The Family Soul

The spotlight shines on him as he stands steadily in the middle of the tightrope. Jongin starts his act with a vertical split, maintaining his balance with spread out arms.

As he lowers his leg, the music kicks in. He takes sure steps forward until he reaches a little platform, where his props are. Jongin grabs a rope and makes his way to the center again. He takes the ends of the rope, one in each hand, and in cue with the music, starts jumping rope.

Jongin can hear the awe and applause from the crowd, but from his vantage point high above the ground, the sound is muffled by the music and the rapid beating of his heart. After he's done with the rope, he lets gravity do its job and lets the rope go. He carefully walks backwards until he reaches another little platform. There, he grabs a unicycle and a long balancing bar and sets to cycle across the tightrope.

Halfway through, he cycles back and forth as he tries to gather enough momentum to push his body upwards. He reaches the platform and waves, much to the crowd's amazement.

A voice comes out of the speakers. "Now, we're going to need members of the audience to cooperate with us and reach out with your hands towards Kai. Palms down, fingers straight, pointing at him. That's it, beautiful."

"Keep that up, but we also need everyone to do just one more thing," says the voice. "The next act Kai performs will need the energy from everyone, and to do that, you'll need to be dead silent, and focus all of the energy you can muster in his direction. If even one person doesn't do this," the voice pauses dramatically for effect, before they continue, "Kai will fall." The spotlight leaves Jongin for a moment and shines on the deserted floor. The audience, ever receptive, gasps.

"As you can all see, Kai doesn't have a safety net. So please give it your all so he can safely reach the other platform." The entire arena turns silent, their eyes never leaving Jongin's who is defying gravity again and again.

Jongin crouches down, putting his hands flat and firm on the platform floor. He slowly-- with a precision honed by years of practice--pushes his body up until he's doing a handstand. An appreciative murmur spreads throughout the crowd below but it is followed quickly by urgent shushes. Jongin smirks at their reaction.

Jongin still doing the handstand as he slowly reaches the center. He does an upside down air split. Jongin straighten his legs, back at his handstand position. He bends his knees towards his stomach, visible strain on his arms.

Jongin does another split to accommodate his arms in front of his chest and to easily rest his extended legs on the tightrope. Once he is securely on the rope, he flourished his arms as a sign of success.

He lets his legs dangle before he lets his body fall, with the rope still secure in his hands. He swings a couple of times but, Jongin miscalculates the force he use to push his body up and loses his grip. His attempt at re-grabbing the rope fails, his reaction seemingly made slow from the strain of keeping his balance, and he hears panicked shouting as his body plunges to the ground. He's a few meters away from the hard ground when the arena suddenly goes completely dark, and Jongin disappears into the darkness.

The arena erupts with noise and the panicked shouting from earlier devolves into genuinely terrified screams. The commotion dies down a notch when the spotlight appears and starts scanning the ground, but the crowd is still nervous, tense, as they dread the worst.

Backstage, Jongin has his feet firmly planted on the ground, in one piece, save for his hair which has fallen out of the neatly slicked-back style he had it in. The smell of sulphur lingers around him. In the background, he hears his boss cough, fussing the whole time--"Jesus, Jongin, years of that and you still manage to shock me."