Chapter 242: Tour Opening (2)
<🎧 Song Recommendation: Love Me by JMSN>
...
"Yeah?"
"Nicholas, these are so comfortable I’m actually mad about it."
She turned in front of the mirror, looking down at her feet, at the little white dolphin against the aqua, at the coral sole.
"Oh my god," she whispered. "They look so cute."
She spun around, crossed the floor, grabbed both of his hands, and looked up at him with the sweetest face she could muster.
She was ready to deal with rejection and save up the money herself, but she was praying he could buy them. It was their anniversary, after all.
"Honey. Please. Please, can you buy these?"
Nicholas looked down at the unique design.
’These things are one of a kind, and they’re made by a huge artist like Von. They’re probably collector items that go for a thousand dollars...’
He cleared his throat nervously. "Excuse me... how much for a pair of these?"
The storekeeper smiled. "It’s just $49, sir!"
Nicholas rubbed his eyes just to be sure, staring at the storekeeper in utter disbelief.
"Sir? You good?" the seller asked, finally looking up from the register.
"...Nothing," Nicholas managed, clearing his throat. "I’ll take them. And give me another pair in my size, eleven."
Sabrina let out a squeal like a tea kettle and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him tightly and kissing him repeatedly.
"Which ones do you want, man?" the girl with the braids asked, chuckling as she reached into the storage stacks.
Nicholas returned the hug and kiss with a grin, scanning the wall before pointing at a sleek black-and-white pair with a soccer ball pressed into the outer panel.
He slipped them on right there beside Sabrina and took a few steps forward.
’I finally get her reaction now,’ he thought, his eyes widening. ’These are incredible.’
He had been standing on his feet since two in the afternoon, but within eight steps, the dull ache in his heels completely vanished.
He paid for both pairs without a second thought. The girl with the braids neatly packed their old sandals and sneakers into black drawstring bags and handed them over.
"Real quick before y’all head out," the seller added, tapping a small card on the counter with a QR code printed on it.
"Download the V-OMEN app. Not trying to be annoying, but this is just one of many unique merch items we’re dropping during the tour. The app tells you what’s dropping and where, and you can order right through it. Though prices are definitely cheaper when you buy live at a show."
"Will do," Nicholas said.
Sabrina already had her phone out, scanning the code to download it immediately.
They stepped back out into the plaza, instantly drawing the same wide-eyed reactions they had watched others get minutes before.
Every eye in the line locked onto their feet. People stared with open curiosity and envy, a few whispering anxiously that the boots might sell out before they reached the front, while others practically murmured prayers to keep their size in stock.
Nicholas walked through the crowd like a man who had just won the lottery. He chuckled as they headed toward the main entrance gates.
"Man, forty-nine dollars?" he said, glancing at her. "Von really doesn’t exploit his fans."
He looked over and saw Sabrina already snapping photos of her Exo boots and uploading them to her socials. He smiled. "I see you’re having a good time already."
Sabrina blushed, quickly tucking her hair behind her ear. "If we came here just for these Exo boots, I’m already satisfied. I don’t even care if the concert is boring now."
Nicholas smiled warmly. "Maybe you’ll get both."
They passed ticket inspection, cleared security, and made their way into the massive arena bowl.
All along the concourse and stairwells, fans who hadn’t made it to the merch pop-up stopped them to ask questions and admire their boots.
While they waited for the show to start, Sabrina nudged Nicholas and showed him her phone screen.
Her post of the Exo boots had already hit three hundred likes, more than all her posts over the past month combined.
A grin spread across her face. She made up her mind right then to keep posting updates throughout the night; if nothing else, it would keep her busy.
Then Sabrina looked around, taken aback by the scale of the venue. She had seen the inside of the Kaseya Center on TV during basketball games, but this was an entirely different world.
The arena floor was swallowed by a massive stage that stretched almost half the length of the bowl.
A wide runway speared straight out into the floor crowd, expanding at the end into a circular secondary stage.
Above it, an entire ceiling’s worth of lighting trusses hung in suspended tiers, hundreds of fixtures pointed down like a swarm of motionless steel.
Behind the main stage, a massive LED screen towered four stories tall, dark for now.
At seven o’clock sharp, the arena background music cut out. The house lights died in one clean sweep, plunging the bowl into darkness before a single, sub-bass note vibrated up through the concrete floor.
Then the overhead truss ignited.
Every fixture in the ceiling fired straight down at once in a blinding column of white light. Standing at the very tip of the runway was a figure who had absolutely not been there four seconds ago.
Von wore a white suit, left unbuttoned at the chest, standing perfectly still in the spotlight.
The moment he appeared in the light, a collective scream went up that nearly blew the roof off the building.
The live band hit the opening chord, launching into Welcome!, a track that was completely different from the leaked opener.
Nicholas caught the exact instant the crowd realized what was happening.
A sudden stumble rippled through the noise, a half-second of complete confusion across twenty thousand people before the scream returned twice as loud.
"That’s not the order!" Nicholas shouted into Sabrina’s ear, laughing out loud. "That’s not the leaked order!"
"What?" she yelled back over the noise.
"HE CHANGED IT!"