Predebut

The teasers for this year's hunger games were minimalist; a countdown done in white, industrial-style letters over a black background. Yet, every time one came on, all traffic in the Capitol would stop. People would come out to their balconies, staring towards the far-off, giant screen mounted along the Jewel, the Capitol's largest building. The happiest were the betmakers, who knew they would rake in the biggest profits of all this year. 

The question on everyone's lips was, 

Whose voice was that in the teaser?

A plaintive voice, too muffled for the lyrics to be fully audible, sang a perpetually sad song. It was a strangely resonant voice, one that seeped through the cracks and occupied corners of you - small, forgotten corners, old hurts, family fights witnessed from through barely-closed doors - calling up all your demons, shaking you from your fingertips to that mechanized heart of yours. Like a bell shaken in the wind, tolling aimlessly, through houses, across lonely cities, perking the ears of an old dog. Like snatches of a favorite childhood song, never remembered in full. That was what the voice sounded like, and no one could stop talking about it.