#ini angst

“one, two, three, four.” masaya clapped, signalling you and nishi to start your dance segment together. “i think you need to take a step farther to avoid bumping into him.” he finished.

in serious thought, you nodded and complied. but you couldn’t stop the overbearing thoughts as throughout the practice you’d noticed that masaya had picked out several mistakes which only made your expression fall.

observing his watch, he clicked his teeth, grabbing both you and nishi’s attention before speaking.

“we probably should head back now. let’s finish this tomorrow?”

masaya met the other man’s gaze as nishi yawned and nodded. when his eyes raked to yours, you shook your head which made the dance leader shoot you a quizzical look.

“i’ll stay behind to work on this.”

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

words couldn’t describe the fatigue that overtook your body. nor could it describe the bubbling feeling of frustration that swelled in your chest.

you didn’t understand. why were you never good enough?

“fuck.” hands cover your face as you sigh loudly when you collapse onto the cold, marble floor. “why can’t i get this down?” heaving yourself up, you did what you do best.

you tried again.

sweat dripping down your face, your head pounded as you repeated the steps over; one leg out, the other in and, and…and?

shit, you’ve already forgotten it. confusion etched your face as you squeezed your eyes shut, temporarily tuning out your overwhelming and intrusive thoughts. frankly, you didn’t know how long you’ve been at this, it was half past midnight and here you were; dancing your ass off.

no matter how many times you went through the moves; you just couldn’t seem to get them down. exhaustion consumed your body and your legs felt as if they were going to give out any second; but you mustn’t stop, you scolded yourself. memories of all the comments that your dance instructor spewed carelessly at you about your dance abilities.

‘that’s the wrong leg.’

‘how were you able to even debut with an inability to perfect a simple two step?’

the harsh commands remained ever the fresh in your mind like they were actively taunting you knowingly each time they’d echo on your conscious.

it never helped that it wasn’t just a one-off. to say the least, it hurt to hear that every single day. tears welled up in your eyes as you breathed raggedly from all the repeated steps.

with newfound motivation, you trudged your feet towards the remote and restarted the music and tried again.

when thirty minutes had passed, your phone buzzed. making your way towards the bench you observed that you had a message.

leader :< (masa!) where are you? answer, i’m getting worried. sent 1:03am

hastily, you texted a quick response and turned your phone off in hopes of finding solace and concentration. as you took a seat on the bench, you felt a random urge of frustration; you wanted to scream, to cry. the anxiety clawed at your throat and consumed your entire being.

you just weren’t good enough. you never were.

were you really going to disappoint your fans with a lousy performance? that question remained on your mind as you heaved yourself up and practised again. this went on until you felt on the verge of passing out fifteen minutes later, and had quite literally collapsed on the floor. as much as you tried to get up, your legs had failed you. heaving loudly, you placed an arm over your face while eying the kaleidoscopic lights of your group’s practice room.

just a few minutes of rest. you thought before your eyes slowly fluttered shut; the fatigue catching up to you.

back at the dorms, masaya had his finger caught between his teeth as he watched his phone anxiously. there had been no sign of any other response from you leading him to become visibly antsy; even getting up to pace around the room.

he had to go and get you.

wrapping a scarf around his neck, he grabbed his jacket and walked out; making his way over to the company practice rooms.

falling asleep in the practice room wasn’t something you had planned but masaya barging in wasn’t either resulting in you recoiling from the loud noise and shooting up.

the man wore an expression of worry as his voice expressed a firm tone.

“get up. we’re leaving.”

shock took to your face as you scrambled up and shook your head.

a stern answer, “i’m not done with practice yet, masaya.”

two fingers pinches his bridge as he breathed in loudly and sighed.

“it’s one in the morning. how on earth are you practicing? i was worried sick, anything could’ve happened to you.”

a glint of regret flashed in your eyes but was quickly replaced with determination as you reminded yourself of all the negative comments you’ve had to endure about your dancing.

as you looked at him, you couldn’t help the frustration that had seeped into your chest slowly build up.

raising your voice, you chided him, “well, i have to be perfect. i won’t be able to achieve that if i just sit idly.”

“you’ve been acting weird.” masaya cringed internally at your tone, it made him feel uneasy. “why are you suddenly so obsessed with practice? you can do it tomorrow. this is unorthodox.”

your face conveyed your sense of disbelief.

“unorthodox? you wouldn’t know anything about that since you’re amazing at dancing, you’re literally our dance leader. what the hell would you know about this?” you scoffed in reply.

it wasn’t like you to blow up on anyone, you’d always been the one who’d take everything quietly. masaya was genuinely confused, he didn’t know what had led you become so annoyed.

“i understand you need to practice, but you also need to sleep and rest. it’s not right on me or the others and especially you.” he tried to reason, but that only seemed to escalate the situation.

you covered your face with your hands. “no you don’t.” your voice was small and inaudible — almost fragile, mimicking your sense of state at that current moment.

“huh?”

taking a step closer, it really felt like this was your last straw. “no, you don’t understand what it’s like to be constantly insulted everyday under the guise of it being constructive criticism. you don’t understand what it’s like to feel constrained and suffocated every single day because you feel like you can’t perfect one simple move.” you noticed the look in his eyes as he processed every word of your rant.

another deep sigh escaped your mouth as you parted your lips to continue. “so tell me. but i bet it feels amazing to have everyone praise you as the oh-so-great and naturally-talented dance leader that is kimura masaya, with his exceptional dance skills and all-rounder qualities too. you’re just so perfect, i doubt you can understand anything.”

you felt frantic. thoughts raced around in your mind and scattered your brain, your heart thumped as you tried to ground yourself.

a feeling of hurt flashed on masaya’s expression and guilt wracked your body.

“just listen to me.”

“look, if i don’t practice i’ll fall behind—” you debate.

“no, you won’t.” he cut you off.

“—but if i do practice, you and the others get worried and tell me to stop practicing so much.” you continued, ignoring the older boy’s interruption. “so what am i supposed to do, masaya?”

“i can’t—“

just as he was about to answer, your heads snap to the sound of the door opening and hiroto emerging from behind it. his head alternates between looking at you and masaya; noticing the energy being off. he couldn’t help but feel like he had interrupted something.

“i can’t believe i had to trek here at two in the morning just to collect you. i don’t know what’s going on right now but i’m sure you can sort it out in the morning.” hiroto sighed. “you both are apart of the eldest, i would expect you to be more responsible.”

animosity radiated off the room, and also off of you too. armed with frustration, you huffed in agreement and began to collect your things. in your peripheral, you noticed masaya grumbling incoherently, annoyed at the interruption. for you, it was the opposite; you didn’t know what else your frustration would’ve caused you to say to the older man that would’ve hurt his feelings.

a part of you wanted to resolve the situation and hug it out — but the other was just blind with emotion, it sucked that one of your best friends couldn’t understand what you were going through right now and was refusing to meet you in the middle.

not looking back, you walked out of the almost-suffocating room alongside hiroto with your belongings.

the blonde cleared his throat, and pointed a finger to the room you both just left. “what happened?”

“oh, it was nothing. just a little disagreement. that’s all!” a small smile made its way to your face, trying to convince him; yourself too.

hiroto turned to you while giving a look showing that he was was definitely not convinced but still left the matter alone, not wanting to push boundaries.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

‘a little disagreement.’ you had said. bullshit.

perhaps you had fooled yourself in the process of lying to the eldest member. what happened between you and masaya was definitely not ‘little’ or just a ‘disagreement’ — quite far from it.

a yawn escaped your mouth as you greeted the five boys at the breakfast table, three of whom were rowdy—when were taji, takumi and jin not?—one peacefully eating his food—this was quite and a new side to hiroto—and masaya.

taji had been laughing at his phone for a quite a while, grabbing the attention of takumi and jin. they both gathered around taji’s phone, snickering in the process. hiroto had been peacefully eating as you raked your hazy gaze along the table, you observed masaya picking at his food; refusing to even look up.

“g’morning.” the second your light voice disturbed the busy air, the dance leader perked his head up. groggily rubbing your eyes, you walked over to sit next to hiroto.

weird. you’d always sit next to masaya during breakfast. hiroto sighed internally, recognising that what happened between you and the dance leader last night was definitely still going on.

the argument from last night replayed in your head as you bitterly pick at your food as well. losing your appetite, you get up from your seat at the table — making a little more noise than you should’ve — which caught the attention of masaya. confusedly, he looked down at your plate and back at you; observing that you hadn’t even touched the pancakes that they had prepared.

“finish your food.”

in surprise, you snap your head towards the man.

“i’m not hungry.” a bitter taste took over your mouth.

it didn’t help that the other members had coincidentally become immersed in the show-off you both were having. the tension was so thick in the room, you could cut it with a knife. his gaze never left yours as he remarked.

“all i ask is for you to take care of yourself. why do you make everything a big deal? you know, i don’t get you.”

“and all i ask is for you to mind your own, i can take care of myself. i’m not a child, stop treating me like one for once.” it was like he was trying his hardest to not understand you.

while thinking, you feel someone nudge your elbow; it was nishi. after catching your attention, he nodded over to jin, who had a worried expression on his face. shooting a sorry look to the man, an exasperated sigh left your mouth.

“whatever. i’m out.” pushing your chair out, you got up and returned to your room in isolation.

masaya ran his hands through his hair and huffed.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

practice was even worser. the air crackled with tension as all other eleven members were red-faced and tried to catch their breaths. this session had been extra exhausting and had drained all their energy. as they all conversed lightly, you could be found on the other side of the room still walking through the steps.

takeru spoke up, disturbing all the other members’ hushed conversations.

“guys, let’s go out to eat this time.” typical, takeru would seize any chance to go out. you giggled to yourself. “chinese, maybe?”

everyone nodded and agreed as they looked to each other. a certain man with a playful but adorable look sneaked up behind you and tapped your shoulder, making you jump out of your skin.

“mj, you scared the shit out of me.” with a hand over your heart, you scolded him.

he snickered in response, “we’re going to get chinese. wanna come?”

shaking your head, he only nodded in frustration. jin only wondered when you were going to stop this. he could see it consuming you.

the bags under your eyes, your restlessness, the burden that weighed heavy on your shoulders; they were all proof of it. and jin despised it; he only wished it would get better—you deserved solace as much as he did (much more than he did). as he walked away, he only cursed his incompetence.

a few minutes later, your group-mates had scurried outside after packing up and left you to your own devices. unknown to you, your dance leader had offered to stay and talk to you.

the music boomed in your ears as it replayed over as you repeated the choreography you’d had just been taught for a new comeback. there’d been a specific move that you couldn’t execute perfectly so you went through it again and again.

“enough, please.” the voice sounded weak.

turning around, you were met with the pleading eyes of your leader.

fatigue flashed in your eyes, “i have to get this down, masaya. i really have no time, we’ve only got weeks before we perform live.”

kimura masaya knew this wasn’t what you wanted.

“do you know how this has been breaking us apart? did you even see the look on jin’s face when you had declined his offer? this ‘habit’ is not simply that; this is an actual problem.” emotion spilled through his speech. he so desperately wanted to get through to you. “this hasn’t only been consuming you, it’s been eating away at me...”

“i appreciate the concern but—“

“before you bring out another excuse, i encourage you to think about how this affects everyone else.”

as your comeback edged closer, you’d become more antsier. the group had been tasked with five new songs to learn with all choreography as well. this wasn’t like any other of your albums or singles; it was more songs that you had usually.

so naturally your ‘habit’ of asking your performance director to stay behind had been a rare occurrence. but rarely became sometimes and sometimes became every time.

“i’m not incapable of thinking for myself.”

the exasperation that took over your mind made you completely irritable and unreasonable. yet you couldn’t deny the anxiety that clawed at your throat or the sob that you wanted to let out in frustration.

the taller man walked closer to you and wrapped his arms around your body, providing warmth. a direct contrast.

“i really want to help you. just tell me everything.”

perhaps his soothing voice cracked at your cold exterior. you melted in his embrace and buried your face in his neck.

“i’m tired.” you couldn’t push back the sobs that threatened to escape now. “i’m just so tired, masaya.” you repeated again, voice muffled by his shirt.

a gentle hand ran up and down your back in comfort, encouraging you to speak your heart out until you’re content. pulling away from you, he weaved a hand through yours.

“i know.” he whispered softly to you. “i know.”

the thoughts that consumed your head and tainted your heart terrified you, “i can’t rid myself of this feeling, it’s tearing me apart. it’s like i can’t even breathe. everywhere i go, everything i do; no matter what it’s with me.”

“you should’ve told me. i didn’t know it was this bad.” masaya couldn’t help but feeling it was his fault. he was the leader, and still you were always the one who would listen to everyone else’s problems; including his. but he never made an effort to return the favour.

“i so badly did, but i didn’t want to burden you.”

“burden me? oh, you could never.” placing a hand on your cheek, he used a finger to wipe away the tears that ran down. “you’re supposed to come to me about anything like this. it’s partly my fault; i should’ve never let you go through this alone.”

with a hand still placed on your back, masaya walked you towards the bench against the wall and tried to calm you down. amidst your sharp intakes of air while passing you a bottle of water, the leader broke the silence and interrupted your incoherent train of thought.

“i think our first step is leaving this room. you need to break away from this pressure-filled atmosphere. let’s join the others?”

you weakly nodded your head at the thought of being reunited with your other members.

that’s how you found yourself surrounded with laughs filled with genuine joy. the group had been waiting for their order to be served and your nerves seemed to slowly seep away with more of the jokes told to lighten the atmosphere. you still had a long way to go but for the first time in a while, ease filled your mind as well as smiles adorned your expression. unbeknownst to you, a certain dance leader sat next to you on the restaurant table observed you with a hand under his chin and a grin.

kimura masaya thought believed you looked prettiest when you had that signature smile on your face.