Sasha

You stand behind the thick velvet curtain, eyes closed.

Forty seconds until the entrance. The air smells of ozone from the pyrotechnics, hot metal from the spotlights, and the acrid sweat of the band warming up. Behind the fabric, the heart of the stadium beats—sixty thousand people merging into one low, vibrating hum. You don't think of them as people. To you, they are simply an acoustic mass, an instrument for you to play today. You don't give a damn about their faces, how much their tickets cost, or who among them came here just for the hype. Your voice is the only thing you truly believe in. It is your only honest way of breathing.

You take a sip of room-temperature water through a straw. Your throat must be perfect.

With a heavy sigh, you crack your eyelids open and cast a lazy glance through the narrow slit between the folds of the curtain. A typical predator's reflex before the leap—assessing the territory.

In the fifth row of the fan zone, right against the railing, stands a guy. He looks like a completely alien element in this sea of glitter, dyed hair, and raised hands holding phones. He's wearing a simple oversized black hoodie, which his friends clearly bought for him along with this ticket to "drag the homebody out into the world." He grips the steel barrier as if it were his only protection from falling into an abyss. His gaze is utterly bewildered, brows knit together. It's too stuffy, too loud, and he has no idea whose songs are about to play. His friends only said: "The vocalist is unreal, go hear them live." He doesn't even know your name. He stands there, shifting from foot to foot and sighing heavily, dreaming of only one thing—to get on the subway as soon as possible and go home to sleep.

"Hey!" the tour manager hisses, running past with a walkie-talkie. "Get away from the curtain, the lights are blinding!"

You sharply jerk the heavy velvet back, cutting the guy off from your reality. Let him stand there and be bored. His discomfort changes nothing. Your job is to sing.

The stage flashes crimson. A low-frequency bass drop pierces the concrete beneath your feet, making your diaphragm tremble.