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The match in the arena goes by in a blur. At first it feels like someone's playing a trick on his eyes, when he sees which bey is left spinning and which bey lies in pieces.
Zac only realizes everything's finally over after he hears the roars from the crowd.
Now what was he supposed to do again--
Congratulate his opponent?
It's hard to guess what people expect the idol him, the ideal, perfect Zac, to do. No one expected him to lose at this point in the competition.
And despite the loss, the arena is sparkling more than ever.
He gives himself a moment to catch a needed breath, looks at what's displayed on the scoreboard and back at the person standing across him, who takes longer to process what just happened.
Right now he can vaguely make out the mixed reactions from his fans. But it isn't the time for him to sweet-talk them, to console them.
Zac doesn't want to look at anyone else but Valt.
"I won.......I won!"
Of course it's Valt who emerges victorious. The only one Zac would ever gracefully lose against. The only one he would allow so many liberties.
Of course it's Valt who meets his eyes first and smiles widely, with no bad intentions, no ill will. Zac likes his smile-it's a smile full of teeth-but he feels a growing fondness for Valt's eyes.
It was always Valt who had and still has nothing to hide, and his eyes show that well, expressing every single thought and feeling going through his mind. There's something quite intimate about them that Zac can't exactly place his finger on.
But he likes it.
He likes--even though he doesn't know why--the plain shade of brown that colors his eyes. The brown that somehow captures his attention more than anything else in the world. They're different from the red that belongs to Shu, the intense and vibrant red that can consume all of Zac's wishful and ill-fated hopes in a glance. They're different, because Valt's eyes are inviting...captivating, even.
He knows and has always known that Valt has the most attractive eyes--even now, the most radiant, sparkling--because Zac always sees the stars and the sky in them.
(Brown fits him nicely.)
Zac weakly gulps down unspoken words, nods and smiles back at Valt without his usual flair. He can feel his chest tightening, his rib cage constricting. He wants to hate Valt for making him feel like this but things are easier said than done.
He's less worried about his loss than the expression on Shu's face.
There's the red that reminds him of blood. The red that best matches Valt's brown, instead of his own blue-green.
---
Zac has always been at the center of the stage whether he liked it or not, so he used it wisely. He learns how to figure out what other people are thinking, how they would react to what he would do.
There are some things about Valt that are easier to miss and harder to notice at first glance. He has his own way of energizing the crowd, different from Lui, who dominates the opponent and even the audience with force, and different from Zac himself, who knows how to play to the crowd's interests.
Valt is simple to understand, but Zac knows the best why Valt is so endearing to others.
Because Zac has always known that people are attracted to light and radiance.
---
He can't really describe how he started out on his path. It's hard to remember what he looked like or how he acted like before.
He likes to think that all idols are the products of years of hard work and dedication, because he wasn't born with the talent that so many others seemed to have.
The truth is always different from what people expect from him.
The truth was built from their expectations.
---
Zac never started out perfect.
He remembers the first day at his first agency. He was tense and it showed--he was worried about messing up, failing, and disappointing others.
It took some time, plus a few lackluster performances, but before long he noticed the lack of attention from his managers, from his so-called rivals. Nobody was disappointed because he had no one to disappoint. No one expected anything from him.
Zac will never forget how much it hurt, but the pain was too precise to be a blow.
---
Zac dreamed that he was falling into nothingness, with no walls, no bottom. He didn't know where he was falling.
If he really was a star, he shouldn't have been falling. Stars should illuminate the darkness.
Yet he still sees nothing.
---
Zac puts on shining smiles in interviews and laughs off difficult questions because everyone wants to see the perfect him, the rising star Zac. Not the Zac who always worries and wonders about how long he can keep up this front, before he slips up and loses himself entirely in the burning light of the sun.
Zac wonders if other idols have always had it easy. He looks at their perfect poise, listens to their cheerful voices, and can't help doubting in spite of it.
---
Zac's first contact with the sun comes with his first rise in popularity.
He contents himself with a fake form of happiness, happiness that's temporary and short-lived, so he can distract himself from how shockingly scorching the sun is. It's nothing like how he imagined it.
Zac lets himself be burned. He can conceal it for now.
---
Valt never lies, so Zac feels reassured around him. He's come to realize, albeit slowly, that Valt has a weird habit of making people reveal themselves for who they are, not what they make themselves to be.
After chasing for so long, Zac finds what he's been looking for in Valt.
Which is why it makes it so much more unbearable when he sees him together with Shu.
Of course Zac never missed the lingering touches between them, the gazes that strayed for seconds too long.
Of course he never missed Valt's starry eyes and soft smiles.
---
Zac is used to letting things slip through his fingers.
But he was never used to the numbing pain.
--"You were amazing, Zac!"
Out of the blue, Valt tightly grasps his hands and smiles. Zac feels the warm sensation in his fingertips and breathes out slowly; it's completely different from the burning sun.
He closes his eyes and tries to remember the last time he felt like this.
"You were...unbelievable too."
He hears his own wobbly voice and wants to look away, before Valt sees him shatter into pieces.
But he knows--already knows--that Valt won't even give him that liberty. Instead he looks up at him, inquisitively, worryingly. There are those twinkling dots of light in his eyes that are so so familiar to Zac. He wants to bury himself in the warm light, the light that he knows belongs to a different person, not him.
Zac knows his mask is cracking--no, that's not right. He's already forgotten when it all started, when the beginning of the end came to him.
His mask has been cracking for too long of a time.
But he knows, when they first met, that Valt already noticed his flaws. The imperfections lying beneath the surface.
"Are you alright, Zac?"
He hears the words tumble out in a whisper, an almost foreign tongue. But he can't break now, not when Valt is looking at him in that way.
So with his usual, perfect, shining smile-- "No problem!"
And the sun consumes him whole and leaves no trace behind.
---
Zac is used to good things not lasting long, so when Valt releases his hands a moment too early, he stays standing where he is.
He watches him run off the stage to his teammates, to his friends, to Shu with his glistening red eyes--to everyone but Zac himself.
Yet his lips quiver.
"I'll see you soon, Valt."