I frowned. I was literally waving my pass at him. I looked between him and my pass, several times.
“Kaiya Thompson,” I said slowly, tapping a finger on the little, plastic square.
He barely spared it a glance, before pulling a device out of his pocket, and clearly in no hurry, began tapping on it.
Eventually, he looked up, eyebrows raised.
“Yeah, okay. Go through.”
He waved over his shoulder to a woman in a high-vis jacket.
“Let her through.” Then back to me. “Off you pop.”
I tamped down the knee-jerk reaction to his tone, and instead passed through the gates into the most restricted area of the whole festival.
I proceeded through the cordoned off area, looking around curiously at the masses of people, but no one stuck out. If I had to guess, I’d say most of these fine people were part of the armies it took to mobilise performers for events like this. Managers, wardrobe, PAs, techies, and many, many more.
It made me weirdly nostalgic for my days at ENT. Even the hard ones.
“Pom!” A sudden shout from my right stopped me in my tracks, and spinning around, I saw Tae for the first time in more than two years.
He sprang towards me, and to my surprise, pulled me up in a hug that that lifted my feet off the ground while I scrambled to hold onto him. I’d forgotten how much taller than me he was.
He gave me a thorough embrace before putting me back down and taking a step away.
I staggered back, face heating. It was weird because when we’d known each other in Seoul, we hadn’t been friends. We hadn’t earned this level of intimacy. I wasn’t sure if we ever had. The two calls we’d had, while fond memories for me, were not exactly strong foundations for the kind of friendship this felt like. I hadn’t spoken to him in so long, and yet…
It was one of those unexplainable things. I just felt like I knew him better than I should. Maybe I just wanted it to be like that.
With Becka, it had just sort of happened. We didn’t know each other, and then suddenly we were each others ride-or-dies, and had been ever since.
Sometimes you just got to be friends with another person, whether you took the time to get that way, or not.
A reason, or a season, my mum would have said.
Maybe Tae was my friend for a reason.
Breathless, I looked him over. He had white hair now, but otherwise seemed the same.
“It’s really you.” I hadn’t meant to say that. The words just slipped out.
His expression shifted into something softer.
“Yeah, Ky. Come on. We can’t hang out here, unless you want to get run over,” he hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the streams of people around us, everyone in some kind of hurry. He began to walk off in a direction he was clearly familiar with, and it was either keep up, or get left behind, so I followed.
He led me away from the immediate area of the stage, and into a quieter, but no less populated green space, that looked to be a camp site. I eyeballed the massive RVs, and figured this was probably where the acts were kept before going on stage.
As far as I knew, very few main acts actually slept on site. The better hotels nearby were booked out months in advance, but some of the smaller acts could stay on site if they wanted.
Maybe they stayed in the yurts I could see further away.
Poles criss-crossed the space from which festoon lighting hung, giving the whole area a sort of carnival vibe.
“Man, this place is much nicer than the camp site I got stuck in.”
I gaped, trying not to stare as Martin Chris from Hot Work walked past me.
We walked for a little while further until we got to a yurt that was cheerfully lit up with twinkly lights and Moroccan-style lamps. The inside was straight out of an advert for an expensive glamping experience. The floor was laid with wooden boards and covered in rugs. There were comfy-looking sofas lining the walls, and little fridges filled with drinks and packages of food.
