The sound of the crowd was a living thing — not cheers, not applause. A wave.
Lisa felt it before she heard it, the way performers do when the lights are too bright and the noise is too big to belong to one place. Her in-ear monitor buzzed softly. She rolled her shoulders once. Exhaled.
Above them: sky rigging, LED trusses, and four stabilized drones with spot arrays.
Below: twenty thousand people and ten cameras feeding into a national live stream.
At her side: Ji-yeon, standing tall in center, chin tilted like nothing in the world could touch them.
To her right: Anika, ready to kill or kiss someone, whichever came first.
Behind: Mei-ling bouncing on her heels, lip-syncing her own line before it started.
Sakura still as glass.
The lights blinked. The timer hit zero.
The music dropped.
They moved.
Lisa hit every mark.
Choreography so sharp it could cut fabric. Lines smooth as bone.
But by the second verse, she started to feel it. A buzz that wasn't hers. Not stage adrenaline. Not nerves.
Something in her chest — a tightening, like pressure was building under her ribs.
It wasn't fear.
It was recognition.
She almost missed her cue.
On the final beat of the bridge, they turned outward toward the rising camera rig. Lisa turned, eyes scanning the crowd.
She didn't see him.
But her body felt it before her mind did —
a vibration in the air that didn't belong to the song.
__
He hadn't meant to come.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
Mapo was west.
But the sound of her voice cut through the city like a signal he couldn't block.
Just one look, he told himself.
Then he'd go.
He already knew he was lying.
He told himself that he'd feel the crowd, hear her voice through the haze of speakers,
and then leave.
No contact. No risk.
Just one final look at the girl he'd loved,
still loved,
would never stop loving.
But somehow, he ended up inside.
Back of the crowd. Hood up. Eyes on the stage.
Not because he was strong enough to stay away—
But because he wasn't.
Her voice hit first — familiar, clear, impossibly close.
Then her face.
Not a screen. Not a memory.
Her.
Real. Alive.
And more than anything, changed.
Not the girl he left behind.
The woman she became without him.
It undid something in him he didn't know was still holding on to.
And suddenly ten years of exile folded into a single breath.
She moved like fire. She was fire.
All sharp lines and light.
He smiled—barely. Just for a second.
This is what she became.
Without me.
And that was enough.
He turned to go.
And that's when he felt it—
a snap in the air.
A wrongness.
A sound like the bones of the sky giving way.
__
That's when the drone rig sparked.
Pop. Crack. Buzz.
A hiss of light. A metal scream.
The sky truss — a 40-foot structure — shuddered loose from its mount.
One of the support arms snapped like a bone under pressure.
The drones above began to tilt mid-hover — electrical panic.
Cables unraveled in the air like whips.
And the entire south half of the rig began to fall —
not forward, not back —
straight down.
Onto them.
A scream behind her.
Ji-yeon shouted something.
Mei-ling slipped. Anika froze.
Sakura moved — too slow.
Lisa turned — light in her face — and saw it.
The falling shape.
The cable flash.
The exact trajectory.
Right above her.
She didn't have time to brace.
__
But he did.
He stepped from the crowd — just a figure in black.
No sound. No costume. No face. Just a force.
One moment he was on the ground — the next, he was airborne.
The crowd saw him second.
Lisa saw him first.
There was no mistaking it — not in the lines of his movement, not in the shape of him.
He didn't fly like a man.
He moved like a force pulled into being — launched into the air not by will, but by necessity.
The rig hit terminal velocity.
He hit it harder.
Midair, he made no sound.
No shout. No command. No warning.
He slammed into the falling structure with his entire body, kinetic energy pulling in around him like a gravity field.
The lights ruptured.
Sparks flew.
Cables shredded.
And the entire thing—
exploded outward.
In controlled force.
A shockwave of pure resonance hit the stage and then flattened, controlled midair like invisible fingers smoothing chaos.
The metal truss disintegrated.
Not shattered — redirected.
Lisa didn't move.
She couldn't.
He landed.
Just ahead of her—one knee down, palm pressed to the stage.
The air around him shimmered like heat off pavement.
The Constant was pulsing — visible now, faint cracks of light crawling up his arm.
The crowd wasn't screaming anymore.
They were silent.
One of the cameras zoomed in.
Someone in production yelled to cut the feed.
Too late.
Lisa stepped forward.
Only a foot. Maybe less.
He rose.
She saw his face.
Not a blur. Not a rumor. Not a shadow.
Him.
Kyosuke Sagara.
Ten years gone.
His eyes locked on hers — just for a heartbeat.
And then he was gone.
One step.
Two.
He vanished off the edge of the stage in a blur of re-channeled kinetic energy, launching into the dark, faster than any drone could follow.
He didn't look back.
He didn't need to.
Lisa stood frozen at the edge of the light.
Her chest buzzed like the air after a speaker blows — not power, just the aftershock of him.
Someone called her name.
Ji-yeon touched her arm.
She blinked.
The crowd began to scream again — this time louder, not in terror.
In belief.
All over the venue, phones went up.
Footage already hitting the net.
One voice in the crowd gasped the name like it meant something holy.
"The Wanderer—"