[color=6ecff6][b]SOU MIYANE[/b][/color] - Southern District: Galaxy[hr]
[color=6ecff6]“<<Quite a crowd,>>”[/color] she observed.

Daehyun whistled. [b]“<<Was that a compliment?>>”[/b]

Miyane rolled her eyes.

[b]“<<Gotta cut that vacation short, Miya-ssi, you’re getting too mellow.>>”[/b]

The light in the backstage area was dim, colors only occasionally filtering across her features, constantly morphed by stage hands, technicians rushing back and forth in the last minutes before the showtime. Even so, the glare she shot the actor-dancer was unimpeded in its intensity. Daehyun raised his hands in surrender.

[b]“<<They’ve been getting big,>>”[/b] he explained, [b]“<<The numbers are about expected. Just enjoy the tunes, yeah? Drum solo’s killer.>>”[/b]

He wasn’t wrong. For a bunch of fresh indie-label signees, they were… competent. Audience and staff alike were entranced. Even from the angle she was looking, the excitement in the mosh pit was clear as day. Miyane wished she could share in that feeling. Years of training, devotion to perfection, spoke otherwise. 

While everyone revelled in the passion of the performance, her gaze zeroed in with distaste. The way the frontman swayed. The way he jumped when the drums went into overdrive. Stiff, tacky. The way his ‘ah’s didn’t round out when the pitch was too high. Sloppy. The nitpicking went on, shame stockpiling in the back of her mind as the songs went on. She just couldn’t watch a performance like a normal person. Was this because she was a professional? Or because someone else was on the stage? 

Then the applause came. It was the hardest part to get through.

Miyane wasn’t sentimental. Miyane was rational. She knew there couldn’t be more than three or five hundred in the live house, a quantity didn’t even begin to compare to an arena - hell, most of the stages she dominated back in the international scene.
Her heartbeat was thunderous, nevertheless.

The booming, small in number but gargantuan in enthusiasm, echoed through the live house, reverberating in every corner. Inescapable. Her eyes were wide open, not from the ecstasy in the air but the fear of the image that would consume her if they closed. A memory once fond, now just a reminder of the emptiness that replaced it. 

[i]A night in 2014, Tokyo Dome. Deafening and blinding and exhilarating, seconds after the night’s final song. Miyane’s breath was course, mind never so awake. Hands sticky, but devotedly clamped to her anchors that kept her from getting swept away by the adoration of thousands of strangers. If she turned to the left she’d see grateful tears trickling past Chaewon’s nose. This applause belonged to them. Miyane thought that happiness would drown the eight of them that night. But that was okay. As long as their hands were still in hers, she was unstoppable.[/i]

Then someone squeezed her shoulder.

Miyane blinked, vaguely recognizing Daehyun’s knowing smirk before he stepped past to congratulate the band members coming off. The show was over.

With Daehyun’s back towards her, amongst a sea of stage hands – nobodies – Miyane stood alone, barely noticed.