Chapter Text
Bangkok rose like a mirage — golden spires beside steel skeletons, glass palaces gleaming in the heat, construction cranes perched like birds over half-finished futures. But for Shin, the city had never looked beautiful.
It looked heavy.
He stood by the floor-to-ceiling windows of his penthouse bedroom, watching the city blink to life before dawn. Somewhere below, a siren wailed. A truck roared through the intersection. The world moved, relentless. Just like the empire his family built.
Behind him, a soft snore.
ChingChing, curled like a dumpling in her pink blanket cocoon, her tiny frame lost beneath the duvet. She always crawled into his bed on nights their mother didn’t come home — which was most nights. She never knocked. She didn’t need to. Shin was her safe place. Her brother. Her constant.
He turned and knelt beside the bed, brushing a few strands of hair from her cheek. Her cheeks were warm. A little puffy. She’d been crying again.
“Ten more minutes, okay?” he whispered.
She nodded sleepily. “You’ll walk me to school?”
“Of course,” Shin said. Then, almost without thinking, added, “But you owe me one pancake.”
She smiled, eyes still closed. “With strawberries?”
Shin chuckled under his breath. “And say I’m your favorite brother.”
“You’re my only brother.”
“Exactly.”
Shin’s days were timed to the minute — not by force, but because precision was the only path he knew to victory.
Breakfast was quiet. The table large enough to seat twelve. Their mother’s coffee steamed beside a plate of untouched toast. She was already gone.
The housekeeper cleared it without a word.
The staff didn’t speak much to Shin. Not out of fear — out of reverence. Like he was some glass prince of a ruined dynasty still learning how to wear a crown that somehow fit.
His mother had become a storm in heels. Cold, calculated, precise. Once, she’d hummed love songs while combing ChingChing’s hair. Now she silenced rooms full of politicians, developers, and men who made people disappear.
They called her Iron Widow behind her back. Shin had heard it. Too many times.
None of this would’ve happened if his father hadn’t died.
His father hadn’t been born to legacy. He was just a trusted worker — smart, loyal, fiercely protective — who caught the eye of the heiress he worked for. Everyone had warned her. She’d loved him anyway. Married him for it.
But love, as Shin was learning, didn’t always survive power.
When Shin’s grandfather passed, the board pushed her to step up. She said no. She wanted to live freely, raise her children. So her husband stepped in. And when he died in a car crash with too many unanswered questions — the pressure turned back to her.
They told her to remarry. She smiled. Then took the empire for herself.
From that day on, Shin knew — she would never return to being just his mother.
So he stepped up.
He learned how to boil rice without burning the pot. He took ChingChing to therapy. He taught himself to tie neckties and calm her nightmares. He studied until his back ached, then stayed up to massage her feet after dance class. He became more adult than men three times his age — not out of grief. Out of choice. Quiet, daily, necessary choice. His mother didn’t say ‘I love you’ much anymore. But she once built an entire housing program overnight just so ChingChing’s friend didn’t lose her home. That was her love now — concrete, steel, undeniable
School wasn’t an escape. It was another battlefield.
At Siamwit International School, power wasn’t earned. It was inherited. Everyone knew who Shin Naruebet was. They didn’t fear him. They respected him—not just for his surname, but for his demeanor, his presence, his quiet command. Even in silence, Shin stood out. He could move a room with stillness more than most could with speeches.
Dew and Win flanked him like twin shadows.
Dew was always late. Not because he overslept — because he was up till 3 a.m. chasing a melody that only existed in his head. Everyone called him a genius. But Shin had seen the cracked lips, the coffee-stained fingers, the notebooks full of scribbled lyrics and crossed-out chords.
Dew’s genius wasn’t divine. It was desperate. He wanted to be heard. Really heard.
And Win. The golden boy of finance. Uniform perfect. Socks matching. Always a spreadsheet open. Once predicted a currency crash before the central bank noticed. Everyone called him a prodigy.
No one knew he’d failed 99% of his pocket money in secret. That he cried in the AV room where no one ever looked. That he texted Tu “I miss you” every night but deleted it before sending.
Shin, Dew, Win — they weren’t kings.
They were just boys, burdened with legacies they never asked for, trying not to drown.
One afternoon, Shin sat by the courtyard benches, flipping through practice sheets. ChingChing’s drawing poked out from the last page — a crayon sketch of their family holding hands under a cherry tree. He folded it carefully and slid it into his wallet.
Dew plopped down beside him, sipping overpriced matcha. “You hear about the new guy?”
Win didn’t look up from his laptop. “Scholarship student. Saint something.”
“Saint,” Dew repeated dreamily. “Dumb name. Dumb face. Handsome as hell.”
Shin didn’t react. “Is he smart?”
“Top grades. Placed two years ahead,” Win muttered, typing. “In our year now.”
“He’s good at soccer too,” Dew added, nudging Shin with his knee. “Teachers are already planning his future. You might have competition.”
Shin closed his notebook.
“Let him be the center for a while. Some stars deserved their own sky.”
That night, Shin walked ChingChing home from her piano lesson.
“Do you think... Mom will come for the recital?” she asked.
Shin didn’t answer at first.
“I’ll record it,” he said softly.
“But I want her to see it with her eyes.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her: their mother hadn’t watched a recital since their father died.
He just squeezed her hand tighter.
In the distance, the glass towers blinked like silent guardians. Cold. Tall. Watching.
Shin didn’t flinch from change. He studied it. Learned its rhythm. And something about this boy. Shin didn’t know it yet. But something in the air had shifted.
For the first time in years, he would meet someone he couldn’t outpace — someone worth chasing.
would require a new kind of understanding.