Chapter Text
Five years.
Pond had learned how to live without Phuwin, though some days it felt like he hadn’t learned anything at all. He had moved to a new city, found a small apartment with creaky floors and a skyline view that didn’t feel like home, filled it with things that were supposed to distract him: books, plants, photos, a camera he barely used.
He had friends. Casual ones. And he had tried dating, briefly, but it never worked. No one laughed the same, no one filled the spaces Phuwin had once occupied effortlessly. Pond told himself he was fine. He had moved on. He had rebuilt himself.
And yet… at night, alone, he sometimes imagined Phuwin’s hands on his, the warmth of his smile, the quiet way he made everything feel alive. The memory made his chest ache in ways he had learned to ignore.
One day, Pond rounded the corner of a familiar bookstore, the one that had always smelled faintly of rain and old pages, and froze.
“Pond…” Phuwin’s voice, soft, hesitant, full of something Pond hadn’t felt in years, carried across the sidewalk.
Pond’s heart stopped. He looked up. Phuwin was leaning against the building, eyes scanning the shelves as if the world outside didn’t exist. Years had shaped him—broader shoulders, longer hair—but it was still him. That same boy who had once been his world.
Phuwin cleared his throat. “It’s… been a long time.”
“Yeah…” Pond swallowed. “Five years.”
Phuwin nodded, smiling awkwardly. “Yeah… wow. I didn’t think… I mean… it’s… weird seeing you here.”
“Very weird,” Pond said softly, almost to himself.
Another pause. The city moved around them, oblivious, but they existed in a bubble of memory, silence, and tension.
Phuwin shifted, tucking a strand of hair behind his ear, and then, after a long hesitation, asked the question first.
“So… are you… seeing anyone?”
Pond’s stomach twisted, but he shook his head slowly. “No.” Truthful, simple, honest.
Phuwin nodded. The silence stretched. Every second felt heavier, loaded with unspoken history. Pond asked "are you?"
“I… yeah,” Phuwin said finally, and the words sounded so firm, so certain, that Pond almost believed them. But there was a flicker—a tension in his shoulders, a twitch in his fingers—that betrayed the truth.
Because he had lied.
Five years. Five years of walking through life half-alive, of craving Pond in every quiet moment, every late night, every ache in his chest he tried to ignore. He had loved Pond quietly, painfully, too much to risk being hurt all over again.
He had seen him move on, even if just in glimpses on social media, in mutual friends’ stories, in fleeting mentions. Phuwin had smiled through it, pretending to be okay, building walls he thought would protect him—but every laugh Pond shared, every new memory he made without him, tightened the knot in Phuwin’s chest.
He had pushed himself away. Built a new life. Tried to be with someone else. Tried to convince himself it was enough. But it never was. Every relationship, every conversation, every day that passed without Pond reminded him of the boy he had loved, the boy he had never stopped loving.
So today, when Pond looked at him—five years older, a little quieter, still beautiful—Phuwin’s chest ached all over again. He had to lie. Had to say yes, had to nod, had to hide the truth that he had spent five years loving him in secret.
Because telling him would mean reopening a wound neither of them could bear.
Back in the present, Pond nodded slowly. “I see.”
The silence returned, heavier than before. They both knew there were truths left unspoken, memories that lingered, feelings that had never truly gone away.
“I… I should go,” Pond said finally, voice low. Careful. He didn’t look back. “Take care, Phuwin.”
“You too…” Phuwin whispered, the words soft, nearly swallowed by the city around them.
But before Pond turned around he said something barely above a whisper but it was something Phuwin could hear from a mile away.
"I still love you, Phuwin."