Lahat ng Kabanata ng Beyond the Spotlight : Kabanata 11 - Kabanata 15

The assistant who’d posted the clip got suspended the morning after the interview aired. Word moved through the tour quickly, the way it always did. She’d been pulled into a room with someone from the label’s social team and came out an hour later pale and red-eyed. Her access to the internal archive was revoked, and within the hour, a formal apology went up on her own account.“I take full responsibility. I should have known better. I’m so sorry to the whole team.”Nobody blamed her out loud. If anything, most people seemed to feel a little bad for her. She was twenty-three, after all, and one impulsive decision had landed her a suspension. Kairo felt bad for her too, in the distant, complicated way he’d felt most things that week, somewhere underneath a much larger weight that had nothing to do with her at all.Rehearsal that day was a disaster, though nobody could have said exactly why except Kairo, and he wasn’t saying anything. Every time Zaire’s hand found his waist on the count

The first time I saw Kairo Anderson in person, he was standing by the water table, holding a bottle and looking in my direction.I noticed him as soon as I stepped into the studio. I recognized Kairo immediately, of course. It was difficult not to recognize one of the biggest pop stars in the world. Still, I didn’t make a big deal out of it. I gave the room a quick once-over, acknowledged a few faces, and went about settling in as if there wasn’t a celebrity standing a few feet away.Kairo kept checking his phone, though he didn’t seem particularly interested in whatever was on the screen. There was something about the way he stood there that suggested he was waiting for someone. I didn’t give it much thought. I’d worked with enough artists to know that famous people were just people, and I wasn’t about to start acting differently because one of them happened to be in the room.Up close, Kairo looked exactly like his posters. Which was a little strange, because I’d always assumed post

By the third week, Kairo had gotten used to the constant movement. There was barely enough time to settle into one city before he had to leave for another. His days followed much the same pattern, with performances, long drives, flights, and hotel rooms that he would barely spend enough time in to get comfortable. Even his days off came with something scheduled, whether it was an interview, rehearsal, a photo call, or another call from Priya about something that couldn’t wait.He had learned to work around the exhaustion. He knew how little sleep he could get and still make it through a show, how long he could go without eating before it started affecting him, and how to keep going even when all he wanted was a few hours to himself.Sometimes, he woke up in the middle of the night and had to check his phone to remember which city he was in. The rooms all looked alike, and after a while, the days started blending together. He was getting used to it, but that didn’t mean he was enjoying