Cascade

Chapter 1

Roaring crowds.

Two years ago, I never would have been able to stand on this stage. The pressure would have been too great, and I would have broken down into tears the second I stepped on the stage.

Now I break down when I get home. Or behind the stage. Depends on the size of the crowd. Honestly, I'm not sure how I will make it through this. We have never been in front of a crowd like this. The Seoul Music Awards is the biggest event in South Korea's music industry. If you'd told me two years ago, when we debuted, that we'd be here, right now, after having not been present in the K-pop world for very long, I would have laughed in your face. But here we are, performing as one of the headliners tonight.

It feels so unreal.

"One Minute," a guy in a headset guy tells me. I nod.

I look beside me to ensure my girls are in their positions. To my left, is Park Seon. Seon adjusts her headset while a hair stylist fixes her red-orange hair with a straightening iron. To my right is Lee Dal-Rae. Seon and Dal-Rae look like opposites. Dal-Rae's hair is light pink and curled, and she wears a black leather mini-skirt and a black cropped top paired with knee-high boots. Meanwhile, Seon's fiery hair is always perfect. Seon wears baggy white leather pants and an oversized black sparkly pleated jacket open over her matching black corsetted crop top. To Seon's left is Han Yeosin. Yeosin's long black hair is draped over her shoulders. She's in an oversized white dress shirt and has a loose tie around her neck, covered in sparkling diamonds. She has a black fingerless glove on her left hand, and glittering knee high heels that match her tie. On my far right, past Dal-Rae, is the group's youngest member, Binnia. Her light brown hair is woven into two loose French braids, her curtain bangs are pulled out to frame her face. Her black jumper is sleeve-less and the legs cut off at the mid-thigh, where the silk meets her knee-high white boots. She has White gloves on her hands that cut off a few inches below her shoulders.

We all match in some way. My long dark hair is crimped and fluffed, my curtain bangs in little braids framing my face, matching the other little braids scattered in my hair. I wear a fishnet top with large bell sleeves at my wrists under a white sleeveless corset with buckles holding it together. I'm wearing white cargo pants on the bottom, with a thick black belt holding it up. I'm wearing short, black, fingerless gloves, and four or five thin black chains around my neck.

A make-up stylist steps in front of me with a palette of make-up. She dabs at my face with a towel before brushing a bit of color onto my pale cheeks.

"Thirty seconds!" A stagehand says through my earpiece. Someone runs past and hands Dal-Rae, Binnia, and I our microphones, and hits a switch on Seon and Yeosin's headsets.

We collectively watch as the last group leaves the stage, leaving it wide and open for us. Stagehands quickly sweep the confetti off the stage. Then it's our turn.

We hear a few piano notes through the speakers as one of our popular songs, "Fire and Ice," begins to play. The beat drops with a thud, and while we're still backstage, Binnia begins to rap. The big piece of wood separating us from the stage falls on the beat. We are greeted by darkness and smoke. The Live Flames spurt out of the edge of the large stage as I slowly step forward, the other girls flowing suit behind me a second later so we are in the shape of a pyramid. We begin to dance and the crowd screams. When we get to the chorus, people begin to dance along. When the song is over, people scream so loud my ears pop.

We come together to stand in a straight line and take a bow. "안녕하세요 서울가요대상! 우리는 캐스케이드입니다 (Hello Seoul Music Awards! We are Cascade)!" We say together, waving out to the crowd.

I take a step forward and introduce each member. Each member stepped forward and waved when I said their name. "This is our very first time at the Seoul Music Awards, and we are so honored to be here tonight." I held up my mic in the air as a cue to the sound crew. Immediately the opening notes to our song "Party Party" began to play. The members and I pivoted and took a few steps upstage while the intro played.

As I started to sing the song, the fans, raised their glowsticks into the air. I saw a few signs, some of them even had my face on them, or one of the other members'.

The most beautiful thing about performing at a show like this is the fans. Their faces shone with adoration. The excitement when I get down on one knee and reach over the edge of the stage to give them high fives. The ear-piercing sound of fan chants. Whenever they dance along with us when they know the moves. The times that we could just stop singing because the fans were singing the song for us. The outfits they are wearing are ones that we wear at a concert, fan meets, in a music video, or simply just to match the theme of a certain album.

When we retreated from the stage, we all smiled. It was a huge accomplishment. The bigger accomplishment that night though was that we left with the grand prize. On the bus back to the hotel, we fell asleep on each other's shoulders.

We were exhausted, but we couldn't go back to the dorms. Instead, we have to hop on a plane to New York City. We can sleep on the plane.

As a group, we have been invited to one of the wrold's most prodigious fashion shows, the AGT WorldWide Fashion Gala. The Gala is in two nights, and we still have fittings.

The gala is being held in downtown New York City, near one of the many smaller Quarantines and labs, as a reminder of how many we lost, and how many we continue to lose.

For the last five years, the world has been crippled by a deadly plague. It's called Cykinosis, but people have nicknamed it "The Blue Fever," for the way it turns your skin blue. The Fever has slaughtered billions worldwide. It's left streets empty and haunted. Streets echo from the sounds of screams when someone is found with the Fever's trademark red and purple splotches, blue skin, bloodshot eyes, creepy smiles, and loss of sanity.

I've seen someone infected before, and it's not something I hope I'll ever see again. It's terrifying. They'll cry blood, and black sludge will foam out of their mouths during the final stage of the disease. So much will come out that they'll choke on it, until they fall, dead, lifeless.

In Korea, it's a dreadful tragedy. Our shows have half the amount of people they would have if we had debuted six or seven years ago. Everyone gets tested and decontaminated twice before entering our shows. And at most shows, there is a large gap between the stage and the fans. We were lucky to be able to high-five fans today, that doesn't happen a lot. Whenever I go out into the normal world, it can be terrifying. Quarantine around every corner. Clinics stopping random people to test them. Police making sure everyone's wearing air-filtering masks. No smiles. No happiness. We all know better.

But in America, it's different.

I was there four months ago, and I saw it for myself. Americans tread it like it's a joke. Like the Blue Fever is a trend that passed years ago. They mock and make fun of the people infected. Filming the arrest of a sick person and posting it online to make fun of them.

The precautions are also slackened in America. They still have checkpoints, masks, and tests, but much less of them. In Korea, I hardly ever saw anyone sick. While I was in America for a short time, less than a week, I saw seven people got diagnosed on the street. Seven. And I hardly ever went out where the people were. I saw people who were extremely sick, looking for someone to take them in at a Quarantine. Three times, I saw someone get tested positive in front of their family, and have to say a short, teary goodbye, knowing they would never see each other again. Tears had sprung from my eyes when I saw them. It was terribly sad.

It's been five years, and still, no antidote exists. No one knows where the plague originated, what caused it, or how to stop it. Scientists and Doctors have been tied in knots trying to find an antidote. People have lost hope and have resorted to slowing the spread, instead of stopping it.