Page 108 of The Sound Between Us

26

asia tour disintegration

Harrison

The KSPO Dome in Seoul smells of sweat, hairspray, and teenage desperation. Fifty thousand bodies packed into a space designed for forty-five thousand, all of them screaming for something I stopped being years ago. The air is thick with perfume and body spray, that sickly-sweet cocktail of vanilla and synthetic flowers that follows us from city to city.

I stand in the wings, watching the support act finish their set, and feel nothing. Less than nothing. The familiar pre-show ritual plays out around me—makeup touches, mic checks, the wardrobe assistant fussing over microscopic wrinkles—but it’s happening to someone else. Someone wearing my face.

“Five minutes, Harrison.” David Chen calls, clipboard in hand, headset crackling. He’s efficient, professional, probably has no idea that the man he’s managing is slowly dying inside his own life.

Jamie bounces past, high on adrenaline and whatever he scored from the local dealer an hour ago. His pupils are dinner plates, teeth grinding as he air-guitars toward the stage. “Fucking mental crowd tonight, boys!”

Dex nods from where he’s stretching against the wall, but his eyes are on me. He’s been watching me more carefully lately, though he hasn’t said anything. Dex notices things—always has. It’s what made him a good musician, before we became a brand.

“You all right, mate?” He steps closer so the crew can’t hear.

I paste on the smile I’ve perfected over fourteen years of lying. “Course. Just thinking about the setlist.”

It’s a lie. I’m thinking about a woman three thousand miles away who told me not to contact her again. I’m thinking about how her voice sounded when she sang our song, how it felt to create something real instead of this manufactured pop perfection.

The crowd noise builds to a crescendo as the support act waves goodbye. The sound hits you—fifty thousand voices becoming one desperate, hungry thing. Once upon a time, that sound made me feel godless. Now it just makes me tired.

Henry appears at my elbow, phone permanently attached to his ear, conducting three conversations at once. “Tokyo’s sold out, Seoul’s sold out, Singapore’s got a waiting list of twenty thousand.” He says this as if it should make me happy. “The Asian market loves you boys.”

The Asian market. That’s what we are now. A market opportunity. A demographic to be exploited.

“Remember,” Henry continues, switching to his pre-show manager voice, “keep the energy up in the second half. The streaming numbers for the ballad section are always strongest when you really sell it.”

Sell it. Love as something that can be packaged and distributed for the right price.

“Places, everyone!”

The opening bars of our entrance music throb through the speakers, and muscle memory takes over. I follow Jamie and Dex onto the stage, into the lights, into the performance of being Harrison Carter.

The roar is deafening. Fifty thousand people on their feet, hands in the air, screaming words I wrote when I still believed in them. The stage lights are brutal—white hot and blinding, turning the crowd into a sea of silhouettes and phone screens.

We launch into our opening number, and I go through the motions. The choreographed moves, the practised smiles, the way I’m supposed to point to different sections of the crowd to make them feel special. It’s all muscle memory now, my body performing whilst my mind drifts.

I catch sight of the front row during the first song—a wall of teenage girls pressed against the barrier, tears streaming down their faces as they mouth every word. One of them is holding a sign: “Harrison, marry me!” with glittery hearts drawn around the letters. She can’t be more than sixteen.

The song ends, and the applause washes over us. Jamie grins and waves, eating it up, whilst Dex nods coolly from behind his kit. I raise my hand in acknowledgment, and the screams get louder.

“Seoul!” I call into the mic, and they lose their minds. “How are we doing tonight?”

More screaming. Always more screaming.

We move into the second song, one of our biggest hits, and I watch myself perform it from somewhere above the stage. The lyrics pour out automatically—something about young love and forever and promises I stopped believing in somewhere between our third and fourth album.

The crowd sings along, forty-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine voices covering for the one that’s checked out.

During the guitar solo, I spot the VIP section. Row after row of industry people and wealthy fans, all holding their phones up. Behind them, a group of women in their twenties wave at me with such calculated enthusiasm that it makes my skin crawl.

I used to find them after shows. Used to lose myself in anonymous hotel rooms with anonymous bodies, pretending that physical connection could fill the hole where my soul used to be. Now the thought makes me sick.

One of them blows me a kiss, and I have to look away.

The setlist crawls by. Song after song, each one feeling more hollow than the last. My voice starts to strain during the ballad section—not from technique, but from the sheer effort of pretending to mean words that taste of ash in my mouth.