Baby, We're Just Dancing in the Dark

Akira definitely had issues to work out in the future, because Hayami looked like the most gorgeous she’s ever been.

It was only right for him to explain himself after a performance like that.

“The last time I let someone get close to me… I ruined that person’s life.”

He looked her in the eye, and for the first time, Hayami saw genuine fear.

“I’m too expensive for Rocketblast to punish, and they know it. So instead, they concentrate all of their energy into making sure my loose threads are tied, indefinitely.”

He gripped the binder until his knuckles turned white.

“The bigwigs in upper management destroyed her. It was my maid, Yumi. They blacklisted her, not just from K-pop but from the entire entertainment industry. Four years of university, gone. Years of connection-building, wasted. Friends turned to strangers overnight because they were terrified of being associated with her.”

He swallowed hard.

“They accused her of grooming me.”

Hayami gasped.

Akira slumped back the bricks of the building, the fight draining out of him.

“They didn’t have evidence, not really. She was just an intern who was nice to me, the fourteen year-old on the verge of losing it all. But in this industry, the accusation is the verdict. Reputation is all that matters, and no company wants to touch ‘damaged goods,’ so to speak. Even if you win a court battle.”

He stared at the floor.

“After that, she didn’t want anything to do with me. I tried to send money, hire lawyers, hire liaisons for those lawyers. Do you know what she said? I wish I had never met you.”

Akira looked at her with those pleading, boyish eyes.

“I’m telling you all of this because I know the extent of what an agency like Rocketblast can do to you. So please, don’t get any closer to me.”

He took a shivering breath.

“Because… if I see someone in that state again, and knowing that I did it? I don’t think I could carry on living.”

For a while, the pair said nothing to each other.

Only their eyes spoke—staring, lost in the depths of their irises, desperately searching in vain for a solution to this problem where they could ride off into the sunset together.

They felt the rain get heavier, a curtain of water isolating them from the rest of the world. Their faces were soaked, water was getting into their eyes, but neither wanted to blink. To blink was to break the connection and let cold reality settle in.

Eventually, Hayami was the first to break, saying, “Then I’m going to tell you something about me too.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t even have a recording of the test server.”

The words seemed to short-circuit Akira. He froze, his mouth slightly open, the rain dripping off his nose. His eyes widened, lighting up not with anger, but with a sudden, dawning realization.

Hayami squeezed her eyes shut. She expected Thor to strike her down from the heavens for lying to someone like that. But what she didn’t expect was for him to laugh.

A full-chested, hysterical hyena-laugh. He threw his head back, laughing at the gray sky.

“I… I don’t see what’s so funny,”

Akira wiped his face, shaking his head, still wheezing.

“You think, after everything we’ve been through, that I’d care about some fucking ransom?” he gasped. “You, Sato Hayami, with no social skills to speak of, tricked me! And I fell for it!” And he continued to laugh.

“Stop it! This is serious!” Hayami shouted over the rain. “Our relationship started… well, with a lie. I manipulated you!”

“You telling me spying is less serious than lying? Because I will take it.”

“One is much worse than the other, now that I think about it…”

“Plus, do you have any idea how much corporate espionage exists in an industry as competitive as the K-pop space? Poaching producers, outright stealing, blackmail because somehow K-pop requires us to be above human error and therefore human mistakes. I’ve dealt with worse. So much worse.”

Akira wiped his wet hair back from his forehead. The amusement was gone from his eyes.

“They’re releasing the statement this week. Maybe not tomorrow, but most likely the end of the week,” he said softly. “Rocketblast already drafted it. ‘Akira and the Non-Celebrity: A Brief Misunderstanding.’ It will say we were never together and that I’m very much single, probably a virgin to boot.”

“So that’s it, then? I go back to my life, and you go back to yours.”

Akira stepped closer, grabbing her hands.

“There was a world,” he faltered, then started again. “There was a world where we did laundry, and taxes, and filmed stupid vlogs. One where we would be stuck on the side of the road with an empty tank, but just because I was with you, it would have held more meaning than all my years in this industry combined.”

“C-Calm down,” she choked out, forcing a smile. “We’re just eighteen.”

“...True.”

“Even if there was no Veronica, I wouldn’t be ready. I still have too much baggage to unpack, Akira. You know that. You keep treating me like our lessons were enough, but I need to actually believe I’m worth it before I can stand next to you. I have to do that work alone.”

Akira didn't smile back.

“How about for the rest of today?” he commented, ignoring her logic. “Just until the sun comes up tomorrow…”

He squeezed her hands. “We make it official.”

“...Huh?”

“I mean it. Let’s start a twelve-hour toxic and ill-advised relationship that won’t last the next morning.” He winked. “You down?”

Hayami blinked, water dripping from her lashes.

“Fine, fine. I will say it straight. Will you be my girlfriend?”

Akira said it with the straightest face imaginable.

She stared at him, pursing her lips. It was a doomed pact, sure. This would haunt her for the remainder of her days, sure.

But Hayami couldn’t bring herself to care.

“If only you get to be my boyfriend,” she responded.

“How unfair,” he whispered. “From now on for the rest of my life until I’m rotting in a nursing home, I’d have to remember you longer than I’ve known you.”

For a while, she seriously pondered her choices.

But Hayami was an impulsive girl. So, naturally, she happily replied with one word. “Sure.”

\\

It wouldn’t be until years to come that a rumour began to spread about how, for a brief moment in time, one of the most popular idols in the world had come to study at Golden Brooch High. How he came to spend time with a girl who nobody even knew existed. A reminder that even the most unlikely of people can strike it big if they have sufficient willpower.

And perhaps most romantically, they would discuss the time that they danced deliriously, manically, happily in the middle of a football field—splashing water and mud at each other, all while the clouds punished the ground beneath them.

They likened it to a swan dance.