She Loves Your Voice on Another Man

YOUR STEPSISTER AND HER FRIENDS ARE OBSESSED WITH YOUR SINGING VOICE. TOO BAD THEY THINK IT'S SOMEONE ELSE'S, AND THEY HAVE BACKSTAGE PASSES FOR THAT SOMEONE ELSE'S SHOW....

(Kay, Jillian, Eric "Razor," Brittany) Art by the wonderful xioN1

You're broke, and three months behind on rent when Helen first finds you.

She hears you at an open mic in a half-empty bar where the stage lights flicker and the audience is more interested in their drinks than the music. You sing a stripped-down rock ballad you wrote in your bedroom, your voice raw, powerful, and aching with the desperation of a man who knows he has something, but can't seem to make people see it.

Helen doesn’t clap. She doesn’t smile.

She just waits by the stage door and hands you a card.

Two days later, you’re sitting in a glass-walled office overlooking downtown, signing an NDA that looks thicker than a dictionary. Helen finally tells you the truth.

“There’s an artist,” she says, her amazonian figure towering over you while you sit. “Eric Jackson. Razor. He’s about to explode. He looks like a god, plays like a legend, but his voice can’t carry a stadium. Yours can.”

She slides another paper toward you.

“You sing. He gets the credit. You get paid. You never tell anyone. You never release your own music. You become a ghost.”

You hesitate for less than a minute.

You sign.

(Eric "Razor," Helen) Art by the wonderful xioN1

The first time you sing for Razor, he’s sitting in the studio booth, watching you through the glass like he’s trying to understand where the sound is coming from.

When you finish, the room is silent.

Then he exhales.

“Holy hell,” he says quietly. “That’s… that’s me now.”

From that day on, your voice becomes his.

Razor’s debut single rockets to number one. Then another. Then an album. Then a world tour. Magazines call him the future of rock. Fans scream his name. His face is everywhere.

You follow the tour under the title vocal production consultant. You stay backstage, in shadows, in studios, in hotel rooms with soundproof walls where you record track after track that will be blasted through stadium speakers to tens of thousands of people who will never know you exist.

After shows, Razor disappears into private r