The stage lights dimmed as I walked off, microphone lowered to my side. The audience was still on their feet, clapping and shouting, a roar that trailed me all the way into the wings.
A handler leaned down, whispering, "That was incredible, Adam. Absolutely incredible. This way." She guided me down the narrow corridor lined with cables and equipment.
Backstage, contestants and parents stared. Some looked awed, others bitter. A boy about twice my age—maybe ten or eleven—lowered the guitar he had been holding and muttered something to his father, who placed a hand on his shoulder and shook his head. A girl clutched a microphone, eyes wide, as if she had just realized what kind of competition she was really in.
My "mother" waited at the end of the hall. She smiled softly as I approached, her hands clasped together. To anyone watching, she looked proud—almost trembling with joy. Only I knew she was nothing but an extension of myself, a second body, a puppet breathing because I willed it.
She knelt slightly, brushing invisible dust from my shoulder. "You were perfect," she said, voice gentle and warm.
I didn't reply. There was no need.
The crew moved us into the greenroom, a space filled with monitors and half-empty cups of coffee. On the screens, replays of my performance looped already, the cameras catching every expression of the judges, every tear in the audience.
I sat quietly on one of the couches, ignoring the buzz of other contestants. My mother sat beside me, close enough to seem protective.
And then I felt it.
The wish energy.
It surged in, not as a trickle but as a flood. Each person in the crowd had left a trace, and together they poured into me, glimmering like molten starlight filling a vessel. It was heavier than before, denser.
I didn't count it in numbers. Numbers were too small. But by weight, by gravity, I could sense the scale.
Tonight's harvest was enough to blanket an entire city in miracles. I could bend reality across boroughs, heal or harm tens of thousands, write new laws into the fabric of matter with a thought. All from a single song.
I leaned back against the couch, expression calm. Outwardly, I looked like any other child waiting for results. Inwardly, I measured the reservoir of impossible power building within me.
And I found something else there, too.
Satisfaction.
Not from the applause itself—but from the fact that I had shown them something impossible and they believed it. I had displayed a piece of myself, and the world had given me something real in return. It was rare for me to feel anything at all. That faint spark of enjoyment was worth cataloging.
Maybe this hobby of showing off was worth continuing.
Producers came and went, some congratulating me directly, others whispering to each other while casting glances in my direction. One of them—a man with a clipboard and headset—actually crouched down to my level and said, "Adam, you just made television history. Do you know that?"
I tilted my head, meeting his eyes. "Yes."
He laughed, thinking I was being precocious. "Well, America's going to fall in love with you."
The cameras loved that line. They caught his grin, my steady stare, my mother's adoring expression. All of it would play well in the edit.
Later, back at the hotel, the city stretched outside our window again—gold, red, and silver lights smeared against the night sky. My mother unpacked our bags methodically, folding shirts, smoothing wrinkles, humming under her breath.
I stood at the glass, hands behind my back.
The energy was still settling inside me, slow currents threading through every part of my being. I could feel it like heat in my chest, like a second pulse. The audience's awe, their longing, their tears—it all lingered, transformed into something usable.
The episode wouldn't air for weeks, but already the wish energy from the live crowd was vast. When the broadcast came, when millions saw me through their screens, the wave would be beyond anything I had collected before.
For now, I simply filed the thought away.
Behind me, my mother's voice drifted softly. "You'll go even further, sweetheart. Everyone will see. You'll never be forgotten."
She smiled as she said it. I smiled faintly at my reflection in the glass.
But not for her.
For the storm still gathering outside the spotlight.
That night, when I finally lay down to sleep, I let the applause echo once more in my memory. as proof of what I could draw out of people.
And in the silence that followed, I closed my eyes with the weight of wish energy glowing steady within me.