Rest Is Allowed

Chapter 10 – Rest Is Allowed

Morning arrived like a sentence finishing itself. The kettle clicked off; the window kept last night’s rain on the glass in tidy beads. Aleem scrolled exactly far enough to confirm the thing he didn’t want confirmed: a clip from the encore, the angle bad, the audio worse. Aoi landing from a traveling turn, a micro‑wobble, the kind that trained bodies file under note it, don’t panic. She finished the phrase–of course she did–and then the lights went down.

The captions tried to be doctors. Comments tried to be prophets. He put the phone face down next to his mug and waited for the cupboard door to close before he took a sip. Rules were for mornings like this.

His mother padded out in house slippers that had known two Chinese New Years. “You’re doing the face,” she said gently, pouring hot water as if it were a solution.

“I’m doing the face,” he agreed. “Small ankle thing, maybe.”

“Then we pray like adults,” she said, which in her dictionary meant: we behave.

The Telegram channel had already started fluttering. Screenshots, magnified stills, Arrhythmia by Exclamation. Aleem pinned a note above the noise with the calm of someone hanging a frame with a level.

CARE PROTOCOL (TEMP PIN):
1) No speculation. We are not doctors, and even if we are, we are not their doctors.
2) No pressure chants. No “one more song,” no “dance!” jokes.
3) Keep aisles clear. If staff need to move, we give them a clean room.
4) Quiet bridge + soft claps. We can be loud later; for now, we choose gentle.
5) Signs: keep to group‑level. No targeted “get well” messages.
6) If you need words, use these: Rest is allowed. We’ll wait.
7) Resources: If worry is heavy, talk to someone. Open Door Line (hotline). SOS (hotline).

We do not fix injuries. We keep the room safe while others do their jobs.

Zara followed with translations that read like they respected grandparents. Kai added, Mods on. DM us with mess; don’t dunk publicly.

He emailed the promoter and the venue in one paragraph that did not waste anyone’s morning: If staff request reduced stomping/jumps, we can push a message through our volunteers pre‑show. We can also discourage encore chants if needed. Let us know how to help.

The duty manager replied first: Appreciated. Please brief your volunteers: no chants if show ends early, aid in clearing aisles when VIP lanes move. Ten minutes later, the liaison’s email arrived with the tone he’d come to recognize as tired and grateful in equal measure.

From: Han Seung‑ah
Thank you. A small ankle strain; choreography will be adjusted. Please keep signage generic and avoid “work harder” energy. If crowds can refrain from encore chants tonight, that helps the medical and crew schedule. We’ll still give a full show; it will just be arranged differently. Appreciate your consistency.

Aleem replied: Understood. We’ll make room and model quiet when asked. Rest is allowed. He hovered over the last line, then left it. The sentence belonged in public.

They met at the stadium early because kindness is easier when you are not late. The bowl remembered them. Stacks of THANK YOU, CREW cards sat on folding tables like polite intentions. Beside them, a new sheet in small type: TONIGHT: SOFT CLAPS / NO ENCORE CHANTS / CLEAR AISLES WHEN STAFF MOVE. THANK YOU.

Ushers learned the words in one pass. “Soft claps,” Wati repeated, amused. “Like for primary school prize‑giving.”

“Exactly,” Zara said, eyes warm. “But in tune.”

Kai led the volunteer briefing like a friendly sergeant. “We’re modeling, not policing. Smile; point at the signs; use your inside voice to tell other inside voices. If the show ends without fireworks, we don’t try to light some.”

At six‑forty, a message blinked from Seung‑ah: Thank you for the signage. Please remind front blocks: no phones above shoulder during the ballad. Camera ops need lines clean. Aleem passed the note; volunteers adjusted their little scripts. The room began to fill with the sound of people who want to be good.

When the lights fell, the VCR stayed VCR. The nine entered together, as promised. For the first three numbers, the adjustments were invisible if you didn’t know where to look: weight pulled modestly toward the safer leg; transitions tuned with the “borrowed breath” delay they’d tested months ago; another member covering a traveling pass with a wink that said this is planned and cute, and it was, because professionalism is the art of disguising prudence as charm.

During the ment, the host acknowledged the elephant with the grace of a veteran. “We are doing… slightly different today,” he said, palms open. “Same love, same effort, a bit more wisdom.” The room applauded in the key of we are not idiots. Aoi lifted her mic last.

“Thank you for… your softness,” she said, English measured, eyes bright but not brittle. “We will do our best in a way that is kind to our bodies.”

The ballad arrived with stools and a rearranged grid. Aoi took the center like a person who didn’t need to prove centrality. She sang sitting down without apology, hands folding the mic in a way that looked like she had rehearsed comfort. Phones stayed below shoulders. The camera operators did their gorgeous work, cutting wide when faces risked turning into content.

At the bridge of Quiet Bloom, the house remembered its new religion. The lyric cards flickered low; the volume washed to soft. It wasn’t perfect–two men in the upper bowl oversang and then laughed at themselves into silence–but it was clean. The mics lowered just enough to let a thousand throats be competent. When the chorus returned, the roar knew its place and filled it without pushing the walls.

Encore came and ended without the ritualized begging. No “one more song.” No tantrums disguised as devotion. The nine bowed as nine, deep. The THANK YOU, CREW cards rose in their two blocks and stayed at chest height like patients following instructions. The girls bowed again, and in the wide shot that refused to sensationalize anything, Aleem saw a brief glance–Aoi toward the front blocks, a small nod with the grammar of gratitude.

The houselights came up the way good innings do–cleanly, with permission. The crowd made for exits without trying to be famous in each other’s videos.

Collection went like choreo. Stack, stack, stack, into bins. “Thank you for the soft claps,” an usher said, grinning. “My head also rest.” Dan, the stagehand, carried in a pile of cards as if they were fragile, which they weren’t, which made it sweeter.

At the debrief point–a multipurpose room with a whiteboard listing LOAD OUT / POWER DOWN / CREW MEAL–Aleem waited with the duty manager while volunteers signed their names against sections like pupils returning library books. He wasn’t fishing for anything. He liked to see good systems complete themselves.

Seung‑ah entered without fanfare, clipboard tucked under an arm like a veteran shield. She smiled the half‑smile of a person whose day had not been easy but had been possible. “Thank you,” she said to the room, to the volunteers, to the bins, to the ushers whose walkie‑talkies were still murmuring in their pockets. “The no‑chant note helped.”

“Your email helped,” Aleem said. “Instructions are a gift.”

She nodded, then glanced toward the corridor with the posture of someone negotiating a short window against a long schedule. “If you step to the lobby,” she said, “I can pass along something.” Her tone had the guardrails built in: public space, camera in the corner, ushers within earshot.

They walked the twenty meters together with two ushers, a security lead, and a camera witnessing the geography. Near a glass wall that reflected the lobby’s ordinary light, a small group crossed perpendicularly–two crew, a physio with a tote that said ICE / TAPE / HOPE, and Aoi, cap low, a soft brace visible above her shoe like a line drawn in pencil.

No one stopped. No one made a statue of the moment. The groups intersected politely the way trains pass in a city that has learned empathy.

Seung‑ah, never blocking, matched speeds for ten steps. “This is the SG lead for the courtesy cards,” she said in Korean, then in English because the lobby was a multilingual space. “He’s the reason the bridge is comfortable.”

Aoi looked up without breaking stride. In the reflection they all became taller, which was funny. Her eyes held the kind of steadiness that belongs to professionals and people who have practiced being kind with limited energy. “Thank you for making room,” she said, English careful, voice light enough not to turn heads. “We will rest.”

Aleem nodded from the respectful distance he used in museums. “We’ll wait,” he said, not to a person but to the air that belonged to all of them. He meant the room. He meant the year. He meant that nothing needed to hurry to belong to him.

They crossed and were gone, the physio’s tote a punctuation mark.

“Short and good,” the duty manager said, brisk and pleased. “Like a sign that fits on A4.”

They did small kindnesses that night because dramas are for television. Zara walked a volunteer to the taxi stand because her train line was playing games. Kai fetched ice for a security guard’s knee and made the correct number of jokes about being forty too young. Aleem carried a bin down to the recycling bay and sent a note to the channel: Thank you for the room tonight. No encore chants tomorrow as well; soft claps rule stands. We’ll post the debrief at noon. Sleep.

In the morning, Ms. Lin replied to his weekly with a line that made his chest feel organized: Your “Rest is allowed” phrasing is the kind that saves our counselors time; may we borrow it for a poster? He said yes before finishing the sentence.

He wrote to Seung‑ah a succinct debrief: bullet points, no adjectives. No chanting; ushers thanked; aisle kept; lyric cards not used in upper bowl per request; bridge decibel −6dB from last cycle. He added one line he hadn’t planned to: If there is ever a need for the crowd to practice “lights up early,” we can brief for that without complaint. Approval, always.

The reply came hours later, likely squeezed between a production meeting and a fifteen‑minute sit in a quiet stairwell. Appreciated. Tonight similar arrangement. Thank you for the line: Rest is allowed. – H.

The second night felt less like vigilance and more like competence. The city learned the new routine as if someone had left a how‑to card on every seat. Fans arrived with softer shoes. The men during the bridge hummed more than they sang and looked happier. Aoi sat for the ballad again, mic steady, eyes bright; a member leaned against her shoulder for two beats, casual choreography that was also community.

At the end, the THANK YOU, CREW cards rose on time and sat down on time. Someone in the camera truck must have been learning too; the feed cut to a wide of the side wing where a stagehand grinned like a man being congratulated for installing the exact right kind of screw.

Outside, the river did its low‑tide impersonation of a mirror. Zara sent the counters for White Crane Drive: modest numbers, steady growth, stories that read like practical prayers. Kai showed up with kacang putih at exactly the moment when salt becomes a decision. They ate without summarizing the night. Summary is for later.

After the cycle, the city returned his breath to him. Work folded back into its useful rectangles. He returned the collapsible tables with a note and a packet of good biscuits. He answered three emails unprompted that had been waiting in the corner like shy children. He mended a loose thread on a shirt as if it were important.

On a quiet afternoon, the company posted a photo set: backstage hands, coiled cables, a shoe with tape where tape belonged, a whiteboard that said REST = STRONGER SHOWS. No faces; just nouns. The caption read: Thank you for making space when we ask. Health first. We’ll keep the music intact. He smiled because the sentence had gone into the world and come back wearing other people’s handwriting.

The next weekend, he met Ms. Lin in the kind of café where the plants were not performing. She slid across a draft poster: REST IS ALLOWED above Talk to us 24/7. No logos that didn’t belong. No appeal to drama. Just an instruction with the dignity of a rule.

“Use it,” he said. “Any time you want.”

She looked at him as if he had passed an adult test. “Some people want their words to be theirs. Thank you for letting them be useful instead.”

At home, he opened the locker door’s private museum and added a new square cut from a calendar that was giving up on telling him what month it was: Rest is allowed. He slid it in below Approval, always and above Don’t be the wind. The stack looked like an index of a book he was still writing by living.

His phone buzzed–Zara, linking an article that, for once, did its job without injuring anyone. Crew interview in Kobe, she wrote. They mention “comfort in the bridge.” He read it and left it unread for public performance. Some things were allowed to become part of him without becoming part of his feed.

That night he cleaned the fan’s guard with a toothbrush and thought about counts and concrete and the way rooms could be arranged to prevent harm. He made tea. He practiced the old breath–two in, hold, three out–without trying to turn it into augury.

Before he slept, he opened his Notes app and wrote a sentence he would later cross out and then write back in because it was both obvious and necessary: We are not owed risk in exchange for entertainment. He left it there as a pin in his own head.

Then he lay down, turned toward the wall, and kept time the way he had learned to: by choosing where to place the quiet.

Outside, somewhere, a physio packed a tote for tomorrow that said ICE / TAPE / HOPE in letters that had been through a wash. Somewhere, a duty manager printed two extra copies of a plan. Somewhere, a singer learned that sitting in a song can be a form of strength.

“We’ll wait,” he had said in the corridor, and meant it. He still did.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.

He slept like a man whose room had been set up for kindness.