I have no idea where I am or why I ended up here. I had always had my suspicions that my brother was into bad stuff but I never had the guts to ask. And now I'm standing in a small bathroom, mascara running down my face and my shirt partially ripped from being dragged from the building into a van. I have no idea what's to come, all I know is right now I've been taken and being held hostage by eight men, tears start running down my face again but I can't be bothered to try and clean up my makeup.... I wonder if I'll ever go home
12 hours earlier
I wake up to my annoyingly loud alarm and immediately shoot up in my bed. Today's the day!! I've been waiting months for this one specific day! The day I finally get to meet Stray Kids and Ateez. My best friend Callie would be coming over soon and we would get ready together in my cute studio apartment. She was head over heels in love with Stray Kids whereas I am head over heels in love with Ateez. There's just something about their music that pulls at my heart. I'm not the type of girl to listen to Kpop, I grew up listening to heavy metal thanks to my mom. But one day Callie showed me some Stray Kids song and I slowly started listening to their songs and not long after my Instagram was filled with posts of them, shortly after Ateez posts started making its way into my feed and boom, I was in love.
My absolute favorite Ateez song is Halazia and I'm desperately hoping they play it tonight at the concert. I'd seen some videos of them performing Halazia at other concerts before they got to LA but it wasn't actually in the setlist, so I'm hoping they perform it tonight.
I stood in my bathroom doing my makeup, purple eyeshadow, thick eyeliner with wings, fake eyelashes, cc cream, highter, blush, contour and bloodred lipstick. My usual look but today I took extra time to make sure my makeup was done to perfection and that I would look okay.
Next was my hair, I normally don't do anything with my hair but since we were lucky enough to get VIP tickets and do a meet and greet with both groups I figured I should do something special. So I curled my hair and fixed my side bangs with light hairspray to make sure it would still look okay for the rest of the night. Now onto my outfit, skintight black ripped skinny jeans with fishnets underneath, a black crop top with a heart shaped cutout exposing part of my chest and a body harness underneath it. I'm starting to feel so nervous, I even decided to change my bellybutton jewelry to a cute dangley black rose, and I changed my purple nose stud to a black one to match with my outfit. I've never liked wearing bright colors, I've always dressed in black and the perk of being a twenty year old with a job means I can finally buy all of the grunge/punk clothes I want.
Taking a final look in my full length mirror beside my dresser, I'm trying to convince myself that I look okay and there's no need to be self conscience. I've struggled with my body image my whole life, my family always made snide comments about me being underweight, then I got bullied the entire time I was in school for being flat on top and down below. It's still something that bothers me to the point where I'm considering plastic surgery. Callie reassures me that I'm beautiful and she even tells me that shes jealous of me but I can't tell if that's just her being my best friend. Am I really okay looking?
Getting lost in my train of thought about my body that it startled me when I heard a knock at the door before the door actually opened revealing Callie with her key I gave her.
*Rhea you look amazing! You're definitely going to be getting stared at all night by fans and especially Stray Kids and Ateez* she said while giggling
I glared at her and put my arms over my body trying to hide myself with a slight pout
*Callie you're delusional, i most definitely will not be getting looks from anyone tonight*
*Yeah okay you liar, let's get going. I know we still have three hours until we have to be there but who knows what traffic will be like plus we can get something to eat along the way* she said with a big smirk and slightly hitting me in the arm. I grabbed my bag and phone following her out the door and flipping the light off, quickly locking the door before we both raced to the elevator like children while giggling the whole time. Stepping into the elevator and still slightly running in place, the doors opened and we took off running through the lobby out the door and to her car seeing who could make it there first. We both managed to make it at the same time, clearly both full of energy for the concert. Hopefully the hour long drive to the venue would pass by fast. Sitting in the passenger seat I unlocked my phone and went to my Spotify playlist full of Stray Kids and Ateez songs, playing my favorite song first, Halazia. We're both still trying to catch our breath as she starts pulling out of the parking lot, I turned the volume up a little trying to make sure we could still hear each other while we talked. Callie had other ideas, she cranked it all the way up and gave me a wink as she did. It was hard trying to sit still in the car the whole ride there, I made sure to play her favorite songs as well, Venom, Maniac, and Ex. Before we actually got to the venue we stopped at a coffee shop for some Americanos and muffins. We had both agreed to get a small snack because neither of us wanted to be bloated while we were standing in the pit dancing.
We finally made it to the venue. We're about an hour early, we got out of the car anyway and went to go wait in line with about ten other fans. Someone had brought a small Bluetooth speaker and I can hear Taste playing and there are some people standing off to the side of the entrance dancing to the song. I knew sooner or later that learning the choreography for some of the songs would pay off, I'm half hoping I get picked for the Stay dance challenge that they do. We raced over just in time for Taste to end before Red Lights started playing, I looked over at Callie and gave her a wink, she knew the choreography as well and we both start dancing to Red Lights while everyone that was there watched and cheered us on
Ateez POV - sitting in the van
*Wow look at those two girls go! I wonder what they're dancing to?* - Yunho
*I'm not sure, maybe they'll play some of our songs and we can see Atiny do our choreography!* Jongho said excited
*Don't forget the other part of our job here* Hongjoong said in a stern voice
Rhea POV
I knew I should have started running more, I shouldn't be this winded from doing one song. How am I going to dance to the next one? I thought about just standing with the others and watching some of the other fans when Halazia started playing. I got so excited and started jumping up and down and raced back over to start the dance. I was the only one out there so I got to put on a small show for everyone there, doing my best to match the demon line facial expressions. The small crowd was cheering so loud for me as I kept going through the choreography, I decided to do my own little ending fairy doing a heart with my hands and turned to walk away slightly while trying to catch my breath and that's when I noticed them.
Ateez in the flesh, and they were standing by the staff entrance of the venue and all of their eyes were on me, some looked excited and the others had unreadable expressions on their face. I hope they at least thought I did good dancing to Halazia. I quickly looked away from them and didn't say anything to anyone there including Callie because I didn't want the fans to start swarming them when they had to start getting ready for the meet and greet.
Did that really just happen? Ateez saw me dancing to Halazia... I feel excited and shocked about it and just hope I had done a good job. I went back over to Callie and we sat down on the sidewalk with the other fans waiting for the meet and greet to start and drank more of my coffee. I wonder how long Ateez was standing there watching me, I can feel my entire face going red, at least Stray Kids didn't see me dance to Red Lights. I'm honestly kind of embarrassed right now. Hopefully Callie won't notice my face, she's too busy watching some of the fans dancing to other songs anyway.
I truly wonder what they thought about me, or if they even gave it a second thought. I guess I'll never know