Announcement Week

Chapter 35 – Announcement Week

The statement landed at 9:02 a.m. like a careful plate on a quiet table. Black text, white background, three languages that had learned to keep each other honest. Aurora9 will complete current commitments and conclude group activities after the final concert in Tokyo. Health, gratitude, futures. The nouns did the heavy lifting. No adjectives went on strike.

Aleem didn’t read the comments. He read the date twice, then the line about staff and members needing rest, and put the phone face down on his desk the way you put a book down when the paragraph is true. The office hummed in its weekday key. Nadiah from finance walked past, saw his shoulders, and set a pack of tissue on his keyboard without ceremony. “For any liquids,” she said. “Eyes, tea, rain.”

“Approved,” he said, and the corner of her mouth climbed a rung.

He opened Telegram and wrote the post he’d known he’d have to write since the day he taught a bowl to sing softly.

ANNOUNCEMENT WEEK – CARE PROTOCOL
1) No trending. Don’t make grief a hashtag.
2) No speculation. About reasons, dates, contracts. We are not in the room.
3) Archive, not feed. Letters welcome → keep offline.
4) Practice ordinary. Eat, sleep, hydrate, return trays, thank bus captains.
5) Gentle spaces. If you need people, we’ll host quiet walks this week. No candles, no banners, no chants. Shoes and sea breeze.
6) Crew gratitude continues. If attending shows: quiet bridge, chest-height cards, clear aisles.
7) If you need words: Small and right. We will wait. Rest is allowed.
8) Resources: Open Door Line / SOS (local hotlines). If lines are busy, they will call back. You matter.

We don’t audition for grief. We keep rooms kind.

Zara translated into the three grandmother languages and pinned the hotline card separately. Kai added, Mods on. DM mess; don’t quote-tweet mess. The channel answered not with fireworks but with rows of yeses that felt like chairs being placed in order.

A new email arrived with the economy of a person who has slept on a bus and learned to function anyway.

From: Han Seung‑ah
Thank you for your steady hands. This week: please avoid vigil-style gatherings. Quiet walks good. Keep gratitude group-level. If there’s confusion, we’ll clarify in the daily Q&A.
– H.

He replied with what had become their dialect. Understood. We’ll be boring on purpose. Approval, always.

At lunch he and Kai ate rice that tasted like they were normal. The kopitiam TV ran weather and then footage of a cat rescued from a drain. Ordinary fought for space and won. A girl at the next table practiced not crying by eating noodles. He silently nominated her for an award that will never exist.

On the MRT home, two teenagers whispered about flights and hotels and “catching last shows.” He wanted to hug them and also confiscate their browser histories. He did neither. He looked out at cloud and scaffolding and the sea pretending to be nearer than it was.

His phone buzzed twice. First: the official post from A9’s account–same copy, same fonts, a photo of the nine backs, not faces. Then: a DM from a name he had learned to let pass through his phone without leaving fingerprints.

A: Thank you for your quiet. Schedule heavy; heart okay. Tonight – East Coast walk? If weather agrees. Archive clause applies.

Aleem: Yes. Marine Cove benches, 8:15. I’ll bring barley.

East Coast carries the smell of ships even when ships are far. By 8:05 the park had traded families for runners and runners for couples learning not to step on each other’s feet. The lagoon hawker smoke held to the ground like low cloud. Aleem sat on the sea wall with a thermos and two paper cups. A bicycle passed with the soft chain-singing sound of a well-kept machine.

Aoi approached with the posture of a person asking a shore to host them. Cap, mask until the room consented, long sleeves that forgave wind. She lifted her hand in the small salute that meant I am here as citizen; let us be furniture.

“Evening,” she said.

“Evening,” he answered. He poured barley into cups that had not auditioned for Instagram. “Rules?”

“No photos. Phones for time and weather. Public first. If we are recognized, we offer ‘hi’ and not performance. We proceed by invitation.”

“Approved,” he said. “And we keep no clothed in gratitude.”

They walked the promenade in the direction of lamps practicing being moons. On the water, ships sat like punctuation. The skate park did its democracy. An uncle timed his kite with a wind that didn’t belong to anyone in particular.

“Statement landed without adjectives,” she said.

“I saw,” he said. He did not reach for her hand. He put his palm near the rail, flat. She matched, an inch away. Two taps, one hold; three light taps. Here. Stay. Air. The grammar rode alongside them like a bicycle keeping pace politely.

“My phone is… a market,” she said. “Buyers and sellers with no goods. I have hidden most of it. My company asks for one post a day this week in simple nouns. I can do nouns.”

“Nouns are loyal,” he said.

They reached the breakwater and sat on the granite like people who had passed an exam and declined a celebration. He offered the thermos. The tea tasted like barley’s good intentions.

“May I propose a small ritual,” she said, voice making room for refusal. “Letters we won’t post.”

“Yes,” he said, relieved. “Archive, not feed.”

She pulled from her tote a thin envelope, cream paper, square corners–his embossing auntie’s stock. “One to the group,” she said. “One to crew. One to… the audience. I will keep them in my drawer like my grandmother kept handkerchiefs and sentences.”

He nodded, then produced from his own bag a small notebook–the same brand he used for breath counts and grocery lists. “One to A9,” he said. “One to the room. One to the girl who taught me how to sit during a ballad without trying to fix anything.”

She smiled at the last noun without arguing with it. “We do not read to each other?”

“We can read one line,” he suggested. “Then we keep the rest for drawers.”

She considered. “Correct.” She uncapped her pen like a baton. “I will write first.”

They wrote with backs to the sea and faces to the lamp, drivers of words on a road with no one else on it. He wrote the sentence he had needed as a conscript and as a man: Thank you for teaching me that quiet is a kind of music. He underlined nothing. He dated it.

She wrote small Japanese on paper with patience, then translated a line in English brocade: We will let endings be work, not spectacle. She folded, pressed the crease, slid the sheets into their envelopes and sealed them with the pressure of a thumb.

They swapped–not contents, only envelopes–and held the weight, then returned them. Museum loans. No exhibition.

“Thank you,” she said.

“Thank you,” he answered.

A pair of teens wandered close and did the hover that precedes a mistake. Aoi lifted her head and beat them to the first word. “Hi,” she said, gentle. “We’re off the clock.”

One girl bowed at the air. “We saw the statement,” she said, eyes full and contained. “Thank you for… music.”

“Thank you for being audience,” Aoi said. “Get home safe.”

The girls nodded and left. No footage. Just story.

The week arranged itself like a timetable with enough white space to be humane. Every evening, a message from the liaison’s office: Daily Q&A posted. Focus on health, futures. Please discourage countdown memes. The channel complied because it had been taught how.

He hosted two quiet walks–Tuesday at the river, Thursday around the stadium with rules printed on A5: We do not sing. We return trays. We walk in pairs. We do not approach staff areas. We leave on time. The walks were uneventful in the way good policy is uneventful. A boy cried once at the railing and then laughed at himself before anyone else could. Two aunties brought oranges and handed them to strangers with the authority of parliament.

He answered DMs like a librarian: pointing people to shelves, not writing their essays. He scheduled volunteers for the upcoming fan meet: shorter shifts, more water. He met Ms. Lin for tea and left with a sentence on a sticky: Grief is repetitive; kindness must be, too.

At work, he did his job so competently that his boss told him to go home early, which is a sentence Singapore bosses rarely say and often mean as a gift. He accepted the gift.

On Friday, the company posted a photo of the nine around a table doing nothing dramatic–tea, papers, a cake that looked like it would taste better the next day. We will finish together. The caption wore respect like a uniform.

He and Aoi met again at East Coast, later this time, after families had convinced children to sleep. They walked past the Lagoon where satay wrote its own thesis. She laughed at a toddler who was awake solely by force of personality. He pointed out the cargo ships blinking their Morse code to no one in particular.

“I’m not… broken,” she said finally, a confession to the air, not a request. “Just changing shape. I thought I would feel like a shell with music leaving. I feel like a drawer making space for other nouns.”

“Space is correct,” he said. “We collect days, not trophies.”

“Your mother’s sentence,” she recognized, pleased.

He lifted two fingers to his cheekbone–their request signal–and stopped them in the air without touching his face. “Caption,” he said. “Not now. Just… comfort in repeating the motion.”

“Caption received,” she said, and smiled. The relief of not being asked to be more than present did its quiet work.

They took the long way back. At Marine Cove, kids’ laughter rehearsed for tomorrow. Somewhere a couple fought in a low, civilized voice about who had forgotten the wet wipes. The sky decided to be kind for one more hour.

At the junction, she lifted her palm. Two taps; one hold; three light taps. “Here. Stay. Air.”

“Here,” he said. “Stay. Air.”

“Archive clause update,” she said. “We may print the umbrella-hands photo now. One copy. Museum only.”

“Approved,” he said, far too quickly. They laughed together at his lack of restraint.

Saturday’s fan meet was gently loud. Signs behaved; ushers smiled with their shoulders. During the final thanks, the host invited the room to “hold gratitude without trying to invent a finale,” a sentence someone must have smuggled into his ear.

Backstage corridors did their usual lemon cleaner. At the collection point, Ohno from Osaka–visiting as part of the final tour audits–watched the chest-height cards filing into bins with a field scientist’s interest. “In other cities, you taught quiet in bridge,” he said to Aleem in English that wore a Japanese coat. “Good export.”

“Import, too,” Aleem said. “We learned it from places that already had it.”

“Correct,” Ohno said, approving of humility.

A text arrived at 6:31.

A: Thank you for the walks. Crew happy. Tonight, one small request: after the corridor, no messages. Sleep instead.

Aleem: Filed. Library closes early. We proceed by invitation.

Sunday, no events. The city gave itself a rest day and actually took it. He cleaned the fan’s guard with a toothbrush because the fan had worked hard. He cooked omelette with diplomacy. He printed the umbrella-hands photo at the little shop that still believes in instant prints. The uncle behind the counter nodded at the image as if the composition had paid its bills.

He glued the square behind Proceed by invitation in the paper museum, secret exhibit. He cut three new labels from the calendar that had retired from months and dedicated itself to being useful.

We don’t audition for grief.
Endings are work.
Don’t be the headline.

He slid them under Archive, not feed and above Choose together. The stack made the rustle that means paper recognizes family.

His phone chimed once.

A: Home. Drawer holds letters. I will open after Tokyo. Thank you for barley and benches. Next week–last Singapore rehearsal, then I go. We keep small and right.

Aleem: Home. Museum received umbrella. Small and right stays policy. I’m here; I stay; we keep air.

A: Proceed.

He lay on his side toward the wall that had memorized his breath. Outside, the park counted ships. Somewhere a kite tried to lift, then decided to wait for better wind. In a drawer, envelopes learned to be patient. In a phone, a picture of hands on an umbrella handle remembered rain and its grammar.

Two in, hold, three out. Not magic. Structure.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.

The week had announced itself. They had answered with nouns and walks and a refusal to be weather. It was enough.