Last Monday, I flew to Kuching, the city of Sarawak with my family for a holiday to visit my mum’s family. For the first 2 and a half days of our trip, I felt really normal and comfortable. My body didn’t ache much. I also didn’t have any indigestion problems like I had experienced during my last year’s trip (related post: TRIP TO SARAWAK: WHO’S THE HEARTBREAK GIRL?). Everything seemed pretty fine. I also developed some sort of a detachment from social media for awhile. I didn’t feel the need to constantly update my whereabouts on Twitter as often as I usually would (Twitter acts like a messaging platform meant to inform Taenggu where I was and what I was doing just in case she needed to know and didn’t catch my voice talking to her). As for Taenggu, I knew very well she had already flown to Japan on 7th June and had assumed she would be staying there the whole time for her concert preparations until her first show in Fukuoka on 15th June. So I didn’t feel the anxious need to know or ask exactly where she was either.
On the first night, we went to the cinema to catch the Jurassic World movie with my 3rd uncle’s family. I told Taenggu about our movie plan verbally by mouth and invited her to watch it with us. In response, I could actually feel her excitement inside of me and heard her voice saying “비밀 (secret)”. I thought she wanted to keep this movie date a private affair between us, so I decided not to tweet about going to watch a movie on Twitter first. And the effect was rather positive. Throughout the movie, I felt I could sense her presence inside of me a lot more this way. I enjoyed the movie thoroughly as if the two of us were watching it together like a romantic couple. I only tweeted about watching the movie after it ended. Having had this positive experience, I thought doing something in private with Taenggu’s soul first before publicly sharing it on social media was a good thing after all, although I risk the possibility of Taenggu’s physical self not being aware of what I was doing.
On Wednesday, my family went on a road trip with my grandmother, 2nd uncle, 3rd uncle and 6th aunt to a village called Simunjan where their old home was located. It was a place where my mum was born and raised and attended school at until she left for Singapore to work when she was 18. It was an estimated 2 hour’s drive out from the Kuching city. My father, my sis and I were on my 2nd uncle’s jeep while the rest including my mum were in a separate car. Before we embarked, I only told Taenggu on twitter that we would be heading to a village called Si Wen Lan (only a rough pronunciation of its Chinese name as I didn’t know what its official name in Malay was yet) and that the journey would take about 2 hours. Usually on these kinds of long road trips, I tend to get sleepy and would close my eyes and try to fall asleep. But this time, I felt pretty much awake and energised. My body was considerably comfortable. I was staring out of the window, looking at the scenery and thinking about pretty much nothing the whole time. But one thing I noticed was I often exhaled in quick, short breaths through my nose as the jeep bounced up and down on the bumpy roads. This may not sound anything unusual to you, but I thought in doing so, I was actually subconsciously dispelling all the bad energies out from my body, which was the reason why I could have a comfortable and enjoyable ride on the jeep. Because my mind was pretty calm and clear of any other troubled thoughts, I could hear positive, nurturing voices telling me things like “exercise”, “养成好习惯 (develop good habits)” etc. But I also heard negative voices that seemed to warn me to be careful: “被人下降头 (cursed under a black magic spell by someone)”, “不公平 (not fair)”, “招待不周 (bad hospitality)”.
About an hour later, we stopped by a wet market in Xilian for a rest. The moment I alighted from the jeep, the tune of Alan Walker’s Faded mysteriously started playing in my head. The lyrics went, “Where are you now? Where are you now…?” This was strange because this wasn’t a song I often listen to. I didn’t even have the song in my phone, much less know the title of the song at the time, but I probably had heard the tune somewhere before. Was it a sign from Taenggu that she was looking for me and asking where I was? Or was there someone else or something out there searching for me? 😣 I took out my phone, expecting to get a weak data connection at the village area but was surprised to see that I still had 4G connection at the market. I went on to instagram to check for new updates and was taken aback to know that Taenggu had just unfollowed @_taeyeonfanpage, a fan account whom she had been following on instagram for the past 5 years. Unsure of the situation, I decided not to update Taenggu on twitter that I was at the market as I didn’t feel it was necessary. We stayed at the market for about 40 minutes or so (my mum and aunt loved to look at the vegetables and fruits and all kinds of kuehs for sale there) before continuing our trip again.
Another hour later, we finally arrived at the village whose name I had come to know is called Simunjan in Malay, 实文然 in Chinese. We stopped by a coffeeshop for lunch first.
I think it was after lunch, I checked my instagram again and saw a series of new instastories from Taenggu. It was her first video that I found something strange.
Right at the start of the video while she was waving her new official lightstick for her Japan showcase tour, there was a voice that sounded very similar to mine saying one word “Earth”. Was that voice another half of me? Then I recalled that Faded song which was playing “Where are you now? Where are you now?” in my head about 2 hours ago. It seemed to me that maybe Taenggu or some kind of bad forces were really looking for me after all, but I ignored her/them. Instead of revealing my exact location, this “other half of me” gave a rather crude reply, “Earth”. If it really was Taenggu who had been asking for me, then I think “my” reply was rather rude and mean towards her. Because of this, I went back to Twitter again to tell her that my exact location was Simunjan and also started updating her more regularly again.
Later on, we went to visit my mum’s old schools, their old home, their old neighbours and the river which my mum used to row a sampan to travel between her home and school every day.
At around 4 plus, we left Simunjan and took another 2-hour return trip back to Kuching. This time, I didn’t feel any urge to sleep either. I had my eyes opened the whole time silently watching the scenery run by outside.
But after I returned to Kuching, I could feel my body getting tensed. Things started to get unsmooth and unpleasant for me. I felt more impatient and irritated easily by the people and my surroundings. I even hurt my right hand by accident when the heavy back door of my uncle’s jeep suddenly fell and hit my hand. I believed the series of unfortunate and unpleasant incidents that started happening were due to some evil invisible force having found me after I revealed my location on Twitter.
Coincidentally, that same night, Taenggu posted the following photo on instagram with a japanese caption.
The english translation of the caption given by instagram is the following:
“I’m not sure if I’m in Japan or Korea or Africa or Switzerland right now, but this picture is definitely Japan. I’ll see you tomorrow. Let’s enjoy Fukuoka.”
It seemed to me that Taenggu was asked the same question by the same mysterious force too – “Where are you now?” And she was skilfully trying to dodge the question and not reveal her current location by saying that she had no idea where she was right now. True to what I had constantly heard her voice had been saying, her location was indeed a 비밀 (secret). (At first, I thought she was just joking when she said Africa and Switzerland, but she later revealed on her concert the next day that she really did went to Morocco, North Africa for the shooting of her MV. As to exactly when she flew there, I actually had no idea too. 😝)
Later that same night, another strangest thing happened. First, I happened to be on instagram and caught the latest instastory update from Taenggu that was posted just seconds ago. It was a strange selfie of herself in the dark. The photo looked like it was snapped by accident when she was half awake.
I quickly sensed something was terribly wrong and got worried for Taenggu. But when I checked back on her instastories again, that strange photo was already deleted within the first 2 minutes. But another strange thing happened on my instagram app right after that. When I watched her instastories in sequence (there were probably 4-5 videos altogether at that time), it kept bouncing back to the very first video – the one which I had shared earlier on this blog post, the one where Taenggu was waving her pink light stick with a voice that said “Earth”. No matter how many times I tapped right to view the next video, it kept bouncing back to the first one. The message was clear – something or someone was demanding me for an explanation why the voice (which presumably was me) that said “Earth” was in the video.
2 days later, I decided to write about my incident of hearing the “Where are you now?” song in relation to Taenggu’s photo caption on my dedicated instagram account for her.
After the above post was posted though, later in the day, Taenggu became unusually more open about her current location and where she had been to for the day. She actively updated her instagram from time to time with new videos and photos. It turned out that she was actually touring Fukuoka and visiting the Marine World Uminonakamichi. Probably she was diverting the evil force’s attention away from me? But whatever her intention was, I actually was glad that she could enjoy a day off to relax and tour around the city and take a little break from her hectic schedule after her concert the night before.
As for the voice who said “Earth”, I was really puzzled myself too because I don’t consciously remember myself saying that word at all. To verify whether it was really me, the next day after that instastory video was posted, I recorded my own voice saying the same word and listened to it myself. I realised my real voice actually sounded slightly different. I had a different way of pronouncing the word I guess, if you could tell that difference. 😝
I LOL-ed at myself for having to do this for verification. 😂 But it still remains a mystery to me – did I and/or Taenggu fall under a curse and were being chased by an evil spirit or human? Who was that thing or person asking “Where are you now?” Is writing messages on Twitter better or does speaking to Taenggu verbally by mouth through my mind work? 🤔❓
#mysteryunsolved