December 24th [COMPLETED]

Part Six: Their Final Show

George didn't have time to explain. She was handed another tissue by one of the guys and a face mask by another when Seo Joon approached. The rest of the crew was ready to leave. They had to go. Their plane to London was waiting for them to board.

George took a deep breath and met each of the members' eyes before nodding and trying on a smile that wouldn't fit. Sydney passed her her sunglasses and baseball hat and they were off. There were people watching. Every single passenger that had gotten past security had seemingly become aware that the group was in the airport and so a small fraction of the crowd that had met them outside was now lining their way to the gate.

They moved fast and quietly, George once again in the middle of their hub, all seven members surrounding her, Sydney right by her side, a ring of security past that. George could barely breathe through her nose but at least she felt safe, hidden.

Their crew took up all of first class and when the seatbelt sign was removed, one by one, the members approached George's seat, forming a half-circle around her, all of them wordlessly looking to each other and then to her. George's eyes burned and she was sure her nose was as red as a cherry but when she spoke, her voice came out clear. That was the only good part of the next ten minutes.

She explained the situation with the label, with Felix, with her mother, everything. Sydney translated and George spoke as if there was no delay in understanding, no language barrier. She faltered when she finally got to how this applied to the group. There her voice caught.

The album was finished. Done. If George had her way, she would kill for one more week with the guys, preferably in her own studio in New York. Five days at the very least where none of them slept and all of them made the album the best that it could possibly be.

But for the time they had been granted and the resources they had been given, it was the best George and the rest of them could do. Jae Min and CJ were happy with it and so George decided she would be too.

But they were far from out of the woods. This album still had a small chance of ever even making it to the public. The company still needed to approve it and with everything going on with George and Concept....

George had been in the music industry long enough. In her mind, there was absolutely no way. She couldn't conceive anyone, any label executive anywhere in the world, approving an album born out of such controversy.

George's solution was simple and she could tell by the way each member nodded with a deep frown on their face that they were taking the matter as seriously as it needed to be. No where in George's mind did she hesitate to offer up the only solution she could think of. From where she was seated, there was no other option.

She suggested they remove her name from the album. Entirely.

After a long pause, long even after her words were translated to the members, Jae Min finally spoke.

"We'll think about it. And then we'll see what the label thinks."

The rest of the members nodded along with his words. There was nothing else to say. George's name, her work, all that she had done for the album, could go at any second. But at least she could sit back and breathe for the first time since that phone call. It wasn't up to her anymore and in that fact she could take comfort.

The album was what mattered. Not whether or not the name Georgiana Burns showed up in the liner notes. The music was what mattered.

The flight only lasted two hours and George and the crew had only left their hotel in Barcelona that morning but George felt as though she had aged ten years in that short span of time. There were people waiting for them at the airport, more fans, more photographers, more reporters calling out their names. George's face mask and sunglasses hid the puffiness under her eyes well enough and she kept her head down the whole way through the airport.
There were people at their hotel and it felt like being squeezed through a ketchup bottle when they finally burst into the lobby, a wave of noise following them and then getting cut off when the doormen closed the doors.