Recognize That Fan

Chapter 5 – Recognize That Fan

Morning arrived like water poured from one jug to another–no splash, just the sound of a day changing containers. Aleem tied his shoelaces, tugged the loops once to check the knot the way he’d seen Aoi’s fingers do in rehearsal footage. On his wrist, under the cuff, three inked initials had softened to a grey he liked: R / D / G. Respect. Distance. Gratitude. A rule set small enough to carry.

The fan‑meet wasn’t a concert; it was a daylight creature. The venue was the type that advertised itself with glass–atrium bright, escalators practicing their infinite commute. Staff wore lanyards in colors that meant something: green for ushers, blue for floor managers, yellow for tech. Volunteers had been asked to dress “neutral and polite.” Zara took this literally and wore beige with a side of eyebrows.

“Check,” she said, touching the stack in Aleem’s tote as if it might get ideas and run. THANK YOU, CREW cards, A4, clean type, Japanese under the English like a bow.

“Approved,” Aleem said. He had the venue email on his phone like a letter of transit–final bow only, A4 only, no seating distribution without ushers, return to collection points.

Kai arrived carrying hydration like a man auditioning for a sports drink commercial. “I brought isotonic, water, and very strong mints. One of you will need at least two out of three.”

They checked in with the duty manager–same neat bun, same corners‑of‑the‑eyes kindness. “Stacks at these doors, please,” she said, tapping a laminated map. “Final bow only. You’ll be visible at your posts; if anyone questions, refer them to me.”

“Understood,” Aleem said. He liked maps. He liked the way laminated surfaces converted chaos into arithmetic.

They split. Zara to Section B, Kai to the side entrance where aunties prefer to congregate and look like they’re not congregating. Aleem took the central run, placed the stack on a small folding table, and taped a simple sign to the front with gaffer: FINAL BOW ONLY / NO LITTER PLEASE. The letters were so clean they looked like they didn’t know how to shout.

Inside, the stage had dressed down for intimacy. No giant trusses, no pyros shamelessly auditioning to be fireworks. A backdrop with a soft gradient, stools set shoulder‑close, microphones ready on stands instead of packs. The host’s podium was transparent, the better to look harmless. A camera on a dolly tracked a quiet rehearsal arc. The sound check made polite noises and then apologized for them.

Fans found their seats with the courtesy of people who had been taught how to share air. Merch bags rustled like small waves. Lightsticks emerged for inspection and then went back to sleep–too bright for daylight, but happy to be on the premises.

The show’s opening was a VCR that winked at in‑jokes without starting wars over their definitions. The members came out in outfits that looked like they had been borrowed from themselves on a day off–pleasant sneakers, hair that resisted being over‑instructed. When they bowed, Singapore bowed back with the sober joy of people who have made peace with public happiness.

Skits and games are designed to keep a room amused without asking it to think too hard. The host did his job with the efficiency of a man who could carry three shows at once if someone spilled a drink. The members teased one another with the choreography of intimacy you can perform safely in public. They answered questions from cards with the balance of sincerity and practice that keeps a parasocial economy from turning into a riot.

Aleem watched the crew as much as the stage. A floor manager moved like punctuation–appearing at sentence ends to make the next sentence legible. The sound desk’s faders rose and fell the way you tuck a blanket around a sleeping child. Stagehands swapped stools with the choreography of men who did not want to be seen and were therefore loved by the lights.

Halfway through, the host brightened in the way hosts do when the producer in his ear tells him to brighten. “Next segment!” he beamed. “A new game. Well–old game, but we pretend it’s new every time. It’s called… Recognize That Fan!”

Groans and laughter rolled across the room like a friendly wave. Everyone knew the risks: too many faces, too little time, the terror of making people feel unseen even as you perform seeing.

“We will show crowd shots,” the host said. “Members must point out and share a small story–maybe a sign we’ve seen before, or a person who is always writing the best puns–” he winked at a corner of the room that reacted as if personally accused–“or… something meaningful.”

The dolly camera slid into the aisles like a polite cat. The big screens went to split: left, the nine on stools; right, the audience as geography. Hands popped up and then retreated, shy. Signs bobbed and were read aloud when they were funny and ignored when they were trying too hard.

On the second pass, the camera alighted on a block of white rectangles resting on laps. The cards were face down–no performance before time–but the visual was there: a neat brace of edges, a decision waiting for its moment.

“Ah–” one of the members perked, leaning forward. “What is that?”

The host squinted at the monitor. “Looks like… homework.”

Laughter. The camera hovered as if asking permission. Zara, three sections over, made the small chopping motion that means later. Kai held his hands as if soothing a startled bird. The block of faces did something remarkable for a crowd: it didn’t seize the moment; it waited for the moment to be itself.

Aoi’s gaze had been doing its usual work of listening more than looking. When the camera went to the cards, she glanced to the host, to the floor manager’s hand signal, to the duty manager who had moved to the aisle with I‑am‑visible posture. Then she lifted her mic.

“At the concert,” she said, English careful, “we saw this message at the end. ‘Thank you, crew.’” The words broke around her mouth like something that had been practiced not for correctness but for fidelity. “It made us very…” She paused, looked for something softer than happy, found it. “Calm.”

The host grinned. “Crew Banner Squad!” He shaded his eyes theatrically. “Are you here today? Where is the owner?”

Aleem did not mean to stand. He stood because Zara’s elbow had found him telepathically. He lifted one hand to chest height and waved once, the way you hail a taxi you don’t necessarily intend to get in. “Not owner,” he mouthed, glancing at the stage floor where the floor manager gave him the tiniest nod a human neck can issue. “Everyone.”

The camera caught him in an angle that did not betray. The screen gave him a second and then gave him back to the room. The members smiled–the friendly kind, not the autograph kind. Aoi’s mouth turned the corners a little, the way someone smiles at the end of a well‑performed bow.

“Thank you,” she said, not to him alone; to the block; to the decision. “Thank you for thanking them.”

The audience did an agreeable thing; it clapped for the crew. A man in black on the side wing looked startled and then tried not to be. The host rode the moment well–“Yes! Our unseen heroes!”–and segued to another fan with a hand‑painted sign that deserved its own award.

The game passed. The show continued. The room settled back into its friendly loop of laughter and designed sincerity. Onstage, water bottles were raised to lips at a pace that suggested professionalism rather than thirst.

Aleem sat with his heart behaving. Recognition can be a hazard disguised as a gift. This had been the right amount: a wave, a word, a redistribution of credit. The goodness of a room emerges from the behavior of many, not the image of one.

The final segment came with the day’s light still available to be borrowed. The host thanked sponsors, the girls thanked the audience, the audience thanked itself. As the final bow drew its breath, the cards rose–low, even, refusing spectacle. The message did what messages do when they’ve been well designed; it spoke without requiring a megaphone.

Backstage and back‑of‑house are phrases that sound like secrets and are actually logistics. After the dismissal, as people shuffled with courtesy toward exits, Aleem felt the tap on his shoulder that could have been a mistake if the person didn’t say his name correctly on the first try.

“Aleem?”

He turned. The liaison stood with her clipboard like a medieval shield. Close, Seung‑ah’s eyes were heavier than the room required and exactly as alert as her job demanded.

“Yes,” he said, and had the urge to apologize for existing in her workload.

“Han Seung‑ah,” she said, although he knew. “Would you and your teammate–” a nod toward Zara, who had materialized with the speed of someone who respects roped‑off areas–“have five minutes? Staff debrief. Public space, on camera,” she added, an assurance and a boundary.

“Of course,” Aleem said. “We’ll return the stacks first.”

“Thank you.” The word landed like a habit in her mouth.

They ferried the collected cards–neat bundles, bent corners facing in–back to the collection point. Kai showed up with his arms full of tidy piles and the look of a dog that had retrieved the right stick. The duty manager signed off on the count with a flourish that suggested she allowed herself this one petty joy in a job that required many unglamorous ones.

The debrief location was a rehearsal studio repurposed as a neutral zone. A camera on a tripod sat in the corner, a witness rather than a surveillance. A whiteboard listed bullet points with the shorthands of people who expect to be interrupted: SEATING FLOW, MENT TIMING, SIGNAGE.

Seung‑ah gestured to the seats at one side of a folding table. “Thank you for coordinating the cards. We appreciate the no‑mess policy. Could you walk us through how you briefed?”

Aleem explained the script Zara had written–final bow only, chest height, stack after, no waving, no blocking. He outlined the Telegram channel’s ground rules and the bit where he’d asked people to thank ushers by name, if the ushers offered them.

The floor manager asked practicals, the way COMMs people do: what would they do if a section rebelled and raised the signs mid‑show, what was their plan for someone using the cards as bait for attention. Zara answered like a woman who could run both a household and a small coup: deputize volunteers to gently model the right behavior, collect signs if needed, refuse to engage with clout.

The camera hummed. It felt less like being recorded than being accounted for.

Seung‑ah shifted a sheet of paper and the table snapped into new alignment in Aleem’s mind. He recognized the tone change before the words. “Also,” she said, “a thank‑you from office.” She slid a small printed note across the table the way you pass a bill at dinner when you intend to pay it without turning the moment into theater.

He didn’t touch it. Paper on a table is both invitation and test. He read upside down: Thank you for keeping the music intact. Initialed –A in a hand that did not beg to be distinctive.

His ears did the pressure change thing that used to mean he was getting sick and now meant attention had arrived a fraction before he had braced for it. He nodded because boys who grew up being told not to waste adults’ time learn to nod first and feel after.

“Please continue to follow the rules,” Seung‑ah said, not scolding; blessing.

“We will,” Aleem said. The we felt right. This was not his club; it was a room he helped arrange chairs in. “If you want, we can publish our brief so other cities can copy. No credit necessary.”

The liaison’s mouth did a small thing that could have been a smile in cultures where smiles have to go through customs. “Send it to this email,” she said, tapping her card. “We will distribute through the channels that have safety attached.”

Zara’s pen scratched. Kai, who had been extremely well‑behaved during this, produced a mint and then put it away without eating it because mint wrappers are noisy.

The debrief lasted eight minutes. They thanked the crew by job title–sound, lighting, floor, security–because gratitude is better when it has nouns. Then they were dismissed into the public lobby, which had resumed being a place where families negotiate boba and children practice spinny moves against their parents’ better judgment.

Zara let out a breath that moved the hair over her forehead by two centimeters. “We didn’t die,” she said cheerfully. “We didn’t embarrass ourselves. We might be allowed to do this again.”

Kai pressed his palms to his cheeks to keep them from escaping. “We were in a real meeting,” he said, as if three adults had not had real jobs for a decade. “With camera. I said nothing stupid.”

Aleem took the folded note only once they were outside, there on the edge of daylight where the atrium light lost interest and the city’s more honest light began. He read the sentence right‑side up. Thank you for keeping the music intact. A gift given in language so spare it left room for breath.

He did not text anyone else about it. He sent one message to the Telegram channel–We were able to share the brief with staff; thank you for behaving like people your mothers would be proud of. He added, after a beat, Please keep thanking ushers by name.

They walked toward the MRT with the unhurried pace of people whose day had not stolen their energy for living. Outside, the air was exactly as humid as always. The city smelled like bread and bus brakes and air freshener negotiated by committee. They passed a cluster of fans standing near a door that led nowhere anyone important would use; the cluster chatted with the pleasant intensity of people rehearsing a story before it happened. It was not dangerous. It was a habit he did not wish to rehearse.

They turned the corner instead and found the uncle with the chestnuts cart. The paper bag warmed his palm. The first bite made the afternoon feel proportionate.

“Do you think she saw?” Kai said finally, which was either about the note or about the cards or about the way even daylight can look cinematic when you’re allowed to be a little silly.

“I think she saw the room,” Aleem said, because answering a question with a better one is sometimes kinder. “Which is the point.”

“Next time,” Zara said, “we print a small stack more. People near the back asked. Also maybe a tiny thank‑you slip for ushers. Like a business card but not yucky.”

“Okay,” Aleem said. The day agreed. The plan extended itself by an inch.

On the train, the city reflected in the window. Outside the glass, a boy taught his sister a clapping game too fast for her hands, both of them giggling as if the world had left space for practice. A woman in a uniform moved her shoulders like someone who has carried a tray for eight hours and will carry a child in twenty minutes. A man in a suit yawned like an expensive animal.

Aleem kept his palm over the pocket where the printed line rested, not to guard it but to remind himself it was paper. Paper can be recycled or kept under magnets. It is not a talisman. It is a sentence that fit.

At home, he slid the note behind the others on the inside of his locker door: Respect. Distance. Gratitude. and now, lower down where a person would find it only if they were wiping dust, Keep the music intact. The corner of the new paper stuck out by a hair. He considered adjusting it and then left it. Asymmetry is just a pause in the right place.

He washed his hands. He peeled a sticker from the back of his phone case that had been collecting lint and then put it in the bin with the decisive tenderness of a person learning to treat small acts as practice for larger ones. He boiled water. He set two cups. His mother emerged, eyes taking the measure only mothers take.

“Meeting?” she asked.

“Meeting,” he said.

“Good people?”

“Good,” he said, and paused. “Careful.”

She nodded like a blessing. “Then you be careful also.”

He promised without words, which counts.

Before sleep, he opened the Telegram channel one more time. A volunteer had posted a photo of a returned stack of cards tied with twine like old exam papers. All accounted for, she’d written. Ushers said thank you back. Another had shared that a security guard, when thanked by name, had grinned and said, “Eh, finally someone notice I exist.”

Aleem typed: That’s the point. Then, because he was trying to be a person who said just enough and not more, he put the phone down.

The night decided to be generous and claim the city in one piece. He turned toward the wall and made the old count–two in, hold, three out–the way you tell your body there is a door and you know how to use it. He did not imagine future rooms. He did not replay the camera cut to his face. He let today be today.

Respect. Distance. Gratitude.

A rule can be a kindness if you promise it to yourself first.