I'm sorry.
Now, starting a chapter with an apology is perhaps not the most conventional narrative choice. It raises questions. It creates concern. It implies that what follows requires preemptive forgiveness.
All of that is correct.
But please — hear this author out. Because there is a reason. A very specific, very personal, very harrowing reason.
For the past week, this author has been subjected to a trial.
Not a legal one — LegalEagleKween, put the briefcase down, this doesn't require your expertise. A different kind of trial. The internal kind. The kind that happens entirely inside one's own skull with no escape route and no legal recourse.
The culprit?
Pinky Up. By Katseye.
Yes. That one.
Now. Let this author be absolutely, completely, on the record clear about something —
The song is... something. The lyrics are something. The composition is something. The depth — or rather the specific and deliberate absence of it — is also very much something. This author has thoughts about all of those somethings and they are not entirely complimentary.
However.
The melodic pre-chorus.
That specific, particular, criminally constructed melodic pre-chorus — the progression of it, the way it moves, the melodic architecture that someone clearly labored over while the rest of the song was apparently being assembled on a lunch break —
That part has taken up residence in this author's head.
Rent free.
No lease. No deposit. No notice given.
Eviction proceedings have been attempted. They have failed. Repeatedly. The melodic pre-chorus has retained legal counsel and is contesting every effort to remove it.
Even the choreography — and this author cannot believe these words are being typed — kinda slaps.
Kinda. That word is doing a lot of work in that sentence and it is staying exactly where it is.
And so. Being the author that this author is. Possessed of the particular brand of unhinged creative logic that has gotten us all this far together —
The solution was obvious.
The only known cure for LSS — Last Song Syndrome, for those unfamiliar with the specific Filipino experience of having a song burrowed so deeply into your brain that it has essentially become a roommate — is to externalize it. Get it out. Put it somewhere outside the head.
And what better place to put it than here.
In this story.
Subjected upon all of you, beloved readers, who have come this far and trusted this author and are now being repaid for that trust by being handed the exact same earworm that has been making this author's week a restless, melodic, pre-chorus-haunted experience.
You're welcome.
And also — I'm sorry.
I love you all deeply and sincerely. 😘
Your forgiveness has been accepted in advance. Thank you for your understanding. Thank you for your grace. Thank you for continuing to read despite everything this author puts you through.
Now.
Pinky Up has entered the story.
May God have mercy on us all.
****
And so another team took the stage.
A team that, much like the Work performance before them, wore their straightness like a badge of honor and had apparently decided that this was not going to stop them from doing anything.
Their song choice for the female artist performance?
Pinky Up. By Katseye.
Let that land for a moment.
Pinky Up. Performed by a group of men whose collective masculine energy could have been detected from space. The song that is, at its fundamental core, built on the specific and non-negotiable foundation of shaking ass and keeping that pinky elevated at all times.
These men had looked at that song. Assessed it. And said yes.
The audacity was, once again, present and fully operational.
At the coaches' table, three separate internal monologues were happening simultaneously —
Dora, reading the song title on the program: Eughhh. Are these guys SERIOUS right now.
Robin, giving it the benefit of the doubt she always tried to give: This could go either really really well or really really catastrophically. No middle ground available.
Lorelei, with the measured acceptance of someone who had seen things: Well. That is certainly a choice that has been made.
The performance began.
And began it did.
It was, in the most complete and specific sense of the phrase, the beginning of the end.
The silence that fell over the audience was not the good kind. Not the stunned-by-excellence kind. Not the holding-their-breath-because-something-beautiful-is-happening kind.
It was the other kind.
The kind that accumulates slowly, building on itself with every passing second of what was unfolding on that stage — the particular, terrible silence of people watching something happen and being completely unable to process how to respond to it.
Because here was the thing.
These men had taken Pinky Up — a song that lives, breathes, and derives its entire reason for existing from a very specific feminine, sassy, unapologetically extra energy — and they had masculinized it. Completely. Thoroughly. Systematically. They had approached the choreography like a renovation project and removed everything that made it what it was, replacing it with the straightest, most aggressively masculine interpretation physically possible.
Pinky down. Everything down. The vibe, the sauce, the entire point of the exercise — gone.
Now. This author wants to be fair. There are songs and choreographies in this world that can be reinterpreted across the masculine-feminine spectrum and come out the other side as something new and interesting and valid. That exists. That is a real and legitimate artistic choice.
Pinky Up is not one of those songs.
Pinky Up is a song with a very specific recipe. And you can add a seasoning of masculinity — a pinch, a suggestion, something that adds contrast without dismantling the dish. But overhauling the entire recipe? Replacing every ingredient? That is not reinterpretation.
That is food poisoning.
And the audience was experiencing the symptoms in real time.
The ending came. The final pose hit.
Crickets.
The profound, echoing, deeply communicative crickets of a room full of people who were too stunned to generate a response.
Even the internet — the internet, which always, always had something to say, which had never once in recorded history been rendered speechless — went quiet.
For a genuinely terrifying moment.
The guys on stage looked out at the silence.
And interpreted it as awe.
They lined up for feedback with the proud, satisfied energy of people who believed they had delivered something memorable.
They had delivered something memorable.
That was not incorrect.
In Dora's head, a very specific thought was forming with great urgency: I need bleach. For my eyes. Immediately. Where is the bleach.
The rage was bubbling. Quietly. Like something on a stove that hasn't boiled yet but absolutely intends to.
In the audience —
"THE FUCK WAS THAT?!" Liam's voice, at full volume, expressing the collective feeling of approximately everyone present.
"That was... definitely a choice," Mikko said, with the careful measured tone of a man genuinely attempting to locate a silver lining and coming up empty handed but refusing to give up on principle.
And then —
"Well," Timmy said, with the serene, filterless honesty of someone who had not fully calculated the social weight of what they were about to say before saying it, "that was ass."
Every head in the vicinity turned toward him simultaneously.
Timmy looked back at them with the mild, unbothered expression of someone who had simply stated a fact and was unclear why this required the reaction it was receiving.
The silence stretched.
Because he had said it. Outwardly. Innocently. Completely without malice.
And he had said exactly what every single person in that room was thinking.
It really was that bad.
****
Even Cat wasn't spared.
Cat — professional, unflappable, born-for-this Cat — walked up to the stage with the measured composure of someone who had hosted everything and been surprised by nothing.
She looked at the coaches.
"Sooooo..." She paused. "Coaches?"
That was it. That was all she had.
Which, coming from Cat, said everything that needed saying about the severity of what had just occurred.
At the coaches' table, something had been building in Dora for the duration of that entire performance. Quietly. Steadily. The way pressure builds in something sealed — not loud, not visible, but very much present and heading somewhere inevitable.
And then it arrived.
"I'm about to act up," Dora said.
Calmly. Completely calmly. Which was somehow the most unsettling version of those words that had ever been spoken.
Robin and Lorelei exchanged a look. The look of two people who knew exactly what was coming and had accepted it.
Here we go.
Dora turned. Found the nearest camera. Made deliberate, unhurried eye contact with the lens and motioned — one finger, beckoning — for the cameraman to come closer.
The cameraman, to his credit, approached.
The camera was now in Dora's face.
Dora looked directly into it. Wide eyes. An unsettling smile that lived in a very specific neighborhood between playful and unhinged. The smile of someone who had decided to channel something.
And in a voice that was sweet and light and completely childlike, Dora spoke straight into the camera — straight through the screen, straight into the souls of everyone watching at home —
"Chat, chat."
A beat.
"Do you see a trainwreck?"
The unease rippled through the room like a weather change. Several trainees in the audience had their hands pressed firmly over their mouths. The laughter was there but nobody was brave enough to let it out yet.
Dora waited. Patient. Still smiling.
"Chat," she repeated, sweetly, "do you see a trainwreck?"
As if receiving an answer from somewhere only she could hear —
"Really?" Her eyes went wide with innocent curiosity. "Where, where?"
The livestream chat was not handling this.
@chunchunMaroo: THE STAGE DORA THE STAGE—
@hells_swarm: DORA HAS LEFT THE BUILDING AND SOMETHING ELSE HAS TAKEN OVER—
@1ndeciph3rable: I am genuinely afraid and I am watching from my living room—
@Rumi: CHAT DO YOU SEE A TRAINWRECK I CANNOT BREATHE—
@LegalEagleKween: I have paused my client meeting AGAIN. My client is also watching. We are both terrified.
"The stage?" Dora repeated, turning to look at the stage with the expression of someone receiving new information. Tilting her head. Considering it.
Then the giggle. Small. Light. Completely unhinged.
"That's not a trainwreck, silly."
A pause.
"That's Final Destination type shit."
And then — like a switch being flipped — Dora returned. Our Dora. The one we knew. The unsettling smile packed away, replaced by the full force of a woman who had something to say and intended to say all of it.
"Y'AAAAAAAALLLLLL." She turned to the stage. "I am so disappointed I genuinely don't know where to begin." She pointed — directly, specifically, at the line of trainees on stage. They flinched. Collectively. The dawning realization arriving on all their faces simultaneously that they were not, and had never been, that guy. Not a single one of them. "But you know what? This situation demands words so I'm going to find some."
"There is a time and a place," Dora said, vibrating with it, "for EVERYTHING. In this stage of the program — after everything you have been through, everything you have been taught, everything you have seen on this stage — you people decided that THIS was the moment to pick THIS song and do THAT with it?!" She gestured at the general concept of what had just happened. "Are y'all for real right now?! You treated this program like a joke! Like a JOKE!"
"And before ANYBODY comes for me comparing this to the team that did Work—" she pointed at the camera again, preemptively, "—open your eyes and look at the CHASM of difference. Those boys took that song and honored it. They enhanced it. They brought creativity and respect to it. What did y'all bring?!" She looked at the stage. "Nothing. You brought nothing. You took something with a soul and drained it completely dry and then had the audacity to stand up there looking PROUD of yourselves?!"
The silence after was the kind that has weight.
The guys on stage — the pride that had been sitting on their faces slowly, visibly, crumbling into something much harder to look at. Eyes going bright. Jaws tight. The specific devastation of people who had genuinely not known, and now did.
"Don't you DARE cry on that stage," Dora said immediately, reading every face. "You don't get to cry right now. You know what?" She sat back. "We're done here. Get off the stage."
And so, another team walked off that stage through the gutters.
Courtesy of Pinky Up by Katseye.
This author warned you all from the very beginning.
The I'm sorry at the start of this chapter was not decorative.
It was a prophecy.