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Tian dies in the sun. Tian dies in the heavy humidity of the longest months, the warm rain a distant sensation against his cheeks.
He dies in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. (Ironic, that.)
Tian dies in a field on a hill with the pull of a smile still lingering on his lips. He dies in someone's arms. (Whose arms? He doesn't remember.) He dies alone. He dies on the floor of a bathroom in a high-end casino, his clammy face pressed against the cool tile.
Tian dies in a fire. He dies in the cold. He slips away in his sleep, in the space between where reality ends and dreams begin. He dies with a gun pressed to his temple. He dies when his heart breaks itself in two from pain. He dies when he looks up from picking up a photograph and sees the two headlights blaring into his face—throws his hands up, flinches back from the glare—darkness. He dies in his mind when he imagines himself falling from Pha Pun Dao cliff. A hand (—whose?—) reaches for him but cannot catch him. The last thing he sees is the stars.
(The stars. The stars. Tian wonders if there are stars where she is now. If she can see them.)
Again and again, Tian dies.
Death is an old friend to him by now. It has lived in his chest for years, kept him company when no-one else would; a constant presence. He cannot muster up the energy to be afraid of it anymore. (And yet.)
He remembers words shouted at him when he was younger. You could have died! Each near miss, he closes his eyes and imagine a universe where the near miss hadn't been a miss at all—where he had not been fast enough, strong enough. A short, sharp instance, a dividing line between what is and what so easily could have been. In the space of a heartbeat, a single moment in time, the flip of a coin, where he could just as easily live or die.
He lives. Every time, he lives. But in his mind thousands of universes spool out from where he stands, and in each one there is a Tian who has not survived—electrocuted as a child, hit by a car age thirteen, unable to get a heart transplant as an adult. All of them, and by some strange twist of fate, he was the one who survived.
Some nights, he dreams of them. He is being buried beneath the weight of his own corpses and he cannot breathe.
‘City boy,' he (who?) had called Tian, when Tian had first arrived (—arrived where?). But he was a city boy, it was no use denying it. He hadn't spent his childhood making kites in the mountains; he'd spent it driving remote control cars and fighting on his computer games and waiting for his politician father to come home.
The first time Tian nearly died—that he remembers, at least—he was five. His nurse had disappeared to make him dinner, and his nintendo was out of charge. He'd tried to plug it in by himself, a task his nurse had always done for him, and been distracted by the shape of the wall socket. Such an innocuous thing, to inspire such lectures from his nurses! He was struck by the sudden desire to explore what precisely it was that was forbidden to him. It struck him that one of his mother's hairpins was the exact right shape and size to fit into one of the holes.
It took him less than three minutes to run, silently, upstairs, and ransack his mother’s drawers for a long metal hairpin just the right length and width for him to slot it, oh so neatly, into the socket.
He pushed the hairpin into one of the holes—felt the brief resistance against his hand as metal met metal. Time contracts. The world (oxymoronically) turns black in a flash of dizzying light.
He sleeps.
That is the first time he wakes up in a hospital bed, surrounded by anxious parents, worriedly chiding him to be careful. Establishing a pattern that will repeat itself throughout his life, his recovery is accompanied by strengthened restrictions; the walls of his childhood castle being built higher than ever. He has proved he cannot be responsible when left to his own devices, cannot take care of himself. Another nurse is hired. His nintendo is confiscated; his trips out are limited. He must submit to the humiliation of having baby protectors fitted over all the sockets in the house. They are not removed until he is eight.
They chide him again, years later, when he wakes up in another hospital bed. They tell him he fainted in a game of badminton. Later, the doctor calls them in and explains that his heart is trying to kill him. He has—not long left. Years, perhaps. If he is lucky.
When they get home, his parents are gentle with him, like they are afraid he is about to shatter into a thousand pieces. One night, though, he cannot sleep. He goes downstairs and finds his mother crying in the living room. Angry, heartbroken tears. Half-delirious, she digs her fingers into his shoulders and asks him, why? Why couldn't he have been more careful? Why does he always make them worry so much? And Tian knows—he knows that she is grieving, that he should be gentle with her, that she doesn't mean it. But he can't, dammit—he is more than just a repository for her grief and pain.
So he asks her if she thinks it's his fault that his heart is trying to kill him. And before she can answer, before she can do anythng but gape in shock, he storms out the front door, one hand already calling up Tul to tell him to get his ass over to the club. To hell with caution. Shouldn't a dead man walking be allowed to enjoy himself?
"A car race," suggests the other man. A smirk plays on his lips. Tian wants to wipe it off his face, force him into humility. He knows he will be unable to control himself against such a man. He'll push himself beyond his limits (too far beyond, this time?) in order to win.
He smiles. "A car race." In his chest, death beats an excited rhythm against his ribcage. Patience, patience. Soon.
But he is a coward, even in this. For all his avowals that he does not fear death—he hesitates. Turns to Tul. "I don't think I can do this, bro." Hands over his keys, heads back inside. Into the warmth.
Tian does not die. Somebody else dies instead.
"Seven months?"
Dr. Nam's voice has risen in—shock? Anger? Around seven months, Tian had told him. It was a lie, of a sort—Tian could have told him it had been exactly six months, three weeks and two days. If there was a clock in the infirmary, he could tell him down to the hour.
Tian had hoped that Pha Pun Dao would be far enough away from the site of his death for him to lose track of how long it had been. No such luck. The beat of the stolen heart in his chest is like a clock, a constant reminder. Tick, tock, you have been living on borrowed time for this many days. This many hours. This many laboured beats.
But Nam wouldn't understand if Tian tried to explain it to him. His mother had not understood. His friends had not understood. I am a dead man walking, Tian wants to scream in all of their faces. You shoved this stolen heart into the chest of a corpse. You have spent a whole lifetime crafting me into the son, the friend, the student you wanted, loading your expectations onto me. But none of you can see that I have been dead for a very, very long time.
So Tian just nods obediently while Nam lectures him on appropriate behaviours seven months after a heart transplant. He has heard it all before. He pays slightly more attention to the threats of being sent back, but there is only so much energy he can muster after this latest brush with death. One more near-miss to add to the list, that's all this is.
Some nights, Tian lies awake staring into the pitch black of his unlit hut and wonders if it's even possible for him to die anymore.
A fire. This one—this most recent in a long line of petty deaths—burns. Acrid smoke crawling into his throat, curling into his lungs beside his stolen heart.
He clutches the kite close to his chest, as if it could save him. (And that in itself is—unexpected. Does he want to be saved? It is—an unfamiliar sensation.)
They say oxygen deprivation can cause visions. He wonders if she will come to him again, in the peace between life and death. Torfun. This time, he will be able to call her name. He wonders if she will blame him for bringing this fire to her beloved Pha Pun Dao, for dying before he could accomplish everything she wanted to achieve. If she will hate him for wasting her heart.
But when he slips into the darkness, there is nothing but velvet silence. Consciousness recedes.
Somewhere far off, the part of his mind that is still connected—tenuously—to his body dimly registers a pair of strong arms pulling him close.
This would not be the worst way to die, a part of him thinks distantly.
And then—nothing.
—And once again, he wakes. No burns. This time there are no physical scars, but when Phupha comes to him he sees the intangible wounds the fire has left instead: a panic, a muted fear that now dwells in his fearless ranger's eyes.
When he was first diagnosed, Tian used to play a game with himself called 'lucky or unlucky'. The rules were simple. He dragged his brain back through every single shitty thing that ever happened to him, every near-miss that he'd survived by the skin of his teeth, and try to work out whether he was unlucky for having it happen in the first place or lucky for managing to survive it. Every time he played, he came out feeling very sorry for himself, which… well. It's not like he had anything better to spend his time on.
He stopped playing the game after the night Torfun died.
They had told him that this new heart was whole and healthy, but it does not feel that way when he casts his gaze around the crowd and sees their anger. And he carefully does not look at the face of the one whose reaction he fears the most. No point, no point. He knows what he will see there.
He has had nightmares about it often enough.
It has been years and years since he started spiralling into the deep, black hole, and still he has not been able to fix himself. But he is tired of things breaking apart in his hands. As he stares at the crowd of villages, stunned into wordless stares by shock and grief and anger, he wonders if maybe he can fix this. If maybe he can manage to put something back together. Play the hero. Save the village.
These people have, over the past few months, begun to reassemble his shattered sense of self. He had given up on himself long ago, but they saw him and refused to let him drown. And he has repaid them with—what? This pain, this betrayal? Guilt is a familiar sensation to him, but never has it felt this all-consuming.
He would walk into the jaws of danger to fix this.
He does.
One more death. As he stands there, gun pressed to his temple, he wonders if this one will be final. No amount of strange luck and borrowed hearts can save him from a bullet through his brain.
Part of him recalls Phupha's expression, the last time he saw him—face set with anger and grief and hatred for Tian—and he wonders if it might not be better if he dies once and for all.
But there is another part of him—larger than it has ever been before—that screams for more.
More—life?
He was so close. He was so close to having everything he never knew he wanted. And yes, maybe he's blown his opportunity—but he'll never know until he tries to fix it. One last time. It isn't over till it's over.
And these bastards—who'd come here and hurt his village and left their legacy of fear—are trying to rip it away from him.
He tries to talk his way out of the hold. Invokes his father's name, as he once swore never to do again. His father's name, that had saved him from certain death last time; five syllables that had bought him a whole new heart. For a moment, he think it has worked—Sakda looks hesitant. And then he laughs. "What do I care who your father is?" he sneers, and Tian almost wants to laugh at the irony of it all. Finally, he got what he wanted—reached a place far enough from Bangkok that his weighty last name no longer holds any meaning. In the forests surrounding Pha Pun Dao, he is just another nobody. He wonders if anyone will know to tell his parents that he has, finally, died.
And then he comes—the Chief, his Phupha, comes to his rescue, and there is worry and not anger in his eyes, and—
The bullet meant for him hits Phupha instead.
Lucky or unlucky? Lucky or unlucky?
Sometimes—often—Tian hates himself.
‘The hardest thing is to forgive yourself,’ Khama tells him. Those words haunt him as he lies in bed in the cabin he has lived in for these past few months and stares at the ceiling as if he can see through it to the stars. Tian wants to brush it off as another cliché—he's heard enough of them ever since that doctor delivered his death sentence three years ago—but he can't, quite. Because—it’s true.
Of course it's hard to forgive yourself when you don't deserve to be forgiven, a part of him whispers.
But another voice—a woman's voice, a voice he has never heard but which sounds so familiar—says: forgive anyway.
It is not instantaneous. He does not even notice a single moment when his world shifts on its axis, a single second he can point to and say: there. That is when things changed. Instead, it is slow—unbearably slow at times. It is made harder by the lack of destination. For the first time in a long time, his days are not a clock ticking down to nothing. Instead, his life is just a slow, long march onward: footstep after heavy step, heartbeat after laboured beat, with no clear end. Life stretches out in front of him, a vista of yawning openness. Once it would have terrified him, or filled him with unimaginable weariness. Perhaps those feelings are still there; perhaps they will never truly leave him. But he is not the same person he once was.
It happens one day while he’s sitting with the children, watching them dig holes for seeds in the garden: he realises with a thrum of quiet surprise that that he’s already begun to forgive himself. Had he noticed himself starting, and looked forward to see the distance he still had to travel, he might not have had the courage to start at all.
But here he is.
One step at a time; one foot in front of the other. Day by day; night by night. He buries himself in his work, in the laughter of the children he cares for and their delight at the sight of the shoots poking their heads through the soil. When Tian walks in the fields and helps with the harvest, he sheds his dark clouds and bad luck and his heavy last name; becomes nothing more than another warm human body among the rest of the villagers on the hills. His demons still eat at him, but he keeps them at bay with thoughts of the man who he has come to love, and the village that man calls his home.
Healing will take time, and effort, and pain—but Tian breathes in the mountain air and thinks, But I want to. I want to heal. For myself. For these people, for this place.
This, the village of his heart, where the sun rises and sets at its own serene pace, and the beat of his heart does not sound like a countdown, but like the beating of wings.
The night before he is going to leave Pha Pun Dao, he stands atop the cliff and feels his borrowed heart—no, his shared heart—throb inside his chest. He welcomes the feeling. It's the pain of living. It is a reminder that he is still—against all the odds—alive.
When he first came to Pha Pun Dao, he used to dream of falling from this cliff. Sometimes he hit the bottom with force and the world turned black around him. Sometimes he kept falling for hours, getting farther and farther away from the sky.
Tian has been dreaming of death for a very long time.
He pictures Torfun standing beside him, smiling. Live, she says gentle, and her gentleness does not grate.
On his other side, there is the warmth of a living human body. Phupha, into whose hands Tian would willingly unload his weary heart. Whose heart he would cup in his own palms in return, and carry around his neck on a thin silver chain. They do not look at each other but stare out over the edge of the cliff into the wide beyond.
Phupha shifts slightly. “It’s dawn,” he says. “Are you ready to go back down?”
Back to Bangkok, he means. Today, Tian leaves. The thought of it sparks a dull ache in his chest, but alongside it there is acceptance, and a small flame of determination. These past few months have taught him patience. They are sending him away, for years, perhaps, but this parting will not be forever. How can it be, after all, when he is leaving so much of himself here?
Tian nods.
Atop this cliff, he can see it all. The forests, the river, the mountains. The wide blue sky, stretching out into infinity. His body feels light. The air is clear here. He feels like he could take flight, like a bird, like a kite.
Tian takes a deep breath—and turns and begins to pick his way down the path, back to his village. It is a long route, and it is not an easy walk. Phupha will take his hand to guide him down the sharper drops, and he will have to stop and rest at times. But that is okay; he has time now. He has all the time in the world.
And this; this is how Tian lives, instead.
Tian lives in summer. Tian lives in the heavy humidity of the longest months, the warm rain a vivid sensation against his cheeks.
He gasps breath after stubborn breath in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.
Tian runs through a field on a hill with the pull of a smile lingering on his lips. He feels most alive in Phupha's arms. He is not alone, but even if he were, he would survive.
Fire warms him. Cold tries to leach the warmth from his fingers, but a pair of large hands takes them and gathers them to their owners' chest; cradles them there against the wind. He lives an entire life, flashing before his eyes, in the moment between the click of the gun's safety and the crack of its trigger—and lives them again when the bullet does not hit. He lives—painfully, acutely—every time his aching, breaking heart throbs in his chest, the dull pain of living. Like it is telling him, look. Here we are. Alive.
He lives in photographs, a trail of them tracking him from his earliest days to his present. Snapped by his mother, his father, Tul, by a forest ranger with tenderness in his eyes. He lives, vicariously, for the young woman who smiles out of the photo frame, whose heart has given him life.
He lives in his village, his home. The space between the earth and the sky, where the stars feel so close he could reach up and touch them. One day—one day, far in the future, he will die there. It will not be a sad death. It will be like laying down to sleep after a busy day, after a life lived to its fullness; a life bursting at the seams.
But that is for the future, for another day. For now: again and again, Tian lives.