before you love me | jjk

chapter forty-six

━━━༻ ˚✩‧₊ january 2021₊‧✩˚༺━━━

"Can you turn my mic up please?" Narae asked the sound engineer as she adjusted her in-ears.

It was the first day of their tour and they were currently doing the soundcheck in preparation for the evening ahead. Despite the cold, everyone was buzzing as they ran through the setlist for the night.

The first leg of the tour was in Asia and they were kicking things off in Seoul. From there, they'd hit Australasia, then North America for the Grammy's, followed by Europe over March. Africa and the Middle East were the fourth leg, before Central and South America for the fifth. They'd return to North America for the penultimate leg, before ending the tour back in Seoul. In total, they'd be touring for just under eight months, visiting over 60 cities in that time period.

All the concert venues were stadiums and following an insane ticketing process, it had quickly attained the record for being the fastest stadium tour to become sold out. The magnitude of the tour was unprecedented, like nothing anyone had ever seen before.

It was equal parts terrifying and exhilarating.

However, you wouldn't have been able to tell from the way the artists in question were goofing around on stage as they interacted with the fans who had braved the cold to see the world-class performers.

Hoseok was busy taking polaroids of Yoongi and Namjoon, whilst Taehyung and Jin were playing around with the crowd, pretending they were conductors and controlling their lightsticks. Jimin was wrapping Narae up in his scarf as she tested her microphone levels, whilst Jungkook was running through choreography off to the side of the stage. It was like it was just any other regular day for them.

"That's great thank you." Satisfied with her levels, Narae gave a thumbs up to the engineer as she continued running through her song. One thing about Narae (and BTS too), is that no one could ever accuse her of lip-syncing. Her mic stayed on.

Narae was beyond excited for the tour. She loved being on stage and performing. She'd been practicing endlessly for the past few months and had been largely involved in the creative process and planning behind it. She always had certain visions for how she wanted her performances to look, and was very much hands-on in when it came to concerts.

The running order for the tour started off with songs from the album, mainly OT8 and subunit songs. Then, there would be a BTS only section, followed by a Narae only section. To end off the setlist, they had made remixes of each other's songs that were tour-exclusive.

For each leg, Narae had prepared something different for her solo section. Some focused on her songs by language, whilst others were by music genre. Some were songs special to the particular crowd, whilst others had no particular meaning. What was common to all though, was that each one was unique.

She had just under thirty minutes for her stage, and she was going to do her best to make sure that anyone that came to watch her, came to see a performance in the realest sense. Whether it was a Supernova or an ARMY, she wanted it to be forever ingrained in their minds and leave her mark indefinitely. That was her aim.

As she listened to the boys warm up their vocals, she realized that she truly couldn't wait for the first concert to begin.

✩ ✩ ✩

"Seoul, how are we all feeling tonight!" Namjoon was answered with resounding cheers. The energy from the first crowd was palpable and had all of the idols on stage thrumming with excitement.