Face-Slapping9 min read
My Hat, My Steps, His Silence
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I had worn the black cap so long it had become part of my face. People called me cruel nicknames like "mystery choreographer" or "the quiet champion," but I only wanted my steps to speak. I was Marie Guzman, and when the airport glare hit the brim of my hat that day, I did not expect to meet Elden Santiago.
"Is this your luggage?" he asked, voice low and tired, as if sleep were a uniform he wore all the time.
"It isn't mine," I said. "You should check the tag."
Wade Floyd, his assistant, looked mortified. "Sir, the translation is slow. We'll—"
Elden smiled without moving his mouth. "Thanks for helping. I owe you a meal."
"No need." I pushed my hat down, and walked away.
"Wait," Wade called. "What's your name?"
"Marie."
"Marie," he repeated like a mantra. "We won't forget."
Back in the car the translator fixed, Elden sat in the seat, hands folded. "Who was she?" Wade asked.
"Black hat," Elden said. "Tall. Knows how to stand so people notice her without asking."
I heard them laugh at something outside, then silence again. Ahead of me, Paris breathed blue through the windows. I kept my hat on and my eyes low. I only wanted to rehearse.
"Are you sure you don't want to join us for dinner?" Elden asked much later, when the day had turned small and slow.
"No." I shrugged. "I have work."
"Work like what? Dancing for shadows?"
"Work like choosing my steps so other people can shine," I said.
He nodded. "Fair."
When I went back to the studio, people stared at me like I had returned from a different planet. "You met Elden Santiago?" someone whispered.
"I said hello," I replied, but they all smiled like it was breaking news.
"He's the cold one," Ayane Russo said, wry. "He doesn't warm for anyone."
"I don't need warming," I said.
"Fine," she teased. "Be frosty. But don't be surprised if he remembers you."
We were a small world that kept folding into larger ones. I left the stage to teach and to keep my computer lab open—Emeric Craft had offered me a place in the research group and that was a promise I couldn't refuse. "Three days," Emeric told me. "Decide in three days."
"I will," I said, more to myself than to him.
Back at the studio, Felix Ribeiro was practicing a routine I had given him. "You're getting there," I told him, and he flushed.
Later, when Dawn came to ask me to choreograph, Danielle Burns introduced me. "This is Marie," she said. "She wrote the bones of your moves."
Zion Neal, the tall one who led the group, watched me but didn't say much. "We liked your demo," he said. "We want the raw edge."
"Good," I replied. "Let's make it hard enough they'll feel it."
"Hard is fine," Felix said, grinning. "Make us bleed."
We worked until the skin on our feet felt thin. The song was fierce. The studio smelled of sweat and coffee. I liked it.
Then trouble arrived like a small, well-dressed storm.
Ayako Chavez was like a bright fake pearl—smile too white, voice too soft, movement too measured to be honest. She was an actress who also liked attention. She stepped into our crowded MV set with a string of pearls and a smile that stopped the cameras.
"Hello, Marie," she said, as if the world rotated to let her speak.
"Hi," I said. "Are you ready?"
She hugged the director, then walked right past me. The assistant who carried her things kept glancing at me. The costume people whispered. I went to check the set and the choreo.
"Who hid the necklace?" Ayako's makeup assistant cried, suddenly frantic.
"Lost where?" someone else asked.
"It was right here on the dressing table," the stylist said. "Now it's gone."
The assistant stared at me. "I saw her near the table," she said, pointing with trembling fingers to me.
I looked. "I was at the mirror adjusting a strap," I said. "I didn't touch jewelry."
"Please, small things make big headlines," Ayako snapped in a voice sweet as sugar but sharp as glass. "It must be a mistake."
"Ayako," whispered Danielle. "Let's not make it messy. We have a schedule."
"Messy?" Ayako smiled at everyone like she owned the cameras. "I think it's funny when life writes drama. Maybe the choreographer who wants the spotlight wants more than steps."
They believed it because she cried on cue. The cameras liked a scene. The producer scowled. The director breathed hard.
"Let's find the necklace," he said. "If it's misplaced, we fix it."
I left the set. I sat on the truck's step, put on my cap, and watched people rush. Then I walked to the stage corner where the assistant had gone to hide. She was nervous and sweating and suddenly produced a small box, dark green, out of her pocket.
"Found it!" she cried.
Heads turned to the corner like it was a pulse you could measure.
The stylist took the box and looked at Ayako. Ayako looked at the box as if it were a scepter returned to the throne.
"Who put it there?" the director asked.
The assistant swallowed. "I—I saw someone... but it must be a misunderstanding."
I stepped forward. "You take things that don't belong to you," I said, low.
For three weeks, the internet fed on that scene. Ayako cried soft tears and the assistant apologized behind a closed door. The director moped and the shooter missed shooting hours. I left, because I didn't want to stand where the cameras were.
But the world is small and impatient with apologies. Ayako wanted more than "sorry." She wanted a stage. She wanted power.
Months later, there would be a stage large enough.
When Dawn's album hit the charts, something else happened. The music world shifted. I watched from my kitchen. My brother Mariano Young cursed loudly when he found he'd been relegated to second place on a chart. "Marie," he said, mouth full of toast, "this Dawn thing—your steps are wrecking charts."
"That's the point," I told him.
"Point or not," he laughed, "you still owe us dinner."
We traded jokes and then the world invited me to judge again. J. competitions needed me. I went to France, to the judges' seat, because the work mattered. Emeric nodded across an ocean. "Use the chance," he said. "Teach what you can."
At the awards ceremony for music and industry, people flowed like rivers in gowns and suits. I was there because of Dawn's success. They wanted faces. They wanted cameras.
Ayako was also invited. She arrived in silk and pearls and a smile that had been serviced by a dozen professionals.
"Elden?" she called as he arrived with Wade.
"Good evening," he said.
"Ayako," Elden said coolly. "You look... radiant."
"Thanks," she purred. "You too."
They sat nearby, because the music business likes to lay its players next to each other. I watched them from the steps.
After a few speeches, the host announced a surprise: "We have footage to show. Some moments caught backstage that remind us how messy the industry can be."
The screen flashed. It showed the MV set that had become a small battlefield months earlier. It showed the assistant rummaging and finding the necklace. Then the camera cut—surprise—onto the assistant's phone, which had a clip of someone in the corner placing the box behind a curtain.
Gasps filled the hall.
Ayako stiffened as if nailed. Her smile frayed.
"Wait," someone shouted. "What's that?"
The clip played again, this time slowed. There it was: a motion like a hand, quick and practiced, slipping the box behind the curtain. The face turned to the camera—Ayako's face.
The hall roared. Phones rose like metal wings. People whispered, cursed, laughed. The director, seated in the third row, stood up white-faced. The stylist dropped a napkin. Someone began to record.
Elden's eyes found mine, and in that split-second he seemed younger and more human.
Ayako stood up so fast her pearl earrings clicked. "This is a mistake," she cried, but the room had turned to ice.
"Who filmed this?" the host asked, voice steady.
"Our crew found footage," the director said, voice thin. "We thought it best to show the truth."
"Turn it off!" Ayako screamed. Her voice cut through the hall. It was thin and high like a glass breaking.
But the screen kept playing. The clip showed Ayako’s hand, the deliberate step, the look back as if she wanted to make sure someone would find it. The hall was a chorus of betrayals.
I felt it then—the old rush that used to make me fly. Not because I was happy, but because truth when public is a clean, brutal thing.
The first reaction was silence. Then murmurs grew teeth. Phones snapped photographs. The chairman of the label stood up, fully red. "Ayako Chavez," he said, and suddenly his tone was the voice of an authority you could not ignore, "step forward."
Ayako crumpled like a doll with the strings cut. She walked to the stage, neckline trembling.
"This is a private matter," she whispered, barely above a breath. "There must be—"
"But it's public now," Elden said from his seat. His voice was low but everyone heard it. "Because you made it public."
She sank to her knees on the red carpet. The flash of cameras turned the act into a thousand shutters trying to catch a confession.
"Please," she said. "I—"
"Do you deny planting the necklace?" the host asked, loud enough to be heard in the bleachers.
She stared at him. "No! I—" Her voice broke, then steadied. "I thought—" She looked at the assistants, at the director, and finally at the audience. "I wanted to—" She started, and then failed to finish.
Someone in the crowd began to clap. A small, cold sound. Another person joined. Then the clap grew into a storm. Half the room held phones, recording; half held champagne glassed mouths wide in judgment. Someone laughed. Someone sobbed. The director kept rubbing his temples like it hurt to think.
Ayako's face twisted through colors: anticipation, then shock, then denial, then unraveling. The smile drained first. Her shoulders crumpled. She looked around for someone to save her; faces averted. The producer shook his head slowly.
"Did you think no one would ever find the footage?" Elden said, voice cutting through the applause. He had stood up. He walked forward with slow steps, each one measured.
Ayako flinched. "Elden—"
He spoke to the room more than to her. "We can't run a business where people manufacture scandals to climb. If we reward this, we break trust. If we don't, we protect artists who work honestly."
He turned to Ayako. "Why did you do it?"
She gasped, "I needed a story. I needed people to care."
"At whose cost?" he asked.
People started taking sides. Someone shouted, "Throw her out!" Others hissed, "No—this is a man-made witch hunt!"
"Tell them," the director begged. "Tell them why."
She looked at him, and then she looked at me. "She was rude to me on set," Ayako said, and for a second she was small and human. "I wanted someone to be blamed."
"And you chose to frame the choreographer?" the director asked, voice rising.
"There were cameras. It was a setup. I thought—"
"You thought you'd get sympathy," Elden finished. "But you planted evidence."
Cameras swam around her like hungry birds. The lights felt like ovens. Someone yelled, "Kneel!" Not as an order but like the room demanded it be true.
Ayako's knees hit the carpet. "Please," she said, and now the voice was thin as paper. "Please don't ruin me."
"Ruin you?" A woman in the front row laughed and her voice was sharp. "You tried to ruin another woman for headlines."
Phones recorded her pleading. A dozen people filmed as she slumped, hands over her face, and then folded forward into herself. For a while she was a small animal, shaking and asking for mercy.
"No," someone said. "This is not enough." Another voice asked for consequences.
"Security," the director said. "Please escort her out."
The security team moved in. Ayako screamed, "Stop! No, I'm sorry!" She made a few attempts to stand, then slid back to her knees, sobbing.
Outside, paparazzi shouted questions. Inside, plates of canapés went cold. The internet would have this clip within minutes, and the rumor mills would grind it down and rebuild it into something more vicious. For those minutes, she was stripped not of clothing but of the pretense she had used as armor.
When they led her away, she knelt again at the doorway and begged at anyone and everyone. "Please, I—I'll apologize. I will apologize publicly. Don't—please."
The crowd was a mix—some called for forgiveness, some demanded sanctions. Someone in the balcony clapped slowly, and that clap grew into a steady beat of approval like a verdict.
Elden returned to his seat. He was silent for a long time, then he leaned back and looked at me. "Are you all right?" he asked.
"Yes," I said. "It was ugly but true."
He nodded. "Truth sometimes is heavy."
"People will remember the clip," I said. "They'll decide who they want to be."
"Then let them," he said. "We can't write every ending."
After that night, the world changed around us. Ayako's managers dropped her while statements were written and apologies rehearsed. The assistant who found the box got fault and credit, and the director slept with one eye open. For me, the act of being cleared in public rewired something inside the room: a recognition that lies worked only as long as people believed them.
"You didn't have to be the one who spoke," Elden said later, when the heat had cooled.
"I didn't," I agreed. "But I never let a lie stay planted in my garden."
He laughed then, quick and genuine. "You keep that black hat on like a shield."
"It is warm," I said. "And it's mine."
A week later, at a small dinner with the Dawn team and Danielle, Elden came over. Wade lingered by the door like an anxious bird.
"Marie," Elden said, voice low. "Will you help me rehearse something? I have to play a scene."
"Rehearse singing or truth?" I asked.
"Both," he said.
We worked together in the quiet that followed scandals. He would hum a line, I would show a step. We practised how to stand without needing applause. It was slow, careful work.
"Will you come to France again?" he asked one evening, as if the question could be soft.
"I will," I said. "If you promise to keep your hat on."
"Only if you promise to keep yours."
We laughed. The world kept moving. Fans chattered online in ceaseless threads. But in small rooms, steps and notes and the steady work of being honest were enough.
At the end, when the season folded and J. calls came and contracts were signed, I kept one small item on my desk: the cap, slightly faded at the brim, a ticket stub from the flight, and a photograph of a tea hill where my grandfather taught me to watch leaves fall.
I ran my finger over the cap and thought about the day at the Paris airport, the time Elden offered me lunch and I refused, the night the necklace was exposed, and how a single public moment changed everything. I smiled to myself and put the cap back on.
"Don't ever lose your cap," Elden said once, watching me fit it low.
"I won't," I answered. "Not when it's the hat that remembers how to stand."
The End
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