Chapter 94: The Girl in the Leaked Clip
The courtyard behind the Solomon Islands National Museum was a pocket of stillness trapped in the city’s humid breath. The main building, all concrete and colonial memory, loomed on one side. On the other, a chain-link fence separated the space from the steady growl of Mendana Avenue traffic. The air here smelled of damp earth, stale museum air escaping through a vent, and the faint, metallic tinge of impending rain.
Zoruk waited beside the designated rehearsal space. It was less a room, more a claimed corner: a few weathered boards painted with bubbling murals of fish and spirit figures leaned against the fence. A cheap drum kit sat under a frayed blue tarp. A guitar case, stickers peeling, lay open on a fold-out chair. Posters for local bands—names like Tropic Fury and Bikpela Sanda—were tacked to the fence, their edges curling in the moisture. It felt less like a creative hub and more like a forgotten campsite.
He didn’t have to wait long.
Iuniana Talo came through the museum’s rear door like a localized storm. She was talking before she even saw him, her voice carrying over the muffled city noise. “—and I told him, if the mic feed sounds like it’s underwater, maybe don’t use the cable that was literally in a puddle, you know?” She was addressing the empty air, a rapid-fire monologue to an invisible companion. She carried a canvas bag overflowing with fabric scraps and notebook pages.
She spotted him and the stream of words hit a dam. She stopped walking, her dark eyes flicking over him with a mix of curiosity and immediate wariness. Her style was a rebellion in progress: ripped black leggings, a faded band t-shirt (The Screaming Jets) under an open, oversized plaid shirt, and heavy boots that looked too hot for the climate. Her hair was a wild, dark cloud, half-pulled back with a clip that was losing its fight. She looked both boldly defiant and like she’d dressed in the dark.
“You Zoruk?” she asked, her voice shifting into a higher, deliberately casual register. “The scout guy? Sorry, I was just… dealing with tech stuff. It’s always something. Like, always.” She waved a hand vaguely, her bracelets clacking.
“Iuniana. Thank you for meeting me,” Zoruk said, his tone neutral, his posture relaxed. He didn’t move from his spot by the painted boards.
“Yeah, sure. No problem.” She walked over, dropping her bag near the guitar case with a thump. She didn’t sit. She paced a short line, her energy palpable. “Cool space, right? We use it sometimes. When the museum people aren’t being weird about noise. Which is, like, most of the time.” She laughed, a short, sharp sound. “So. Cultural exchange. James said you talked to him. He said you were… direct.”
“He would.”
“Yeah.” She finally stopped pacing and looked at him directly. Zoruk simply watched her, his gaze steady and calm. The silence stretched a beat too long. She blushed, a quick, warm flush that crept up her neck. She looked away, brushing imaginary dust from her shirt. “So, what, you’re just here to observe the local art scene? See the crazy island girl in her natural habitat?”
“Is that how you see yourself?”
The question, softly delivered, made her blush deepen into something closer to frustration. “I see myself as someone who makes things,” she said, her voice tightening. “But that’s not what people see after… after that clip went around. They see the unstable girl. The one who loses it. So if that’s what you’re here for, the behind-the-scenes drama, you can just… you know.” She trailed off, crossing her arms.
“I never said you were unstable,” Zoruk replied.
“You didn’t have to! It’s the only thing anyone knows now!” The words burst out of her, loud in the quiet courtyard. A pigeon startled from the fence. She took a ragged breath, visibly trying to reel herself in. “Sorry. I just… I’m tired of that being my entire profile, you know?”
“What did the clip steal from you, Iuniana?”
She stared at him, her eyes glistening. She wiped at them angrily with the back of her hand. “It stole the right to be complicated in private,” she said, the defiance leaving her voice, replaced by a raw, aching honesty. “I can be sweet. I can be friendly and loud and stupid funny. I can be sharp. I can be crazy, quiet, angry, embarrassed—all in the same damn day. That’s just… me. But now? Now the group, everyone, they only remember the moment I broke. That’s the fossil. That’s Iuniana. The breakdown.”
Zoruk leaned back against the fence, the chain links cool through his shirt. “James was blamed for leaking it.”
“James is a jerk,” she shot back, automatically. Then she hesitated. She scuffed her boot on the cracked concrete. “But… he didn’t leak it. I don’t think he did. He’s a jerk to your face. That’s different. He said my song was self-indulgent chaos. Okay, fine. At least he was listening to the song. The others…” She shook her head. “After it leaked, Simon just wanted to find the ‘source of the infection.’ Like I was a virus. Freda started talking about ‘healing’ and ‘moving forward as a unit’ in this voice that made me want to scream. She wanted to wrap the whole thing in a pretty ribbon and put it on a shelf. Esther just watched. She always just watches. And Henry… Henry looked at me with these puppy-dog eyes and said ‘I’m sorry you’re sad,’ like it was a rainy day and not my guts spilled all over the internet.”
“So James understood your anger better than their pity.”
“He didn’t understand it,” she corrected, fiercely. “He didn’t try to fix it or explain it away or pretend it wasn’t messy. He just… let it exist. Even when he was criticizing it. The pity? The pity was worse. It was like they were putting my anger in a little box labeled ‘Handle With Care’ and patting the lid. My shame got so much louder because nobody would let it just be private. They had to have a reaction to it. Simon needed a culprit. Freda needed a recovery narrative. Henry needed to look compassionate. Esther needed to not get involved. Their needs made the whole thing bigger and uglier until I couldn’t even recognize my own feeling in it anymore.”
The words tumbled out, a torrent of pent-up perception. Zoruk let the silence settle after her outburst, letting the distant grind of a truck’s gears fill the space.
“Simon’s impatience is a blunt instrument,” Zoruk said. “Freda’s need to protect the group’s image can be a form of censorship. Esther’s distance can feel like betrayal. Henry’s slippery innocence is its own kind of weapon.”
Iuniana barked a laugh, but it was hollow. “You got all that from a file?”
“From the patterns. The clip didn’t create those dynamics. It turned up the volume so they became impossible to ignore.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a really shitty way to get everyone’s real playlist,” she muttered, kicking a small pebble. It skittered across the concrete and into the dirt. “So, what? You’re here to offer me a bigger stage? To take this beautiful mess international? What happens when TDC Season 5 exposes it all even more? Huh? What do you think I’ll do then?”
She turned her full gaze on him, challenging, vulnerable, a storm contained in a slight frame.
Zoruk met her eyes, his own calm and depthless. “What will you do?”
“I might explode,” she said, holding his stare. “I might cry for a week. I might laugh in the middle of a challenge because something is suddenly, ridiculously funny. I might scream at someone who doesn’t deserve it. Or…” She looked past him, at her painted boards, at the drum kit under the tarp. “Or I might make something so fucking beautiful out of it that it hurts to look at. I don’t know. That’s the point. I don’t know. And I’m sick of pretending I should know before I feel it.”
Zoruk nodded, a slow, acknowledging gesture. “Chaos is not useless if it has direction. A storm has a center. So does a fire.”
“Is that supposed to be reassuring?” she asked, her voice small again.
“It’s an observation. Your group craves stability. You provide the essential instability. Without it, they calcify. They become Freda’s perfect, silent picture. You are the force that reminds them they’re alive, even when it’s painful.”
Iuniana wrapped her arms around herself, as if suddenly cold in the humid air. She didn’t agree or disagree. She just stood there, breathing, the emotional whiplash of the conversation leaving her visibly drained. The rebellious, talkative girl was still there, but beneath it, Zoruk saw the raw, pulsing core of her: a creature of feeling so intense it threatened to scorch everything around it, including herself. She wasn’t broken because she felt too much. She was dangerous because she refused to feel quietly. For Lord Olmer’s purposes, she was perfect—a source of pure, unpredictable creative energy that would terrify and galvanize the carefully balanced teams in the Bloomtide Cradles.
“Think about the offer, Iuniana,” he said finally, pushing off from the fence. “A place where the chaos isn’t a leak. It’s the point.”
He left her standing there in the museum’s shadow, surrounded by the ghosts of her own creations, the traffic on Mendana Avenue a steady, indifferent roar just beyond the fence. She didn’t say goodbye. She just stared at the painted boards, her expression unreadable, already miles away in some inner landscape of sound and fury.
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Lawson Tama Stadium, Honiara. June morning, after Zoruk’s first meeting with Iuniana Talo.
June morning, after Zoruk’s first meeting with Iuniana Talo.
The air at Lawson Tama Stadium held the night’s damp breath, heavy and still, waiting for the sun to burn it away. Zoruk stood on the cracked running track that circled the empty pitch, the faded white lines bleeding into red clay. The stands were skeletal shadows in the dawn gloom. The only sound was the rhythmic, approaching slap of rubber on compacted earth.
Simon Dau came around the far bend at a punishing clip, his form tight and economical, each footfall a statement of impatience. He saw Zoruk and didn’t break stride, completing his final lap before slowing to a walk directly in front of him. Sweat sheened his skin, his shirt plastered to his chest. He grabbed the hem, wiped his face, and fixed Zoruk with a look that asked why they weren’t already done talking.
“You’re early,” Simon said, his breathing already leveling out. “Or I’m late. Which is it?”
“I’m on time. You’re efficient,” Zoruk replied. “Speed is a useful currency.”
Simon grunted, bending to stretch his hamstrings. He didn’t look up. “It gets things done. Unlike talk. Or feelings. Or style.” He spat the last word like a bad taste. “So, you’re the scout. James said you were chatty. Iuniana will probably write a song about you.”
“Do you dislike their methods?” Zoruk asked.
“I dislike waste.” Simon straightened, his gaze sweeping the deserted stadium as if its emptiness proved a point. “Some people hide behind feelings, style, or drama because it gets them more attention than actually doing anything. It’s theater. We’re supposed to be building something.”
“You mean James and Iuniana.”
Simon’s eyes snapped back to him. “Everyone knows what I mean. James cuts people down and calls it honesty. Iuniana explodes and everyone treats the damage like it’s art. Meanwhile, the actual work—the logistics, the permits, the fundraising reports I stayed up until two a.m. finishing—that just magically happens. No applause for that.”
“So you want accountability? Or recognition?”
The question made Simon’s jaw tighten. He picked up a water bottle, took a long drink, buying a second. “I’m tired,” he said, the word sharp, “of being the person who fixes the room after others make it dramatic. I’m tired of the mess. Iuniana’s clip? That was a mess. A private mess someone aired publicly, and then we all had to spend weeks mopping up the fallout instead of making the film.”
“And Henry?” Zoruk pressed. “Freda? Esther? Henry floats. Freda papers over cracks with nice words. Esther watches from a distance. Why is the chaos louder to you than their silence?”
Simon began pacing, a short, aggressive track on the spot. “Chaos wastes time. Silence lets people escape consequences. Henry will agree with whoever’s closest just to avoid a frown. Freda will smile and talk about ‘group harmony’ while the foundation is rotten. Esther will see the rot and say nothing. At least chaos you can point at. You can say ‘that, right there, that’s the problem.’ With them? The problem is an absence. It’s like trying to nail smoke to a wall.”
He stopped pacing, his chest still rising and falling with residual adrenaline. “After the clip leaked, part of me was glad. Not about Iuniana, Christ. About the fact that everyone finally had to look at how unstable it all was. No more pretending we were one big happy creative family. The wound was out in the open, bleeding all over the nice tiles.”
“Does that make you cruel?” Zoruk’s voice was mild.
“No,” Simon fired back, too quickly. He exhaled, forcing control. “It makes me honest enough to stop pretending. I want to build. You can’t build on a swamp. Sometimes you have to drain it, even if what comes up smells.”
“Directness is a tool,” Zoruk said. “But it becomes brutality when it refuses to see pain as real data. Iuniana’s pain. James’s isolation. You dismiss them as drama, but they are forces. You can’t manage a force you won’t acknowledge.”
Simon stared at him, a muscle in his cheek twitching. The stadium was slowly turning from gray to a hazy gold as the sun breached the stands. The silence between them was filled with the distant sounds of the city waking up.
“What do you want from me?” Simon finally asked, his voice lower, stripped of some of its abrasion. “You want me to hold their hands? To have a group hug and talk about our feelings? That’s not me. That’s not what gets the fucking projector fixed or the editing suite booked.”
“I want the person who gets the projector fixed,” Zoruk said. “The one who sees the unstable foundation. But I need to know if that person can lead, or if he just wants to be right.”
Simon was silent for a long moment, looking out at the empty field. His practicality was a wall, but Zoruk saw the fissure now, the raw seam beneath. It wasn’t just about efficiency. It was about the bitter, unacknowledged jealousy of the worker bee who watches the flamboyant butterfly get all the pollen.
“My effort matters,” Simon said, not to Zoruk, but to the field, to the morning. “It has to.”
Then he turned, his expression closing once more into its familiar, impatient lines. “If this ‘exchange’ is just another stage for their chaos, I’m not interested. I’ve got real work to do.”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He just started running again, his footsteps pounding the track with a steady, retreating rhythm, leaving Zoruk alone in the gathering light.
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Holy Cross Cathedral, Honiara. June afternoon, after Zoruk’s first meeting with Simon Dau.
June afternoon, after Zoruk’s first meeting with Simon Dau.
The community gathering at Holy Cross Cathedral was dispersing, the polite applause from under the banyan tree giving way to the shuffle of chairs and the soft murmur of departing voices. The June sun was a warm, heavy gold, filtering through the broad leaves and painting the cathedral’s white walls in shifting patterns of light and shadow. A faint, salty breeze drifted up from the sea, carrying away the last notes of the hymn and the scent of crushed grass.
Zoruk waited near a stone bench, watching the crowd thin. Freda Sale was easy to spot. She moved with a calm, purposeful grace, stopping to touch an elder woman’s shoulder, sharing a warm laugh with a group of teenagers, her presence like a balm. She was the last to leave the core group, ensuring everyone else had begun their journey home before she collected her own woven bag.
She approached him with a serene smile, the picture of admirable composure. “Mr. Zoruk? I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. The fellowship after the service always runs a bit long. It’s such a precious time for community.”
“It seems to be a central theme for you,” Zoruk said, returning a smaller, polite smile. “Community.”
“It’s everything, isn’t it?” she said, her voice gentle and confident. She gestured to the bench. “Shall we? It’s so peaceful here now.”
They sat. The distant sounds of Honiara felt muffled, held at bay by the cathedral grounds. Freda smoothed her simple, elegant dress over her knees, her posture perfect. “James said you were insightful. Iuniana… well, she said you were intense. But she finds most things intense.” Her laugh was light, airy, a soft dismissal of any discord.
“Insight often feels like intensity when it gets close to the bone,” Zoruk replied, watching a myna bird hop across the path. “Hope can become a beautiful way to avoid looking directly at damage.”
Freda’s smile remained, but it stiffened at the corners. Her hands, folded in her lap, tightened slightly. “That’s a rather cynical way of seeing it. I prefer to think hope is what allows us to repair damage.”
“A fair point. Tell me about the repair, then. After Iuniana’s rehearsal clip leaked.”
The directness made her blink. She took a measured breath, the model of patience. “That was a very difficult time for all of us. The clip hurt everyone, not only Iuniana. It felt like a violation of our shared space.”
“Does saying it hurt ‘everyone’ protect Iuniana,” Zoruk asked, his tone conversational, “or does it dilute her particular pain into something easier for the group to manage?”
Freda looked away, her gaze following the myna bird as it took flight. The graceful composure stayed, but a fissure had been tapped. “Iuniana was in tremendous pain. We all saw that. My first instinct, I’ll admit, was to protect the project. Our image. If the group fell apart publicly over something so… raw, then everything we’d built, all the good work, would be judged through that one ugly moment. It would have defined us.”
“So the story of the group was more important than the truth of the individual.”
“It’s not that simple,” she said, a faint defensive note entering her melodic voice. “We are a collective. Our strength is together. If the story becomes only about fracture, then the fracture becomes all we are. Dignity matters when people are watching.”
“Dignity without truth can become decoration, Freda. A pretty wreath on a locked door.” He leaned back, the warm stone of the bench against his spine. “James was blamed. Simon was frustrated into bluntness. Henry floated, agreeing with the nearest opinion. Esther watched and said nothing. And you worked very hard to keep the story dignified. Why was the dignified story more urgent than the honest one?”
Her calm was beginning to look like an effort, a conscious holding of a pose. She studied her hands. “Someone had to hold the center. James’s anger and Simon’s… efficiency, they’re destructive forces if left unchecked. Henry needs direction, not more chaos. Esther… well, she processes things inwardly. My role was to be the anchor. To remind everyone of the beauty we were trying to create, even when things were ugly.”
“Even if that meant asking Iuniana to perform being okay before she actually was?”
Freda fell silent. The breeze rustled the leaves above them. A choir was beginning to practice inside the cathedral, the faint, mournful sound of a hymn drifting through the stained glass.
“I wanted her to be okay,” Freda said finally, her voice much quieter. “Of course I did.”
“Did you?” Zoruk asked, the question hanging in the warm air. “Or did you need her to be okay? There’s a difference. One is for her. The other is for the stability of the group, for the beautiful image you needed to project.”
Tears, sudden and shocking in their clarity, welled in Freda’s eyes. She did not sob; she simply sat as they brimmed and spilled over, tracing silent paths down her cheeks. She made no move to wipe them away. It was as if even her breakdown was graceful.
“I wanted the hurting to stop,” she whispered. “For her, yes. But also for us. Because her pain… it made the whole group look broken. It made us look like we were failing each other. And if we were failing, then what was any of it for?” The admission seemed to cost her, leaving her breath slightly ragged. “I see her, you know? I see how much she carries. But I saw the project, too. All these people believing in us. I couldn’t let it become an ugly story.”
Zoruk watched her cry, his expression one of detached compassion. “Admiration is a powerful tool,” he said softly. “But it’s only useful if it doesn’t require other people to suffer beautifully for it.”
Freda slowly nodded, finally lifting a hand to dash the tears from her face. She took a deep, shuddering breath, and like a curtain rising, the warm, admirable composure settled back over her features. The distress was tucked away, visible only in the slight redness around her eyes. “I believe in the good we can do. I have to. Otherwise, what’s the point of any of it?”
“That is the question,” Zoruk agreed, standing. He didn’t offer comfort. “Thank you for your time, Freda. You’ve given me much to consider.”
She stood as well, smoothing her dress once more, a picture of restored poise. “I hope you’ll see the good in us, Mr. Zoruk. There is so much of it, beneath everything else.”
She offered one more hopeful smile, then turned and walked toward the cathedral gate, her steps even and sure. Zoruk watched her go. She remained warm, admirable, graceful. But he had found the precise weakness beneath the idealism: a terror that if the story ever turned truly ugly, no one would believe in the good anymore. For Lord Olmer’s purposes, she was perfect. She would fight to keep Team South’s image pristine, even if it meant gently suffocating their truth. She was the beautiful pressure that would make the eventual break so much more compelling.