Part 12
For two days, every news channel replayed the same clip.
The burst of sparks, Adrian pulling the dancer out of the way, the thunder of applause that followed.
"Heroic," the headlines said.
"Grace under pressure."
But behind the headlines, Adrian couldn't shake the unease crawling through him.
The stage crew swore the lighting rig had been checked, yet the safety logs were strangely incomplete.
And the technician who'd handled the setup had already quit, vanishing the next morning without notice.
Adrian sat in the empty rehearsal hall that night, replaying the footage on his phone.
There—just before the sparks—he caught a reflection in the stage glass.
Someone standing in the wings.
Ethan.
His stomach tightened.
It could've been coincidence.
It could've been anything.
But he'd seen the look in Ethan's eyes too many times to call it chance.
Ethan, meanwhile, was unraveling.
He'd locked himself in the studio for hours, trying to drown the noise with music.
But every sound felt hollow.
Every lyric he wrote sounded like an apology he couldn't admit.
His manager burst in with good news.
"The festival clip boosted both your numbers. Your song's back in the top 10!"
Ethan barely looked up.
"His too?"
"Of course. Higher."
Ethan laughed—a brittle, broken sound.
He'd tried to break Adrian's moment, and all he'd done was polish the man's legend.
When he left the studio, reporters swarmed the street.
One shouted, "Ethan! Any comment on the stage incident?"
He forced a grin.
"Accidents happen. I'm just glad everyone's safe."
The cameras flashed, but his smile faltered for half a second—just long enough for every lens to catch it.
That night, Adrian received a call from his manager.
"They found something," he said.
"A tampered fuse box. Someone rewired it."
Adrian's chest went cold.
"Who?"
"They don't know. But it wasn't the crew."
He hung up slowly, staring out at the city lights below his window.
Somewhere out there, someone wanted him to fall—and had almost succeeded.
He whispered to himself, "Why me?"
And in the silence that followed, the reflection in the window almost looked like it was smiling back.