Y/N

by Esther Yi

THE PACK OF BOYS HAD released their first album in Seoul two years ago, and now they were selling out corporate arenas and Olympic stadiums all over the world. I was familiar with the staggering dimensions of their popularity, how the premiere of their latest music video had triggered a power outage across an entire Pacific island.

Me with Stray Kids and fans discovering Felix during the God's Menu era.

I knew the boys were performers of supernatural charisma whose concerts could leave a fan permanently destabilized, unable to return to the spiritual attenuation of her daily life.

It's the quick descent to becoming a K-Pop Stan for me. Absolutely delulu.

“But this concert will change your life,” she said. “I just know it.”

Me dragging my local friends to see SKZ when I had an extra floor ticket.

Moon. I remembered that Moon,

Annnd the MC has picked their bias. Also, how ironic the idol's stage name is Moon. Drawing fans in by some unkown force - glowing far enough away to be out of reach, but bright enough to be captivating.

“You must have heard the saying that the pen is mightier than the sword. Well, its usage has vanished from popular literature in recent years. What has taken its place is the comparison of the pen to a gun. This reflects, I hypothesize, the growing awareness that the act of writing kills quickly and from a great distance. Literature murders—not the reader, as one might expect, but the characters, who are no different from real people. Behind every character is a person out in the world whose sanctity is violated in the process of literary transfiguration. Every black letter on a white page is a bullet.”

If most people looked for someone to love, she, like a tax collector, looked for those who failed to love her and made them pay up.

solutions. A boy band like this”—Masterson waved the picture of Moon—“is one such god. Here we have data disguised as philosophy, information disguised as art. We no longer go to church once a week; we attend a stadium concert once a year.”

For real though - like we all flock to concerts like it's church standing in a pit worshipping. Everyone that was ever into K-pop will make the pilgrimage to Seoul.

“He feeds my imagination more than you do.” “Of course he does,” Masterson said. “Because he exists in your imagination.”

“I think what you mean is that he designs his lyrical content and sexual appeal with the specific intent of exploiting the most basic of human emotions, like loneliness, or the desire for unconditional love, and then derives massive profit from his vampirism.”

I wasn’t sure how to navigate a space filled with strangers who knew I loved what they loved.

I thought it would be hard to make friends at concerts for this same exact reason, but no, it's so easy to connect when you have a common interest.

Reading her first Y/N story, Lise had learned incredible things about herself:

I have no words. Y/N walked down stairs to see her mother sitting solemnly on the couch surrounded by five boys. "Honey, you’re being adopted by One Direction."

“You say you’re Y/N, but you’re really no one at all. You’re the placeholder itself. A vacancy waiting to be filled.”

I was sure that knowing everything would reveal nothing of importance.

But his first-place ranking made the disturbing suggestion that my imagination, one of the few remaining places where I felt truly free, was actually the site of my dreariest conformity.

“I don’t know what to do with the rest of the day,” I said. “I’ll go home, and then what. What do I do with all that time ahead of me. But there’s also not enough time. For what, I don’t know.” “It’s simple,” Lise said. “You find the people you love and follow them to the ends of the earth. Nothing else matters.” “But what if they turn around and spit at me. What if they make the kind of gesture people make at stray dogs.” I remembered Masterson at his window. “Like they’re wiping the dog off the face of the earth.”

But the three decided that if they truly loved him, they must let him disappear without demanding a reason. The task that remained was to remember Moon vehemently. But how? Friends who drifted away, lovers who broke your heart—you cared less and less about such people with each passing day. So how would you bring yourself to care more and more about someone who’d disappeared? “Mourn,” the woman in love said.

Every human body is capable of producing a spirit that lingers apart from it. But whether that spirit is truer or falser than the body—she has no answer.

Look straight ahead and squeeze the power. Do not change course. The world will change for you. You are at the center of the universe. You can’t make a single wrong move.”

“Before I started painting,” O said, “I’d spent all of my time doing one of three things: distracting myself, preventing matters from getting any worse, or obliging a person who meant nothing to me.

I had the strange feeling that I could not look out the window, that I could only look at it. The view had the flatness of a computerized reproduction.

is perfection just the massive accumulation of small errors?”

“That doorway feeling. To be on the cusp of experience. I’d kill to know it again. The truth is, I wouldn’t be surprised if you eventually found yourself wishing you’d stayed at Polygon Plaza instead.”

Honestly, same. I would love to go back in time where I was first discovering SKZ. The where every song and video was new an exciting, trying to decipher who is who in the group, and discovering who your bias is.

“It’s just so much better in our heads,” she said.

And that is why I read to escape reality.

“If everything goes wrong, there should be no one but myself to blame.”

“Everyone wants to take, but no one has anything to give,”

I was his hell, he my heaven. We were indispensable to each other in our separation. I

I would love for all of you to go on living. I encourage it very much. Not because it’s any fun. We know better than most how stunning the despair can be, perfect in its meaninglessness like the structure of an ice crystal. But we must see our miserable experiences through to the end.”

“I’m not broken,” he said. “I’m just very tired.”

I don’t miss you because I love you. I love you because I miss you.