Page 47 of Hamartia
“Fuck you, I have friends that aren’t in DP.” I lie. “Just one.”
He laughs again. “Cool. Talk later. Enjoy your gig,” he scoffs and I roll my eyes.
His attitude has no right to piss me off, but it does. Success on their level confuses people, and people are distrustful of things they don’t understand. It’s fucking textbook. At the end of the day, they’d sold out five nights at the MetLife Stadium which has a capacity of eighty thousand. No one could argue with that.
Now I can’t wait to see him perform. To see him command a crowd of that many people. I wonder if he does it as easily as he does it to me.
I dump my trash in the can and head out into the crisp New York air. I get to see him perform in a couple of hours, and the thought of it causes something like butterflies to start an air dance in my stomach.
Ilook like a weirdo; I know I do. I have my hoodie pulled up and my ray-bans on, but the risk of being seen here was damn hard to explain on its own. Checking out the competition was fine to say to Sam, but there’s no way to explain that to a journo or paparazzi. So, I’m hoping the crowd are just way too into the band to give me a second look.
Which isn’t too far-fetched given what I’m seeing so far. It’s insane. The merch stands are the biggest I’ve ever seen, full-blown pop-up stores inside and outside the venue selling every kind of merchandise imaginable. Stuffed toys, hoodies, t-shirts, scarves, phone cases and these light-up stick things that almost everyone is carrying. They’re wearing bespoke-looking costumes and artistic face-paint and every second person has these hairbands shaped like cat ears. Every third person is carrying a homemade banner.
The crowd is mainly women, but not teenage girls as Sam had implied. They’re all ages. I pass a group of women the age of my mom, giggling and laughing and carrying a banner with Kai’s face on it and some words in Korean. There are lots of little groups hanging around inside the food court section, laughing loudly and recreating the dance moves. The vibe is pure fucking joy.
Yeah, people are happy at our gigs too, but men just bring a whole different fucking atmosphere. The guy’s bathroom room is empty compared with the mile-long queue for the ladies, and so I nip in quickly before trying to find the VIP bar area.
A beer in my hand, I make my way to the entrance to my section. It’s on the first level, not too far from the VIP bar. The security guy gives me a weird look as he scans my ticket but I’m not sure if it’s because he recognizes me or because I’m one of about 100 guys in the entire place.
As I climb the stairs into the main arena, I stop dead. The place is packed to the rafters with colored light sticks, banners, and that same sheer joy. The whole place radiates positivity and excitement. I should hate it. I should. But when I see Jae’s face on posters and banners and hear them singing and chanting his name, I can’t find it in me to hate any of it. I struggle to think of any concert I’ve ever been to where the energy is as bright as it is in here.
Thankfully, I’ve got a seat at the end of the row. When I glance along it, I notice there are a few guys on it—albeit they’re sitting next to their wives or girlfriends, and in one case: two young daughters. The two girls who can’t be more than ten are dancing and laughing together to the music playing over the sound system, all big smiles, face paint, and glowing headbands. The guy catches my eye and gives me a friendly smile which I return.
It’s only a few minutes later before the lights go down and the place explodes in a cacophony of screams unlike anything I’ve ever heard. I feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up as they shoot up from beneath the stage in a cloud of fire and smoke. Each of them doing nothing but standing there looking cool for almost a full minute as the crowd goes insane. The big screens pan along the six of them in turn, the screams changing imperceptibly for each member. No one gets a louder scream than any other, but Jae’s feels more intense to me. He looks insane; his hair slicked back from his forehead and his expression bad ass as he soaks up the applause. I can barely breathe as the camera lingers on him. In fact, I barely breathe for the entire three hours of the show.
Wanting to avoid the rush, I leave before the encore and take the subway back to his apartment. My ears ringing and my heart beating wildly over what I’ve just seen these guys do. Most of their music isn’t to my taste, but the production on each one is immaculate, along with their choreography and the sheer energy they put into it. There were also a couple rap tracks in there that I’d listen to again.
In all my hours spent deep-diving Jaehyun, I hadn’t really listened to them as a band. I’d watched a lot of their music videos, but I’d never listened to an album from beginning to end. I decide it’s the first thing I’m gonna do when I’m next alone. Watching them do what they do, the way they do it, it’s fucking clear that the hype is more than justified.
There was a duet in the middle between Jae and Kai that made the crowd go particularly insane and I’m certain it’s an album track without a video because I’ve never heard it before. The contrast of Kai’s powerful rap and Jae’s sweet voice was hypnotizing. I try not to think too much about the sexual tension I saw between them because I know there’s fanservice at play. We do it too. Not on their level but watching them laugh and flirt with each other for close to three hours cemented the notion that they play up to this idea that they’re all fucking. The fans love it. Fuck, I’d read the odd article about Cleo and me because of the chemistry we have on stage. We just don’t lean into it the way these guys do.
The doorman gives me a look like he doesn’t quite recognize me but moves to open the door for me anyway and I make my way to the bank of elevators. There’s another guy inside and I give him the floor and he nods, not saying a word as we shoot up.
I’m outside his door when I start to get the weird fluttery sensation in my stomach and my chest. Nerves. I’m nervous. Last night I was halfway wasted and high on adrenaline, tonight I’ve had a single beer and a whole day to overthink it. Except I haven’t overthought it. I’d barely thought about it at all, really. I’d known it was happening, that I was going to see him tonight, and that something was—is—going to happen that will change how I look at myself and my life forever. But my head has been surprisingly chill about it. My head is very rarely ever chill about anything, so this is nothing short of remarkable.
But this second my body seems to have figured out something before my head has and its scared fucking shitless. The thought goes through my head to turn and bolt, run as far away from this apartment and this guy as I can get. Take a flight to fucking Tibet or something, hide out in a monastery for a month until I find myself again, but my feet don’t move. They don’t want to move. Not really. And not away from the door.
Taking a deep breath, I punch the code I’d memorized into the small black keypad beneath the handle and push open the door. I call out, just in case he got back early.
“Jae? You home? It’s me.” Then, wondering that same thing I had last night when I wondered if this was a place he brought guys to fuck them, I add, “Raphael.”
But there’s no answer and so I move into the apartment. Having the place to myself means I have some time to calm the fuck down, pour a drink, maybe check the place out.
He said he only lives here some of the time, but the living area feels more than lived in. Maybe because he’s been here the last few days. There’s an iPad on the low wood coffee table and a book with a bookmark sticking out of it. Picking the same spot on the sofa he did this morning to sit, I reach across to pick up the book. ‘Almost Transparent Blue’by Ryu Murakami. It’s in Korean. Making me marvel, not for the first time, how fucking incredible he is. He sings and dances, looks like a supermodel, and speaks two languages fluently. Wait, three, because he told me that night at Frida’s that he speaks some Japanese too.
I fancy a drink, so I go to his table/trolley thing and browse the options. He has a bottle of Canadian Club which I haven’t had in ages, so I pour three fingers into one of the crystal glasses and amble over to his sound system. It’s high spec and looks more like a piece of sculpture than a sound system, but this shit I can do. These things always look complicated but everything you find in a home sound system has a more complicated counterpart in a studio, so it’s not hard to work back from that and figure it out.
After a minute I have my current playlist playing from my phone’s Bluetooth. I move to look out at the view while sipping my drink, mind flitting to Camille briefly. Soon. I’ll deal with all of it soon. I’m not quite sure what I’ll tell her but I’m sort of hoping it’s one of those things that as soon as I start doing it, it’ll come.
I want to look around the rest of his place but I’m not sure if he’d like it. Doesn’t sit right to go snooping either and so I just down the last of my drink and pour myself another.
I’m sitting on the couch, head resting against the back, a nice low buzz in my blood when I hear the front door unlocking. The quiet beep of the mechanism before the soft whoosh of the door being pushed open.
My heart kicks up a level, that fluttery sensation coming back full force. I hear him kick off his shoes by the door then curse myself for not doing the same, glancing down at my sneakers like they’ve committed a felony. Then, he’s standing in the large open doorway looking at me. He’s wearing an oversized hoodie with the hood up and a long dark blue winter coat over it with big gold buttons. Dark sweatpants and white-socked feet.
I’d seen him this morning without his usual designer gear, heeled boots and make-up on, but this is different again.
“Hey.” I smile. It feels dorkish on my face.