🎶 Is it too late to say sorry now? 🎶
When the dance break hit — when the music dropped and the formation locked in and Zen moved — the entire room short circuited.
Liam and the OG trainees stood there with the collective expression of people whose brains had just tried to load something and failed. Because the Zen currently executing this choreography with clean, confident precision was not — could not possibly be — the same Zen from before lunch. Before lunch Zen and after lunch Zen were not the same creature. They were not even from the same dimension.
The single question running through every mind in that room, simultaneously, was:
What in the actual hell happened in that one hour?
When the music stopped, nobody moved for a beat. Just stared. The wonder was visible and completely unguarded.
And then Liam opened his mouth.
"What the ACTUAL hell—" He ran a hand through his hair, somewhere between relieved and deeply personally inconvenienced. "You could've just DONE THAT from the beginning and we could've skipped the whole shouting situation entirely! Dammit—" His jaw tightened. "I could've kept my streak."
His streak. His carefully maintained, hard-earned, increasingly precious streak of days without losing his temper. Gone. Snapped clean in half during a rehearsal that had apparently resolved itself anyway.
"Now I'm starting to get pissed all over again," he muttered — but even as he said it, he could feel the difference. The anger was there, yes, tapping at the door. But the bigger, louder thing underneath it was something closer to relief. Something that might, given time and privacy, become genuinely happy.
He kept it under control. Barely. But he kept it.
"I'm really sorry about earlier," Zen's phone said. "Mikko taught me really well."
Every head in the room swiveled to Mikko.
Mikko, who had been waiting for exactly this moment, straightened up with the energy of a man stepping onto a stage he had built himself.
"Behold my greatness," he said, with a gracious, magnanimous wink. "You're welcome."
"You're welcome MY ASS—" One of the trainees stepped forward, pointing. "Tell us how you did it! All of us tried to teach Zen that choreography and YOU'RE the only one who got through! How?!"
"For a low, low fee of 9.99," Mikko said, shaking his head with the solemn gravity of a businessman who had not not come here to negotiate, "I will share my secrets."
"You are really," Liam said, in a voice that had dropped to a very specific register, "pissing me off."
He started moving toward Mikko.
The trainees nearest to him moved faster.
"Angy, calm down—"
"Angy, don't do it—"
"Angy, do NOT succumb to temptation right now—"
"Just ONE smack," Liam said through his teeth, straining forward while no fewer than three people attempted to become physical obstacles between him and Mikko. "This guy is literally asking for it—"
"Unfortunately, dear valued customers," Mikko said, dramatically shaking his head, entirely unbothered, possibly energized by the chaos, "no pay, no show. Those are simply the terms."
"FUCK IT—" Liam lunged. "YOU'RE DEAD—"
What followed could only be described as a full structural commitment from his fellow trainees. This was no longer a casual restraint situation. This required both arms. Both legs. Full bodyweight deployment. They clung onto Liam with the desperate, total investment of koalas gripping a eucalyptus tree during a 7.8 magnitude earthquake — limbs everywhere, someone's chin hooked over his shoulder, someone else basically horizontal off his left arm, all of them holding on for dear life while Mikko continued to exist at them from a safe distance.
"9.99," Mikko said pleasantly. "The offer stands."
The koalas tightened their grip.
****
After considerable struggle, considerable koala-level restraint from his teammates, and considerable internal negotiation with himself, Liam finally — finally — settled.
Mostly.
"Fine," he said, breathing slightly heavier than usual, straightening his clothes with the dignity of a man pretending the last two minutes hadn't happened. "Don't tell us then. But whatever the hell you did?" He pointed at Mikko. "You better keep doing it."
"Are the profanities really necessary?" Mikko asked, with the serene tone of a man who had absolutely no self awareness whatsoever about what was coming next.
"You," Liam said simply, "fucking deserved it."
"Okay..." Mikko nodded slowly. Once. Twice. The measured, contemplative nod of a man arriving at a decision. "Okay."
Now. Here is something important about Mikko that the story has thus far neglected to fully disclose.
Yes, he has several screws loose. Yes, he is operating on a wavelength that most people cannot locate on any known frequency. These things we have established.
But Mikko also has a condition. One he has been actively, earnestly, and largely unsuccessfully trying to eradicate for the better part of his life. A condition that sounds more dramatic than it is, and yet is somehow simultaneously exactly as dramatic as it sounds.
An extreme, clinical, Shakespearean-level case of potty mouth.
We are not talking about the casual deployment of a shit here and a fuck there. We are talking about a level of profanity fluency so advanced, so layered, so architecturally complex in its construction, that sailors have wept. Poets have taken notes. Linguists have considered writing papers.
Nikola had, up until this point, held the undisputed title of pottiest mouth in the entirety of the LEAVEN program. A crown he wore without effort and without apology.
But Nikola was lined up for debut now.
And it appeared he had left a successor.
His best friend. Mikko. Who was, as it happened, also German. Which raises the question — are Germans particularly well versed in the art of advanced swearing? Is this a cultural phenomenon? A linguistic gift? This author genuinely does not know. What this author does know is that they have now written two German characters and both of them swear like they invented it.
This is not this author's fault. Probably.
Anyway.
Mikko turned. And the look on his face — the slow, burning, absolutely loaded gaze that he leveled at Liam — made every single person in the room take one involuntary step backward. Including people who had not been involved in the original conflict.
And then he opened his mouth.
"Beep you, you absolute beeeeep—"
What followed cannot be printed. Not because this author is shy — regular readers will know better — but because what came out of Mikko's mouth operated at a frequency so advanced, so fluent, so genuinely Shakespearean in its layered complexity, that the only responsible editorial decision was full censorship. The beeps stacked on top of each other. They multiplied. They conjugated. They formed compound structures that had no business existing in any known language and yet somehow made complete grammatical sense.
Zen's eyes went wide.
And then, with the calm, decisive energy of someone who had made a split second judgment call —
He covered Mikko's mouth with both hands.
Mikko's eyes went wide above the hands. He grabbed at Zen's wrists. Tapped them. Tapped them more urgently.
"Hmmmp — HMMMP—"
Zen did not move.
Mikko tapped faster, increasingly frantic, the international signal for I cannot breathe, I am begging you—
Because Zen, in his thorough and complete commitment to stopping the profanity, had covered not just the mouth.
Also the nose.
Both. Simultaneously. With full unintentional dedication.
Mikko's tapping became desperate. His knees went. His eyes, above Zen's hands, took on a glassy, faraway quality. And then, in what was genuinely one of the most unexpected developments of the entire training camp —
Mikko's body went limp.
And dropped to the floor.
The room froze.
Everyone stared at the body on the studio floor.
Then at Zen, still standing, hands slightly raised from where they'd been, blinking down at Mikko with the expression of someone running a rapid internal calculation of what had just occurred.
"Oh my God," someone said, in a voice of pure, unfiltered awe.
"You actually killed him."
****
Zen's brain processed what had just happened in approximately half a second.
And then he moved.
Down to his knees. Mikko flat on his back. Zen straddling him with the focused, purposeful energy of someone who had a plan and was executing it immediately.
"1... 2... 3... 1... 2... 3..."
Chest compressions. Steady. Committed. Zen counting in his head with the concentration of a man who had absolutely decided that Mikko was not dying in this dance studio today.
1... 2... 3...
And then —
CRACK.
The slap landed so clean, so hard, so thoroughly that it ricocheted off every mirrored wall in the studio and came back around for a second visit acoustically.
The trainees, who had already been standing very still, became even more still. Liam's mouth was open. Nobody spoke.
Zen went straight back to chest compressions.
"1... 2... 3... 1... 2... 3..."
Beat.
CRACK.
Other cheek. Equal force. Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Mikko's eyes flew open.
Not gradually. Not the slow, blinking return to consciousness of a man gently rejoining the waking world. His eyes launched open — wide, wild, the expression of someone who had just been yanked back from wherever he'd been by a very firm and very loud hand.
Zen looked down at him.
The small, relieved smile that appeared on his face was so quietly satisfied, so genuinely fulfilled, that it could only be described as the expression of a man who had done a job and done it correctly.
He climbed off Mikko. Sat down on the studio floor beside him. Let out a small, soft "phew," wiping his forehead with his forearm, eyes carrying the peaceful glow of completion.
The trainees stood in a loose semicircle around the scene, blinking.
Liam surveyed the studio. Mikko on the floor, conscious but horizontal. Zen sitting next to him looking quietly accomplished. The echo of two slaps still spiritually present in the room.
"I am stuck," Liam said, to no one in particular, "with the most unhinged people on this planet."
"Angy." One of the trainees raised a hand carefully. "You're also kind of crazy though."
Liam turned.
The trainee's arms came up immediately — the automatic, muscle-memory shield of someone who had learned through experience. Eyes squeezed shut. Bracing.
The hit didn't come.
He peeked.
Liam was walking away. Hands in his pockets. Just — walking. The anger arriving, being acknowledged, and then being managed, quietly and without incident.
The trainees exchanged a look of pure, genuine reverence.
A miracle. A real one.
Meanwhile, on the floor:
"DUDE—" Mikko turned to Zen with the expression of a man filing a formal complaint. "You almost KILLED me!"
Zen picked up his phone. Passed it over.
Mikko read:
"I'm sorry. I watched that the most effective way to silence someone is to put a chloroform-soaked cloth over their nose and mouth. Since I had neither chloroform nor a cloth, I used both hands over your nose and mouth until you became quiet. I thought it was the same principle."
A long pause.
"...And the SLAPPING?" Mikko asked. "That hurt, by the way. Both of them. A lot."
Zen took the phone back. Typed. Passed it over again, and his face as he did so was the specific expression of someone who was very proud of their own reasoning and felt it would speak for itself.
Mikko read:
"I watched it in a movie. The person doing CPR kept slapping the unconscious patient every few compressions. After a couple of slaps the patient regained consciousness. I thought it was worth trying. What do you know — it actually works."
Mikko stared at this message.
Then at Zen, who was sitting there with the quiet, radiant self-satisfaction of a scientist whose hypothesis had just been confirmed by data.
"We need to do a full raid," Mikko said slowly, "of whatever it is you've been watching. Immediately. As a matter of public safety." He paused. "Also — how are you alive? How have you been surviving without your brother?"
Zen thought about this genuinely for a moment.
Then took his phone back, typed, and showed it to Mikko.
"Honestly? I'm not entirely sure."
****
PS- The song in this chapter is "Sorry" by the Biebs, if you haven't already figured that out. 😉