Constantine Harroway

About

Constantine lives in the center of a performance that some might consider to be manipulation. On the surface, he’s witty, flirtatious, and magnetic, and he’s never unprepared for attention; he soaks it in like stage lighting.

He has a melodramatic streak, not in the tantrum sense, (although he does prefer to get his way) but in the way he exaggerates expressions or punctuates his sentences with a gesture that feels both ironic and sincere. His voice is warm, amused, and always seems to hint that he’s keeping secrets you’ll never get out of him. Probably because he is.

Constantine is an observer. He reads people faster than they can explain themselves, but he never reads them too deeply. He’s quick to spot the cracks in someone’s composure or the desires they pretend not to have, but cares nothing of the origins of such behaviors. He can’t help nudging those buttons: not usually maliciously, but because he’s simply fascinated by watching human emotion bloom, erupt, and self-implode.

He senses other people’s feelings easily, but his own? He avoids introspection the way others avoid pain, which means he rarely understands what he actually wants. Even when he’s not consciously using his power, he subtly steers people into reactions that amuse him. He’s addicted to micro-drama, fueled by equal measures curiosity and boredom.

Because he can create chemistry on command, he’s convinced true love doesn’t exist. This cynicism makes him unintentionally cruel to those who want something real from him. Not because he is cruel-natured, but because he offers a lesson they ought to learn sooner rather than later. He doesn’t let himself acknowledge this (remember no introspection), but when people fall for him it’s because he pushes boundaries, not because they truly saw him.

Early life

Constantine “Connie” Harroway grew up in a house where everything was beige; everything except the bookshelf where his mother kept the collectable book she loved to display but never actually read. Constantine did. By eight years old, he knew whole soliloquies by heart. By twelve, he was performing them in the mirror. By fifteen, he was in every school production with a level of dramatic devotion that made teachers both proud and his parent’s shed a tear.

He was a theater kid in the truest sense: expressive, intense, and a little too melodramatic for his own good. He lived for the stage lights, for applause, for costumery, and for the moment when he could step into someone else’s skin. The stage, for him, was transformation; a place where he could be the butterfly indefinitely.

The strange thing was how good he was at playing “love” on stage. Even as a teenager he could make an audience believe in star-crossed devotion, breathless passion, and tragic yearning. Privately, Constantine always suspect that something was…unusual. And adolescence was full of micro-drama moments. Too many on-stage kisses had become too complicated off-stage. Too many co-stars had confessed feelings that burned hot and fast, and then fizzled into confusion days later. He was amused by how easily emotions sparked around him and completely unconvinced they meant anything real.

Much Ado About Connie

When he was seventeen, he started posting Shakespeare monologues online, but not the traditional ones. He did modernized, comedic, flirtatious versions. Sometimes he improvised. Sometimes he filmed them in public places, playing Romeo on a subway platform or Benedick on the hood of a bus. There was something different about his content that audiences couldn’t get enough of; it turned out, that something different was him.

He eventually tried real theater, but the industry wasn’t built for someone who performed better for a camera than a casting director. Instead, a streaming network approached him with an idea: a dating show for the new era of reality tv. Romance but curated chaos. And they wanted the “Shakespeare boy” to host it. At first, Constantine laughed. He barely believed in love. But the job offered creative freedom, global travel, and an absurd amount of fame. It didn’t take long before he realized that a dating show was the perfect stage for him. Romance was theater. Reality tv was theater. Everything was theater.

The show was eventually named Hearts Unmasked, and it became a worldwide phenomenon. The premise was that contestants wore ornate masks for the first half of the season and were forced to form emotional connections without seeing each other’s faces. Reveals happened in stages; gloves slipped off fingers, masks grew shorter, the lips parted open. Meanwhile, bonds strengthened or shattered dramatically. Turnover was high, heartbreak was common, and Constantine orchestrated it all from the sidelines with a gleeful smile.

What the world didn’t know was that Constantine wasn’t just a charismatic host. He was the invisible hand flipping emotional switches. If a couple needed a push, he gave them one. If sparks were weak, he fanned them. If the producers needed drama, he simply nudged someone’s attention elsewhere. Easy peasy.

The show exploded in popularity, but the winners were nothing compared to the global icon that Constantine became. The person people trusted to talk about romance despite secretly thinking romance was the flimsiest illusion ever invented. He believed in lust, in adrenaline, in the high of desire, but not in love. Never in love. Don’t be absurd.

Singapore

Connie’s rise didn’t slow after the success of Hearts Unmasked if anything, the world’s appetite for his brand became synonymous with romance, spectacle, and emotional volatility delivered in the most entertaining way possible.

First came the travel specials: reality-dating competitions set in tropical islands, snowy mountain resorts, mythic faraway castles anywhere visually dramatic enough to match his personality. Constantine adapted with unnerving ease. On a beach he analyzed “romantic pair bonding” like a poet. In the Alps he officiated a love-trial involving blindfolds and ice-skating. More shows followed, each one stranger, more daring, more deliciously theatrical.

There was The Pact, where contestants swore to stay with their chosen partner for one week while navigating physical, mental, and emotional challenges; Constantine presiding over it all like a mischievous officiant. Then True North, filmed across multiple continents, where he guided couples through cultural love traditions meant to “test their destiny.” And his personal favorite: The Heart of the World, which hopped between cities every episode (Paris, Dubai, Cape Town, Kyoto) each week ending with a ceremony of his own invention, half Shakespearean, half spectacle. But the pinnacle of his catalog was the retro-style matchmaker revival he launched, Connie’s Love Lottery. It was ridiculous. It was charming. It was thirty minutes of kitschy music, vintage graphics, and Constantine promising, with a smirk, “true love OR your money back.”

The wildest part was people actually did fall in love. Or at least they believed they did until the two-week post-production guarantee expired. The success rate was high enough that viewers began treating Constantine as a kind of modern matchmaker with a killer wardrobe. The illusion held because no one suspected the truth: his “success rate” was the result of his sly nudges. His ability to spark affection, push attraction, and amplify chemistry wherever he went.

Eventually, he landed in Singapore for a new run of Connie’s Love Lottery International, filmed across Marina Bay Sands, Orchard Road, and Sentosa’s glittering beaches. Singapore adored him instantly. The city loved color and spectacle, and Constantine brought both in excess.

It was during this run that the producers decided the show needed a local guest presence: someone with global reach and a devoted online following. They invited Jia Xin Kao, the influencer who could turn a single restaurant visit into a worldwide trend. Her arrival stirred a frenzy before she even arrived on set. Constantine expected the usual: wide-eyed admiration, polite flirtation, and another co-host dazzled by him.

Instead, she teased him openly, dismantling one of his more dramatic intros in front of a live audience, and called him out with a sweet smile for “trying a little too hard.” After filming, she challenged him. He’d claimed he could manufacture romantic chemistry between any two strangers, anywhere, anytime. She wanted proof.

So they went out. Not on a date, both made that clear immediately, but on a little experiment. Jia Xin took him through crowded night markets, posh bars, the boardwalk thrumming with music, and a late-night hawker center where people recognized them instantly.

And Constantine ever the performer guided two complete strangers into a moment of connection so vivid that Jia Xin stopped walking mid-sentence.

It wasn’t a cheap trick nor a camera sleight-of-hand, but genuine spark. Or at least something that looked identical to one. He shrugged, smug and self-satisfied, like a magician who’d just revealed the hat was bottomless.

They’ve been friends ever since.

Hanging up the wings

Constantine found that fame had a predictable flavor. The spectacle of new shows and new formats, of exotic shoots and dramatic contestants that had once delighted him now felt like déjà vu. Every airport lounge blurred with the next. Every producer wanted another version of the same success. Every “new concept” circled back to the same formula: pair strangers, stir emotions, film the fallout.

The thrill of manipulating emotions for entertainment had dulled. He could orchestrate chemistry in his sleep. Even the drama felt staged, not because the show demanded it, but because he’d perfected the craft of nudging people into reactions that looked good on camera. For a while he toyed with the idea of a show about breaking people up, but he was depressed just thinking about the premise and never pursued it.

When the idea of a Japanese-style companion club in Moscow entered his orbit through Jia Xin Kao, it struck him as both ridiculous and oddly perfect. Companion clubs, in his opinion, represented the saddest kind of human longing; a loneliness so sharp that people paid for the illusion of being noticed. There was no erotic thrill, no romantic pretense, no high-stakes emotion. Just strangers pretending connection because real connection felt inaccessible. It was tragic in a way that fascinated him. People did not hide their desperation in such establishments; they wore it openly. And while Constantine found it pathetic, he also found it honest. There was no delusion of love, just an agreed upon elaborate ruse that everyone silently accepted.

More compelling was the prospect of stillness. After years of flights, filming schedules, and press circuits, the promise of being anchored in one place felt almost luxurious. His life had been lived in transit. He had no roots, no rooms that belonged to him, no habits that weren’t shaped by production calendars. So why not Moscow?

He agreed to join the venture on the condition that he would shape it. If he was going to attach his name to a club built on the fragile theater of paid attention, it needed to be something more than a dim room filled with lonely patrons. It needed to be crafted, layered, and intentional. A space that carried his signature irony and artistry, where the experience mattered as much as the illusion.

Jia Xin couldn’t guarantee full creative control, but she promised influence and partnership. That was enough.

The Luminous Thread

Among the eight known reflections of the Mirror of Pandora, none is so infamous or so paradoxical as the Luminous Thread, the fragment that governs connection in all its forms. In mortal speech it is called the Shard of Love, though that name deceives. The Luminous Thread does not create affection; it amplifies the invisible cords that already bind one soul to another: cords of loyalty, longing, desire, even aversion or hatred.

Those who carry its resonance can see these connections as filaments of living light stretching between hearts. By drawing upon their shard’s radiance they may tighten or loosen those bonds, yet they never forge them anew. Connection is reflection, not creation.

The god most closely associated with this fragment is Eros (Cupid), who in the oldest myths was said to have inherited the first spark of the Thread from the Mirror itself.