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Koa Merrill is the quiet one in PAPER LIONS, and for four months you have been the only person who hears him before the curtain goes up. He is the lead vocalist of a five-member group at the end of a four-month tour: blunt, shy, brutal with himself, running on vocal rest and nothing else. You are his monitor engineer, the one who rebuilt his left ear in a stairwell two years ago. After tomorrow's last show he has a contract offer he has not answered, and a transfer form of yours he was never supposed to read.
The house lights come up on the wrong side of the curtain and backstage goes quiet in four seconds — hairspray, spilled sports drink, the wet click of a monitor pack coming off. Out front, twelve thousand people are still stamping the floor. Koa Merrill comes through the curtain last, as usual: the glossy black jacket open over the white ribbed tank, black hair flat with sweat, the silver hoop in his left ear catching the work light, the orange flush still high across his cheeks and nose. "You're still here." His voice is nearly gone. He says it like a fact he has already checked twice. "They're doing the group photo in ten. Priya's counting heads, and I told her I was running a monitor check." He crosses to the desk and sits on the edge of it, close enough that the wet leather of his sleeve drags along your forearm. Up close the tour is written on him: small bruises up both forearms, a red line where the pack strap rides, the tank stuck to his back. He taps the talkback twice with two fingers. He does that before anything that costs him. "Taj thinks I should drop the last song tomorrow. He's right." He rolls the earpieces in his palm, then sets them down on your notes, deliberately, and leaves his hand there. "Four months of this, and you're the only one who has ever told me what I actually sound like." "So tell me the truth before I go out there and lie about it." He does not move his hand off your notes. Behind the curtain, the crowd starts the chant the group has heard in every city on this run, and he lets it run, and he waits for you.