Iori had that habit of never looking into a mirror more than necessary when he felt like that'd just drag him down. He didn't need to look at himself through one of these to know when he looked less than spectacular: if the people around him weren't here to ask him how he was doing or make loud remarks about how tired or ill he looked, just thinking on his current physical shape was enough.
He just knew he had reached a new low when he stopped wondering about how he was physically doing.
They were two weeks and a half into this mess of a situation. The flu epidemic was finally showing signs of dying out, but the convalescence step was barely any better for them. Osaka was almost overdoing it, but Yotsuba had gotten the memo that he couldn't let his sub-unit partner go too far for any given excuse. It seemed like paying his classmate in King Puddings was the way to go and, to be frank, it wasn't hard at all and not that expensive.
He knew full well that would only keep Yotsuba for a while, because that boy was more than his fondness for pudding, but it'd work until it wouldn't. He was already searching for new solutions and, to be fair, wasn't he already blackmailing Yotsuba enough by being the remaining thread linking the latter to the school system he had decided to leave alone for a while to fully focus on MEZZO"? It'd have been dirty of him to go further than that.
News from the hospital, through the manager. Nikaido was recovering steadily but, once again, the convalescence was viciously biting their ankles. It seemed to be their eternal knockback. They had no time to take time to heal, but it had to be done. It had to be done otherwise the base would be fragile again and the entire thing he had sworn to build and bring to great heights would fall apart and crash to the ground.
He couldn't picture himself as their Atlas. If someone had to represent the one keeping the band together whatever the means necessary to do so, it'd be Tsumugi and her constant cheerfulness, her smiles and her soft voice. Not… whoever he was. He was just the man in the shadows pulling some strings, maybe help her pull some. He was losing his grip over the situation as she started to take over more and more insisting that…
He should rest.
That was tiring him more than the ordeal itself. He hated the questions of concern, like "how are you?" or "you look like shit, Izumi, shouldn't you rest?". Everywhere, everyone, every time of the day and night was a potential risk of getting asked about how he was doing. Physically or mentally? Probably the former, maybe the latter considering the questions on his sudden increase in snappiness and losses of temper.
He wasn't used to getting scolded for legitimate reasons, like getting angry at a classmate just because she asked for some papers and, while she was at it, throw her own shot at a "how are you" type of question. Everyone was out there to get him, and that was by avoiding the fans who'd naturally show concern for their idols.
Thing was, if any of them was to worry for him, they wouldn't worry for the right person.
Out of the seven of them, Nikaido was the most affected: the appendicitis he was facing had been the first stone taken away from their ensemble and lead to unneeded stress for everyone. Making up for one member going on hiatus wasn't too hard, but it was still added workload nobody'd want otherwise.
After Nikaido, the most affected were Osaka, Nanase and his brother, all attacked by a catastrophic flu epidemic. They couldn't sing, dance or talk; and, frankly, they all looked miserable. That wasn't how they were going to make up for one stone missing, considering three of them were taken out in a single blow and barely a couple of days.
That was only leaving Yotsuba, Rokuya and him, out of the different members. Rokuya left shorly after for sudden familial business in Northmare, of which he hadn't been informed for. Fans were right to worry for him. They were also right to worry for Yotsuba, because he was going through a hard time with trying his best to maintain the group afloat through public appearances: talk shows, interviews, livestreams…
He was, as opposed to everyone else, not in the limelight. He didn't want it, frankly. The group needed him more as an asset than as a personality at the moment: he was only providing by setting aside everything "Iori" in himself. It was disregarding what would have made him happy or what would have been good for him. Even his own education was secondary: if he was still attending class, it was also because he could provide Yotsuba with information he needed yet otherwise wouldn't have been able to access.
He had an objective set in stone and he'd do anything to reach it. His body had started screaming at the end of the second week, the point around which the name of days didn't matter anymore aside from "Sunday" because it meant he wasn't attending class, but that wasn't important. It didn't matter to his eyes, so why should it matter to anyone else? It was his, his issue, and an issue he didn't have time to be bothered to fix for the moment. He'd do that once his main objective was fulfilled.
The goal was still clear and almost carved into his mind: fix everything up as soon as possible. It was slightly starting to get harder: whenever he didn't write something on a sticky note or on his overfilled whiteboard, he had great chances of completely forgetting about it. He had forgotten to help the manager with dorm-cleaning duty on the day before and, two days ago, had forgotten to tell Osaka about the next business plan.
He was failing at it adapting to the situation. There were some last-minute changes he hated to make to what he had originally planned, but aside from that, it was going to complete shit for him getting better and better for the group.
In a way, his objective was vaguer and vaguer with time passing. It was taking more and more time to figure out how to make up for people who were missing when they were starting to be less and less missing. He had allowed the manager to make most of the group appear on some talk show once he had made sure his brother's voice and energy had recovered enough.
"I know why you're being that weird and insistent," his brother told him during the inspection. "I thought I had told you about that when you mentioned it. You didn't want to give up on it, didn't you, Iori?"
At first, he was afraid he had been a weirdo in front of his beloved brother. He didn't want him of everyone in I7 to judge him harshly because he mattered. He soon came to the realization it didn't matter in the great scheme of things: he'd do it for his brother and for everyone, even if everyone was telling him he was being weird, insistent and snappy. That he "wasn't himself". What did that even mean? Did it really matter when everything else was against them?
Sure, it saddened him to see Mitsuki posing himself as against his plans and objectives, because he couldn't bring himself to overcome that obstacle. It was much harder and more painful to do than to beat someone else's flu or make it so the group's name didn't die out from lack of activity and news. There was no magical solution going by the name of Tamaki Yotsuba or Tsumugi Takanashi to come and fix that. All there was, was getting around an issue he couldn't bring himself to crush.
He needed to strengthen his list of objectives as quickly as possible. It was clear there wasn't just one goal to reach anymore: there was a plethora of these he needed to achieve in order to make the group survive through these harsh seas, trapped in a typhoon they were, finally, seeing the exit far away into the violent waters.
He had to take care of most of the other members until they were back to full health, make up for Nikaido still missing from the stage, convince the manager that he was doing perfectly fine once and for all, continue his planning, rinse and repeat. It had become his daily routine or, at least, the biggest chunk of it.
If he had been more lucid, he may had been able to understand why everyone was staring at him in such a negative way, a way he couldn't describe properly with the words he had on hand. Perhaps it was concern, but who would be concerned about a guy like him? About a tool someone who had made helping them out his mission? They didn't need to feel bad about it. He didn't need to see everyone look at him as if he was deserving their worries.
His eyes glanced at the whiteboard again onto something he had written
"Make it so they stop worrying for anything. It'll make it harder and take more time. Pay attention to big brother, Manager and Nanase the most."
At times like this, whenever he needed to access a full-on utility mode, he would pick up words that'd give him what he needed. It may had just been a placebo effect: he didn't care. He didn't have time or energy to care about that. He needed to concentrate it all onto his current missions.
Help I7 out as much as possible to become relevant again, even surpassing its pre-hiatus relevance.
Be the manager the group needed behind the scene while staying in the shadows.
Just make sure everything was good and under his control. Control everything. Have everything under his control and only his because that was the only way it was ever going to be fine.
Abstinere et sustinere.
In a moment of lucidity, his eye noticed the manager standing outside his room. She seemed rather angry at him, just like everyone else was at the moment, so he didn't make much of it. Perhaps she was just watching over him to see if he was doing the work he had promised her he'd do. Perhaps she was unhappy with his work and wanted to tell him, but that didn't make sense, because she walked away as soon as he noticed her.
There was a burn in his chest when he deciphered the expression on her face. His heart hurt, beats resonating against his ribs. If there was one thing he didn't want, it was to see Tsumugi in any way dissatisfied.
He could get over seeing the other members unhappy: it happened all the time with Nanase anyway. He had even learnt to put aside his admiration for his brother just enough so he could get over his judging stares as to make the mission a complete success, and even if it still hurt, he just ignored the pain anyway. Nothting could faze him. Nothing… but her.
For some reason, Tsumugi always managed to bypass the firewalls he had set in place. Any time she'd show even the slightest of negative reactions to anything, he wanted to back down and change everything. He'd never tell her that, just to save face because he had promised to be a good second manager to her, but he'd always change up plans and organization because she thought it was "too heavy", for example.
He had troubles remembering her exact words, but he remembered drowning into her upset eyes and listening to everything that came out of her mouth.
The thing was, he couldn't let that stand out. He couldn't let these unnatural feelings pollute everything. As he swayed back into balance, Iori shook his head as a way to forget about it all. His mind had to stay clear from selfish wants of wanting to please Tsumugi: he just needed to make it so any manager would accept it and, as such, I7's manager would accept it without questioning every single time if he knew what he was doing at long last.
He had to set something straight again: he, no, they couldn't tolerate failure. He needed to be perfect and to make everyone perfect with him so the group would rise to the stars. He had promised he'd make Nanase a superstar after all, he couldn't let him or anyone else down. He would become their light and only strive to become their ideal.
Before he knew it, he had fallen onto the floor in a dizzy spell.
The world was spinning all around him. One thing had to be admitted: his brain was a mess. Shards of thoughts were floating around his mind, piercing into his braincells like knives into flesh, bullets of pain going down his entire thought process. Ideas kept appearing only to disappear seconds later, before he even had the time to realize they had come to existence. A moment he was thinking of how to make it okay, another he was thinking of how he had hurt his ribs by falling hard to the floor.
However, one thing was for sure: his heart resonated with his head. His heartbeats matched the pace at which the shards stabbed and extracted themselves out of his brain. They seemed to all adopt a common theme, a red thread tying everything together in a confused yet sensical bundle.
As he was rising himself back up, slowly trying to use weakened limbs to elevate himself from the floor, he had become lucid again. He got it together just enough to determine his physical condition and how damaged it was. What was he doing already? Oh, right, trying to organize a new TV event that he'd attend as the subunit he shared with Nanase…
The light-headedness had made him completely dazed, beyond everything he could have ever imagined before. He had planned on staying up for a little bit longer: he settled for sitting on his desk's chair waiting for it to pass.
A strange, unknown, sour taste made its way onto his mouth and all over his teeth and tongue. The bitterness of it made it all the much worse, rendering everything numb around him. His eyes closed down on their own at a rapidly alarming rate, to the point he could barely pull himself awake. That wasn't the time to do that! What if… What if Tsumugi needed him?
Goddammit! Why was she the first thing to come to his mind in a moment like that?! He'd cry for Mitsuki, for his family or for his friends the bandmates in that case! Why did he think of her like that?! Why was imagining her happy face soothing him in a time where his own heartbeats muted his love for his brother?
And then it hit him like a thundercloud.
There had to be a reason why he was so attached to make her happy, beyond his workload and missions. The group was important, but she was just as important, if not more at times. She was more than "the manager" to his eyes, and it hurt. It hurt because he couldn't allow that to stand. He had wanted to erase "Iori Izumi" from his way of thinking and acting, just for this time, just because of the situation.
Yet, his heartaches and his feelings kept pestering him, interfering with the good of everyone.
On the other hand, wouldn't ignoring his feelings be disrespecting her? He didn't want to make it as if she wasn't anything special to anyone! Tsumugi was unique and close to perfection. The more time he had spent with her, the more he understood why she was such a good person. She was strong-willed, good-willed, kind but not too tender, always settling with the best for all of them. It was selfish of him to even think he needed to prioritize something that only concerned two people (and his perception of how good he was or not), but… it was out of his control.
This was going to be a failure, and he was seeing it coming, which made it all the much worse.
It was either how much he loved her or how much he wanted the group to succeed, and he was stuck in an impossible choice. No matter how much he wanted to push himself aside from the greater good, this anchor kept pulling him back to a minimal sense of identity. Because of them, he couldn't fully chain himself away.
The undeniable truth was that he was still Iori Izumi, a seventeen-year-old boy that had set to be his idol unit's saviour in dire times, and that there were two things about him that were seriously interfering with these plans.
He was desperately in love with a girl who would never love him back because of her job commitment, and he was getting seriously sick.
