Stacey heard someone get up and sit on the side of her bed, patting and stroking her back, while she tried to muffle the sounds of her crying as much as possible. She stiffened in surprise at first but then slowly began to relax. Eventually, she fell asleep.
"Stacey, you're late," Telea shook her awake in the morning. "Wake up."
Stacey sat up and clutched her throbbing head, the consequences of crying so hard last night. She felt dizzy. Maybe she was dehydrated.
Stumbling to the bathroom, Stacey hurried to get ready. She slipped in the shower, bruising her hip. On the way out of the room, she tripped on the corner of a suitcase and ended up face planting into the side of a bed, hurting her neck when it got twisted awkwardly. Despite Beryl's exclamation of surprise, Stacey scrambled back upright.
"Sorry," she mumbled and staggered out the room.
"Mel, you'd better go keep an eye on that girl before she falls down the stairs," Beryl said. "She doesn't look quite right today."
Too late. They heard a squeak and the sound of tumbling. The ladies rushed out of the room, followed by some staff to find Stacey picking herself up in a wobbly manner on the landing and stumble down the next flight of stairs with a groan.
"Stacey, are you alright?" someone called, racing down to support Stacey. They arrived a step too late, their grasping hand missing catching Stacey by a few centimetres.
Stacey lay at the bottom of the stair on the floor where the trainee girls were living. Curious and worried heads came out to peer at her, exclaiming to each other. After the staff made sure Stacey wasn't seriously injured, she was escorted downstairs to her pre-breakfast lesson. There all her scrapes and bruises were seen to and Tonton clucked his tongue while he did her makeup. Everyone was amazed she hadn't broken or sprained something. Stacey even more so.
Everything that could go wrong did. Stacey didn't think she had ever had such a bad day in her life before. She couldn't concentrate on her lessons. Her tutors even smacked her palms with their rulers for the first time. During assembly, trainees were informed of the upcoming battle with the beastmen, as well as the massed training they would do for the production's theme song music video to introduce them all to the world, and the subsequent changes in scheduling to allow them to train their fighting abilities in the evenings. Stacey somehow fell off her seat and banged her nose on the back of the person sitting in front of her. After apologising for disrupting the assembly, she tried to sit back down only to miss the seat and land on the floor instead.
Stacey was scolded in every single one of her lessons afterwards. Her palms felt swollen with how many times she'd been punished by her frustrated tutors. She couldn't remember anything she was taught and was so clumsy with everything that her tutors gave up on her for the day before lunch.
At lunch, Stacey somehow slipped and dropped all her food all over herself. Then when she went to get cleaned up, she missed a step on the stairs and fell back down them again. She was lucky to have only bumped her head and not gotten any other serious injuries from falling down the stairs so many times in the day.
The crew all agreed to give her the rest of the day off, since she seemed so out of sorts. Stacey went to practice by herself and was frustrated to find that she couldn't do any homework, remember any Tadpole vocab or grammar and even fumbled playing the piano. The cameraman who had been following Stacey closely and filming her horrendous mistakes eventually stopped her and called a crew member to help put her to bed before she hurt herself any further.
After a short nap, Stacey was willing to try and participate in the group martial arts training in preparation for the battle. But then when she nearly injured several people around her and almost knocked herself out, the crew kindly but firmly escorted her back to her bed again. Stacey saw Mr Huo watching her from a distance with a frown and accidentally tripped on her own foot.
Dinner was brought up to her and when Ken and the rest of the group came up after dinner to visit her, Stacey broke down when she couldn't remember any of the words. Neither could she get a single move of the dance right.
"Don't worry," Ken and Endo patted her back while Flail helped her to drink some water, holding the cup for her. Whenever Stacey tried to hold the cup herself, she somehow shook all the water out of it and all over herself. "We'll be fine. We'll work something out," Ken reassured her. "Get a good night's rest and maybe you'll be feeling better tomorrow morning. We have assembly time to practice for the ranking competition. That will have to do."
Stacey tried to sleep but she couldn't. She tried to get up out of bed but kept tripping on things or walking into walls by accident. When she nearly fell down the stairs, the staff asked the doctor to give her a sedative to help her to calm down.
After that, Stacey slept like a dead log. She dreamed of being chased by barking and braying animals. When she was caught, she turned around to find herself being pressed down onto a bed by Mr Huo who turned into a faceless giant. It freaked her out.
In spite of a night full of nightmares, she woke up late the next morning, drenched in sweat. Her entire body ached and felt heavy.
Telea shooed her into the bathroom and Stacey felt somewhat better after the warm shower. She sat on her bed to try and gather herself for the day. To focus.
That was where Tonton came to find her to help her prepare for the day. The other ladies were trying to give her a pep talk but Stacey couldn't hear them. She felt like she was lost in a thick and heavy fog.
She stared in a daze and jumped when she heard Mr Huo's voice from the door.
"Is your mind so weak? You'll never survive in this industry if you're already like this. You might as well let the beastmen carry you off during the battle next week," he scoffed in a cold voice. "Nobody has any use for weak people like you in any world."
It was like a bucket of cold water had been emptied on her.
"Lord Huo! You can't say such harsh things to people who are going through a nervous breakdown!"
"Nervous breakdown? Only useless people and weaklings have nervous breakdowns. The local tribe leader of the beastmen nearly carried her away while she was messing around outside at night doing who knows what two nights ago. It was a close call. If that centaur discovers how disturbed she has been by his presence, he'll charge in here to take her and anyone else he can get his hands on away. He won't stop until he's got her. He'll think she wants to submit to an alpha like him or wants to join the Ancients but we're stopping her. You all know what the beastmen are like. They have spies everywhere, even amongst the normal wild birds and animals."
Stacey shivered and hugged her knees. She couldn't even form coherent thoughts right now. Everything in her mind had scattered and she felt like she was bumbling about without purpose.
"She'd better wake up and come to her senses or talent or not, I'll deliver her to the beastmen myself."
"Lord Huo!"
"Fine. Fine. I'm going. You people had better talk some sense into her. There are other lives at stake here besides her own. She'd better not be so selfish as to pull anyone else down with her."
Stacey heard Mr Huo's footsteps tap away down the corridor and then down the stairs. His words were like a slap to her mind, waking her from her panicked and confused daze. He had said all that for her benefit. It was a warning. A threat. She had to pull herself together. Had to or who knew whether that evil man would do exactly what he said. There was a feeling that he was the type of person to do what he promised.
"What he said isn't true. Even the strongest of us can have nervous breakdowns once in a while. Nearly being carried away is traumatic enough for any woman but what he said about what the beastmen are like is true. Stacey, you need to get a hold of yourself."
Stacey took a deep breath and decided deep in herself to stop being so scared and just work hard. She gathered all the scattered bits of herself in her mind and dragged them back into place. She slapped herself hard on both cheeks and shook her head. Now her hands were covered in makeup. Looking into Tonton's surprised face, she cracked a weak smile.
"Sorry. Could you help me fix that again?"