normally did?
Why wasn’t my crew working on charming the crowd?
Why weren’t they…
Well, why weren’t they working? It was a strange thing, watching people you had seen a thousand times over do nothing but what they weren’t supposed to do.
“Are you having a good time tonight?” I asked the crowd. They waved their glow sticks at me, nodding in unison. “Good,” I said, “I want you all to know that you’re my friends and I respect you so much. We’re are all one big family here. One big happy family. Is that all right? I want to include you in my family. Because we’re all one on this planet. And in Korea, we are all one as well. It’s like we’re concentric rings, stacked on top of each other. One after the other after the other. Isn’t that right?”
Just then, as we began our next song, a fire grew in the back. It started as a spark, nothing more than what you might see if you lighted a match. Just a tiny point in the blackness of the crowd. I thought it was nothing at first. Everyone lit up during these events. Everyone wanted to try and enjoy themselves a joint or something extra.
You would have to know how it went down by now. Imagining the bodies pressed together, all around this single point of light, a multitude of them spread throughout the crowd.
But this particular light grew in strength. It exploded as a lightbulb would if it suddenly were short-circuited. The light expanded, outwards as a nebula does, speeding towards the sky. An inferno in moments, a firecracker explosion.
Hae-il went up in flames. His skin caught so much fire, he began to roll about on the ground. Women and men in the back screamed. Teenagers ran about in circles, clutching their iPhones and MacBooks. Others who were sitting down on the grass and enjoying the view of the stars sat up, staring at what was going on.
Then feet in the course of a stampede steamrolled outwards back towards the gate. A wave of people spread outwards and stood away from me.
I reached out into the blackness, as if that would do anything. As if I could psychically stop them all from panicking. But once the instincts kicked in, you couldn’t do anything at all. Gunshots fired out into the air, and then that was that.
I pulled away from the microphone, dropping my guitar. My gang got around me, forming a cordon about my body.
Was it another coup d’état that had started? Was I about to be disposed of?
Were my gang members going to drop my body into the nearest river?
They stayed by my side, without a hint of betrayal on their faces.
My earbud exploded with noise. A cacophony of voices all of a sudden erupting out of nowhere.
Hae-il screamed out loud, just as if he was right next to me. He kept saying, “I’m on fire! The Twin Swords are here! I’m on fire! Jesus Christ, I’m on fire!”
The radio chatter picked up. For sure we had an infiltration going on, a serious breach in our affairs.
“He’s got Hae-il, they’ve got Hae-il!” someone was saying. “They’re here, they’re here!”
Bodies swarmed about me.
I lost sight of the crowd.
I lost sight of Hae-il.
All of my fans dissipated into nothingness, yelling wildly, no longer cheering, no longer happy. Shrieking at the top of their lungs, as if they were riding a roller coaster from the top peak all the way down to the bottom trough.
The fire spread across the crowd, consuming women, men, and teenagers alike. Hair was lit like wood. Like hay, spurting outwards with a cackling seizure of light. It seemed as if someone was holding a Christmas party early, in the middle of spring time.
Fighting broke out. Fists were swung from left to right. The crowd turned into a chaotic fury, swirling flesh, nothing more than bodies killing each other over what I could not tell. My earbuds were useless now, shut off from the others.
The Twin Swords were up to something bad,
Why wasn’t my crew working on charming the crowd?
Why weren’t they…
Well, why weren’t they working? It was a strange thing, watching people you had seen a thousand times over do nothing but what they weren’t supposed to do.
“Are you having a good time tonight?” I asked the crowd. They waved their glow sticks at me, nodding in unison. “Good,” I said, “I want you all to know that you’re my friends and I respect you so much. We’re are all one big family here. One big happy family. Is that all right? I want to include you in my family. Because we’re all one on this planet. And in Korea, we are all one as well. It’s like we’re concentric rings, stacked on top of each other. One after the other after the other. Isn’t that right?”
Just then, as we began our next song, a fire grew in the back. It started as a spark, nothing more than what you might see if you lighted a match. Just a tiny point in the blackness of the crowd. I thought it was nothing at first. Everyone lit up during these events. Everyone wanted to try and enjoy themselves a joint or something extra.
You would have to know how it went down by now. Imagining the bodies pressed together, all around this single point of light, a multitude of them spread throughout the crowd.
But this particular light grew in strength. It exploded as a lightbulb would if it suddenly were short-circuited. The light expanded, outwards as a nebula does, speeding towards the sky. An inferno in moments, a firecracker explosion.
Hae-il went up in flames. His skin caught so much fire, he began to roll about on the ground. Women and men in the back screamed. Teenagers ran about in circles, clutching their iPhones and MacBooks. Others who were sitting down on the grass and enjoying the view of the stars sat up, staring at what was going on.
Then feet in the course of a stampede steamrolled outwards back towards the gate. A wave of people spread outwards and stood away from me.
I reached out into the blackness, as if that would do anything. As if I could psychically stop them all from panicking. But once the instincts kicked in, you couldn’t do anything at all. Gunshots fired out into the air, and then that was that.
I pulled away from the microphone, dropping my guitar. My gang got around me, forming a cordon about my body.
Was it another coup d’état that had started? Was I about to be disposed of?
Were my gang members going to drop my body into the nearest river?
They stayed by my side, without a hint of betrayal on their faces.
My earbud exploded with noise. A cacophony of voices all of a sudden erupting out of nowhere.
Hae-il screamed out loud, just as if he was right next to me. He kept saying, “I’m on fire! The Twin Swords are here! I’m on fire! Jesus Christ, I’m on fire!”
The radio chatter picked up. For sure we had an infiltration going on, a serious breach in our affairs.
“He’s got Hae-il, they’ve got Hae-il!” someone was saying. “They’re here, they’re here!”
Bodies swarmed about me.
I lost sight of the crowd.
I lost sight of Hae-il.
All of my fans dissipated into nothingness, yelling wildly, no longer cheering, no longer happy. Shrieking at the top of their lungs, as if they were riding a roller coaster from the top peak all the way down to the bottom trough.
The fire spread across the crowd, consuming women, men, and teenagers alike. Hair was lit like wood. Like hay, spurting outwards with a cackling seizure of light. It seemed as if someone was holding a Christmas party early, in the middle of spring time.
Fighting broke out. Fists were swung from left to right. The crowd turned into a chaotic fury, swirling flesh, nothing more than bodies killing each other over what I could not tell. My earbuds were useless now, shut off from the others.
The Twin Swords were up to something bad,
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