By the time they reached Otaru, the crew was ready for a break. Over a month spent on the road, never spending more than one or two nights in the same place, and the constant performances had taken its toll on the crew. The young adults were more than ready to spend four whole days at the same place, and at this point, were about ready to call any place they spent more than one night home.
Since the performance was on Thursday and they were leaving on Monday morning, they had basically the whole weekend to themselves, and they all knew exactly how they were going to spend it. Hiroichi and Akari, of course, disappeared off to their room the minute their concert on Thursday ended, and it was a safe bet that there wouldn't be much seen of either of them for the rest of the weekend.
The rest of the crew, on the other hand, were planning to explore Otaru, especially the night scene they'd heard so much about. (All right, it wasn't much compared to Tokyo, but all of them had been reading extensively on Otaru, just looking forward to the small break.)
Since results came out on Friday at noon, at half-past eleven Minori was at the door of the boys' room, laptop in hand. She'd gotten SOS texts from the other boys all morning, complaining that Seiichi was in an awful mood and neither of them could figure out what to do with him.
Minori figured it was just pre-results jitters, and had brought some snacks with her together with her laptop. Noticing that Seiichi had enjoyed her strawberry chocolate from the flight, she'd stocked up at the supermart down the street, and carried a plastic bag in her other hand containing about five different varieties of strawberry chocolate.
She knocked on the door awkwardly, given that both her hands were full, and when the door opened, she found a very relieved Naoki and Akira in her face.
"Minori-chan! We're so glad you're here!" Naoki cried, pulling her into the room. She toed off her shoes and walked further into the room, seeing a glum Seiichi sitting on his bed.
"What do you want?" he barked at her, and she rolled her eyes.
"Come on now, don't be so mean to everyone," she said, sitting on the bed and messing up his hair. "Want some chocolate? I brought a lot," she said, fishing around in the bag. Seiichi wasn't really in the mood for eating – he was far too nervous – but he did like strawberry chocolate, so he held his hand out grumpily.
She bypassed his hand entirely, popping it directly in his mouth, then leaned in to give him a kiss on the forehead. "Don't worry so much, sweetie," she said fondly, stroking his hair. "Whatever happens will happen, and I'll be here for you no matter what, okay?"
He draped his arm over her shoulders and sighed like the weight of the world was upon him, burying his face in the crook between her neck and shoulder. "I don't wanna check my results," he whined like a child.
Minori looked down at Seiichi, surprised, pushing at his shoulders so he pulled back and she could look at his face. She'd never known Seiichi to be like this before. "Come on, I'm nervous about them too, but we have to check them."
"You don't understand," Seiichi said, looking even more despondent than before, and Minori hadn't even known that was possible.
"Seiichi…" she said, wanting to probe more, but since it was almost noon already, she set up her laptop and went to the page where the results were coming out. Since last semester, she'd gotten into the habit of checking the portal a little earlier than noon, and refreshing constantly until the results showed up.
She started on her ritual while Seiichi stared at her. "What are you doing?" he asked with horrified fascination.
"Shh, sometimes they may release the results a little earlier than noon," she defended.
"They never do that; you know they can program the results to come out on the dot, right?" Seiichi asked, amused despite himself.
She whined and lay down, flinging her arms across his outstretched legs. "I just want to get this over with!" she complained.
He absentmindedly patted her hair with one hand while typing on his laptop with the other. "Well, just wait a little longer and – oh." The clock on the top right corner of his laptop changed to 12. Their results were out.
"What? What is it?" Minori asked, craning her neck to see. Then she realized the cause for his reaction, and scrambled into a sitting position to refresh the page on her own laptop. In the second that it took for the page to reload, she grabbed Seiichi's hand nervously, and he grasped it right back, grateful for the comfort.
They made a rather adorable sight, and Naoki and Akira had called the other performers to come and witness the pair checking their exam results. They were all clustered in the room, sitting on the other beds and Aiko and Hanae were perched on the desk chair, watching the two of them do deep breathing exercises with their eyes closed.
"Okay," Minori finally breathed out, tightening her grip on Seiichi's hand as she slowly opened her eyes and looked.
"Oh, my God," she whimpered, her eyes bugging out of her head.
"What? What is it?" Curiosity got the better of him as Seiichi first looked at her computer screen, and then at his. His reaction was very different from hers as his shoulders slumped for a moment, eyes closing in defeat. Then he got up, slammed his computer shut, and left.
There was a beat of silence where everyone sat awkwardly, not sure what to do, before Minori quickly got up, picked up her laptop and followed Seiichi.
"Seiichi, wait!" she called, running after him. He stopped, but didn't turn around for her.
"Hey," she said, slipping her hand into his and tugging. "You okay?"
"What the fuck do you think?" he snarled, although it turned into a sob halfway. Horrified, Minori immediately wrapped him up in a hug, stroking his hair as she shushed him.
"Let's go back to my room, okay? Everyone is in yours, so it'll be empty." When he nodded, she led him down the hall back to her room, fishing for her key card with the hand that wasn't holding onto his.
When she finally got the door open, she led him to her bed and made him sit down, stroking his back and waiting for him to stop crying so she could ask him what happened. She didn't think his grades could be so bad as to warrant this kind of reaction – she knew he was intelligent and hardworking, so he couldn't have done badly enough that it would cause problems such as academic counselling or expulsion.
When he started to calm down, she asked softly, "Do you want to talk about it?"
He sighed, and without a word, opened up his laptop, showing her the page with his results on it. She gasped softly when she sees it. Only the GPA comes out at noon; the individual grades only come out later, at 5pm, so she could only see his semester GPA, but it was far from ideal.
She cringed a little; no wonder he had such a bad reaction. "Seiichi… it's not the end of the world. Look, your cumulative GPA isn't that bad; you can just pick it up again next semester."
He flopped down onto the bed and whined something unintelligible into the pillow. She patted him on the back. "Sweetie, I hate to see you like that. Do you still want to go for drinks with the others tonight? I'll stay in and keep you company if you're not up to it."
He turned over and sighed. "No, I need to get wasted."
She laughed at him. "All right. Do you want to get some lunch? I know you haven't eaten all day."
With another overdramatic sigh, he agreed and they got up to get some food. Seiichi didn't ask, and she didn't tell him that she'd gotten a near-perfect GPA.
Sho was really enjoying his short break. He'd gone out alone in the morning, and as he'd planned, almost immediately found himself surrounded by beautiful women. He was walking with his impromptu entourage when he found Seiichi and Minori at a small roadside market, buying street food. They were way too touchy-feely for his taste; Seiichi had his hand on her back while they looked at the offerings the stalls had, and when he said something funny she turned to him and laughed.
He growled a little, under his breath. "Sho-chan? Is everything okay?" one of the fangirls asked.
"Yeah," he grunted, his mood to hang out with pretty girls completely gone. "I'm going back to the hotel," he said shortly, leaving them behind while ignoring their plaintive protests. He didn't think about why he was so upset – he didn't really want to. It was common, after all, for performers on tour to start dating, since they spent so much time together, and it wasn't like someone with Fuwa Sho's cool image could be dating a backup performer. He had to date someone who was as cool as him, after all.
Somehow those thoughts didn't make him feel better as he stormed back to the hotel to sulk in his room.
"Was that Fuwa-san?" Seiichi asked as he saw him out of his peripheral vision.
Minori looked over as well. "Well, given the size of that gaggle of girls, it must be. Who else could attract a crowd that big?" She turned back to the stall owner and paid for the daifuku, placing one in Seiichi's hand. Given his affinity for strawberries, she figured this would cheer him up.
He smiled at her as he opened the little paper bag and scrunched it so the daifuku peeped out. "Thanks, these are my favourite," he mumbled through a bite of the dessert. She smiled back at him as she bit into her own.
They spent an hour at the market, snacking on the various street foods and looking at the knick-knacks that were on sale, before buying yakisoba and heading back to the hotel. Minori had been texting the others, who were justifiably concerned at Seiichi's abrupt departure. She didn't want to tell them too much in case she was out of line, but she reassured them that Seiichi was with her, and she was keeping an eye on him.
"Do you want to rejoin the others? I think they went to get food as well," Minori asked.
He reluctantly agreed, still not sure if he was feeling up to the company, but knowing that they would worry about him until they saw that he was all right. He wasn't – he was still incredibly troubled, and he hadn't told Minori the whole story (or any of the story, at all) – but it wasn't fair to make them worry about something they shouldn't even know about.
He would just muddle through it alone, as he always did.
This chapter is a little shorter - just wanted to give yall a little something to tide you over before I start my internship tomorrow morning!
As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts.