Chapter Text
Putting your trust in someone is hard.
Can you trust your parents? They encourage you when you succeed (even if as Pang, you're not even sure of why and how you succeeded), and care so much about your health that they forget to listen when you say what you want (and if Namtaan's Mae has to put her daughter in a golden cage to keep her safe, maybe she would). They want you to do your best and don't watch when you destroy yourself in the process, only caring about the first places and the trophies you bring back home (as you should yourself, will probably say Punn's father).
Can you trust your teachers? Maybe they are hurting too, crushed by the same system you try to destroy until they became a part of it, a useful tool in the greedy hands of the power in the shadows. Maybe they are behind everything, pulling the strings of everyone like puppets, considering their goals as the only important.
(And maybe if being adults means that you have to choose between being a victim or an instigator, maybe you don't want to become one, even if it's a sucker's game).
Can you trust your friends? You want to, more than anything. You want to take their hand and press it in your own, standing together against the world. But they told you that you have changed, that you don't trust them anymore, and that you lie when you say that you care about them. And even if it's wrong (you care, you care way too much), it's not enough to stop you.
Can you trust yourself? Maybe they're right, and you have changed. Maybe your goals are more important than the others, too. Maybe if given the choice between your future and losing a friend, you choose yourself. Maybe your friends are only pawns in your plan B, the one you knew you will have to use at the end. "I trust you", said Wave at the start of the day, and maybe now he regrets, his hand on his arm where the needle hits him while his potential dies in his veins in the same time of his future. And like Pom stole Non's, you are responsible, and you will never know what would happen if you simply asked. Maybe Wave would have given you all he thinks make him special (and maybe you should have told him, that in your eyes, his potential is the least special about him).
But it's too late, and you're on your knees, watching your future in the face of your enemy, watching what you are becoming in the faces of your friends.
You failed them, and they know it. They should hate you. Maybe they do already, but you can read worry in their faces when they look at you. Maybe it's for you, maybe it's for themselves. None of them move when they can, and it's for the better, you know it: the director's promises only bind those who believe in them. And maybe yours too because you can hear the surprised betrayal in Ohm's voice when he asks about Khun Ladda and the injections.
And you see in Khun Pom another mirror of yourself, another horrible future. His eyes are full of tears in his emotionless face, and you know it's not even the first time he has to hurt this way someone he cares about. You are sorry (and maybe it's not on you to reassure an adult, your teacher, but today it is. Or maybe it's only for you that you say that you are sorry).
All is black, and you forget.
You forget why your heart longs when you watch the gifted students' table and their easy companionship. You forget why everything feels so bland. You forget why the features of the boy you bump into look so familiar.
You forget until you remember. And while you run to your friends, you realize what trust means for you. It's these nine others kids, at night, waiting for you to come back home.