The song didn't just find an audience; it found a nerve. A raw, universal vein of grief that was quietly humming beneath the surface of the world. And it tapped into it with devastating precision.
The montage begins with a shot of Alex's laptop screen, a sight he had been actively avoiding. He'd logged into the distributor portal out of a sense of obligation, and the numbers that greeted him were staggering. The streaming count for "Before You Go" was climbing at a dizzying, exponential rate. Ten million. Fifty million. One hundred million. Each digit was a testament to a stranger's heartache, a quiet echo of a pain they recognized as their own. The simple, personal tribute had become a global phenomenon.
The perspective shifts, pulling away from Alex's quiet room and into the roaring, chaotic world outside. We see a mosaic of phone screens, a river of social media feeds. A teenage girl in Brazil, tears in her eyes, lip-syncing to the chorus in a video dedicated to her brother. A group of boys in England, arms around each other at a football match, singing the lyrics like a hymn for a fallen teammate. The hashtag #BeforeYouGo trends for weeks, a digital wall of remembrance where people share photos of lost loved ones, always with Alex's raw, wounded voice as the soundtrack.
The mainstream media, sensing a story far more compelling than just another viral hit, latches on. The narrative solidifies quickly. Clips flicker across a dozen news channels: a morning show host with a look of practiced sincerity discusses the "tragic and beautiful story behind the song." An entertainment reporter on a nightly broadcast frames Alex as a sensitive, mournful prodigy, a voice for his generation's quiet sorrows. Mental health organizations, seeing the song's organic impact, adopt it for their awareness campaigns, praising its raw vulnerability and emotional honesty.
Alex watches all of this from a profound, disconnected distance. He is a ghost at his own coronation. He sees his face on the television screen in his own living room—a still from the "Lost Boy" video, his expression serious and soulful. He hears his song, his private confession to Leo, pouring out of the car radio as his mom drives him to school. But the person they are talking about, this accidental icon of Gen-Z grief, this reluctant spokesperson for a pain he can barely manage himself—it's a character he didn't agree to play. The world has built a monument to his suffering, and he feels trapped in its shadow.
He actively avoids it, retreating from the praise as if it were an attack. One evening, as his parents are watching the news, a segment about him begins. He sees his own face, hears his own music. Without a word, he quietly gets up from the couch and leaves the room, the sound of the anchor's voice fading as he walks down the hall. He disables all notifications on his phone, turning the constant buzz of validation into a blessed, chosen silence.
His friends and family don't quite know how to handle it. His father tries to talk to him about the incredible sales figures, his voice filled with pride, but Alex just shrugs and changes the subject. Finneas mentions that a major producer he admires tweeted about the song's "brutal honesty," but Alex offers only a noncommittal hum in response.
Billie, as always, seems to be the only one who understands. She doesn't bring up the numbers or the news reports. She just watches him with a quiet, sympathetic gaze when he flinches at the sound of his own song coming from someone's phone down the hall at school. She sees that the global conversation about his pain is not a comfort, but a heavy, unwanted burden. He didn't write the song to become a symbol; he wrote it for Leo. And the world's applause felt like a desecration of that sacred, private act.
The sequence ends with Alex back in his room, the door closed. The curtains are open now, but it still feels like a sanctuary, a bunker against the noise of his own success. He can hear the faint, muffled sound of a television from the living room, can imagine his song being discussed, analyzed, celebrated. He is at the center of a global conversation, a household name, an icon. And as he sits there in the quiet, he feels more isolated than ever, trapped not by his grief, but by a success that was inextricably, eternally linked to his greatest failure. The crown the world had placed on his head felt less like an honor and more like a cage.
-------------------------
I am losing my motivation to write this. Maybe I will fast pace it after arc 3 and end it.
The readers are also low compared to start with just 10 now.