into the lyrics and the words were seemingly more of a message to me than a performance for Skylar Unnie and I'll be damned if she says the song was just something that reminded her of her Unnie. It was obviously for me, the way she does things for me and everything that we've both been through, we are bonded over that fact, that we found each other after all the years of her heartbreaks and I found her after my own scandalous non-existent relationship with Matsui-san, there was a reason why she did this. I don't know which of the reasons why she did.

I will find out someday, somehow. She never kept any secret as I previously mentioned. Maybe it was her grand scheme of planning out our future together through music, maybe to fluster me and make me blush. She's mischievous like that, she has word spasms, she suddenly blurts out sweet and flattering words. She's a vocal person annoyingly so at that, when her mind is set on doing something, she does so with out proper consideration and reasons, she just does it. It was a source of lengthy discussions between us like her outbursts and easy to anger nature, while I do understand that it was just stress talking, it doesn't completely justify why she's seething at everyone for just one mistake. We all knew better than argue with her, when she's being her usual hot headed messy self.

A few remarkable instances where she demonstrated her hot headedness was towards me trying to catch up with her dancing and she still thinks I wasn't doing enough effort on the choreography. Minju takes my side and shouts at her too, which leaves me in a sandwich between the two. I learned the first time to speak up to her, cause she gets more angrier when I do the silent treatment to her, it doesn't help at all. Space for her meant that no one likes her for who she is when I was simpl