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“Khun Yai…” Jom’s voice is quiet, tinged with heartbreaking acceptance. “I think it’s time I have to go.”
Jom’s body — the one that Yai has held, kissed, cherished — is scarcely a ghostly outline now, fading before him into delicate wisps of an extinguished candle.
“Jom, don’t say this!” He goes to grab Jom’s hand; it’s like trying to hold onto water from a rushing stream.
Jom presses on, knowing that they can’t afford to waste a precious second.
“Even when I’m gone, you— you’ve got to enjoy your life to the fullest.”
Yai’s mind spins, desperate to think of a last-ditch solution to keep his love from disappearing and ripping out his heart as he goes.
“How could I live, Jom?” he cries. “I love you so much. Don’t go. Stay with me, right here. Please, Jom.”
“Even if we didn’t part today, we still would have to be separated someday, be it in life or by death,” Jom says softly, laying his hand over Yai’s heart. “Nothing lasts forever, Khun Yai.”
It’s an undeniable truth that sounds more like a stinging platitude in the moment.
Yai shakes his head, refusing to accept the inevitable. “My Jom. I need you. I—“
“Don’t worry,” Jom says. “I’ve promised you that I will wait for you at the House of Palathip. If everything that would happen weren’t too bad, I would wait for you right there.”
Yai’s mouth quivers, the first errant tears sliding down his cheeks.
“I love you, Khun Yai,” Jom says, taking the other boy’s face in his hands. “I’m about to go. Please smile for me.”
Yai tries — he really does — but the tears flow nonetheless.
How can this be how our story ends?
Jom lightly swipes his thumbs over Yai’s tear-marked skin.
“I love you very much,” Jom whispers, his fragile composure breaking at last with a trembling sob. “I hope we will meet each other again.”
Vision blurred, Yai pulls Jom to him for a hug, gripping his shirt, white-knuckled, in a foolish attempt to alter the course of fate.
He feels Jom’s hands on his back and the whisper of a kiss as Jom brushes his lips against his cheek.
There is a gust of wind and the floral sweetness of the plumeria blossoms flood Yai’s senses.
The familiar scent soothes Yai’s heart and he inhales the perfumed air and tightens his arms around Jom’s vanishing form.
But then the wind dies down and Yai suddenly pitches forward, realizing in a moment of delayed horror that his anchor is gone.
“Jom? Jom! Jom!” Yai whirls around, but there is only stillness to greet him.
Yai takes an unsteady step backward and crumples to the ground, distraught. He continues to call out for his beloved until his throat aches. It’s no use.
Jom is no longer in his world, and any trace of his existence now resides solely within Yai’s memory and the walls of the House of Palathip.