When I wake up, we are in the usual spoons position with Tae's leg thrown over me. I smile gently and yawn, feeling very happy and relaxed. I turn to grab my phone and see that it's only 9 a.m. He tightens his arm across my chest. "Don't go, Birdie!" he mumbles.

I laugh lightly and roll over toward him. "I'm not going anywhere, love. I just wanted to check the time. It's early, you don't have to be awake."

"I'm not awake," he says, and we both chuckle. "I'm starting to get nervous, though." He cracks one eye open and looks at me.

I scoot a little closer and put my arm around him, humming. "Don't be nervous, sweet man. You guys are going to be amazing, like always!"

He sighs heavily. "It's been so long. What if nobody shows up? What if we can't dance for that long? We always end up going harder when ARMY is there."

"You guys have been practicing hard. Just try to pace yourself so you stay healthy and have something left for tomorrow, my love. And I'm pretty sure the stadium is going to be packed to the rafters with ARMYs, considering that the tickets sold out in presale and thousands of people were mad that they couldn't get any..." I kiss his chin.

"Mmm," he says, his eyes still closed.

"What time do you have to go today, my love?" I ask.

He sighs. "We have a team meeting at 1, go out to the stadium, I have physical therapy first, then final costume check, hair and makeup at three, soundcheck at 5, show at 7:30. So I need to be back at the other hotel around noon." I kiss his chin again, and he chuckles.

"Well, that's three hours from now. You can go back to sleep, sweet man. I'll make sure you're awake in time."

"I'm too nervous to really sleep. I've just been laying here dozing for a couple of hours already."

I sweep his bangs back from his eyes, and run my hand through his hair. Then I push him over onto his back and purr, "I can help you relax, babe." His eyes are still closed but he breaks into an open-mouth boxy grin as I slip down beneath the blankets.

Emerging from the covers a short while later, I see a blissful smile spread across Tae's face as I snuggle up on his chest. He wraps his arms around me weakly, gently stroking my back. "That was amazing, Birdie. Thank you. I definitely feel more relaxed now!" he whispers, and chuckles softly in his deep voice.

"It's my pleasure. You taste so good! And I like making you feel good." I kiss his pectoral muscle. "Sleep a bit more, if you can, Tae. You have time."

He sighs again and closes his eyes, drifting away, and I pull the duvet cover up over our shoulders and do the same.

______________________________________

ARMYs have been lining up outside the stadium since the wee hours of the morning, from what I see on social media. I decide that I don't need to be there that early, since the gates don't open until 5:30 anyway. Tae had asked me if I wanted a soundcheck ticket, but I decided not to get one since I can see the guys up close at work, but other ARMYs don't have that opportunity.

Around 5 p.m., I steer my rental car through the LA traffic and into the designated orange parking area. Lines and giant clumps of people are standing all over the stadium grounds, and it looks pretty chaotic. I don't see many stadium staff around to direct people, just those manning the checkpoints for covid vaccination status. My vaccination card is in Korean, but hopefully they'll let me through anyway...

I get into what looks like one of the lines, and start chatting with the other ARMYs around me. Everyone is really happy and excited to be there, and people are exchanging little gifts and goodie bags with one another. My clear stadium bag is filling up with freebies; I feel bad that I don't have anything to share with people, and wonder if I can assemble something before tomorrow night's concert.

When the gates open at 5:30, it turns into a friendly scrum around each of the open entrance gates. I am miles back in line when I see a security guard standing behind one of the locked gates, eyeing the crowd. I decide to take a chance, getting out of line and walking over to flash my Hybe employee ID at him. He reads it carefully, looks at the picture and at my face, and then unlocks the gate to let me in. Nobody checks my ticket or vaccination card - I just walk right into the stadium, and find my seat.

I am about thirty rows up from the floor, at a diagonal from the front left corner of the thrust stage. I look around at the massive space filled with seats. Everyone entering is supposed to keep their masks on unless they are actively eating or drinking, but this still strikes me as a perfect super-spreader event now that I'm here.

The seats slowly start to fill in as people make it through the checkpoints. A kindly looking lady in her forties comes over and scoots past me to sit in the next seat. I nod at her and tell her my English name. She bobs her head and introduces herself as Eun-Young Lim.

"Oh, are you here from Korea?" I ask her in English.

"I am originally from Korea, but I live in Canada now," she explains.

I switch to Korean. "Ah, and did you travel here alone?"

"Oh, you speak Korean well! Yes, I decided that life is short, and I wanted to see my boys perform, so I came here from Toronto." She eye-smiles at me over her mask. "You are here alone, too?"

I glance around and lean in closer to say, "Actually, I am with the band." I wink at her, and carefully show her my Hybe employee badge, trying not to let anyone else nearby see it.

"Omo!" she exclaims. "So you came from Seoul? Or do you work for the American Hybe?"

"I came from Seoul." I put my forefinger up to my mask. "But don't tell anyone else, I'm supposed to just blend in with the other ARMYs!" I laugh.

"Omo, omo..." she repeats. "What do you do at Hybe? Make-up, hair...?"

I shake my head. "No, I'm not good at that fashion stuff, as you can see." She glances at my clothes, and laughs politely. "I'm a songwriter."

She gasps and leans back, her eyes wide. "Wow, younger sister, you are doing so well!" she says in Korean, then grabs my hand and squeezes it.

I bow and thank her, laughing a little bit.

By the time music videos start to play on the giant screens behind the main stage, I know all about Lim Eun Young-shi's family and her job at a hospital in the Toronto area. I tell her about my family in Oregon, but keep it pretty vague when it comes to my work at Hybe. I also meet and greet the excited early-twenties couple from San Jose who are sitting on the other side of me, Chloe and Xavier, and they ask me my bias and give me a custom "Taehyung" wrist strap for my ARMY bomb, which unfortunately I don't own. 'I should get here early tomorrow and see if any of the merch places have ARMY bombs,' I think, and then laugh at myself for never having bought one. 'For all I know, I could have just gone to the gift shop downstairs at work and gotten one. I wonder if they stock them?'

If I was a bit claustrophobic at the AMAs last Sunday, with a couple hundred other people around me, I am completely overwhelmed to be in a space with 55,000 people in Sofi. Everyone is buzzing with excitement, although the tone of the crowd takes on a bit of stress and irritation as 7:30 approaches and thousands of ARMYs haven't been able to get through the gates yet. People inside are worried for their friends outside, and I can just imagine the guys and the managers trying to decide whether to start the show promptly, like they always do, or wait for those who are still stuck in line. At 7:31, the giant screens play the Permission to Dance video, and I tear up slightly remembering when the guys filmed it, before Tae and I were dating.

Next, the VCR starts, with the guys in an interrogation room. My love is sitting right in the middle, looking swaggy as hell, and I am so awestruck that I can't even scream as each member is introduced with a prison intake placard. The VCR shows the guys breaking out of prison thanks to a paper clip that Tae had smuggled in his mouth. I feel a strange combination of pride, amusement, and jealousy when the crowd erupts at the image of him sticking out his tongue to reveal the paper clip. 'Back off, you thirsty bitches!' I think, and then laugh. A buzz passes through the crowd, as people tell one another that Lizzo is among us, here to support the guys. I know that she's Vmin biased, so I add her specifically to my silent "back off" warning, and laugh at myself again.

Then the guys themselves appear on stage inside a cage, which gets broken open by a backup dancer with a sledge hammer. The guys burst out and go straight into "On," performing the choreo for the first time ever live. The whole crowd is on our feet, singing along at the top of our lungs. My eyes are fixed on the giant screen, and I feel annoyed whenever Tae isn't in the frame.

I can hear a tiny bit of nervousness in the first couple of songs, but they absolutely slay anyway. They come out to the thrust stage for Fire, the second song, and I lose my mind and most of my voice when they do my favorite part of the choreography. It's nice to be able to see Tae with my own eyes, although he's still pretty small from where I am, so I rely on the giant screen to see his face. He looks like he's having the time of his life, and in the brief moments I'm not singing or screaming, my own face is frozen in a huge grin under my mask. As they do the Dope choreo, I marvel at how different they are from the weedy little goobers who made the music video, and did it so well. 'Just look at these men!' I think, my eyes welling up with tears. The crowd roars and screams and dances, generating enough electricity to power the State of California for days.

I cry during Blue and Grey, a song that has always really impacted me emotionally since even before I met Tae, but to my surprise, it's Life Goes On that destroys me and leaves my mask soaked in tears. During Telepathy, Taehyung passes in front of me on a cart along with Jimin, Hobi, and Namjoon. I can see him scanning the crowd, but he doesn't find me. The rest of the concert passes in a sort of haze. I am so overstimulated and overwhelmed that I feel like I'm not really absorbing the experience at all.

After the concert, I am stuck in traffic in the Sofi parking lot for what feels like a year. While I'm idling there, my phone pings with a Vlive notification, so I open the app to find my boyfriend vibing to Percy Sledge, When A Man Loves A Woman. He spends a lot of time just staring into the camera, looking like a snack in his favorite loose-fitting hoodie, the one that always makes me want to kiss his neck. I kiss my phone screen instead and laugh. The Rolling Stones' Satisfaction comes up next and I raise my eyebrows, but he changes the song after just a couple of lines. I smirk and nod.

https://youtu.be/EYb84BDMbi0

He goes into his head-wobbling MC mode and eats a bunch of chicken wings as a mukbang segment. "Oh my god, he's being so weird!" I say to myself, laughing fondly. "At least he's eating." I have to look up as the line of cars inches forward, but soon I throw it back into park and pick up my phone again. Jimin comes in, and the Vlive gets slightly less awkward, but not a lot. I am laughing and shaking my head, but feel really bad for my lovie when he stands up and bangs his head on the lamp over the table. Jimin-shi refers to him as "teddy bear" as he explains what happened, and I giggle. I am almost to the parking lot exit now, and have to set my phone down and just listen to the guys as I inch out onto the street.

It's strange, but I feel like Jimin is explaining my own reaction when he describes how he couldn't really feel any emotions during the concert because he was in shock to finally be having a concert with a real audience. Then Taehyung starts talking about how he's dieting, but failed his diet the night before, and I feel a pang of guilt for buying him In 'n Out. "But love, you have to eat if you're going to dance like that!" I say out loud, shaking my head.

I hear JK come in and join the Vlive, but then the connection drops and I have to give up on it, because I'm driving.