45. Everyone Watching
EVERYONE WATCHING
AIDAN — SEOUL
When we arrived at the stadium on the afternoon of the concert, eight officers stood in front of the gate instead of the usual four, all Korean nationals, all ex-military.
Jason had briefed us before we arrived, his voice carrying the particular weight of a man who’d done everything right and knew it might not be enough.
I looked at Liam. His posture hadn’t changed.
That told me everything.
The bus door opened. Jason stepped out first, and a distant roar drifted across the parking lot and the approach avenues to the stadium. Fans behind the glass barriers, camera flashes strobing off the windows. Jin followed, then the others, and the roar grew as all five of them hit the pavement.
“Jin!”
“Pryzm!”
Hundreds of voices, overlapping and echoing around us. Fans pressed against the barriers, phones raised overhead. Most were filming. Some were crying.
A cluster of fans held banners above their heads. Most were supportive.
WELCOME HOME.
PRYZM FOREVER.
THANK YOU, SANG-HOON.
Jin stopped a few feet from the entrance and motioned behind him to Sang-hoon, who had come out of the bus with the rest of the crew. Sang-hoon stepped up to stand beside Jin, and the crowd went wild.
Jin raised a hand immediately, smiling despite the dark circles under his eyes.
People cried harder. Phones shot into the air. A chant started somewhere down the line and spread.
“Jin! Jin! Jin!”
Sang-hoon kept his head down. Jin nudged him with an elbow.
I caught the exchange because I was already watching them. Sang-hoon shook his head, and then Jin said something I couldn’t hear.
Whatever it was earned a reluctant smile, and Sang-hoon lifted a hand and waved.
Several fans began chanting his name. Others shouted Gamsahamnida, Sang-hoon-ssi!, which was Korean for thank you. One woman was openly sobbing while holding a poster showing the photograph that had already spread around the world, Sang-hoon bleeding in the backstage area.
“Everybody loves a hero,” Liam muttered to me.
“Until they don’t.”
“True.”
One young woman with furry rabbit ears over her head held up a sign covered in rainbow hearts and Korean writing. I nodded toward it and turned to Sunny beside me. “What does that say?”
She smiled. “Jin and Sang-hoon forever.” Then she sighed. “I hope the Starhouse executives are as welcoming.”
A few feet away, another fan had a banner that simply read REMEMBER YOUR FANS. The contrast wasn’t subtle.
I scanned faces instead of signs. Hands. Bags. Anything that looked out of place.
I didn’t see anything, but then, I didn’t have much experience with the kind of crowds Pryzm attracted.
We moved across the pavement in tight formation, the members surrounded by security, fans screaming from behind barriers. Jin walked in the center, Sang-hoon close beside him, both of them looking exhausted.
Questions started flying from the media pack clustered behind a second barrier. I couldn’t understand the rapid Korean, but Sunny translated. “They want to know how Jin is feeling, if the concert will go on. And if Sang-hoon has a statement.”
The group ignored them all, until one young man with the logo of a TV station on his jacket shouted something. “He wants to know if the relationship rumors are true,” Sunny told me.
The noise shifted and it was like a bubble opened up around Jin and Sang-hoon. Jin stopped walking and turned to the reporter. He lifted his hand and Sang-hoon’s up together, and fans screamed. Every phone in sight seemed to tilt toward Jin and Sang-hoon at the same moment.
Jin turned and continued walking behind Jason toward the stadium entrance. But I saw Sang-hoon’s attention snap immediately to the crowd.
The entrance was less than fifty yards away. Suddenly it felt much farther.