Sixteen Counts

Chapter 4 – Sixteen Counts

The tripod was a stack of books and an apology. Aleem’s phone leaned against a museum catalogue and a rice cooker manual, lens aimed at a rectangle of floor he had measured with painter’s tape. The fan in the corner clicked at the end of its swing like a metronome that had chosen to be human. He took one more step back, checked the framing, stepped forward again until his toes kissed the tape.

He had swept twice. He had moved the table once. He had told himself three times that trying was not the same as thinking you deserved anything.

“Alright,” he said to the room, to his own chest. He hit record.

The track started soft and did not apologize for it. In his living room, the first phrase wore house sounds–neighbors rinsing plates, a child upstairs practicing the same four piano bars with the determination of an ant. Aleem let the music arrive at him, not the other way round. He borrowed a breath before the lift and paid it back after the turn. No flares. No counts carved into the air like graffiti. The body as a good listener.

Two passes. A third for luck, though he scolded himself for the superstition. He stopped the recording, stared at the thumbnails until they all looked like strangers, picked the second.

He resisted the sabotage of watching it at quarter-speed. He watched once at life pace and again at the pace the song had meant for it. He did not flinch at the flinchable parts. He wrote the description with the same economy with which Aoi answered interview questions: Minimal breath study for bridge transition. Borrow on three, return on one. Keep the music intact.

Then he clicked Submit on the AURORA9 Movement Lab portal and tried to remember how adults behave after sending something that had required a small piece of courage: they made tea and did the laundry. He did both.

Waiting made boys dramatic and men quiet. Aleem chose quiet, not out of nobility but because dramatic exhausted him. He did his job–spreadsheets, calls, a troubleshooting session with a teammate that turned into a good ten minutes of laughing at the kind of bug that could only exist in a world where people cut and paste with fear in their hearts.

He checked his email three times a day, like meals. No more. The portal’s auto-reply had been cheerful and useless. You will hear back by [DATE], it chirped, which in human meant: practice patience like it’s a hobby.

He slept. He didn’t rehearse in his head. He let the week be a week. On Friday afternoon, in between a meeting that could have been a well-written paragraph and the MRT home, the subject line arrived:

AURORA9 Movement Lab (SG) – Finalist Invitation

He did not open it standing up. He sat on a bench under a poster that had decided to sell shoes by promising emotional transformation and tapped the email with the thumb of a man who had learned to open things gently.

Dear Aleem,

Thank you for your submission to the AURORA9 Movement Lab. We are pleased to invite you as a FINALIST for the Singapore session. Details below.

Date/Time: [SATURDAY], 1300-1700 (call time 1200)

Location: Kallang Practice Studio 2 (back-of-house), entry via Door C. Security will have your name.

Dress: movement-friendly attire; indoor shoes. No filming/recording unless instructed. NDA attached.

Ground rules: This is a staff-supervised rehearsal lab focused on micro-transitions. No direct approach to members. All communications through staff. Thank you for respecting boundaries and helping us keep a safe environment.

Warm regards,

Han Seung‑ah (Liaison)

The FINALIST felt less like a trumpet and more like someone holding a door open. He exhaled into his hands and then laughed because what do you do with a bench, a poster, and a good email? You go home, you help your mother carry groceries up from the carpark, you check your shoes for squeak.

He forwarded the email to Zara and Kai.

Kai replied: I’m bringing isotonic. Also spare socks. Also don’t be nervous. But also be nervous a bit so you take it seriously.

Zara replied with an itinerary and an emoji that looked like a clipboard gained sentience: I will walk you to Door C and then act like a very supportive fern in the lobby.

Kallang Practice Studio 2 lived behind a door that did not care if people took photos with it. It smelled like resin and citrus cleaner and a hundred days of hard work. Security checked his name and handed him a green sticker. A laminated sign taped to the wall with gaffer read MOVEMENT LAB → in block letters that trusted walkers to read.

Inside, the room gleamed in the particular way mirrors do when they have known both triumph and tears. X marks dotted the floor with a logic that would be explained. A table by the door held bottled water, hand sanitizer, and a stack of NDAs waiting to be initialed into obedience.

“Hi, welcome,” said a woman with the efficient kindness of someone whose job was to make chaos look scheduled. “I’m Seung‑ah.”

Up close, the liaison’s voice had the texture of five late nights and an affection for people who try. She briefed them in a circle, a dozen finalists making nervous jokes with their hands. “Thank you for being here. Today we’ll test micro-fixes for two transitions that don’t quite land in large venues. We are not rewriting choreography,” she said gently, with the humor of a person who had prevented ten disasters with that sentence. “We are sanding edges.”

Ground rules came next. No filming. Staff would collect phones. Water breaks announced. If any member happened to be in the building, act as if you were in a library: respectful, quiet, no approach. “We are here to keep them safe so they can do their job,” she said, and Aleem felt the relief of a room where the rules were the point, not the obstacle.

They stretched. They laughed too loudly at a joke about hamstrings. They learned each other’s names. A guy from Yishun who taught hip hop on weekends. A girl from Ngee Ann Poly whose parents did not know she was here and would not be told until after if she made no mistakes. A lithe woman from a contemporary company who smelled faintly of eucalyptus and dread. Aleem introduced himself without biography.

The coach arrived with two assistants and the aura of a person who had learned how to spend exactly the right number of words. “We’re going to look at the diagonal pass from ‘Starlight Run’ into the ‘Quiet Bloom’ bridge,” she said. “It clumps in domes. It’s a breath issue more than a step issue.” She grinned, conspiratorial. “I’m allergic to clumps.”

They walked the pattern–four counts to move, two to settle, two to breathe before the bridge. It looked fine. It didn’t feel fine. The assistants demonstrated the version currently on tour, and even in this smaller room with no screaming and perfect air, Aleem could feel the moment the bodies asked for something the counts hadn’t allocated.

“Suggestions,” the coach said, palms open. “Within the phrase. We’re not borrowing a minute, we’re borrowing a breath.”

He waited. Three others spoke–one about a hip initiation change, one about a less aggressive arm line, one about sliding the foot rather than lifting it so the center stayed lower. They tried each. Better, then worse, then better in a different way that introduced a new problem.

Aleem raised his hand not high but in the way you ask a waiter for the bill if you’re polite. “May I try something?”

The coach gestured. “Show me.”

He stepped into the diagonal with the assistant, placed his weight, then–“On three instead of four,” he said, “shift the center like you’re agreeing with the floor. Don’t turn the head yet. Borrow the inhale you want to spend on the bridge and hold it one beat. Then return it on one as you settle the knee. The line softens without collapsing.”

He did it with the assistant. It felt right in his body. That meant nothing until it looked right from the outside. The coach watched, mouth doing the thinking shape. “Again,” she said.

They did it again, this time with four of them, then eight. The room made a small sound that rooms make when a piece slides where it had always meant to go. The diagonal stopped being a bunch of individuals crossing a street and became a flock changing its mind.

The coach nodded. “It keeps the music intact,” she said. “Good.” She clapped, low and quick. “Let’s drill it so the body believes us.”

They drilled. Aleem tried to think about nothing. Thinking was for editing and trains. The body, when it has learned its agreements, does not require commentary.

A water break came. They leaned against the mirror and smiled at each other like people who had done a tiny civil thing. The coach stepped out to make a call. The assistants compared bruises as if they were recipes.

“Borrowed breath, ah,” said the Yishun guy, nudging Aleem with an elbow made of friendship. “Very song.”

“Just… air management,” Aleem said, embarrassed at the compliment.

The door at the far end opened without a fuss. No fanfare. No ta‑da. A small group moved in–two staffers, a stylist with a tape measure draped around their neck like a necktie for work, and a woman in a cap and mask whose presence was the opposite of announcement: it was inevitability choosing a moment.

They kept talking, because that was the rule. They kept not staring, because that was adulthood. The woman stood near the doorway in a square of linoleum that had seen fifteen thousand steps and two unexpected naps. She watched for exactly thirty seconds, that polite amount that says I am present but not interrupting. The eyes above the mask were a fact the room remembered.

The coach returned. “We’ll run once more with the new delay,” she said to the room and maybe to the doorway. The track cued. The diagonal breathed. The bridge waited. The group did the thing humans can do when they agree to share a decision: they arrived together.

“That,” said a voice near the door–low, the English careful and spare, the consonants smiling at their own neatness.

Heads turned with the choreography of acknowledge without swarm. The woman in the cap had stepped one foot inside the room, as if waiting for permission from the floor. She addressed the coach, not the circle. “It keeps the music intact,” she said, in the same sentence the coach had used as if aligning vocabulary would help the bodies align.

“Aoi‑ssi,” the coach said, pleased. “We’re sanding.”

A small bow in return. The eyes moved along the line of finalists not with the lazy scan of shopping but with the attention of reading. Aleem stood in the third position of a person who did not want to be first. When the gaze skimmed his row, his body had the odd sensation of being seen and offered back to him in the same movement.

“Thank you for working hard,” Aoi said to the room, the Korean warmed with effort. “Please continue.”

She stayed for one more run, leaning against the doorframe in a position that tried to look like rest and succeeded because she had learned to make small postures into real ones. Then she left, or rather, the square of the room that her attention occupied relocated from being inside to being outside. The air re‑tuned itself to rehearsal.

No one sighed dramatically. Drama is for rooms with less work to do. They did another three passes. The assistant choreographer wrote something on the mirror with a pen designed for such crimes: → 3 hold / head on 4.5 / return 1. The coach circled the hold and underlined return.

Seung‑ah reappeared as if summoned by the underline. “Thank you,” she said to the room. “We’ll break for fifteen. After, small group feedback. Then we’ll clear by five.” Her eyes did a professional sweep and landed on Aleem for a beat that measured no longer than anyone else’s. “Nice note,” she said–to the air, to the idea–and moved on.

He drank water too fast and got the small pain under the ribs that health teachers warn children about. He breathed through it like a count.

The small group feedback was the kind that proves meetings can be merciful. Specific, kind, efficient. The coach looked at Aleem’s version of the diagonal and said, “You have the patience to let counts finish. Keep that.” The assistant added, “If you ever teach, teach breathing first.” The eucalyptus contemporary woman high‑fived him with the tenderness of tired people.

When it was truly done, when the music had been turned off properly and not just paused in case, when the bottles had been binned and the resin dust had given up and returned to the floor, they lined up by the door to collect their phones. There were thank‑yous and bows without notes, nods passed around like a plate of cut fruit.

At the table, Seung‑ah placed a small stack of square Post‑its and a pen. “For feedback to staff,” she said, pointing to a shoebox labeled with the kind of handwriting that precedes policy. “Crew reads them later. Notes to members go through official channels only, please.” Her eyes were not unkind.

Aleem took two squares. On the first: Sound: floor wedge at left runway saved the quiet section. Thank you. On the second: Runner who caught the bottle before it rolled into the wing–hero. He hesitated, took a third, and wrote: The “hold on three” note was clear. Thank you for trusting us with small things. He folded them like a person folding laundry.

He left the room the way you leave a chapel after hours–without touching anything and with the stupid urge to tidy a space already clean.

The corridor was a nation of gaffer, flight cases, and wall sockets that had worked overtime. On the far end, the door to the loading bay was propped open by a wedge with a sense of humor. The light outside had committed to late afternoon. Zara stood in the public lobby beyond the security rope exactly where she had promised: fern energy contained, eyes bright. Kai, who had somehow produced a tray of drinks from a place that did not sell drinks, lifted a cup like a toast.

“How?” he asked as Aleem stepped into the breathable part of the air.

“Good,” Aleem said. “We sanded a clump.” He took the isotonic and did not make a face at the first mouthful even though isotonic always tasted like fruit remembered by a robot.

Zara, expert at removing secrets without puncturing them, asked, “And?” with the tone of a librarian encouraging the next sentence.

“And,” he said, then allowed himself one more word. “Aoi came in.”

Kai swore in a way that made the security guard look up and then look down again because the sound had not been for trouble. “What did you do? Did you scream inside your own body?”

“I did the counts,” Aleem said. “She said it keeps the music intact.” The sentence appeared in the air in front of him and stacked itself with the others he had kept: quiet is a gift. thank you for coming. The stack felt like a shelf that finally had the right brackets.

They walked out into Kallang’s practice backroads where the stadium hummed invisible and familiar. Zara handed him a small packet. “For the coach,” she said, as if he had asked. Inside: a thank‑you card with no names, just a block of clean type and a white crane watermark faint enough to be denied. “You can give to Seung‑ah to pass on, if appropriate.”

“Thank you,” he said, because gratitude is a habit and a gift and a skill.

On the MRT home, the mirror of the train window offered him his own face with the lighting of a photographer who had learned restraint. He resisted looking at it for wisdom and instead counted stations. Stadium, Mountbatten, Dakota, and the poetry of Old Airport Road being a place trains now pass, not stop.

A few stops in, his phone buzzed with a new mail. He glanced, a precaution against hope, then opened because sometimes the world designs a rhythm on purpose.

From: Han Seung‑ah
Subject: Thank you (and a small note)

Aleem,

Thank you again for today. Your “borrowed breath” suggestion was noted and will be tested at scale. We appreciate your respect for the ground rules and your kindness to crew. Please keep following the same principles at future events.

Also–A small note forwarded via office:

– “Thank you for keeping the music intact.” – A.

Best,
Seung‑ah

He read it twice to make sure his mind wasn’t tricking his eyes. The forwarded sentence was as spare as the person he associated with it. No heart. No flourish. A line that could be pinned above a desk and not embarrass you if a colleague saw.

He typed a reply the way you pack a parcel for a friend’s friend you’ll never meet.

Thank you for the opportunity. I’ll keep the rules. Please thank the coach and assistants for their patience–and the crew for making the room safe.

He removed three other sentences that tried to be born in the space his fingers made on the glass. He sent the email and put the phone in his pocket like a thing you don’t need to look at again to know it exists.

Across from him, a teenage boy practiced a popping combo so small only the boy and a very patient god could see it. The boy’s mother stared at her own phone with the concentration of a bomb disposal expert. The train breathed.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.

He mouthed the words, then smiled at himself for mouthing words on public transport. He leaned his head against the window and let the city slide past like a room changing scenes.

At home, he washed his shoes with the tenderness you reserve for things that had done their job without complaint. He set them by the door to dry and felt an absurd pang of affection for rubber and laces. He texted the Telegram channel: Today went well. Thank you for keeping the rules. Crew notes appreciated. We’ll debrief next week; for now, rest and hydrate.

Zara sent a photo of the white crane on his shelf he didn’t remember her photographing. He’s proud of you, she wrote. Also your origami needs moisturizer.

Kai sent a voice note that was just him humming the bridge of Quiet Bloom and occasionally laughing at his own wrong notes.

Aleem stood in his kitchen where the tiles had kept cool through the day and felt the house attend to him. He thought of the girl in the doorway reading a room the way a musician reads silence, the coach underlining a hold, the crew tape on the floor that meant someone had decided not to let anyone trip.

He placed the small forwarded line on the shelf inside his mind where he kept sentences that had helped him sleep. Then he made dinner without trying to extract metaphor from onions.

He did not plan the next ten years. He did not build fantasy architecture. He did what men do when they are raising a habit instead of a hope: he set the alarm, folded the shirt he wanted tomorrow, and wrote one small thing on a scrap of paper that would go behind the other scraps on the locker door in his room, which was now a museum of modest promises.

Keep the music intact.

He slid it behind Respect. Distance. Gratitude. and closed the door with the quiet click of a person who has learned that drama is a privilege rooms can’t always afford.

Outside, the city kept time. Inside, he matched it.