Chapter Text
When Jao was very small, and could hardly hold himself upright on two feet, his mother told him the story of how she met his father. He was leagues richer than her, and his reach far greater than hers, but he fell for her in spite, and perhaps because, of this; she left her hometown and followed him to the city and gave him two beautiful sons: Kaojao and Jettrin.
He’d moved on shortly after Jettrin’s birth. He sent for his sons on special occasions and one would hardly know he was of straitened circumstances – to say, he hid it well. He could not admit to his children what their mother had already confided in them, many years ago:
He lost his riches to his own greed. He lost everything for simply the possibility of something better.
But better didn’t exist, not for him, not for them.
Of course, Jao was too young to understand her words, let alone her lesson, and though she never repeated herself, he saw in his father the regret his mother warned him of. He saw it so often that, eventually, his father stopped calling for him.
Perhaps he still thought of his family as lower than him. Maybe he couldn’t bear the recognition of failure in his sons’ eyes. More than likely, he had driven himself into the ground.
A card addressed to Jettrin and Kaojao arrived on their doorstep two years ago, and inside was a postnuptial announcement from their father and his new bride, an upstanding woman of silver and gold, and while Jettrin responded with fit anger, Jao felt calm. Peaceful. All of his unanswered questions were resolved in a single letter.
Jao understood, then, where he stood in this world.
“Is he okay?”
“I don’t know. What’s wrong with him?”
Ever since he stepped into the taxi the night of the party, he’d been unable to distinguish words from voices. The world seemed to exist in distortion, as if a rift split Jao’s days between then and now. On Monday morning, after a listless Sunday spent in bed, he’d tidied himself for classes and the routine almost excused the dull hum in the back of his mind. It was only when he turned off his lights and made to grab his tripod that he paused. A vague sense of deja vu had stilled his muscles.
“He’s been staring into space for two days.”
He couldn’t remember his morning classes. When he’d entered the classroom, his peers had been giggling about the party – witnessed only through social media – and any color the sun had sown into his tired eyes disappeared entirely. He’d been unable to focus on his professor’s words, but his lack of participation hadn’t been cause for worry or intrigue; Jao was just as mousey as normal.
He couldn’t stop his eyes from turning to the sky.
“Jao?”
But his own name he could recognize. He looked up, unaware he had been cradling his backpack to his chest, and found the concerned gazes of his friends on him. He glanced about himself and wondered, distantly, when he’d arrived at the Comm Arts stairs, and just how long he’d been here.
“What’s happening?” the same sweet voice asked, and – oh – it was Daisy, Jao realized. “You’ve been staring into space for the past two days. We’re worried about you, you know.”
“Jao, you might think we’re snooping on you, but we’re really worried,” Som said, and Jao’s eyes moved to meet hers. “Tell your friends what’s on your mind.”
Jao sighed and clutched his bag against himself. His mind grew hazy with deep maroon thoughts of tepid chlorine and hushed conversations behind flimsy curtains. He couldn’t bear to think about the moment the party ended for him, but his thoughts always turned in that direction; when shy smiles faded and confused, betrayed shock came forth to replace it, Jao had to force his eyes shut.
“Too much,” he said.
“This is about p’Sky, right?” Toh asked softly, and despite himself, Jao returned Toh’s sad look with a shocked stare of his own. His friend smiled and shrugged, and his glasses fell an inch down his nose, and for a second, Jao relaxed, calmed by the familiarity – calmed enough to respond, albeit only in nods.
Daisy hoisted herself up to sit next to Jao. She wore the same look she had offered him at the party, that conscious-stricken frown, as if she had a sentiment no words could express. Her back was straight and she bit her lip, unsure, and Jao didn’t like that. He didn’t like that his friends were uncomfortable because of him .
“The club was big, but you’re our best friend,” she said. “So we tried to keep an eye on you.”
If it was possible, Jao slumped further into himself. “Then you saw… all of it?”
Som shifted her weight between her feet, and when she opened her mouth to respond, Jao shook his head quickly to cut her off. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“We don’t have to talk about the party,” Toh said quickly. “Or maybe we have to? Jao, I might not know what happened between you and p’Sky, but I don’t think he could have hurt you – right? I know p’Nuea and –”
Jao’s sharp eyes flew to Toh’s once more and Toh, who had never seen such an adverse reaction from Jao before, blinked before trailing off hesitantly. Jao sucked in a breath and gathered himself from his outburst, and it appeared as though it took great effort, because his pretty, tan cheeks grew ruddy in color and hot, in the first instance since Sky’s party.
“You don’t know p’Nuea,” Jao finally muttered. Daisy and Som shared a look.
Toh stepped forward and placed a tentative hand on Jao’s knee. “At the party,” he said, glancing to his friends out of the corner of his eye, “I took pictures of him, he turned around, and I couldn’t hide in time – so, well, that is to say – we started talking about p’Sky – they’re best friends, you know…”
When Jao’s eyes turned to Toh once more, the distant fire had been extinguished and now remained only a tinder of apprehensive confusion. “You talked to p’Nuea? Why didn’t you tell me?”
Toh looked away, his little shoulders lifting to drop as an answer. “I wanted to! But you weren’t feeling well. You aren’t feeling well.”
“Tell Jao what p’Nuea said,” Daisy reminded, patting Toh’s back impatiently, and Som nodded.
“P’Sky had been talking about a cute boy nonstop before the party,” Toh said, his tone rising in excitement even as he attempted to gauge Jao’s reaction for any sense of extremity. “P’Nuea said p’Sky met him during a rainstorm one night.”
“Do you… do you know anything about that, Jao?” Som asked.
A beautiful horizon. Slippery fingers on a wet camera. Relief in red above him. And p’Sky, peering down at him, like Jao had set the sun himself.
In no lifetime could he ever forget.
But like Daisy, his memories couldn’t so easily be described in words, so Jao could only nod and hide his chin in the top of his backpack. From the corner of his eye, he saw Som mouth something to Daisy, but he couldn’t find the energy to decode their whispers. He had little energy to do anything. Toh’s hand rubbed wide circles into his knee before pulling away.
When Som spoke again, her voice came out waterlogged and thick. “I hope someday you’ll tell us all about that night and about the party, too. But today, Jao, please try to explain to us what Sky did to you –”
Jao’s face crumpled. “He didn’t do anything. He was perfect.”
“Then, I don’t understand…”
“It’s about me . It’s about what I did, or what I didn’t do, I don’t know – how I became this way.”
“What about it? What’s the problem of being you? Tell me, why must it be a problem being someone like you?” Daisy asked.
“Maybe it’s not,” Jao muttered, voice muffled into his backpack. “But who I am would be a problem for p’Sky. And p’Sky’s friends.”
“Jao, you like Sky,” Daisy said. She ran her hand through Jao’s thick, curly hair, tsking slightly when the path became tangled. “Sky likes you. That’s it. The end.”
Her words fell on deaf ears. Dusty clouds had drifted into Jao’s eyes once more. He didn’t move for a few moments, but when he did, his arms were sluggish and his movements unhurried, as if he was acting on a memory long-forgotten. He unzipped a pocket on his bag and pulled out a small disk. It laid poor and unsuspecting in the palm of Jao’s hand, and he eyed it curiously, spiritlessly, before dropping it into Toh’s grasp.
“It’s the SD card from my camera,” he said, zipping up his backpack and jumping down from the sill. “All of my pictures from the party are there.”
“Jao…” Toh trailed off, looking to Som and Daisy for help.
“I hope they like the pictures,” Jao said. He turned to his friends and offered them a small, sad smile. “When you’re done, just delete the memory, okay?”
He walked away.
Sky’s predilection for sweets had softened each year as he grew older; now, freshly twenty-two years old and faced with a sickly, decadent birthday cake, he felt the last remnants of his favor disappear entirely.
Time slowed.
His friends and guests carried on their song, but Sky’s eyes were locked on his boy slowly fading into the crowd, a blur of pink against a dark sea of nameless faces. His hand burned where it was once wrapped around the boy’s wrist, desperate and pleading, and he thought to call out, and just as he tried, his boy turned around.
Tears stained his rosy, little cheeks and dipped into the soft pout of his lips, and his ears crimsoned, even under the fluorescent lights, but his eyes – so wide and dewy – had lost him, and they flickered between the bodies around him, searching for Sky.
His feelings were at odds with his mind, Sky could see it so clearly in the wavering call of his gaze, and Sky resolved to follow his boy through the crowd, to follow him wherever the boy would allow him. The dark thoughts that swam in his boy’s eyes could be wrested, he knew that to be true, because how could a boy so sweet and beautiful be home to such doubt?
“ I just wanted to help my friend, but-but why are some of you guys so… so mean?”
Sky could only watch as the crowd swallowed his boy whole, like the mouth of a whale, and in just seconds, his boy had vanished.
“ Even if this party is scary, I want to help.”
Sky hadn’t pried for fear of running the boy off, but now he regretted every instance that night he hadn’t; how much he could’ve prevented if he’d asked better questions, if he’d taken more care to his boy’s veiled concerns, if he had –
The song concluded, and through the cheers from the teeming crowd before him, Sky heard his friends ask him to make a wish. A thousand wishes came to mind, but he settled on the most important.
“Please give me a second chance,” he murmured, and because he stood in a circle of cameras, he blew out the candles.
He hardly heard the subsequent applause. The bar called his name.
Just under thirty minutes later, he came to long enough to find he had draped himself over the arm of a stiff, uncomfortable couch. His fingers were sticky with booze where they clasped the beer bottle and a rushing headache was beginning to set in. A gentle hand pried the bottle away from him, and he looked up, eyes dark, until he met the wary gaze of Fon. Just behind her sat Kongkwan and Tor, and to his right Nuea, all appraising him with the same careful look.
“How can we help you if you won’t stop drinking?” Fon said, placing the bottle on the table in front of them. “How many have you had?”
Sky groaned and rubbed a hand over his face, cringing at the residue that followed. “It’s all paid for. What does it matter?”
“So what? Your crush had to leave, it’s not the end of the world,” Kongkwan scoffed, crossing both her arms across her chest and her feet at the ankles, leaning back against the couch. “Instead of crying about it, why don’t you grow up and find him?”
“Right,” Tor said, abandoning his own glass of liquor. “Start with his name, then school, maybe major?”
Sky paused. Then, he let out a drowned moan and reached for his bottle again, only for his hand to be swatted away by Fon.
Of course he’d hoped to learn his boy’s name; he’d asked many times, and thought to ask even more, but no circumstance seemed quite right. Maybe he hadn’t given him enough time to answer, as excited as he was to be with him again. It wasn’t as if a name was an intimate secret, but it felt like one now.
“Sky, you idiot , don’t tell me –”
Sky wanted to stomp his feet. He wrung his hands in front of him, his movements growing increasingly blurry as the alcohol made its way to his head. “I don’t know his name, and yes , I’m an idiot.”
Nuea leaned in and clapped his hands together. “Agreed. But he wasn’t a guest, was he? He was one of the photographers. Just check the employee roster.”
Sky saw light break the clouds. He stood suddenly, swaying on his feet and staunchly ignoring the line of arms hovering about him, and leaned forward to plant a wet kiss to Nuea’s cheek. Nuea let out a noise not unlike a shriek and pushed at his best friend’s shoulders, disgust curling his lips into a frown. Tor chuckled and landed a firm slap to Nuea’s back before disappearing into the crowd.
“Ai’Nuea! I knew I kept you around for a reason!” Sky cried out. He looked very much as if he wanted to kiss every last one of his friends, but before he could, a wave of vertigo rushed through him and he fell back to the couch.
Nuea swiped at his cheek and fought a fiery glare against Sky’s blitzed, loopy smile. “Pretty sure it’s the other way around, idiot,” he muttered, huffing.
Tor returned to Sky’s side, a tablet in his hand. Sky took it from his grasp, movements harried. He recognized it as the tablet from the bar, and while it didn’t store all of Glass’s records, Sky was sure the guest and employee lists would be available to him. His fingers danced across the tablet, and his eyes, too, but faster, and as the seconds ticked by, cloaked by the blue light of the screen, his face grew wrought.
He passed the tablet back to Tor. “There’s only one photographer listed – is that true? We only hired one photographer?”
His friends shared a helpless look and shrugged. “Who is it, then?” Kongkwan asked, peering over Tor’s shoulder to the screen. “Thima… well, that’s him! He’s your photographer.”
Nuea’s eyebrows furrowed, and were it not for the purple and blue lights flashing above head, Sky may have noticed a high rise of a blush bloom beneath Nuea’s eyes. “No, I met Thima – ah, Toh. He was taking pictures, too.”
Sky slumped further into the couch. He couldn’t so easily hide his exhaustion anymore, not when the cavity he had hoped to replace with alcohol hollowed, and each dead-end felt like the last. Through his muddled mind, he tried to recall a memory from the night that may lead him along a stronger path, but his eyes hurt, and when he closed them, he saw nothing but vague, white dots.
“Sky,” Fon muttered, encouraging him to meet her smile. “It’s okay. This is just a clue – like a game. We’ll find him.”
“Don’t even need your dice for this one,” said Kongkwan, taking a swig from Sky’s neglected beer bottle.
Fon sent a sidelong glance to her girlfriend. “But Sky,” she said, and though her eyes were kind, the smile had fallen from her lips, “we won’t help you if he doesn’t want to be found.”
Sky’s chest expanded and deflated rapidly, and as his gaze moved between Fon and the rest of his friends, her words sank to the pit of his stomach like a skipped rock. His eyes flickered dangerously, a welling of rain, and later he’d blame it on the alcohol coursing through his system – speaking of, where had his beer gone? He ducked his head and sought the surface of the sticky table with labored fingers, blind, but a firm swat to his hands shocked him back to meet Fon’s meaningful look once more.
To think his boy could merely have left to be rid of him, that perhaps his flight drove him away to save himself from ugly, bitter words – it was a thought Sky couldn’t face.
“I understand,” murmured Sky. “I don’t – I don’t want to pressure him, or I don’t know, stalk him but let me just try to talk to him again.”
“What if you can’t find him?” Tor asked. Kongkwan nodded.
“Or, worse, you find him but he doesn’t want to see you?” she added, ignoring the exasperated glare from her girlfriend. Sky gulped.
“Who wouldn’t want to see Sky?” a trilling, tinny voice called. In the same beat of a second, a hot body wormed into the narrow space between Sky and Nuea and the sickly scent of artificial roses wafted around them in a transparent cloud of pink smoke.
“Prao, Waiwai, Peach,” Tor greeted politely, glancing to Sky.
Prao settled herself on the arm of a chair and crossed her legs at the ankle. She appraised them with a careful, pointed look, her nose stuck in the air like an animal searching for something sweet. After a moment, she forced a smile to her lips. “Excellent party,” she said. “And don’t stop on our account – who are we talking about?”
Kongkwan sniffed. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she muttered, ignoring the matching looks of disdain from three sets of narrowed eyes.
Peach had steadily inched herself closer to Sky, effectively cornering him into the seam of the couch, but halted her movements to run her hand up and down Sky’s arm in a poor imitation of consolation.
Waiwai let out a bark of laughter. “We wouldn’t like to know,” she said, twirling her hair between a long, manicured finger. “We already know!”
“Waiwai!” Prao hissed, glaring at her friend. Waiwai stiffened.
Sky shot up straight in his seat and wavered only slightly against the bright dots swimming in his vision. “You already know?” he asked hopefully.
“Mm,” Waiwai agreed. “We talked to him once. What was his name again? Let me think…”
“Waiwai,” Prai repeated through terse teeth. That same strained smile returned to her cherry lips. “Stop thinking. We didn’t catch his name, remember? He didn’t talk to us for long.”
“That’s right, Waiwai,” Peach said, a little furrow creasing the skin between her angry eyes.
Sky leaned forward, his attention directed solely on Prao. Poor little Peach huffed and crossed her arms across her chest. “Did you talk to him tonight?” His voice betrayed his eagerness, but Nuea, now sharing dubious looks with their other friends, didn’t appear as convinced.
Prao’s eyes flickered. “Yes, we did,” she said slowly. “He didn’t tell us his name. But he did tell us what faculty he’s in.”
“Is that so?” Nuea asked. “What school is he in, then?”
“Dentistry,” Prao said. “If you want to find him, you should look there.”
Sky felt elation balloon in his chest and he was weightless, happy, and the liquor began to taste toxic. He couldn’t stand it to be so near him now, not when he had just learned where to take his first steps. The smile upon his lips was so wide and great it hurt his cheeks. He clapped his hands together and thanked Prao generously, but Prao didn’t acknowledge his gratitude beyond an uncomfortable sneer and a wave of a hand.
“If I remember anything else, I’ll be sure to let you know,” Prao said, but her words were far away. Sky nodded anyway, furiously, eagerly, and far too quickly, because the clouds had returned to his vision once more, and his movements became sluggish as nausea settled deep in the base of his stomach. He grimaced and patted the hollow of his throat.
“Okay, why don’t you lie down a bit, Sky?” Fon said, pushing him gently by the shoulders to relax against the arm of the couch. “You’re looking green.”
“Wait…” Sky said, opening an eye to glance sidelong at Peach, whom he just appeared to have noticed. “Is that my jacket?”
The air shifted.
The smell of alcohol and bitter beer, the lingering taste of mug and sweat from dancing bodies, and the faint sheen of grime upon each surface and trace of skin disappeared in a single breath of fresh air. Even the nausea in the deep of Sky’s stomach cleared, just for a moment. Sky breathed deeply once, twice, three times, beautiful, clean air, the air from a lush, green valley, or the mountain stream where his grandfather took him fishing as a child.
A bitter rush of wind mowed the valley and dried the river, and the loud slam of a door died his thoughts and sent the nausea rolling back into his stomach.
“Dentistry,” he muttered.
And with hope in his chest, he passed out.
