The world didn't stop when Julian collapsed.
The lights dimmed, the crowd screamed, someone backstage cut the music. His group rushed to his side. A medic emerged from the wings. It was chaos—but it passed, like everything did. The headlines the next day said "Overworked Idol's Health Scare," and the footage trended for three hours before getting buried under a scandal involving another group's stylist.
By morning, people moved on.
Julian didn't.
---
He woke in the dressing room, not a hospital.
A handheld diagnostic patch clung to his collarbone, blinking amber. He felt like he'd been chewed up and spit out by the stage floor. Someone had shoved a mint between his teeth—sweet, sharp—and his entire chest ached with an almost nostalgic throb.
He wasn't alone.
George sat nearby, headphones slung around his neck, scrolling through rehearsal footage on his tablet. His fingers moved fast, but his foot tapped off-beat. Nervous. Restless.
When Julian stirred, George looked up. His dark eyes darted away too quickly.
"You scared the hell out of everyone."
Julian didn't reply. He sat up slowly, peeling the diagnostic patch from his chest. It left behind a faint square of raw skin.
George shifted. "You should've told us you weren't feeling good."
"I didn't think it was serious."
"You passed out."
"It happens."
---
Later that night, when the dorm lights were off and the others were pretending to sleep, Julian lay awake, staring at the ceiling fan as it ticked in slow, lazy circles. His thoughts spiraled the same way—slow, heavy, and going nowhere.
The collapse wasn't the problem.
The problem was, it hadn't surprised him.
---
The Group: NOX
They weren't like the others.
They weren't sculpted from marble or stitched together in private clinics with perfect cheekbones and camera-calibrated faces. They were just... boys. Boys that had survived the worst, just....boys
Five of them. Each rough around the edges. Each with a different story that bled into the next.
George— the strategist, dancer, obsessive perfectionist.
Ren — the joker, whose smile always arrived before his words.
Marvo — the youngest, still wide-eyed, still too soft for this world.
Tae — the quiet one, muscle memory in place of conversation.
Julian — the center. Not because he wanted to be, but because he had to be.
They'd trained in stairwells. Practiced in basements. Recorded demos in borrowed booths. Their fans didn't love them for their shine—they loved them because they tried, and they failed, and they tried again.
But trying wasn't enough anymore.
The industry had changed.
Now, every billboard face had skin like polished stone and teeth set like diamonds. They moved with precision only surgery could buy. The top idols weren't born—they were built. Programs chose their features. Surgeons assembled them. Agencies hired them after the dust settled and the stitches dissolved.
Julian's group—NOX—was one of the last "organic" groups still charting. Barely.
They had no sponsor. No exclusive contracts. Just fans. Just sweat.
And Julian's collapse had shaken something in them they didn't want to name.
---
In the days after, the practice room became... quieter.
Tae stopped correcting Min's footwork.
George showed up early and left early, alone.
Ren made fewer jokes.
They were still a unit, still moving in the same general direction—but not as tightly. Not as naturally. Something had shifted.
Julian could feel it in the way Min avoided eye contact during warmups. In how Ren always asked, "You good?" but never waited for the answer. In the way they danced with more precision now—as if preparing for something.
Or someone else.
They didn't talk about it.
They never talked about important things.
They just kept moving.
---
To uncle Shane, Julian went alone.
The clinic was small but high-end, hidden in the commercial district's quieter end. No neon signs, no glowing ads, just polished concrete and tinted glass.
Dr. Shane greeted him with a warm smile and cooler hands.
"Still ticking, I see," the man said lightly, checking Julian's vitals.
Julian shrugged. "Barely."
The doctor was one of the few people who didn't look at him like a product. He had treated Julian once, early in their trainee days, when Julian's leg had seized up from malnutrition. After that, he'd offered help when he could. Said he believed in the group.
Julian had come back because he didn't know where else to go.
The scans took twenty minutes.
Shane didn't say much as he examined the data. He hummed once—low and brief—and then touched a button to bring up Julian's cardiac readout.
"What does it say?" Julian asked.
"Something I don't understand yet," Shane admitted. "You're stable. But... strange."
"Strange how?"
"Your heart rhythm is... atypical. More machine-like than human."
Julian stiffened. "Is that bad?"
Shane paused. "Not necessarily. But it's not good, either."
He leaned back, folding his hands in his lap.
"You need to slow down."
Julian almost laughed. "In this industry?"
"Then you need options. I can help you. But we'd be talking about... surgery. Time off. Rest."
Julian stared at the readout. Blue lines danced like lies.
"I'll think about it."
---
Two weeks later, their agency got a call.
The Star Program.
A three-month televised competition between rising idol groups. The winner would get a performance deal, sponsorships, and a guaranteed contract with a high-tier label.
It was the last chance kind of offer.
The producer called it a miracle. George called it suicide. Ren called it fate. Marvo cried. Tae said nothing.
Julian listened.
The others looked at him—not for leadership, not for approval—but because he was the oldest, the first trainee, the center. The heart, even if he didn't have one.
He hadn't told them about Shane.
He hadn't told them about the mechanical rhythm or the metallic pain in his chest every morning.
He just nodded.
"We do it."
The vote wasn't unanimous, but it didn't need to be.
The water in the practice room was too still.
It pooled around Julian's feet in silence, not quite warm, not quite cold. Just… still. Sterile.
No music played. No hum of machines. The only sound was the quiet ripple of water as the others moved. Their breaths came sharp. Focused. Disciplined.
He moved with them, but he wasn't really there. Not entirely. It was like his body remembered more than his mind did. The steps slid into place, muscle memory guiding every pivot, every flick of his wrist. But inside, it was hollow. An echo chamber.
His chest itched. Not the skin, but something deeper—beneath the ribs, beneath the meat.
He'd showered twice already. Scrubbed until his skin flushed pink across his collarbones. Still, the itch persisted. A faint burn near the seam of his breastbone. The scar was healed—visibly. No one ever looked close enough to know what was under it.
No one except the doctor.
"Julian," A voice snapped through the haze. "You're behind the count."
He blinked. George had stopped the music. The others stood frozen mid-formation, staring at him. Some annoyed. Some worried. A few unreadable.
Julian forced a nod. "Sorry. Just a little dizzy."
"You were dizzy yesterday too," came Ren's clipped voice. His eyes didn't look at Julian—just over his shoulder, like he couldn't bear to meet him directly. "We can't afford mistakes, remember?"
Julian didn't flinch. "I'll keep up."
"Can you?" George's tone was gentle, but the words cut. "You collapsed on stage six months ago, Julian. I let that slide. We all did. But this is the final round. If you mess this up, there won't be a next."
He could feel it again. The itch. Not on his skin but in his ribs. It crept up the back of his throat like heat. Like something pressing outward from inside.
"I'll be fine," he said.
"You're not fine." Ren's voice dropped, quiet and bitter. "You haven't been for a long time."
No one spoke for a few seconds.
Then marvo, quiet as always, leaned forward and placed a towel around Julian's shoulders. "Let's take a break."
Julian didn't argue.
---
In the cramped dressing room, they sat in a ring on the cracked vinyl couch, bathed in green-tinged overhead light. No one spoke at first. Ren tapped at his tablet, looking over rehearsal notes with a tight jaw. Tae stared blankly at the ceiling. Marvo leaned into the crook of Julian's shoulder, silent but warm.
The silence stretched until George exhaled.
"I got a message this morning. From the Star Program."
Julian stilled.
"They're making a documentary," Ren continued. "On underdog idol teams. They want us to apply."
Tae barked out a laugh. "Us? As the inspirational failures?"
"No," Marvo murmured. "As the desperate ones."
Ren looked up. "We agreed we wouldn't take any more contracts until we knew what we wanted. We're not tools. Not anymore."
Julian looked down at his hands. Long fingers. Clean knuckles. Slight tremor.
"They'll give us exposure," George pressed. "And resources. And backup dancers. Even studio time. That's more than we've had in a year."
"We put a deadline on ourselves," Julian said softly. "Eighteen months to break through or break up."
Tae shifted. "And we've got what? A year left? Less?"
"Thirteen months," Marvo said.
Ren stared at Julian. "You can't even make it through a rehearsal."
The words weren't cruel. Just... real.
Julian didn't answer. He couldn't.
Because it was true.
---
That night, Julian lay on his side, staring at the ceiling of the dorm room they all shared.
The mattress springs groaned whenever he breathed too deeply. The bunk above him—George's—swayed faintly in time with the hum of the fan. Outside the window, the city breathed neon.
Julian reached beneath his shirt and touched the scar over his heart.
It pulsed faintly. Mechanically.
He used to believe he could trick himself into thinking it was normal. That the thrum was just a variation of a heartbeat. But it wasn't. It never was. It was a whir. A murmur of something built, not born.
Sometimes, late at night, he wondered if his real heart missed him.
If it beat inside someone else now.
He thought about the girl in the hospital. Pale, graceful. Too quiet.
He thought about the nurse who never made eye contact.
He thought about the warmth he'd felt when they adjusted his IV and touched his wrist—like something in his body remembered something it shouldn't.
A phantom pulse. Not from his chest. But somewhere... else.
---
When the sun rose, painting the sky in bruised violet and pink, Julian sat with Haruto in the kitchen. They were the only ones awake.
"So," George asked, pouring tea into two chipped mugs, "should we do it?"
Julian didn't answer immediately. He sipped the tea. Let it burn down his throat.
"I think this might be the only way we get a stage," he said eventually. "A real one. Before... before the end."
"Your end?" George asked quietly. "Or ours?"
Julian's fingers clenched around the mug. "Does it matter?"
George's eyes were too kind for a world like this. "To me it does."
Julian looked away.
---
The decision came later that evening.
They sat in a circle again, this time not as idols but as people. Tired people. Fractured, but still intact.
"I vote yes," Tae said.
"Me too," Marvo nodded. "One last chance."
George looked to Ren.
Ren stared at Julian, then looked away. "Fine. But no more hiding."
Julian nodded once. "No more hiding."
And that was it.
They would enter the Star Program.
One last attempt to make something real out of all their scars.
One last stage.
One last heartbeat.
---
That night, the group sat in their shared kitchen, picking at leftover rice and sliced meat from a sponsorship promo.
Marvo finally spoke. "What if... we don't win?"
George's hand clenched around his chopsticks. "Then we go back to selling fan kits and doing livestreams from our bathroom."
"No," Julian said, softly. "If we don't win, we disband."
Silence.
It wasn't a threat. It was the truth.
Ren leaned back. "At least we'd go out with a bang."
"Speak for yourself," George muttered. "We've worked too hard for it to end like this."
Julian didn't answer.
He felt the ticking again in his chest.
Louder this time.
Like a countdown.