Chapter Text
Another day, another grind.
Orm woke before sunrise, as she always did, to the soft buzz of her alarm and the familiar pressure of a day already waiting for her. Her eyes opened not to peace, but to a checklist running quietly in her head. Meetings. Calls. Schedule adjustments. Follow-ups. Traffic estimates. Coffee order. Contingency plans. There was always something to anticipate, something to fix before it turned into a problem.
Not her calendar, technically.
Anne Thong’s.
But after years of managing her boss’s life down to the minute, the distinction had long since blurred. Anne’s appointments shaped Orm’s mornings. Anne’s travel plans dictated Orm’s weekends. Anne’s emergencies became Orm’s emergencies. Somewhere along the line, the job had stopped being something she clocked into and turned into a rhythm that governed her life as surely as breathing did.
And to be fair, it was not something Orm resented.
Anne trusted her. Fully, unequivocally, in the way that only came from years of consistency and competence. That kind of trust was not easily given, and Orm had built her life around proving, day after day, that it had not been misplaced. She took a strange pride in being the person Anne never had to worry about. The one thing in a demanding world that would always be handled.
By the time she arrived at the office that morning, the city had only just begun fully waking up. She stepped into the building with a tray of coffee balanced expertly in one hand, her bag hanging from her shoulder, her expression composed in the way people wore professionalism like armor. The lobby smelled faintly of polished floors, paper, and overworked air-conditioning.
A few familiar greetings met her the moment she entered.
“Morning, Orm.”
“Morning.”
“You’re earlier than usual.”
Orm offered the small, practiced smile of someone who had long mastered warmth in measured doses. These were people she had seen almost every weekday for years now. They knew the shape of one another’s habits. Who liked their coffee too sweet. Who missed lunch when deadlines piled up. Who needed reminding to breathe on bad days. It was not family, not quite, but it was its own kind of ecosystem. Predictable. Efficient. Reliable. A machine made of human routine.
The sort of place where everyone noticed when one cog was even slightly off.
Anne was already in her office by the time Orm reached her floor, which immediately told her the day had shifted off its usual axis. Her boss was rarely this early unless something had changed. Orm set her things down at her desk in quick, practiced motions, slipped her phone beside her iPad, grabbed both along with Anne’s coffee, and headed straight inside.
“Sorry, I’m a few minutes behind,” Orm began the moment she stepped through the door.
Anne looked up from her desk and waved the apology away before Orm could finish.
“I got here early. It’s fine, Orm,” she said, reaching for the coffee as Orm placed it gently within reach. “Andy was restless. Kept pacing around the room at dawn, so I gave up on trying to sleep.”
That drew the faintest softening in Orm’s face.
Andy, Anne’s beloved Border Collie, had been a regular topic in the office for years. On difficult days, Anne spoke of him with the fondness other people reserved for children. Loyal, moody, absurdly intelligent. A constant, cherished presence in her life.
Orm settled into the chair across from Anne and pulled up the schedule for the day. Their routine took over with ease after that. They moved through the morning agenda with the kind of precision that came from doing this together long enough to anticipate each other’s pace. Orm flagged a scheduling conflict before Anne even reached that part of the list. Anne revised a call time. Orm made the note. One meeting had to be pushed, another confirmed, a lunch squeezed between two site visits.
Steady. Orderly. Controlled.
Then Orm’s phone vibrated against the table.
She glanced at the screen, swiped the notification away without reading it, and continued.
Anne was halfway through adjusting a meeting with legal when Orm’s iPad lit up next, the call syncing across both devices. Orm ignored that too, her expression unchanged, her voice even as she asked whether Anne wanted the financial review moved before or after the client briefing.
The phone vibrated again.
And then again.
By the fourth time, Anne stopped mid-sentence and looked at her over the rim of her glasses.
“People don’t call that many times in a row unless it’s urgent,” she said, her tone mild but pointed. Her gaze dropped meaningfully to the phone just as it began ringing once more. “Take it.”
Orm hesitated only a second before standing. “Sorry.”
She stepped out of the office and let the door click shut behind her, sealing the quiet efficiency of the room away from her. The hallway suddenly felt too open, too bright. The phone was still ringing in her hand.
She answered it with the crisp professionalism that had become second nature.
“Hello?”
There was a small pause on the other end, then a voice, polite and clinical.
“Hi. Is this Kornnaphat Sethratanapong?”
“Yes.”
“This is St. King’s Hospital. We have Sirilak Kwong here, and we’ve been trying to contact you to gain consent for a procedure—”
The rest of the sentence blurred.
Orm went completely still.
Not the ordinary stillness of composure. Not the practiced quiet of someone trained to stay collected under pressure. This was something else. A deeper kind of stillness, the kind that happened when the body froze before the mind could catch up.
Sirilak Kwong.
Lingling.
Her ex-wife’s name struck through her like glass.
For a second, the hallway around her lost shape. The sounds of printers, footsteps, distant voices, the hum of the office all seemed to recede until there was nothing left but that name, echoing in the hollow place she had spent three years trying not to touch.
The last time she had seen Ling was under white lights and unbearable silence, seated across from her at a table too small for something as enormous as the end of a marriage. A stack of papers between them. Sign here. Initial there. Final page. Final look.
Three years ago.
Three years since Ling had become someone Orm only carried in memory. Three years since she had forced herself to build a life around not asking where Ling was, how Ling was, whether she was eating properly, sleeping enough, still overworking herself into exhaustion the way she always had. Three years of teaching herself that love, no matter how enduring, could still become irrelevant.
“Khun Kornnaphat?”
The voice on the line pulled her back so abruptly she almost felt dizzy.
“Yes?” Orm said, though it came out quieter than she intended.
“Do we have your consent for the procedure?”
Orm blinked hard, forcing her thoughts into order even as her chest tightened with something old and sharp and unwelcome. A hundred questions surged up all at once.
Why was her name still listed?
Why were they calling her?
What happened to Ling?
How bad was it?
Was she awake?
Was she alone?
“Yes,” Orm said quickly, the word nearly tripping over itself. “Yes, please do it.”
Her free hand curled tightly at her side.
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The call ended, but Orm remained standing in the hallway for a beat too long, the phone still pressed to her ear, her pulse suddenly loud in the silence.
Then she lowered it and stared ahead, unseeing.
After all this time, after all the effort it had taken to build distance where love had once lived, Ling had returned to her life in the form of a hospital call and a question only family was usually asked.
And that, more than anything, was what shook her.
Because somewhere in the wreckage of the years between them, Ling had never removed her name.
Days passed, and Ling still did not wake up.
On the first day, the doctors had sat Orm down and walked her through the extent of Ling’s injuries with the practiced calm of people who had delivered bad news often enough to know how to soften it without making it any less real. A dislocated shoulder. A badly bruised back. One cracked rib. Bruises scattered across her body from the impact of the crash, deep and ugly beneath the skin. Her head had taken a hit too, enough to keep her unconscious longer than anyone was comfortable with, though they kept repeating that her scans could have looked much worse.
Lucky, they had said.
You’re very lucky.
Ling is very lucky.
Orm had sat there listening with her hands locked tightly in her lap, nodding at the right moments, asking the practical questions because someone had to. How long would recovery take. What medications were they giving her. Was there swelling. Was surgery necessary. What signs should they watch for. She listened, absorbed, signed, consented.
Lucky.
The word had felt almost offensive in the face of Ling lying motionless in a hospital bed, skin mottled with bruising, shoulder strapped into place, lips dry, body made still by pain and sedation. Lucky was such a flimsy little word for survival. It did not account for the violence it took to get there.
Still, Orm clung to it because the alternative was too unbearable.
The first two days, she stayed as much as she could.
She took leave from work, which in itself felt unnatural, as if stepping away from Anne’s orbit for even forty-eight hours disrupted some larger order. But even then, work did not really release her. It never fully had. Not in years.
Pat, her reliever, called so often during those two days that Orm eventually stopped silencing her phone.
At first it was tentative.
“P’Orm, sorry, just one question. Ms. Anne’s ten o’clock, do I move it or ask legal if they can shorten the briefing?”
Then more frantic.
“P’Orm, she wants the investor call moved but operations says they can only do eleven-thirty. Should I bump lunch or the site visit?”
Then full-blown panic.
“P’Orm, I’m so sorry, I know you’re at the hospital, but who do I call if the Singapore team asks for a reschedule? And Ms. Anne is asking if you already sent the revised deck to finance and I can’t find the file version with your notes.”
Even sitting beside Ling’s bed, Orm found herself answering in a low voice, one eye on her phone, one eye on the still figure in front of her. She knew the system too well. Knew Anne’s preferences, the order of importance, the hidden pressure points in every schedule. She had long ago accepted that she was not built into her job in a way that could be easily unplugged. Hands-off was a fantasy she had stopped entertaining years ago.
By the third day, work had called her back in full.
So Orm settled into a rhythm she hated almost immediately.
Office in the morning. Hospital after work. Home only when exhaustion finally cornered her into it.
Every evening she arrived with the same quiet hope pressing against her ribs, only to be met by the same stillness. Machines humming softly. Hospital lights too bright for comfort. Ling asleep, unmoving except for the rise and fall of her breathing.
Orm told herself she was only there because there was no one else. Because she had been listed as the emergency contact. Because any decent person would see it through. Because someone had to be there when the doctors came around with updates.
She did not let herself examine how flimsy those excuses sounded in the privacy of her own head.
On the fifth day, she came straight from work, her body heavy with the drag of an overlong day. Her blouse still smelled faintly of outside heat and office air-conditioning, her shoulders tight from tension that had nowhere to go. She barely looked up as she stepped into Ling’s room, already reaching into her bag for the folder the nurse had asked her to bring back signed.
Then she froze.
Ling was awake.
Not groggy. Not barely stirring. Awake.
And smiling at her.
For one suspended second, Orm forgot how to breathe.
That smile.
God.
That smile.
Open, warm, unguarded in a way that hit Orm like something physical. It had been years since she had seen that expression directed at her without hesitation, without walls, without the carefully measured distance that had come to define everything between them by the end. But here it was now, soft and bright despite the bruising on Ling’s face, despite the hospital gown, despite the pain that must have been threaded through every inch of her body.
She looked at Orm as if seeing her was the easiest thing in the world.
As if there was no history sharp enough to cut between them.
As if love had not once curdled into silence and signatures and a life split cleanly in two.
Orm stood by the doorway, unable to move for a moment, her fingers still curled around the strap of her bag.
Ling’s smile widened, small but real, like she had been waiting.
Before Orm could even begin to gather herself, a nurse appeared at the door behind her.
“Ms. Sethratanapong?” the nurse asked gently. “The doctor would like a word.”
Orm tore her eyes away from Ling with effort and followed the nurse down the hall, her pulse already beginning to pound with a fresh kind of dread.
Inside the doctor’s office, the explanation came in careful language, clinical and calm, as if the neatness of the words might make them easier to accept.
Post-traumatic amnesia.
Memory disruption following head trauma.
No, they could not yet say how permanent it was.
No, they could not predict exactly what would return or when.
Yes, there was a specific period affected.
The doctor folded their hands together on the desk and delivered the part that made the room tilt.
Ling had lost the last ten years of her life.
Ten years.
Orm heard the number, but it did not settle cleanly in her mind. It struck, echoed, fractured into pieces that kept hitting her from different angles.
Ten years.
Ten fucking years.
It repeated in her head with a numb, terrible clarity.
Ten years ago was when they met.
Ten years ago was before the marriage. Before their shared apartment and shared bills and whispered plans late at night. Before the grief. Before the wanting. Before the trying. Before the heartbreak. Before the long silences that started swallowing whole evenings. Before the way Orm learned to hate the look on Ling’s face because she could never tell if it was sorrow or disappointment or both. Before the divorce papers. Before three years of teaching herself to live alone again.
If Ling had lost the last ten years, then what remained?
Orm sat there, her body rigid, the doctor’s voice continuing with details she only half absorbed.
Monitor her for confusion. Avoid overwhelming her. Keep the environment calm. Do not force memory recall. Let recognition come naturally.
Recognition.
That word caught and held.
Because suddenly there was only one question in her mind, louder than every other instruction, louder than reason, louder than fear.
Did Ling remember her?
Not the woman standing at her hospital bed now, worn down by years and grief and restraint.
But her.
The Orm from ten years ago. The one Ling first fell in love with.
And somehow that possibility felt more terrifying than if Ling had forgotten her entirely.
Because if Ling only remembered the beginning, then Orm would have to stand in front of a version of Ling that still belonged to hope.
And Orm no longer knew what to do with hope when it wore Ling’s face.
Flashback - 10 years ago
Ling stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the building that was, for the first time in her life, hers.
Well, rented hers, but still.
It was not brand new. The paint on the exterior had already dulled in places, and the balconies had the slightly worn look of a building that had seen enough tenants come and go to collect stories in its walls. But to Ling, it looked perfect. More than perfect, actually. It looked like the kind of place people ended up in only after they had already made it. Not the kind of place someone like her stumbled into by sheer stubbornness, luck, and a dozen late nights spent recalculating a budget spreadsheet.
Yet here she was.
A few minutes from work. Close enough that she would not have to drag herself through a punishing commute every morning. There was a grocery store nearby, a couple of decent restaurants, a church within walking distance for Sunday mass, and across the street, a small park where she could bring Tofu in the mornings or after long days when both of them needed air. It was central without being chaotic, convenient without feeling soulless.
A gem.
That was the only word for it.
And somehow, by some miracle that still felt suspiciously fragile, it had fallen within her budget.
Ling let out a slow breath and stared at the building a second longer, as though if she looked away too fast, it might disappear and reveal itself to have been some administrative mistake. Her chest felt strangely full. Not quite happiness, not yet. Something quieter. Relief, maybe. Pride. The fragile beginning of a life that felt like it belonged to her.
At her feet, Tofu lay sprawled on the sidewalk like a dog with absolutely nowhere to be, his golden fur catching the light, his tongue hanging out in dramatic exhaustion. He looked entirely unbothered, as if finding the apartment had been his accomplishment all along.
Ling glanced down and smiled.
“What?” she asked, one hand resting on her hip. “You’re the one who made me walk around three extra blocks because you needed to sniff one specific plant.”
Tofu blinked up at her with that shameless, sweet-faced expression only golden retrievers could pull off.
Her smile softened.
“Do you want some water?”
That got an immediate response.
Tofu perked up at once, lifting his head and pushing himself up with sudden enthusiasm, tail giving a hopeful wag against the pavement. Ling laughed under her breath and crouched down, pulling out his collapsible dish from her tote bag. She popped it open with practiced ease, unscrewed her water bottle, and poured.
“There,” she murmured. “At least one of us is handling this move well.”
Tofu immediately lowered his head and began drinking like he had spent the last three days wandering the desert instead of standing dramatically on one sidewalk in the city.
Ling stayed crouched there a moment longer, scratching lightly behind his ear while she talked to him the way people only talked to dogs and babies.
“You better appreciate this place, okay? This is a nice building. Nice location. Nice park. I worked hard for this. So no embarrassing me in front of the neighbors.”
Tofu, predictably, offered no guarantees.
She was still bent over him, half-laughing to herself, when someone crashed into her shoulder hard enough to throw her off balance.
“Oh!”
Ling caught herself with one hand on the pavement just as a sharp little surprised yap cut through the air.
She looked up, startled, and found herself face to face with a woman glaring at her like Ling had personally ruined her day.
The stranger was around her height, maybe a little taller, younger-looking, and very clearly irritated. She had a small dog straining at the leash in one hand and an expression on her face that suggested patience was not one of her spiritual gifts. But it was her eyes that caught Ling first, even before the attitude fully registered. Amber. Sharp, warm-colored, and annoyingly beautiful on someone glaring at her like it was her fault.
The woman gave her a once-over and said, with all the grace of a slap, “Don’t stop in the middle of the sidewalk like some homeless person. Geez. It’s a sidewalk, people generally walk on it.”
Ling straightened immediately.
The warmth she had been feeling about the building a second ago vanished so fast it was almost impressive.
“Me?” she shot back, disbelief sharpening her voice. “The sidewalk is huge. I was just giving my dog water.”
She gestured pointedly toward Tofu, who had not only resumed drinking, but now had company because apparently the stranger’s tiny dog had taken one look at Tofu’s water dish and decided communal hydration was the way forward.
“And clearly,” Ling added, eyebrows lifting as she watched the smaller dog happily lapping away beside Tofu, “your dog is thirsty too.”
The woman turned so fast she nearly tangled herself in the leash.
“Uni!” she called, scandalized. “Don’t share water with animals you don’t know.”
Ling stared.
Then she looked at Tofu, who had somehow allowed this complete stranger’s dog to join him without so much as a protest.
“Tofu,” she said, deeply offended on principle now, “come on, man. Guard your water, for goodness’ sake.”
Tofu glanced up at her for half a second, entirely useless, then went back to drinking shoulder to shoulder with his new friend like he believed in open borders and mutual aid.
The stranger muttered something under her breath, bent to scoop up her little dog, and straightened with the kind of clipped annoyance that made it very clear she considered this entire encounter a waste of her time. Without another word, she turned and started walking away.
Ling stared after her, dumbfounded for a beat, before the indignation finally caught up.
“I’m sorry would’ve been nice!” she called after her.
The stranger paused.
For one glorious second, Ling thought maybe the woman had found a scrap of decency somewhere deep inside herself.
Instead, the woman only turned her head slightly, one eyebrow lifting as if Ling were the unreasonable one here.
Then she kept walking.
Ling gaped at her retreating back.
The audacity.
The absolute audacity.
She stood there in the middle of the sidewalk, tote bag hanging from her shoulder, one hand still gripping the half-empty water bottle, while Tofu sat down beside her with a happy pant like he had just made a lifelong friend and not participated in social betrayal.
“Well,” Ling muttered, shaking her head. “So much for a good first day.”
Tofu thumped his tail once against her leg, which she chose to interpret as useless emotional support.
Ling huffed, crouched to pack away the dog dish, and forced herself to focus on the more important things. The apartment. The move. The new chapter. The fact that she had done this on her own. One rude stranger with an attitude problem and an equally shameless dog was not about to ruin that for her.
And yet, hours later, after she had brought the last of her bags upstairs, after she had arranged Tofu’s bed by the corner of the living room, after she had stood by the window trying to imagine the shape of a life she could build here, Ling still found herself thinking about amber eyes and a voice sharp enough to leave a mark.
Not because the woman had been kind.
God, no.
She had been insufferable.
Rude. Abrupt. Needlessly pretty for someone so irritating.
And still, for reasons Ling found deeply annoying, that brief encounter stayed with her longer than it should have.
By evening, she could no longer remember the exact outfit the stranger had been wearing.
But she remembered her eyes.
Those impossible beautiful amber eyes.