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Nakamura Kazuha had never given much of her heart to anything other than ballet. Some would even go as far as to say ballet was her first love.
There was much to see in Osaka. Busy streets, hot-spots for tourists, a sea of people far and wide. But there stood a little girl too young to make out anything on the advertisement billboard other than the pointe shoes printed beside all the gibberish she could not understand; and of all the flurry of options surrounding her, she chose this to be her dream.
For 18 years she pursued nothing but passion, passion for none other than a stage and the art she considered freedom.
For it was the prospect of chasing a dream that brought you freedom, was it not?
So why did she leave it behind?
Perhaps it was the liberation she felt to be given a choice.
Although ballet was a choice she had made, it was the sole purpose she had been living for. No other dreams available for consideration, because, why would one choose the unknown over the safety of an enclosure they had known their whole life? Humans have always been wary of the unfamiliar, Nakamura Kazuha was no different.
At first, she declined the offer.
There was no one to ask her if she was crazy, out of her mind for declining an offer from Hybe. Millions would kill for this opportunity. But those that surrounded Nakamura Kazuha were exactly like her, living and breathing ballet. They chose ballet.
For Kazuha, that was until she heard the name Miyawaki Sakura.
Hook, line and sinker. All it took to recruit her.
HKT48? AKB48? Iz*one? Kazuha did not care for those things. But she was curious…
Miyawaki Sakura, a Japanese idol, pro-wrestler… former Iz*one member, now signed under HYBE. Over a decade of being an idol yet able to live so many different lives and have so many choices to make.
They say Miyawaki is a woman who has lived 9 lives. Fitting is it not? for a cat.
That was Kazuha’s first impression her.
In the end, she left her enclosure behind. But she did not think she would regret it, she would still be on stage would she not? Perhaps freedom lies within the stage.
The dream… was it ballet? or simply the thrill of the stage and eyes that followed you, drinking it in.
-
For the first time, she thought herself a spectator. Entering the training room, Nakamura Kazuha’s focus was on nothing but the enigma that was Miyawaki Sakura.
She sat herself down next to Sakura and listened intently as she spoke. That was when it became real to her.
I’m on my way to a new stage.
-
“It’s okay to fall” is what Sakura tells her after their first dance practice as a group. Kazuha had inevitably broken down, believing she was holding her peers back.
“We’re all just growing. Some at a slower rate, but it doesn’t invalidate our growth, does it?”
Sakura would proceed to make an analogy with her height. Along with the drying of tears came Kazuha’s giggles and in return a smile with the warmth of spring she never wanted to forget.
In Kazuha’s mind, as you do with your first love, she had given her youth to ballet, but the eyes mirroring hers told her otherwise. They were so gentle, so kind and for the first time Kazuha thought... There was something more beautiful than an invitation to the stage.
It was winter time when the seedling emerged. All white but a tiny sprout of warmth.
Many had already counted on Sakura to tend to Kazuha, to mentor her and to relieve the language barrier with the other members, but Sakura took it upon herself to request to share a dorm with the latter. She cooked for them, tutored Kazuha and would practise with her beyond the required hours.
Kazuha had never been more grateful; and shy as she was, wasn’t able to convey it with words.
Sakura knew nonetheless.
The younger girl always watched her with oh-so-gentle eyes, submitted to her every request and was well behaved and attentive (as compared to– with the most love– their cheeky little maknae) yet, she never got too close.
This was Kazuha being considerate. She was grateful, but felt that she was only an obligation to Sakura. Where she could be independent, she would avoid relying on the older girl. It had always been this way after all. You shoulder the choices you’ve made.
But as time passes, the concealer washes off and Kazuha’s bruises are bare.
Sakura can only frown. As much as she wants to help, she knows their distance will grow with every step she takes. One step forward, one step back. Kazuha would only throw her a silly little grin, telling her it’s ok.
“I’m ok.”
So she leaves her be and lets the bird take care of her own feathers.
Wings are bound to heal, right? It’s the only way she can fly.
That is until Sakura enters Kazuha’s room, asking if she wanted to go on a stroll only to find the girl laying in bed shedding silent tears. It’s that feeling. An ache.
She knows all too well.
When confronted with Sakura’s embrace, Nakamura Kazuha makes another choice. She allows herself to be enveloped and confides in the older girl with a whisper of the wind. Sakura tells her stories of deadly words and battles, of bruises and scars much like her own and of a family.
“It’s ok to fall” she is reminded once again.
So instead, Kazuha asks Sakura to go out on walks. She discovers Sakura’s love for film and photography, of the joy one feels to be swinging on a playground simultaneously with the other… They visit cafés and restaurants and she learns of the older’s love for Kimchi stew… They laze around on weekends and play on Sakura’s game console, the older woman’s carefree bouts of enthusiastic screams ringing throughout the dorms…
It is then that Kazuha loses touch of distance perception.
Kazuha had never allowed herself to long for anything other than that of the stage. But that never stopped the moth from being drawn to the flame.
Shortly thereafter, the final lineup is set and Chaewon is appointed the leader. But Kazuha knows that Sakura will also be shouldering much of that responsibility, Kazuha knows that she is not Sakura’s only younger member, Kazuha knows that much of Sakura’s attention will be on Eunchae even more so than before and finally… Kazuha knows now that she is fluent and familiar, she will have to stand on her own.
Kazuha has always known.
So whenever she is met with Sakura’s smile now, she packages it up and stores it up somewhere deep and continues to stand on her own… takes walks on her own and bandages herself up so when the time comes, she’ll be strong enough to carry Sakura too.
-
The winter seedling bloomed in spring but the roots are overgrown.
LE SSERAFIM makes their debut and the bird is able to fly once again, but she will always return home. Welcomed by the warmth of cherry blossom petals. A home now inhabited by others.
Moments with Sakura become fleeting, even so, she feels joyful.
She was on stage and Sakura was nearby.
But happiness… such a momentary thing it was. They had lost a member and the impermanence of it all left Kazuha winded. All of them blamed themselves for not being able to protect what they had, Sakura and Chaewon particularly so. It got increasingly difficult to catch glimpses of Sakura within their own dorm but Kazuha understood. She convinced herself she did.
She remembers all of what was left behind and hardens her own two wings. Blow after blow, impact after impact, she is still left standing. She is to be fearless, is she not? (but she isn’t)
She feels parts of herself coming undone once again. This time she’s dangling by her arm and refuses to fall.
Sakura hasn’t allowed her to fall. She won’t fall.
There is a moment of calm after the departure. Kazuha finds herself and the members working themselves to the bone, no time spared to grieve, as there is so much to make up for. The way Sakura’s frown lines are more evident than usual or the way her eyes don’t hold much of a smile don’t slip past Kazuha, neither does the way Sakura avoids her gaze.
Kazuha still remembers to boil water first thing once she arrives home, she knows Sakura has tea when she’s stressed, She prepares extra blankets on the couch because she knows Sakura will stay up gaming in hopes of forgetting, she remembers to clean their shared space because Sakura will have other things to attend to… people who are not her.
But imagine the hurt Kazuha feels when she finds that it’s Chaewon that Sakura is confiding in, as she returns home after a personal schedule.
She hasn’t forgotten how deep the bond between the two former Iz*one members is, how she will never compare but a part of her attributes this to her own incompetence and lack of growth. She still isn’t strong enough to be relied upon.
She smiles and nods politely at their leader before wordlessly heading to her room. She doesn’t notice the way Sakura's frown deepened.
She tosses and turns in bed for hours on end, thoughts running rampant. Sleep hadn't come easy to her lately, but it was only becoming increasingly more difficult by the day. It’s late but she receives a notification. She can only let out what sounds like a self-deprecating scoff as the screen of her unlocked phone lights up with a wholesome moment of Sakura and Eunchae giggling on V-Live. Even so much as a smile hadn’t come so naturally to Sakura for a long while. It was warm, like all the other ones engraved deep in her heart, but Kazuha’s blood still runs cold.
The ugly green monster rears it's head.
Kazuha doesn’t remember when or how she fell asleep but there is a dull ache in her neck. The ache is nothing compared to that of her heart. Paying it no mind, she saunters down to the second level where the other members reside. Yunjin greets her and wraps a welcoming arm around her shoulder, enthusiastically showing Kazuha the omelette she had made and offering her some.
Yunjin catches the way her eyes glaze over. Kazuha won’t admit it but the omelette serves as a reminder of how much she misses their oldest member’s cooking. How much she misses Sakura. The way in which she misses Sakura.
She isn’t allowed to.
What she is to Sakura, is simply a younger member from home. She isn’t allowed to miss her like *that*. And she won’t let herself, knowing the older is incapable of being within the same vicinity as her. Further proven when Sakura wanders out of Eunchae’s room, yawning, and freezing upon making eye-contact.
Kazuha is the first to break it. Just as she broke the rules. She had fallen and it left no one but herself to pick up the pieces.
She goes back to finishing her omelette and Yunjin invites her to go out. She hums and agrees but doesn’t notice the way Yunjin is observing her.
She can only taste the bitterness in her mouth as they arrive at the arcade. She tries to have fun anyway, harder than untangling her twisted expression. In a moment of heedlessness, rather than falling forward, Kazuha twists her ankle in an attempt to save herself on the dance dance revolution.
She doesn’t cry out in pain, but Yunjin notices nonetheless.
“It’s okay to fall”
Yunjin is smart. A fact that no one can deny, despite all the unintelligible remarks she makes, for comedic effect of course.
She’s figured it out by now. This time, Kazuha has truly lost it. She’s wracked with sobs, hanging onto Yunjin for dear life. And only after Yunjin sits her down with an ice pack does she calm down.
“You and Kkura-unnie have been distant lately.” A pause. An observation.
Kazuha shrugs.
“You know, Eunchae is oblivious to stuff like this and Chaewon-unnie just goes along with whatever Kkura-unnie does but… I’ve always been watching.” Yunjin says slowly. She doesn’t pry. Kazuha tells her anyway. A chronicle of avoidance, of overwhelming feelings and of her longing to grow up so that she may be on the same plane as Sakura.
Yunjin understands.
-
She should have known. Only Yunjin would come up with plans as devious as this… and it seems Chaewon was in on it too.
Kazuha doesn’t know what cliché movie she had been casted in, but she didn’t think she’d have to be confronted with being locked in a practice room with Sakura. Sakura doesn’t even realise until she turns the knob, having already picked up her belongings with the intention to leave.
Yunjin, on the other side of the door, tells them in a mock-authoritative tone that they wouldn’t be allowed to leave until they “sorted their shit out”.
Kazuha, in a corner on the other side of the room, shrinks into herself.
Sakura sits herself down in front of the door, vowing to kill the girl once she is let out. “Is it that hard to be near me, unnie?” Sakura looks up at her, surprised. Kazuha wants to scoff. How could Sakura make such a face after avoiding her for so long.
Sakura tells her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about.
Kazuha picks herself up and marches over to the older girl. Sakura stands up but backs herself up against the door. “What part of me isn’t enough for unnie to trust in, to rely on?” Kazuha asks, voice trembling.
“Perhaps in the beginning, unnie chose to live with me out of obligation and maybe even pity. But I truly thought that there was a possibility it was because you liked me even if just a little bit and just as we started relying on one another, you backed out.” She takes a deep breath. Sakura opens her mouth, but Kazuha continues. “So I thought. I had been too reliant, I needed to learn to be independent, because I didn't want to become a burden to you and maybe then you would rely on me too. Yet, you wouldn't so much as look my way.” Realising the older girl was not going to give her a response, she tells her:
“I miss you.” (I don’t know what it would take for you to miss me too.)
Sakura looks like she wants to say something, but she holds back and once again, Kazuha notices. This time, Sakura doesn’t miss the way Kazuha’s eyes dim a little as disappointment paints her face.
“Let me out.”
Yunjin, sensing the exhaustion in Kazuha’s voice, unlocks the door. The only thing Kazuha can think of is to run. Yunjin and Chaewon go after her, leaving Sakura to her own thoughts. Sakura doesn't know whether she is afraid of falling or afraid of losing.
-
Sakura returns to the dorm later that evening. The shared space was dimly lit so she concluded Kazuha was home. She garnered no response after knocking on the latter’s door and like the first time, she walked in, but this time Kazuha wasn’t crying. She wore an expression more twisted than crying. It made Sakura ache too.
“Similar to you, I didn’t want to become a burden.” She realised she would lose Kazuha for good if she continued keeping her silence. Falling became less daunting then.
Kazuha found herself confused, but she listened. “I told you it was okay to fall, but I couldn’t afford to let myself do the same.”
Sakura is only human.
Despite all the philosophical spiels she had made to Kazuha, they applied to herself, too.
Sakura tells Kazuha how her reliance on the younger girl frightened her, how the more reliant she became the more complicated her feelings were, so much so that they confused her. She hoped Kazuha would understand it was also to protect her, and their career, but her fear only ended up being reinforced by the departure of Garam.
“But whether to accept those feelings was my choice to make.” Kazuha tells her.
“Just as choosing this career, over what would’ve been my safety blanket, was my choice. Maybe I never told you… but you intrigued me, Sakura-chan. I didn’t find myself interested in what Hybe had to offer, but rather a chance at something different. Because you have always been making choices, and part of me wanted that choice too... I didn’t know it would end with me wanting you, but I would've accepted it if you did too.”
Sincerity is scary. Sakura thinks. But she smiles a little at the familiar language.
(We’re all just growing up)
"So don't give up on me. I miss you too."
Kazuha stares back at her, a little hopeful.
"It's ok to fall, Sakura."
Just as a butterfly spreads its wings and lands on its first flower, Sakura plants a fluttering kiss on Kazuha’s lips.
It was welcoming, just as spring's arrival.
à suivre