Chapter 32
I was a live wire; a thrum of nervous anxiety vibrating through me, but despite that I let go and gave into the eclectic energy that came from a live audience.
The acts were on top form, and I dutifully took photos and made voice notes to write up later, but mostly I just let myself go with it.
The sun was starting to blur across the horizon when a hush descended across the assembled crowds. The stage techs that had been moving set pieces around like well organised worker bees suddenly fled the stage, and the ambient music from the speakers dimmed.
Smoke machines on either side began to stream white smoke in billows that engulfed the stage in no time.
All at once, and seemingly in unison, cheers, and screams began to erupt from the previously hushed crowds.
Banners and flags began to shoot up, and suddenly, it was like the normal Glastonbury attendees had been replaced with K-Pop fans.
The transformation was extraordinary, and I noted as much into my recorder.
Sol8 took to the stage amidst uproarious screams, and applause.
I hadn’t seen Sol8 perform since that day in the lower levels of ENT, where some of the talent had performed brief showcases for the employees. I’d never seen one of their actual stages.
Had they always been this good?
This wasn’t the first K-Pop act I’d seen in the past couple years, but it was the first group I knew personally, and in a way, it felt like watching old colleagues at work.
Technically, I only knew Taeyang, but I’d helped out with Sol8’s music video sets.
I knew they wouldn’t remember me, I knew the connection was tenuous at best, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a link between us.
It was bizarre, and I couldn’t even really articulate it, even to myself.
It was gratifying to see how well-received they were. When I’d seen them last, they were barely out of their debut era. Now, they were popstars in their own right.
There were still people who loved to point out that Sol8 was not as successful as GVibes had been, and would have struggled more if GVibes were active, though from what I was seeing, they were solid contenders.
But a one-to-one comparison wasn’t fair.
They were very different groups, very different people.
And so what if the absence of such an overshadowing group allowed another one to grow in the sun? It didn’t take anything away from GVibes.
I felt oddly proud.
When their performance was over, it was full dark; nightfall having come and gone.
The stage seemed to explode with bright red pyrotechnics and lasers shooting into the sky.
The roar from the crowd was deafening, lasting several minutes, even after every member of Sol8 had long since left the stage.
I was just walking through the crowd in the loose direction of my campsite when my phone buzzed.
Tae
Walk round the the side of the stage - look for the red gate, I’ve put your name on the list.
[Sent 23:42]
A thrill rang through me, and I turned around to head back towards the Pyramid stage. I was a fish swimming upstream - the flow of people pushing around me in the direction of the late-night areas, looking to string out the night as much as they could.
Because I had to navigate around so many people, it took me longer than I would have thought to get close to the stage, which in itself was massive.
Navigating around it took a while, but eventually I got to a wall of metal railings, obstructed by black sheet material that was obviously designed to keep people out, and from seeing what lay beyond.
It seemed like a good place to start, so I walked along it until – bingo. Big, red gate.
Apprehensively, I approached the cordoned off area, manned by no fewer than five burly looking people wearing red lanyards.
“You can’t come through here,” said the one closest to me, looking bored.
I pulled my press pass out from under my thin t-shirt. I had to repress a mad urge to say, “multi-pass”.
What I said instead was, “my name should be on the list.” I tried not to fidget.
“Uh huh. Name?”
I frowned. I was literally waving my pass at him. I looked between him and my pass, several times.
“Kaiya Thompson,” I said slowly, tapping a finger on the little, plastic square.
He barely spared it a glance, before pulling a device out of his pocket, and clearly in no hurry, began tapping on it.
Eventually, he looked up, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, okay. Go through.”
He waved over his shoulder to a woman in a high-vis jacket.
“Let her through.” Then back to me. “Off you pop.”
I tamped down the knee-jerk reaction to his tone, and instead passed through the gates into the most restricted area of the whole festival.
I proceeded through the cordoned off area, looking around curiously at the masses of people, but no one stuck out. If I had to guess, I’d say most of these fine people were part of the armies it took to mobilise performers for events like this. Managers, wardrobe, PAs, techies, and many, many more.
It made me weirdly nostalgic for my days at ENT. Even the hard ones.
“Pom!” A sudden shout from my right stopped me in my tracks, and spinning around, I saw Tae for the first time in more than two years.
He sprang towards me, and to my surprise, pulled me up in a hug that that lifted my feet off the ground while I scrambled to hold onto him. I’d forgotten how much taller than me he was.
He gave me a thorough embrace before putting me back down and taking a step away.
I staggered back, face heating. It was weird because when we’d known each other in Seoul, we hadn’t been friends.
We hadn’t earned this level of intimacy.
I wasn’t sure if we ever had. The two calls we’d had, while fond memories for me, were not exactly strong foundations for the kind of friendship this felt like.
I hadn’t spoken to him in so long, and yet…
It was one of those unexplainable things. I just felt like I knew him better than I should. Maybe I just wanted it to be like that.
With Becka, it had just sort of happened. We didn’t know each other, and then suddenly we were each others ride-or-dies, and had been ever since.
Sometimes you just got to be friends with another person, whether you took the time to get that way, or not.
A reason, or a season, my mum would have said.
Maybe Tae was my friend for a reason.
Breathless, I looked him over. He had white hair now, but otherwise seemed the same.
“It’s really you.” I hadn’t meant to say that. The words just slipped out.
His expression shifted into something softer.
“Yeah, Ky. Come on. We can’t hang out here, unless you want to get run over,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the streams of people around us, everyone in some kind of hurry.
He began to walk off in a direction he was clearly familiar with, and it was either keep up, or get left behind, so I followed.
He led me away from the immediate area of the stage, and into a quieter, but no less populated green space, that looked to be a camp site. I eyeballed the massive RVs, and figured this was probably where the acts were kept before going on stage.
As far as I knew, very few main acts actually slept on site. The better hotels nearby were booked out months in advance, but some of the smaller acts could stay on site if they wanted.
Maybe they stayed in the yurts I could see further away.
Poles criss-crossed the space from which festoon lighting hung, giving the whole area a sort of carnival vibe.
“Man, this place is much nicer than the camp site I got stuck in.”
I gaped, trying not to stare as Martin Chris from Hot Work walked past me.
We walked for a little while further until we got to a yurt that was cheerfully lit up with twinkly lights and Moroccan-style lamps.
The inside was straight out of an advert for an expensive glamping experience.
The floor was laid with wooden boards and covered in rugs.
There were comfy-looking sofas lining the walls, and little fridges filled with drinks and packages of food.
“I’m beginning to see where all the hospitality went, and it wasn’t the press area,” I whistled, taking it all in.
Tae laughed and moved over to one of the little fridges.
“Drink?” He offered.
“Is it cold?”
He chucked me a can, and I barely caught it, the cold metal sliding across my fingers.
“Cold enough?” He grinned at me, and I rolled my eyes.
I popped the tab, looking around at the fancy, but empty space that was easily big enough to accommodate all eight members of Sol8.
“Are we allowed to be in here?”
He scoffed. “Yes, Ky. Sit.”
He indicated to one of the over-stuffed couches, and I dutifully complied. Grateful to get off my feet for the first time in hours.
He looked at me as he drank from his own can, cocking his head like he was trying to figure something out.
“You’re making me nervous,” I said honestly, sipping the cold beer.
“Sorry,” he shrugged, “it’s just weird seeing you again. I pretty much thought I never would.”
It wasn’t an unrealistic expectation, but the words sent an unexpected shot through me. It wasn’t a direct association with Taeyang, necessarily, but the life he represented to me. That period of time. It made my heart sink to admit that the idea of that time of my life being over still upset me.
“Where’s the rest of the group?” I asked quickly.
“Back at the hotel.” He folded his legs underneath him as he sat on the floor.
“You’re here alone?” I didn’t bother to hide my surprise.
He snorted. “Not quite. I have a manager and a bodyguard sat outside. You didn’t see them?”
I thought back to when we’d approached the yurt.
“Honestly, I was distracted by this outrageous display of opulence,” I waved my beer around to indicate said opulence.
“Eunsong!” He called, and a moment later, a well-groomed man appeared in the doorway, looking at Taeyang.
“Say hi to Kaiya,” he said in Korean.