I am not meant to be here and I know it.
It does not stop me though, as I loom over the sleeping figure that has branded so many people's walls on posters, has been the face of many internet users on their profile avatars.
I am an unseen watcher: a close follower of their work. "Their" being the group this man is part of known as ATEEZ, Korean-Pop boy-group sensation. One of many in a country that churns out pop groups as easily as weeds on grass.
I'm a fan; I'm an ATINY.
It is why I decide to see things on a closer level with one member, in particular: Jung Woo-Young. I have crossed paths with them indirectly; that common fan-idol connection where the idols are always distant as they perform beneath starbursts of spotlights and do vigorous, tiring dances, and the fans cheer on and support and love them online or in the crowd, and if you're lucky, you meet eyes but they more often than not won't remember your name when it's all over. Where some relinquish that idea and cling onto some hope that they will remember me! i hope i made some impact on them! I would rather stay forgotten, reduced to a concept of "just another fan."
I linger in Wooyoung's room for different ways to breach our meeting this way.
One could say this is astral projection--how I can access and find him just by mere intention-- others would say ghostly, undead possession. But, I am not dead, and I am not a ghost. I am still attached to my own body, but tonight it will not be mine. I am alive just as much as the next fan.
Alive like him; alive like the man who has provided so many energized performances that is now asleep. His chest rises and lowers with each breath. He looks content. From their uploaded videos the tired look in his eyes was still scraping for energy, trying to find some spark on why he loved this job that tired him out so much. This is the only solace he finds during the dead of night when his job and time-tight schedule can be tucked away on the shelf, reminded just when he wakes up again from the land of temporary death: sleep.
I sit next to him-- more like float as I seldom feel a thing. He must sense me, too, unconsciously, for he pulls his blanket over his shoulders and clings onto it as if for dear life away from the sudden burst of cold.
I live some Atinys' dream to touch their idol, hover a hand over his cheek which in my incorporeal state feels warm. I phase through him but he does not react this time. Then, I plunge in.
It comes up as an intent: take over him, and I feel myself pulled in like wind by the coastal shores, then a calmness. It blankets over me and I feel a wave of tranquil, a sense of calm that has been foreign to me up until now.
Everything goes dark, the fire of a candle gone cold.
I gasp alive and sit up. The air perpetually under me has solidified to an actual mattress at my back. I am solid, I am here. For a moment, I am him.