Today, while Sana was asleep, I had my headphones on and was looking at his videos on my cellphone. I often do this. I want to see what he was like before. It is my secret guilty pleasure. Because, I know he will never be like how he was in these videos again. However, it doesn't stop my curiosity. I don't know how to feel about it. 

I never met Sana like how he was in these videos. He looks the picture of health in them. I suppose the makeup helps. It's like peering into a strange, alternate universe.

I think about, sometimes, what could have been. We could have been up there together. Sometimes, when I watch his videos, I imagine that I am up there with him. Him smiling at me, able to dance, able to freely move his arms and legs, joke around with me, sing with me. 

I know that since he is my long time fan, he must have envisioned this also, from the other side of it.

And it breaks my heart so terribly, so deeply, like the world is cracking.

I think about how we could still do this. But we can't do this. He can't build the stamina enough to do it. That's not his fault. And it's not my fault for wishing. 

Sometimes, when I look at his videos, I start to cry, and I can't stop myself. Just this long cycle. I see him there, smiling, or with his eyes closed, doing something amazing. Particularly, I see him play his violin. It's almost like a mother would love a child, the expression on his face. Just this content, wholeness, he seems to feel with his instrument. Holding it to his body as if an embrace. All those resonant tones going through him, becoming him. They are one and the same, it is easy to tell. 

He can't play anymore. He hasn't taken his violin out of his case even once. I'm not sure he has the capacity to think about it anymore. He's so tired. I'm not sure what he thinks, sometimes, anymore. 

One day not too long ago, after he came back from the hospital in late December, just before New Year's Eve, I found a video that I watch over and over. It makes me cry like nothing else, but I can't stop. These are his true feelings, and the video is almost ten years old. 

He's standing there in a white dress. The microphone is on the stand. He stands there, not moving his legs at all. Just his arms. They move elegantly, like a ballerina, touching his face, his short wavy black hair, his body, tearing at himself. His eyes are closed the whole time, like he's not even really there.

The voice he uses. It is beyond what I could ever do. Because, I don't have the pain he does. I never will, and that devastates me. I'll never know what he knows. I'll never be able to comfort him how he needs, because I don't know how.

He stands there, in that flowing white dress, like the kind he wants to wear when he's passed away. He stands there, singing the song "Infection" by Chihiro Onitsuka. His voice is a resonant, sad tone. A lower tone than one he usually uses, coming from the depths of his chest, maybe from his heart, out from its cage riding on the waves of his voice. 

He says, just from the way he sings, that he knows he is dying. He's telling an entire audience of people. His real feelings. No cover up. Nothing for show. And nobody is really hearing him. They don't know. That part is the worst part. 

He tells me over and over that his voice is not powerful. It is more powerful than he even knows.

A voice is not about if you can sing loud. It is the message you bring across with it. That's the true meaning of power. 

And his power... He'll never understand it. What he brings to the world. That thought, no matter what I'm watching, no matter what he's doing. As he dances on stage with his band members, or if he's standing there in a white dress singing about his mortality... That thought makes me cry more than anything in the world.