Idol, Burning

by Rin Usami

Fandom talk could get a little over the top. < Thank you for being born > < missed out on tickets my life is over > < he looked at me!! MY FUTURE HUSBAND <3 >

In the same way that a night of sleep put wrinkles in a bedsheet, just being alive took a toll. To talk to someone you had to move the flesh on your face. You bathed to get rid of the grime that built up on your skin and clipped your nails because they kept growing. I exhausted myself trying to achieve the bare minimum, but it had never been enough. My will and my body would always disengage before I got there.

There were as many styles of fandom as there were fans. Some people worshipped every move their oshi made, while others thought discernment made the true fan. There were those who had a romantic interest in their oshi but no interest in their oshi’s work; others who had no such feelings but sought a direct connection through engaging on social media; people who enjoyed their oshi’s output but didn’t care about the gossip; those who found fulfillment in supporting the oshi financially; others who valued being part of a fan community.

“Why him?” she’d ask, curious. “I didn’t know you were into the ‘lightly salted’ type. Akihito has stronger features, and Sena’s a better singer, no?” It was a stupid question. How could there be an answer? I liked him, so I came to like his singing, dancing, talk, personality, presence—everything about him. It was the reverse of that saying “Hate the monk, hate his robes.” If you fell in love with the monk, even the frays in his robe became loveable.

There were so many ways of being in the world—friends, acquaintances, boyfriends and girlfriends, family—all of which involved influencing each other and adjusting daily in subtle ways. People who wanted balanced, reciprocal relationships said there was something unhealthy about connections that were only one-way. Stop pining over him, you don’t have a chance. Why are you always the one making sacrifices for her? It was tiresome being told I was being taken advantage of, when I had no expectation of getting anything in return. My devotion to my oshi was its own reward, and that worked well for me, so I just needed people to shut up about it. I wasn’t looking for my oshi to return my feelings. Probably because I didn’t even want to be seen or accepted the way I was now. I didn’t know whether he’d feel positively about me if we ever met, and I didn’t even think I’d choose to be by his side 24/7 if it were an option—even though, admittedly, exchanging a few words at a meet and greet would get me so excited I thought I might explode.

Phones and TV screens had a kind of grace built into their separation, like the distance between the stage and the audience. It was reassuring to sense someone’s presence at a certain remove, so that the space couldn’t be destroyed by interacting directly, or the relationship ruined by anything I did.

I started to notice myself yearning to push my body to its limit, whittle it down, seek out hardship. Letting go of everything I had—time, money, energy—in service of something outside of myself. Almost as though by doing that, I could cleanse myself. That by pouring myself into it, and taking the pain in return, I could find some kind of value in my existence.

“I still think you should graduate. You can keep pushing just a little longer. Think about your future.” I felt like what he was saying was true, but the voice in my head overwrote it with But my present is already too much. I was losing sight of the line between what I needed to accept and what I could run from in order to protect myself.

I sometimes noticed the people sitting on the train looking serene and carefree. I think it was because they were safe in the knowledge they were going somewhere. The relief of knowing they were moving forward, even though they weren’t propelling themselves, gave them permission to feel safe being on their phones or dozing off. Waiting rooms, too. In a room where even the sunlight was cold, bundled up in your coat, just knowing there was something you were waiting for could bring a warm sense of relief. At home on your own couch, under a blanket soaked in your own odor and body heat, black anxiety built up for every moment you spent gaming or napping as the sun moved through the sky. Sometimes it was harder to be doing nothing than it was to do something.

Sighs settled over the living room, and sobs soaked into the gaps between the floorboards and into the wood grain of the wardrobes. Maybe that was how a home broke down over the years, as the sound of doors slamming and chairs roughly scraping the floor built up like dust, and the slow drip of gnashing teeth and resentful grumbling bloomed into mildew.

Taking him in awakened my true self. My oshi dragged out of me something I’d given up on—something I normally pushed down and turned a blind eye to for the sake of survival. That was why I had to try to interpret him, to understand. Through getting to know his existence, I tried to sense my own. I cherished the movements of his soul. And when I danced, trying with all my might to catch up with him, I cherished my soul, too. Shout it out, my oshi said, with his body, Shout it loud. So I did. Like something that was tightly coiled had suddenly been freed and knocked down everything around it, like I was throwing the entire weight of my burdensome life into it, I screamed.

What had undeniably hurt was the load of laundry in her arms. One shirt or a pair of socks could speak more about a person’s current existence than all the binders, photographs, and CDs in my room I’d worked so hard to amass.

You don’t need to make yourself do what you can’t do. There’s nothing wrong with you, or Akari. It was the things that invalidated you—society, institutions, me that day—that were in the wrong. Your world, which was stifled by our education system, is still, in spite of it, as vibrant as those trees I saw in the hallway of our elementary school.