Forget Me Not

Chapter 3: This is all new to him

Joshua walked in longer strides to run away from the attention. He wished he could talk with her for a little while longer. He knew it would just put her in trouble if the paparazzi gets hold of their picture. He is finally gaining some global attention now that he has collaborated with big name western artists. He didn't want to jeopardize that with a dating scandal. He and his friend, Jacob, started their recording label because none of the agencies were willing to back up a solo artist with no connections. They started out by putting their tracks on social media and one of their songs became viral, and the rest is history. Personally, he never liked that song so much, it was an experiment, but that brought in fans who enjoyed the other not-so-famous tracks, so he quit complaining about that.

Attention was not new to him. He had always been a popular kid at school for his vocals and good looks. But, social media attention and scrutiny on every little thing that he does, that's something he could never get used to. Jacob always insists that he enjoys it while it lasts, he understands how virality works. He wished he gave her his number, or at least asked her's, so that he could text her. But, one of his cardinal rules is to never date a fan. He once had a makeup artist who leaked his personal information to paparazzi and had a highschool kid stalk him for a year. So, he doesn't trust people easily. That's also probably why his love life is a disaster.

He managed to get to the lounge without raising a whole lot of ruckus. He just hoped his staff could do some damage control on the pictures they might have clicked of him and Aishi. They monitored the twitter trends with #joshua for an hour and none of them appeared. So, they concluded that it is under control. All this while, Joshua kept searching Instagram for "Aishi" in the hope that he could find her there. But, unfortunately, without her last name, it was impossible to find her account. Even if he found the account, it will most likely be private and he can't risk to follow her. He gives out a deep sigh and quits the pursuit.

He slid back into the chair, took out his eye mask, and slipped into a quick nap. Before boarding the plane at Dubai, after getting off the plane at Frankfurt, throughout his practice sessions, and through 2 days of his concert, he just kept asking the same thing to his manager.

"Kimmy, did she call yet? Is your phone working? Is it the same number as that in the card?"

After putting up with three days of his shenanigans, Kimmy finally asked,

"Josh, are you in love or something?"

He ignored his question and continued, "Are you monitoring twitter? Maybe someone posted that picture. Maybe she posted something on the fansite. But, again, she didn't seem like someone who would do that on a public platform. Kimmy, should I have just asked for her number?"

"Get it together Josh! The past 2 days of the concert were fantastic. You are all over the internet, our PR is doing a great job posting the clips from your performance. You have just one more day left. Let's get through this with no drama. Also, maybe you are right, she must have lost the card, or she has other travel plans. I'm asking this again, do you like her or something?"

"I want to know her better to see if I like her. Also, don't worry, I know how hard we worked to get here. I won't screw it up. Let's wrap it up early today. We'll go big for the final day!"

"It's better this way, no more obsessing over every normal interaction I have with a decent human being", he thought and headed towards his room.

It was 11 am the next morning when he woke up to a knock on his door. He opened it to find Kimmy stretching out his hand.

"Take the phone, it's her."