aesthete | 𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐭𝐲𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 [EN]

04 | 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟑

𝑎𝑒𝑠𝑡ℎ𝑒𝑡𝑒
04 | 2013

The cheap leather sank a little when Louis fell on it at the other end. I wrapped my hands around one of the legs I had laid over the other and pulled it a little further up to my upper body. My gaze stared straight ahead into the lens of the camera.

"Now you need to calm down and relax."

The camerawoman stepped nervously between the devices and suddenly attracted my attention. I swallowed, then blinked several times and finally nodded understandingly to myself. "I'm sorry", was the only thing I said- just a single, miserable word. My throat felt very dry, so I put a hand on it and coughed to myself.

She seemed to have no hesitation about positioning me in the way she wanted me to be. With one hand she held my upper body straight, while with the other she moved my hand from my neck to my thigh. I backed away a little as she looked up at me and looked at me with a critical gaze.

I squinted a little aside. Liam sat between Louis and me and Niall and Zayn, who had arrived together by now, bent over the backrest with their arms crossed. From my perspective I could hardly see them, but at that moment everything seemed to be about Zayn. No wonder, after all, we had hardly heard from him for all these years.

While the others talked, the cameras and lights were still being adjusted. Now and then they tried to involve me in the conversation. I answered as briefly as possible, trying to overshadow my state of mind with a fleeting smile.

Gradually the sedative that Liam had given me began to spread within my body. I felt the nervousness slowly subside and I became clearer again. But the thoughts in my head were still as tangled as before. I stared straight ahead at the wall clock - only two more minutes, then the livestream would start.

In the meantime, the camerawoman was back in position, Niall and Zayn had also finished talking, and stood behind us with straight backs and looking into the lens. In that moment, everything was quiet. I took another deep breath.

Thumb up.

A thumb up had always been the sign that the video was now going live. As usual, I leaned forward a little and put on a happy face - at least a bit. While Liam greeted the audience, I ran through the course of the stream in my head one last time.

Just a little talk into the camera and then play this one song. If all goes well, it won't take longer five 5 minutes.

"It's so unbelievable how fast time has passed. So much has happened and yet everything still feels as if it was just yesterday. I think I speak for all of us when I say that we can never thank you enough for allowing us to experience all this and that you still think of us like that after all these years, right?" Liam now asked the question in the room. He turned his head in all directions and a communal nod and affirmation filled the room. I agreed.

Again, I clasped my hands around my knee and pressed it a little closer to me. At that moment, all attention was focused solely on me and it obviously put me under pressure. "That's why we have prepared something special for you today", I continued the speech and then took a short break from talking.

I swallowed and tried to build meaningful sentences in my head. "As you probably know, not every song we write makes it onto an album. Actually, it' s quite the opposite - most of what we wrote you will never hear", I said and turned to Louis, although Zayn was the next to speak.

"The song we are about to play for you we wrote in 2013", he said.

No, I wrote it.

"We made it for Midnight Memories and even recorded some demos in the studio, but it never made it onto any of the albums."

Because you thought it didn't fit the concept.

"And so we're very excited to be able to show it to the world for the first time."

That's a brave statement when you don't even know if that's actually true.

"To ten years of One Direction."

Louis was still smiling straight into the camera. He shone so brightly in all his colours that once more everything around him faded into a dreary sea of black and white. And he seemed so happy that even I couldn't help but grin.

To grin and to think that I might look away from him again.