Work Text:
--
Rose is at her mothers’ bubble tea cart at the markets, yawning and struggling to stay awake, when she hears two aunties gossiping as they walk past.
“--ust moved into that empty house on the edge of the village. Saw them out the front--”
Rose frowns and looks down at her history homework. That house has sat empty for as long as she can remember, and now somebody has moved in?
*
Three days pass and Rose hears nothing further about the new tenants of the ghost house, as the kids of the village have christened it, for no reason other than it’s been vacant for so long. People don’t tend to relocate to their village, they leave it and never return.
She’s making a batch of pearls one afternoon, when two boys come to her cart.
“Sawadee,” she hears, and looks up. Her jaw drops.
Standing there are two of the prettiest boys she’s ever seen in her life. They’re impossibly tall and fair-- the one on the left in a gaudy pineapple printed shirt, while the other boy is in a pressed white shirt and dress pants, and pale like he doesn’t ever go outside.
He seems out of place.
They both do.
“Can we get two boba please?” the fancy one asks in a soft, well spoken voice. She gulps and nods, and moves to make them their drinks.
They make her nervous and she’s not sure why.
“What’s your name?” Pineapple Shirt asks. Neither of them are from here, because if they were they’d know her, just like everyone else in this place knows each other. These are definitely the new arrivals.
“R-Rose,” she stammers out, managing to get the pearls and ice in the cup, picking up the ladle and praying she doesn’t splash the tea mixture everywhere.
“Rose, nice to meet you. I’m Palm. This is Neungdiao.”
What a strange name-- Nuengdiao. Only one. She nods and gives them a half wai, her hands full, and hurries through making their drinks and seals them, putting them in separate bags. She points at the cup near the register full of straws. “Pick your colour,” she says.
Neungdiao leans forwards and smiles, reaching for the yellow one, while Palm picks a green one. Palm’s looking around and Neungdiao reaches for his wallet, and Rose swallows hard as she watches him open it.
There’s a huge amount of money in there, more than she’s ever seen in her life-- maybe enough to buy a house-- and watches as he pulls some notes out and hands them over. She goes to offer change and he waves his hand. “Keep it. Have a good day.”
She watches as Neungdiao puts a hand low on Palm’s back and they continue on, stopping at one of the vegetable vendors.
It isn’t until much later that she realises why she chewed her thumb nail down to the quick, feeling uneasy all day-- because when Neungdiao touched Palm, his shirt rode up a little and she saw the flash of a black handle.
A gun.
*
Over the next two weeks, Rose sees Neungdiao (who becomes Nueng after their second meeting) and Palm every other day. They come to the market to get boba and food-- sometimes Palm will see a little trinket or piece of clothing he likes. Neung always dresses like he’s going to a fancy corporate job, and Palm is in a different printed shirt each day, but they’re always together. She’s yet to see either of them alone.
Even the few times she’s snuck to the edge of the village to spy on them, they’re working on the house together.
It looks completely different now. They’ve cleared all the debris, rotten fruit, and overgrown tangle from the front, weeded and chopped, the fence that drunkenly swayed in the wind is completely repaired and painted a deep green now. The trees have been trimmed back, the windows have been repaired, and they were up on the roof yesterday.
It’s a hot day, the sun beating down overhead relentlessly, and Rose knows they’re probably on the roof again. She bites her lip and wonders if her mother will mind too much if she takes them boba. She thinks she’s got about fifteen backed up from the excess money Neung gives her every time, like a loyalty credit.
So she makes them their drinks, grabbing a few water bottles as well, swings past Sis Je and gets them some skewers, and makes her way to their home.
Hm, she wonders, when did I stop thinking of it as the ghost house and start thinking of it as their home?
When she arrives, Palm is on the roof while Neung hoists up tiles, to fix a hole they’d covered in plastic.
Neung sees her first and smiles, waving. “Hi!”
She doesn’t risk waving since her hands are full, but she nods and smiles and enters their property, coming to stand next to Neung. “I thought you might want some food and drink,” she says shyly, holding out the boba and the bag full of skewers.
“Oh, wow. Thank you! Palm, come down! Rose bought us lunch!”
Palm peers over the side and smiles, all teeth, his eyes crinkling. Rose feels her heart flutter a little, as he waves and moves to the ladder propped against the side of the house, making his way down. He’s in a singlet and shorts, barefoot, covered in dirt, with smears on his arms and legs. “I’ll just wash my hands,” he says, going inside. Neung sips at the tea and sighs happily, fishing in for a skewer and eating half of it in one go.
“How much do I owe you?” he asks, and she waves a hand.
“I could buy you ten more meals and still have money left, it’s fine,” she says. Neung frowns and she waves a hand again, sipping her own tea and smiling.
They sit down on chairs in the shade of one of their trees once Palm has cleaned himself up and returned, and she asks how the repairs are going.
“It’s nice to be working with my hands again,” Palm says.
Neung looks down at his own hands, and Rose does too. She can tell this boy comes from riches, probably has never done a day’s labour in his entire life, whereas Palm… Palm’s definitely worked hard. His body is lithe but strong, his arms and back developed. Maybe he was a labourer, or worked on the boats. She’ll probably never find out. The only information she knows about them is their names, how they take their boba, and that Neung is allergic to nuts but not enough to stop him eating satay-- he just deals with the hives.
“Do you have much more to do?” she asks instead, because it seems safer. Neung squints up at the roof.
“Once we fix the roof, which will probably take the rest of the week… we need to paint inside, most of the walls are in decent shape. I want to retile the kitchen as well. Get new fans in each room. The air conditioner needs a service as well,” he says.
Palm sighs and pretends like he’s taking notes, which makes Rose giggle, and he grins at her. He’s cheeky, his default expression a smile. Rose looks at Neung, about to make a joke, and stops when she sees him gazing at Palm.
It makes her chest hurt, how he looks at Palm, like he’s the only thing in the world. It feels like she’s witnessed something Neung wouldn’t have wanted her to see just yet, so she averts her eyes instead, looking at her phone.
Ah, she thinks. I wonder if Palm knows how much Neung loves him?
*
A month goes by and Rose is struggling with her English homework one afternoon, when Palm and Neung visit her cart.
Neung looks at her homework and points out her errors. Her jaw drops. “You know English?”
He opens his mouth and says something, something she only catches one or two words of, but it sounds like he’s fluent. “Please be our English teacher at school! Ours retired last year and the ones that are left are filling in but they have no idea what they’re doing!” Rose begs.
Neung looks at Palm, who nudges him with his shoulder. “We have to wait for the tile, the new fans and air conditioner to be shipped in, so work on the house has stopped. Why not?”
So that’s how Neung becomes a teacher at their tiny school in the next village over. There’s not enough kids for a separate high school, so they’re all in the same place, and his interview with the principal lasts all of five minutes. Rose waits in the corridor and Neung comes out, looking shocked. He’s dressed in a pressed white shirt, blue slacks and shined black shoes, his hair slicked back, and Rose knows the principal would’ve been won over on that alone.
“What’s wrong, did she say no?” Rose worries at the hem of her school shirt, standing closer than she usually would. Neung shakes his head.
“No, she was very impressed. Um, it looks like I’ll be taking a few classes…” he trails off.
Rose frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I’ll be doing English… and Maths and History. I’ve only just finished high school, I didn’t start university. I don’t know how I’m qualified to teach...” Neung trails off. Rose flaps her hand.
“Ne, ne, it’ll be fine. You can’t be any worse than the teachers already here. And we’ve got the syllabus from the government, just follow that!”
Neung doesn’t look appeased in the slightest, but Rose is happy because it means she’ll get to see him every day now, since she’s taking all of those classes.
Sure enough, Neung quickly becomes the most popular teacher in their school.
His style, once he figures it out, is direct and neat, but he explains things thoroughly and the results speak for themselves, when all the students in his classes start passing their tests with flying colours.
Palm visits him every day as well, bringing him lunch, and after a few days the principal asks him if he wants a job tending to the school-- landscaping, repairs, Mr. Fix It, they call him. Palm shrugs and says he doesn’t mind, he’s getting bored at home since Neung is at school now, and it’d be nice to see Rose more often.
So then they’re both working there, and Palm starts taking the kids for physical education when one of the teachers falls sick, playing basketball and soccer and handball with them at lunch, which then becomes a permanent arrangement, between fixing things and patching walls and installing fans, painting and tending, weeding and planting.
Somehow, these two strangers had integrated themselves in their village, filling holes it seemed like they were destined to be part of.
And yet, Rose still knows nothing about them.
*
“You’ve never asked why we’re here,” Palm says on the night of Loi Krathong.
Their village puts on a decent show, and they’re at the lake with everyone else. Rose had only come because one of the boys she has a crush on is there, but he’s been ignoring her for the last hour to speak with his friends, so she’s annoyed. Palm’s nicer to look at anyway.
Neung is helping one of his students fix their offering, smiling as he shows how to weave the strands properly.
“It’s not my business,” she says, even though she’s dying to know. It’s been over two months since they moved here in the middle of the night and set up in the ghost house. The ghost house that’s now sparkling and new, with a huge vegetable garden out front that Neung personally tends to, while Palm creates new projects out the back, upgrading parts of their house for weeks at a time, coming to school with speckles of paint on his arms and smudges on his cheeks. Both of them look happier and more fulfilled than ever, though.
“We’re from Bangkok,” Palm says. Rose hums. She assumed as much. But somehow that doesn’t feel right either.
“You might have come from Bangkok but you’re not from there,” she says slowly.
Palm nods. “Mm. I’m from somewhere else. A fishing village. Somewhere not too unlike here. I think it’s why I feel so comfortable.”
That makes more sense. “How did you end up in Bangkok?” she asks.
“My father… worked for Neung’s family. He asked me to join him in my last year of school. Asked me to attend school with Neung, and work with him.”
The story begins to unfold, and Rose nods. He was a companion, then. Neung’s family must have as much money as the King himself.
“Did you like living in Bangkok?” she asks instead.
Palm shrugs. “It was alright. School was okay. They had a big house, with a nice pool, so I got to swim a lot. It was suffocating though, getting used to all the rules and expectations.” Palm’s expression becomes tight, and Rose wonders if he’ll kill the conversation.
“So that’s why you both left?”
Palm nods. “A lot of bad things happened. Some things we will never be able to apologise for. Some things we don’t want to apologise for. So we left. It’s been a process. Neung is handling it pretty well though. I thought he’d struggle, having grown up with that kind of wealth and coming to… live a more simple life.”
“He seems happy,” she says. Palm smiles.
“I hope so. We closed our eyes and pointed at a map of Thailand and landed here. Neither of us had made it this far before. But we got into the truck and drove, stopping in little villages on the way. We wanted somewhere to start over,” Palm says.
Rose sighs and wrings her fingers. They’re sitting final exams soon and waiting on their university scores. Before meeting Palm and Nueng, she had resigned herself to life in the village forever, getting paired with some boy she didn’t really like, popping out a few kids and running the boba stall forever like her mother.
But both of them were very insistent on their students being focussed and getting good enough scores for scholarships and university in distant cities. “You all have the potential for greatness, and you should all strive for the best,” was Nueng’s catchphrase, one he uttered in every class until the kids started making fun of him for it, but it stuck. Their scores climbed and now Rose feels confident she’ll do well enough to get into university in Chiang Mai. She wants to be a teacher. She wants to see the world.
Nueng appears, holding an offering, and smiles down at Palm. “Do you want to--” he starts, and Palm’s up and taking his hand, tugging him toward the lake before he can finish. Nueng laughs, but follows easily, and Rose pulls out her phone and snaps some pictures. It’s a beautiful sight, seeing them set their offering in the lake and hold each other, illuminated by candlelight and the stars.
She doesn’t think she’ll ever get the full story of them, and somehow, it doesn’t bother her anymore. The gifts they’ve given her, of friendship and education and stories and time, are more than enough.
Nueng wraps an arm around Palm and kisses him, pressing his forehead against Palm’s, holding him tight.
EPILOGUE
Rose coughs as the truck drops her at the edge of the village, the day overcast and gloomy. It’s cool, cold enough for her to have a jacket on, and her backpack somehow seems both too heavy and not heavy enough for the time she’s planning on being back here.
It’s been four years since she left, moving to Chiang Mai to complete her degree, staying on campus. She worked two jobs as well while she was there, sending money to her mother back in the village, enough so she could upgrade her boba cart and make some improvements on the house, and get a new scooter eventually. It makes her happy to provide, to ease the way.
She’s not sure what she’s expecting or what will greet her, but as she walks it’s all still the same. The aunties wave to her and descend on her, pinching her cheeks and stroking her hair, making her show them her degree. She calls into her old home and drops off her things, smiling at the freshly painted walls and new fans, the scooter out the front. Her mother cries when she sees her and hugs her tight, a frame ready for her degree, to sit in pride of place in the main room.
“Are…” Rose starts, but she’s not sure she wants to finish asking.
Truth be told, once she left for university, she didn’t speak to anyone back home, bar writing the occasional letter to her mother. Between her jobs and keeping her grades up for school, she was exhausted and so time poor, that the years flew past. But the idea of Palm and Nueng not being here is enough to make her chest hurt.
“The boys are at home, school’s done for the day,” her mother says, smoothing her hair down and patting her arm.
Hands in her pockets, Rose wanders on, smiling and waving, before she hits the edge of the village and smiles.
There the ghost house sits, but there’s been significant work undertaken. It looks like they’ve added on two more rooms, and an upper floor now. The front yard is almost overtaken with the vegetable patch, but it’s neatly bound and kept, and the other side bursts with flowers of all sorts of colours, trees overhanging the property.
She opens the gate and walks through, knocking on the door. Hearing footsteps the door swings open and there’s Palm, somehow looking the same as the day she left. He’s definitely matured in the face, his jaw sharper, cheeks less rounded, his body more solid and muscled now, but still in that damn pineapple shirt.
“...Rose?” he says, and she starts to cry. He hugs her tight, rubbing her back, calling for Nueng. She looks over Palm’s shoulder and there’s Nueng, his hair now cut short, in shorts and a polo, looking concerned.
“Hi phi,” she manages to get out, hugging them both close.
Once she calms down enough, Nueng brings her tea and they sit in their living room, and she sinks into their incredibly comfortable couch and hugs a large pillow to her.
“Are you back for good?” Palm asks, as Nueng sits on the edge of his chair, and his arm comes to wrap around Nueng’s waist, so thoughtlessly. Rose can’t help but smile.
“I’ve got my teaching degree. Thought I’d come teach at the school for a few years, do some good in the village. Give back to the teachers that pushed me to be the best,” she says. Nueng snorts and shakes his head.
“I’m the principal now, she retired the year after you left. Almost had a heart attack when all her seniors got into universities with scholarships. She said I was more qualified to take the school than she ever was.”
Palm smiles up at him, squeezing his hip. “I teach a few classes now, still fixing things up around the village.”
“That’s good. I’m so happy you both ended up here,” she says, nodding. Palm nods back.
“We are too. We’re both at peace now, finally,” Nueng says, raking a hand through Palm’s hair.
“I’m glad,” she says, sipping her tea.
She heads back home a while later, after she’s exhausted herself with stories of university, finding out that both of them finished teaching degrees at online distance schools, just so in case they’re ever audited by the government they can at least say they’ve got the minimum of requirements to be shaping young minds.
Lying in bed, listening to the sounds of the village and the wild around her, she smiles as she thinks of Palm and Nueng, arriving in the dead of night and taking over the ghost house, now completely entrenched in their lives and happy together. She hopes she can get that too.