The whiteboard he had eventually installed in his room was starting to be filled with a lot of scribbles, even to his tastes. He wished he could have deleted some of them, erasing the mess away, but each time he was inspecting the board, the same thought popped in his head.
"No, I need all of this information on it."
Sighing as he grabbed his marker, Iori could only ponder as to how they had arrived into such a mess. It felt like yesterday was a whole other situation: from an idol unit roaring to success, freshly out of Black or White's male idol prize, they had gone into a situation where they were barely standing on three legs. It was surprising they hadn't fallen or crumbled under the weight of the recent issues the world had raised against them, but they had managed to stay afloat.
Fluctuat nec mergitur.
"It shakes but it doesn't sink". It was a sentence he had picked up when cleaning Nanase's room, from the novel the latter was reading at the time and on the page it the book had been left open on, right when he had caught the strongest strain of flu he had seen in his life. He had heard it before in class as the device city of Paris, France. That sentence could sum them well, he thought.
Without really thinking about it, his hand was already writing the sentence down onto the board, between two blocks of information about the condition and whereabouts of his fellow members and staff members. Ogami had been down with a flu he had given to his big brother, Osaka and Nanase; Nikaido was in the hospital for a surprise case of appendicitis and scarring problems from it; Yotsuba was still there but he couldn't do much without the other part of MEZZO"; Rokuya was away for family business in Northmare. In the end, the only persons who could really do anything good for I7 were the manager and him.
He had listed all the duties he had taken on during the past two weeks without having any issue with it: managing the official website, the official fanclub and merchandising; help the manager out with paperwork, taking care of the sick members, clean around the dorm and, last but not least, attend class for Yotsuba and him. The former had stopped attending school as he desperately tried to keep his group afloat. He couldn't blame him: he was trying to help the way he could.
Iori could only make one last observation, and that it was that he wouldn't last for much longer with the rhythm at which everything was going.
The other members were, luckily, starting to recover. Osaka had started reappearing on some TV show sets, then singing with Yotsuba once his voice was back to normal and sounded right when he did try to perform miss you…. His brother was starting to regain some colours on his face, much to his pleasure, because worry was the last thing he needed to interfere with his duties. Ogami had even reprised his job, taking care of his usual duties.
However, Iori couldn't deny the soreness he had started to feel all over his body one week into this mess. His limbs would just not leave him alone for even a second. The only explanation available to him was how tiring the entire ordeal was, something he could have never contradicted. It was exhausting, and he wasn't the type to deny to himself how bad he actually felt over the situation, but he had to keep on.
Show must go on.
So he put on a face and continued working with the manager. It had been a chore to calm her down at first: she was all over the place, screaming about how IDOLiSH7 was close to collapsing because they had to go on an indefinite hiatus, and how the situation was a catastrophe, and how she couldn't do her job properly, apologizing over and over again. While he could understand her feelings, since the unknown had to be his greatest enemy, she was clearly overreacting and she was much better than that, so he decided to calm her down.
Once she was back on track, Tsumugi revealed herself to his greatest asset ally. She was effective, proactive, was willing to work overtime and was, most of all, understanding how excruciating the situation was willing to listen to him and to his plans and ideas. Of course, he'd listen to hers too, since she did provide them with good ways to stall the sudden drought of content: publishing bloopers and behind-the-scene footage of filmed rehearsals was an incredible way to provide the fans with what they wanted, while they didn't have to force any sick man to sing for said content. It was genius.
A knock on his door swiftly broke him out of his thought process, before slowly opening. A familiar blonde poked her head through the doorframe, a smile on her face.
"Iori, can I see you for a few minutes? We need to discuss something!"
"Of course."
He put down the marker where it was meant to be and followed her to a now very familiar room. In fact, he had been there more than he had been in his room, sometimes. These days were one of the cases: he spent a lot more time around the dorm, cleaning stuff, taking care of the other members, helping out by being errand for food before Ogami came back, and when he had some time he would usually spend it on planning with the manager and school work.
He followed the manager to her office, where she invited him to sit down on the sofas around the coffee table. It had almost become a ritual, as they had been there in similar positions so frequently in the past few days.
"What do you have to tell me about, Manager?" he asked with a hint of impatience in his words. "I don't have much time, so please make it quick."
He had some troubles controlling his temper, lately. He'd have wondered how so a few days ago: now, he was just putting it on his fatigue. One cup of black coffee would do the trick, as unhealthy as that was to even think.
Tsumugi got out papers from a folder lying on the table and started browsing through its sheets. Once she had done so, perhaps to make sure she had everything sorted out before she spoke, she looked up and back at him.
"Oh, sure, we're kind of in a hurry these days, sorry! How would you describe our current situation, Iori?" she asked with a neutral face.
The side effect of managing to calm her down was that she entrusted him more than she entrusted herself. It was only normal: he has the best analytical abilities of them all. Of course they'd entrust him.
"Without being overly optimistic," he replied, "I'd say we're getting there. MEZZO" is buying us time for the moment being. If we're lucky, we may get Nanase back sooner than we thought, although I wouldn't count on luck so we need to stay strong and see that possibility as a best-case scenario. Is this all you wanted to talk about? I have plans to make and you have management to do, we don't have time to lose in trivially going back on a situation we're in."
"That's what I thought," she commented as she put away the papers again. "That only confirms what the others have expressed concern about these past few days…"
Iori felt his eyebrows twitch.
"What concern? We told them to rest. I thought even my brother had understood it."
"They were right when they said you sounded snappy…" escaped her mouth in what seemed to be a try at a hushed tone.
"Come again?"
She straightened up and looked at him in the eyes, despite the slight red going across her cheeks. She was intimidated but still tried to go against him.
"Other members have told me they thought you were snappy these days, and that joins what I actually wanted to tell you about!"
He tried his hardest not to roll his eyes and sigh. Frankly, he had all the rights to be "snappy" if it was being true to his thoughts and objectives. Why did they even say he was "snappy"? He was used to "snarky", "blunt" or "offensive", but "snappy"? That was new.
"How so? If it's not important, like what sick members think of me telling them rest is important but that a quick recovery's necessary for the group's survival, then refrain from telling me about it. I don't need to hear it."
The expression on Tsumugi's face wasn't amused in the slightest. He could read her tiredness on it, sure, but there was a shade of that expression he was certainly losing there.
"Iori… I wanted to talk to you about how you're doing! That has nothing to do with plans and the others, for once!"
He couldn't keep the urge to sigh inside much longer.
"Is this seriously why you're keeping me away from what really needs to be taken care of? Manager, I thought we had set our priorities straight."
"My priority as your manager is to make sure you're all alright!" she replied with conviction burning in her voice. "It's not because you're the only one who hasn't been sick yet that I should brush off concern for your wellbeing, Iori!"
A small smirk made its way onto his mouth.
"That's cute."
Despite what he had just said, that wasn't amusing him in the slightest.
"Please excuse me for the lack of manners, but I'll leave you if this was all you wanted to tell me about. I have other stuff to do. Take care, Manager."
Before he could leave her any proper time to react, he got up from the sofa and made his way out of the room, with the firm intention of going back to his room and resume where he had left things off. He'd have just wished he hadn't gotten a bit dizzy when getting up, but brushing that off wasn't any harder than anything he had spent time on for the past few days.
However, for the first time, it had come to him that his physical condition wasn't the greatest anymore. The dizzy spell only vanished when he had crashed onto his desk chair, and that was only because he had lucked out. He hated relying on luck and just good odds, so he'd have to revise that and find a better way to sustain the effort that was going on.
Originally, he had planned for his survival strategy to revolve around the idea that he was invincible and that, if he just ignored the pain enough, he'd make it with little to no actual issue. However, he had soon noticed his body wasn't following through with that plan: it was almost as if it was trying its hardest to make it harder than it should have been. He was already in a dire situation: he didn't need that kind of inconveniences on top of it.
Instead, he adopted another strategy: focus on what he was striving for and what he needed for it. He needed energy, time and critical thinking to achieve his goals. These "goals", closer to a duty than to mere goals, were, undeniably, the group's survival and everyone's happiness around him. If he focused on that, he wouldn't feel any of the side-effects that this lifestyle would have on him on the short term.
He knew that doing that, focusing exclusively on what he was needed for, could lead him to forgetting his sense of self, at least partially, for a given amount of time: he didn't care. He didn't care because he was the only one who could do this, who could tear IDOLiSH7 apart from what would otherwise be his doom. Currently, everybody needed his abilities and a pillar in a time where the ship was almost sinking.
That course of action was putting in use what the manager hadn't understood. Her misjudgement of the situation shined through when she expressed that… concern for him. Concern wasn't needed and was, in fact, counterproductive. Tsumugi Takanashi couldn't have known, because she was unique, had unique skillsets and because her personality would help them pull through the tough times. His wasn't. His didn't help, as shown by others pointing out how "snappy" he was. There was something he had understood that she hadn't, and to which he had the answer already all figured out.
Nobody currently needed "Iori Izumi".
The phrasing was harsh, but what use was there to mistake himself into thinking his blunt and poisonous personality would help anything be better? There was none. He'd have to put his ego on the side if he wanted the situation to get fixed.
What he felt wasn't important at the moment. The exhaustion trying to take over, the imploding feeling he had in his abdomen when he was around the manager, the uncomfortable dizziness, the sensation of just being a crutch to everyone else, the need to ignore everyone's opinion on him because he'd otherwise worry for himself… It'd all be gone until everything was fine.
And everything would be fine. He had sworn so to himself and to everyone else in silence. He wouldn't disappoint, he'd fix everything.
He couldn't do nothing but try harder, raise it higher because the stakes kept getting higher.
He'd figure it out, because, in the end, he couldn't do anything but raise his own stakes higher, as to have something to strive for.
He'd raise the stakes higher until he was caught by his duties, free to ignore everything bad about him and about the fact he was logically a mere human.
In the end, he had written one sentence on his white board, complimenting the other words:
I'll go find it; it's all I wish to do.
