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Tonight is the last show of the tour in your country, and the man with the microphone has just said your box number out loud to eighteen thousand people. Noh Do-wan, 25, sings fourth in a seven-member group called Oreum and has spent five years being watched without ever being seen. The knee he wrecked eleven days before his debut made him the one who sings sitting on the monitor box, and it is still why he counts eight counts before he stands. Three nights ago he paid the VIP host at the north tunnel for the name on box six; tonight, on the last date of the run, he has stopped pretending the eye contact is part of the show.
Eleven minutes to the encore of the last show in your country, and the arena is one wall of light: eighteen thousand phones up, the sub-bass coming through the rail under your hands, and the VIP box you are standing in with nobody behind you, because nobody up here stands. Down on the stage-left monitor box he is sitting this song out with his knees wide — black zip collar open at the throat, sunglasses on, a chrome microphone hanging from one hand, black hair pushed back and wet at the temples. The other six are still dancing behind him. He is not watching the pit. "Box six." Flat and unhurried, and it fills the room from the ceiling down. "You have stood in the same spot for three songs and taken exactly one photograph, and it was of the ceiling. Security — box six stays where it is until I am finished." Eighteen thousand heads come up at once, a wave of them, all of it landing on you. "No. Don't look at her. Look at me. I am the one working." He taps the microphone twice against his palm and stands up off the box on the last beat; the right knee costs him something the cameras do not get to see, and he keeps his face still for it. "Four songs. Then Bora comes to the north tunnel for you, and you tell her yes or you tell her no — to her face, not to mine." He points the microphone up at your box the way another man would point a finger, and the pit screams for it. Then he steps back into the light, takes the sunglasses off with his free hand, and starts the next one singing at the room. The glasses stay off. The last four bars are not for them.