I gave him a quick kiss goodnight. "Get some rest. Tomorrow's a long day," I said.
He wouldn't. We both knew that.
I went inside and stood at the window looking out at Seattle's lights.
Tomorrow, seventeen thousand people would watch us perform, but the real performance would be Griffin's. The audience that mattered would be judging whether he'd learned anything since the last time the city broke him.
Rune:You're not alone this time.
Griffin:I know. That's what scares me.
It sounded contradictory on the surface, but I understood. Eighteen months ago, he'd failed alone. This time, if he failed, I'd be caught in the wreckage.
I stood at the window for a long time. He was afraid of failing with witnesses. Scared that this time, I'd be collateral damage.
He had it backward.
I wasn't a bystander. I was the mechanism. Soo-jin positioned me as the lever, the variable that would force Griffin into impossible choices while Seattle measured whether his judgment had improved.
As long as I stayed passive, the trap would work.
I thought about the girl in Vancouver who'd thanked me for helping her survive coming out.You didn't have to be braver. You just had to be what you already are.
I'd spent three years accepting that secrecy equaled safety. That management would protect me. Soo-jin taught me that, but then he ended things when he'd decided the risk of visibility outweighed the value of honesty.
I accepted it.
What I knew now was Soo-jin's framework only worked if I cooperated. If I stayed quiet.
As long as I did that, Griffin would be stuck defending decisions that he couldn't fully defend.
I opened my laptop. Pulled up the lyrics I'd been avoiding, a file titled "Personal—Not For Release." Verses about disappearing. About borrowed time.
I'd written all of it using careful metaphors. All of it safe because it stayed abstract.
I created a new file. Titled it "Seattle."
One line appeared:
I spent three years learning how to fade
I stared at it. That was too careful and controlled. I was still hiding inside the language.
My phone buzzed.
Jinwoo:Tomorrow's going to be complicated.
Rune:Yes, it is.
Jinwoo:We handle it together. Whatever happens.
Rune:Together.
I looked out at Seattle one more time. It was the stage where someone else's story about Griffin had been written and archived.
Stories could be rewritten. They were all the time. We didn't need to deny what happened before we only needed to show that the narrative drawn from it was incomplete.
Soo-jin’s trap depended on me staying exactly where he put me.
