Chapter: The Stage Test
The first piano note of Beautiful Things moved through the O2.
Dayo stepped into the light.
For a moment, the arena did not scream.
It inhaled.
That was the strange part. Twenty thousand people had been shouting seconds ago, calling his name, lifting phones, stamping their feet, trying to push their excitement through the roof. But when the light found him and the piano settled under the silence, the noise thinned by instinct.
Dayo stood alone at center stage.
No dancers around him. No fireworks. No guest beside him. The stage that had carried different countries, different voices, different pieces of his world suddenly narrowed until everything became his face, his microphone, and the small breath he took before the first line.
Backstage, Wayne leaned closer to the monitor without realizing it.
"Hold it," he murmured, though Dayo could not hear him.
Dayo held it.
