"Hey"
The awkward air rises as soon as his deep voice bounces within the room full of coffee tables, while he steps into the same boundary of space I'm in. Again, I can't seem to know what to say. You see, after all this time, I have been virtually (or we could even put it as imaginarily) talking to this guy. I have been telling him stories of my life, laughing and even crying.
Most of all I even felt like falling in love.
"Ah... Hi"
A demonstration of what a normal awkward conversation sounds like. Great.
His familiar almond shaped eyes lay low without making any contacts with mine. He runs his fingers through his dark chocolate coloured hair. It is perhaps a bit different than I thought it would be since the him I had been seeing in my 'visions' has deep auburn hair. He pulled out the mahogany brown chair opposite from my seat and sat down. Coffee was served but our conversation seems to be going nowhere.
Guess both of us are not in the position to do anything about this since we've never actually met.
Guess it's good enough that we no longer have to talk virtually, having people thinking we're mad.
This should be getting better no matter how I think about it.
- 6 months before I actually meet the physical body of Mark Tuan -
It was another typical warm summer that I travelled to the land cooler than my hometown.
So.. Here I am.. All alone like a loner...
I dragged my small suitcase along the grey concrete road of the small town, up the slopes towards the service apartment I rented for 2 weeks. It was fair to say that one would feel so bored living in this quiet village for more than 5 days, but well, I guess I preferred wilderness over busy life in ecstasy cities.
Money, music, bright lights, alcohol,
They were all acidic.
Corroding you from the inside out,
Eroding your inner souls slowly you were not aware of it.
It was always so busy and full of people.
But you would still feel so alone among the crowds.
Maybe that's why I left...
Just to find somewhere serene and pleasant to let my mind rest for a bit.
That was when I first saw his face
I remember myself, a backpack and a bottle of water, idly wandering up the hills to a resting point with mountain valley view of Zermatt, Switzerland. I laid down in the middle of complete nature and closed my eyes. However, it was not complete darkness like I usually see. Instead, there emerged a pair of eyes, dark brown almond shaped eyes, blinking slowly and staring right into mine.
I could see the lights as bright as fireflies flickering in those eyes.
Something told me my feeling was intuitive
Something reminded me of my own heartbeats
My eyes shot open with surprise. My breath was uneven. I blinked several times and kept staring at the scenery, as nice as heaven on earth could be, until my pulse got down to its normal pace.
What was that?
I asked myself repetitively but failed to have a defined answer for my own question. I could have forgotten about it and decided to call myself insane. But what I chose was to let my eyelids obtain the darkness once again.
Those eyes did not move an inch.
They did not alter.
They were still. Quiet. A nice kind of quiet.
They were somehow static but tender,
Energetic yet mellow,
And curious as well as settled.
I could not hear my throat making any sounds and the brain was unable to produce a response to this extraordinary incidence.
I looked deep into those eyes for the third time.
They were somehow so meaningful -
As if there was a galaxy reflecting in them.
And I realised my heart skipped a beat.
*
All I knew was that his eyes were kind. All I ever knew about him was his kind eyes.
I thought I was dreaming of the same pair of eyes for a week then something felt a little off. I realised this was not a dream. After seven days the eyes began to have full facial features - to put it in an easier way, I could now tell that this face I had been staring at was from a guy.
He looked familiar
But that was all I could recall...
It didn't occur to me the probability under any kinds of normal circumstances that, by any chance, I would have known this face before.
Youngjae, being his 8-dimensional self, had been telling me repetitively about some kind of a life after life. Well, I think he means reincarnation. There's this theory which states the possibility of one being able to remember and recall some - or in rare cases all - of the memory one had in the life before one reincarnates.
What if that theory was strangely sensible?
I thought it was weird. Not stupid. Just weird. (Even though I wasn't in the position to call him weird, said Jackson)
People said I was (probably still am) a Luftsmensch which literally translates into 'air person'. I daydream a lot. I get drifted away into my own world just by the sound of water dripping.
I never denied this almost factual comment, however when I see myself in the mirror I still couldn't recognise the person I had become.
But that though... Wasn't in a bad way at all.
I had always liked the feeling of being lost.
The feeling of being lost along with other lost people in the world,
Being lost with someone I could lay quiet without feeling awkward.
I used to think that is the best it would get. But the story of my life just kept getting better and better...
When there was Mark.. Inside my head.
I came back from the Switzerland nature hideaway and started telling my two closest friends-almost-brothers the stories of my 'vision'.
How Mark first appeared
What he looked like
How he made me feel
"You sure you don't need help?"
It was Jackson who began this conversation about me and my early schizophrenia syndromes. All my friends never really questioned my weird attitudes since I happened to be a writer as well as a very isolated traveller.
"Guys come on. Bambam's not mad or anything. Well it's not like he can get any worse than now"
"Oh, Youngjae, look who's talking huh?"
Then the topic of conversation drifted from me starting to have psychological disorders to Jackson and Youngjae fighting by words to be called 'normal'.
I never actually think about that... I mean 'normal'.
"So you're saying you see this guy when you close your eyes but you're sure you weren't dreaming"
"Maybe he's just my imagination or hallucination or whatever you wanna call it. But for now this ain't doing any harm and I'm pretty certain I'm not sick."
The weirdest thing was I don't feel like my head's messed up. And the even more weird than the weirdest thing was, somehow, it felt okay to be in 'his' sight.
It actually felt really okay.
Jackson shot a casual glance at me before looking back and making some kind of telepathic communication with Youngjae. The small-eyed brother shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes when Jackson's face looked a little worried.
"Come on, Hong Kong guy. Little Bambam is an adult now. I'm sure he knows what to do. And I'm sure if he thinks he's sick, he'd be brave enough to come talk to us"
Youngjae kiddingly pinched Jackson's stubborn nose before smiling as if Jackson's eyebrows were not frowning and giving him a wait-'til-Bambam-leaves-the-room look.
I nodded along with Youngjae's comment and that was when all the talk about my mental health disappeared. The Korean brother came down to send me out when it was appropriate to call it a night. Those almost straight lined eyes stared at me for a moment before his thin lips parted to transfer a message with a serious voice.
"Maybe you're experiencing your life before reincarnation. Maybe that Mark guy was a big part of your life"
It was an eldritch theory.
But when I look back into this conversation, I find myself believing more than half of it.
Funnily enough,
I was secretly hoping this theory was true.
I grinned a little and whisper into Youngjae's ears the same time he opened his mouth to say the exact same sentence.
"And Jackson thought I was insane."
