Chapter Text
State Federal Building, Internal Revenue Service Office. Senior Auditor Patricia adjusted her glasses and continued reviewing the forms in the folder.
“Copper.” She tossed out the word without looking up.
“It’s used for stage production,” the accountant across from her replied immediately. “Form Four has the technical details. Copper’s workability, thermal conductivity, and corrosion resistance in stage equipment can—”
“Mr. Figueiredo,” Patricia looked up, “your client purchased over four hundred and seventy pounds of copper in the past fiscal year.”
Neil Figueiredo, a certified public accountant, replied without changing his expression: “The demand of last year’s Millennium Tour was very high.”
“You made six purchases through three different suppliers.”
“We compared prices. It’s my responsibility when managing my client’s finances,” Neil explained.
Patricia looked at Neil’s client for the first time. A young man with long black hair tied in a low ponytail, sitting relaxed beside Neil. When he noticed her gaze, he offered a polite, mild look of bewilderment.
“Zinc.”
“It’s used to prevent equipment corrosion, mainly in the recording studio. You can see on the form—”
“Pewter?”
“It’s needed for making the stage outfits. My client’s stylist believes—”
“Gold.”
A moment of silence; the fluorescent lights in the office hummed.
“It’s an investment strategy,” Neil said. “My client is very focused on long-term asset management.”
“Your client is twenty-four this year,” Patricia said.
“Yes, he’s very mature in that regard.”
“And the gold he buys in bulk is a…” Patricia checked her notes, “special alloy. He has been buying the exact same alloy composition from the same supplier.”
Neil paused: “My client has his aesthetic preferences. Artists are always like that.”
Patricia put down the folder and looked at Neil’s client again. “Do you have anything to add… Mr. Rashek? Regarding why a musician needs to purchase large amounts of industrial metals?”
Rashek seemed to genuinely ponder her question.
“One thing. I believe metals have a… calming effect.”
“Calming?” Patricia repeated.
“Yes, reassuring.” He gave her a faint smile. “It’s my personal philosophy. Neil has already noted it in the documents.”
“Ah, yes, using metals counts as a kind of… wellness practice for my client,” Neil looked as though he had been caught off guard by his own client. “It’s actually not uncommon…”
“You can look at Form Eleven,” Rashek interjected. “Neil prepared an appendix regarding wellness practices.”
Patricia looked at Form Eleven. Its contents were indeed very detailed, and entirely possible to be true, which made her very dissatisfied.
She closed the folder.
“Everything seems to be in order,” she said reluctantly. Her intuition told her something was definitely off, but she lacked evidence. Besides, for a global touring superstar like Rashek, the expenditure on buying metals was less than a drop in the bucket of his income, perhaps not even matching the cost of a single night in a hotel suite. He simply had no motive to falsify this.
“Thank you for your hard work,” Neil said.
---
The elevator descended quietly. Neil hugged the folder to his chest as if it were a shield. Rashek watched the floor numbers jump on the display and began to empty his mind. This was a new skill he had learned after arriving at Earth.
Once, for a thousand years, his mind had been filled with logistical organization, contingency plans, skaa rebellions, noble wars, and everything else that required his direct oversight—not to mention the whispers of a certain god. He couldn’t listen, yet he couldn’t ignore it; he couldn’t think about it, yet he couldn’t stop thinking.
It wasn’t until he died and woke up in this world called “Earth” that the noise finally stopped.
It took him a few more years to learn how to truly empty his mind. Like now, he only focused on the sound of the elevator running.
“Form Eleven,” Neil broke the silence.
“You prepared it very comprehensively.”
“I prepared it to deal with the IRS auditor,” Neil said. “Not so my client could specifically bring it up to the auditor.”
“She asked if I had any additional information. Form Eleven is additional information.”
“I only gave you the folder on the way to the Federal Building, and you looked at it for less than a minute.”
“I happened to flip to Form Eleven.”
“I told you to act confused, like a young man who knows nothing.”
“You also said I should act fully cooperative.”
Neil exhaled through his nose. The elevator reached the first-floor lobby. Morning sunlight spilled through the glass curtain wall onto the floor tiles, and the bustle of the street could be faintly heard. Rashek stared out the window at the bustling city, feeling slightly dazed.
“Rashek.”
“Neil?”
“Those metals. You didn’t use them to do anything dangerous, did you?”
A year ago, Neil had asked him the exact same question in the office, with quarterly tax documents piled high on the desk between them.
“No,” Rashek assured him.
Neil nodded, shifting his posture as he held the folder. “Good. Keep the receipts safe.”
Watching Neil walk toward the parking lot, Rashek stayed on the sidewalk for a while, experiencing the feeling of sunlight pouring onto his skin. Pure sunlight, unadulterated, warming the heart more than body heat drawn from a brassmind. The IRS trouble was over. Not temporarily suppressed, not selectively ignored, not handed off to someone else to handle, but truly over. No need to calculate future risks or consequences.
This feeling was as fresh as emptying his mind. And eight years after arriving on Earth, he could finally accept it without fear.
His phone buzzed. It was a message from his manager, Marcus: “Soundcheck at 5 PM, don’t be late.”
Rashek replied: “I’m never late.”
Marcus replied with a “smile” emoji. Rashek knew what it meant—roughly translating to “People really do smile when they’re rendered speechless.”
He, too, walked toward the parking lot.
---
Rashek returned to the team’s tour hotel right on time at noon with Neil. A suite had been temporarily converted into an office, with team members occupying the walnut dining table, piling it with laptops, schedules, and coffee cups. He was very familiar with this “organized chaos”—he had had to *endure* it for a millennium, but now he was gradually realizing he could actually *enjoy* it.
Manager Marcus looked up from his laptop: “How did it go?”
“Everything went smoothly,” Neil answered crisply. “Plenty of artists have drug problems these days; just be glad your Rashek only has a metal problem.” Saying this, Neil picked up a stack of forms, the top one boldly titled “Annual Metal Purchases Categorized Summary.”
Rashek flashed an innocent smile.
Then blonde PR representative Diana handed him a fan letter, tapping the desk lightly with her fingertips as she spoke: “This lucky fan won a radio draw for a one-on-one backstage meetup after tonight’s show. Fifteen minutes. She wrote you a letter about how your music helped her through a difficult time.”
“Lily, I remember her. During her sophomore year, her mother got cancer.” Rashek took the letter. One of the reasons for the massive copper consumption was his decision to memorize the face of every fan he met, as well as every letter and gift he received—he had a villa specifically dedicated to storing them.
PR Diana’s fingers paused. “You remember her?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Give me the letter when you’re done reading it; I need to file it. The lucky audience meetup segment proceeds as usual before her.” She started tapping the desk again, this time faster.
“Okay.” Rashek finished the letter and gently placed it on the table.
Next, the Korean stylist bounced over, holding up his first stage outfit for the night: “Try this on. Is the metal lining distributed evenly this time?”
He tried it on for a second: “No problem.” His stage outfits were basically all lined with pewter (physical strength), bronze (mental speed), and gold (health), acting as his temporary metalmind reserves. Since his debut, he had never experienced vocal fatigue or physical exhaustion during a performance.
The stylist let out a low cheer and skipped back to the clothing rack in the corner to continue working.
Next to approach was the Black keyboardist.
“Hey Rashek, I’ve been studying your chord progressions. During your shows, there’s this… emotional resonance phenomenon I can’t quite understand, and it’s highly regular. I can’t think of any music theory to explain it.” He spread several sheets of music on the sofa, covered in analysis. “Like this chord—in the album, it’s just a normal transition, but every time we play it live, it provokes a unified, intense emotional response from the audience—”
“It’s normal for music to cause emotional resonance,” Rashek said without changing his expression. What the keyboardist was feeling were the emotional fluctuations when Rashek Rioted the audience with zinc, but of course, he wouldn’t admit it.
“But there’s nothing special about the chord itself. Could it be related to the live environment?” the keyboardist continued to mutter at the sheet music, looking confused yet excited.
“Probably just the live atmosphere,” Rashek poured a cup of water.
“But the atmosphere can’t be the same at every—” The keyboardist wanted to continue arguing, but the petite music director patted his shoulder.
“Stop obsessing over the emotional response,” the director said. “Go double-check the key change in the bridge of the third song. He sang it wrong last time.”
“I didn’t sing it wrong,” Rashek swallowed his water, defending himself. “I just made a decision.”
“A wrong decision.” The director blinked and pushed the keyboardist away, clearly putting a stop to the latter’s attempts to torture Rashek with music theory.
At this moment, the female drummer with the afro shoved a piece of burger into Rashek’s hand. She always had food to share, and she never spoke when handing it over.
“Thanks.” Rashek could handle far more carbs than his peers. After all, he could store the excess energy into bendalloy metalminds, so the team never restricted his diet.
---
After taking the bus to the venue, everyone dove into the hustle and bustle, with people coming and going in the narrow backstage corridors. As usual, Rashek stood in a spot where he wouldn’t block anyone, but with only half an hour left before the show, his manager Marcus deliberately blocked his path.
“There’s an obstructed view issue in this section of the audience, affecting about four hundred seats.” Marcus pulled up the venue seating chart on his tablet and turned the screen toward Rashek. “The equipment adjustments this afternoon caused a change in angles, leading to this problem.”
Rashek stared at the screen, frowning slightly.
“Right now, we have two options. One is to readjust the equipment angles, but the venue staff said that would take about forty minutes, which means we might have to delay the show. The other is to proceed with the show as planned, and after it ends, we individually contact every audience member with an obstructed view to formally apologize and offer compensation,” Marcus continued.
Instantly, Rashek felt an irritability that should have been buried long ago surge back up.
“If there’s a solution, fix it,” he said, using the tone he had been accustomed to for a thousand years. *Do your jobs, don’t bother me, don’t I have enough decisions to make already?*
Marcus paused.
“Then we compensate,” he said, but instead of acting immediately, he stepped out of Rashek’s way first.
Rashek continued forward. He took six steps, then stopped. His tin-enhanced senses allowed him to hear the music from the keyboardist’s headphones not far away, the sounds of over thirty staff members busy nearby, and further away, the noise of sixty thousand audience members. He wasn’t at Kredik Shaw; he was backstage, surrounded by real people doing real work. He had learned to experience this sense of reality.
“Marcus, if we had a few more hands, could the equipment adjustment be done faster?” Rashek asked, turning around. Marcus held up a finger. He was already on the phone, the tablet tucked under his arm. Hearing Rashek’s question, he repeated it to the phone.
“Only twenty minutes if we have one more person,” Marcus lowered his phone. “I was just talking to the venue staff in charge. Someone is available to help.”
“Great, then let’s adjust the equipment.” Rashek took a deep breath, looking at Marcus’s shoulder as the latter was already raising his phone to his ear again. “Marcus, I’m sorry about the way I just spoke to you—”
“It’s fine.” Marcus nodded, like a parent used to a child’s mischief. “You’re going on stage in twenty-eight minutes. Anyone would be tense when something goes wrong at a time like this.”
“No, I wasn’t…” Rashek struggled to find the right words to explain his behavior. “Just now, I… it was a reflex. Older than this career. I treated you as an obstacle in my path.”
“And you bypassed the obstacle.”
Rashek fell silent.
“You bypass obstacles every time. I remember,” Marcus said, and started talking into his phone again.
He said “you bypass obstacles every time,” instead of “you hurt me every time” or “you caused trouble every time,” Rashek thought. Marcus made his “bypassing” of obstacles sound so light, so certain, as if it were a matter of course.
He looked down at his hands. These hands had once saved the world, and had once suffocated the world in ash. No one remembered what they had bypassed, or what they had been trapped in. But tonight, they would hold a microphone and play a guitar.
“Twenty-five.” Marcus gestured to him, interrupting his reverie.
Twenty-five minutes until he went on stage.
---
The stage manager’s voice came through his earpiece: “Five minutes.”
Rashek stepped onto the hydraulic lift. Sixty thousand people were waiting for him. They weren’t afraid of him, nor did they revere him. They were just… incredibly expectant and thrilled. They had chosen to be here of their own accord, not demanding anything from him except his singing voice.
He touched the pewtermind on his shirt collar, even though he was fully energized now and didn’t need to tap into its strength.
The petite music director passed by him. “Ready?”
“Yes.”
Earpiece: “Two minutes.”
She patted his shoulder and walked away. It had taken him a long time to understand that this gesture meant “good luck,” part of her leadership style. She did it before every show, patting the shoulders of him and the band members she managed.
The audience’s cheers grew louder.
When the lift finally delivered him before them, their wall of sound engulfed him like a tide. Tin allowed him to hear everything, from the highest screams to the lowest stomps, even every echo formed when the audience chanted his name. The health from his goldmind allowed him to withstand it all without going deaf.
He walked to the microphone. He wasn’t burning zinc. He didn’t need to yet. Maybe he wouldn’t need to for the entire show.
He strummed the first chord.
The cheers of sixty thousand people turned into a breathless silence in that instant. Only that chord continued to vibrate in the air, like a pebble thrown into a lake, the ripples spreading out circle by circle to every corner of the stadium.
Then, habitually, he raised his eyes and scanned the floor section.
Everyone in the floor section was standing. Only one person remained seated.
The man was sitting in the center of the seventh row, right at the edge of the extension stage, arms crossed, a provocative smile on his face.
Kelsier, Survivor of Hathsin.