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Lifetime (Reimagined)- Ben&Ben
The rain in Bangkok didn’t just fall: it reclaimed the city. It had been pouring since they left the studio. It made everything feel quiet and far away. For Keng, the sound was a trigger. Most people hear the rain and think of traffic or ruined plans. Keng heard the rain and heard the weeping of a thousand years. It was a frequency that tuned his mind to things he was supposed to have forgotten.
Beside him, Namping is leaning against the tinted window. He had fallen asleep somewhere between the studio and the turn onto the main road. His head is pillowed against the cool glass, his mouth slightly open, and a lock of hair falling over his eyes. In the glow of passing streetlights, Namping looked fragile, as if he were made of moonlight itself.
Keng reached out, his hand trembling slightly. He brushed the hair away from Namping’s forehead. His touch was light and just a ghost of a gesture. Namping didn’t wake. He only sighed, his breathing deep and even.
You don’t remember, Keng thought. A familiar, hollow ache opening up in his chest. You get to sleep. You get to live without the weight I’ve carried.
Keng closed his eyes, leaning his head back. He tried to focus on the hum of the air conditioner, but the smell outside was too strong. It pulled him back. It always pulled him back to the beginning.
The world was younger then, and the gods still walked among the mortal realm.
Phuchagin was a creature of scales and ancient power. He was a Nagaraja, a serpentine deity of immense power, the lord of the deep currents. Capable of shifting his form into that of a man with skin the color of polished bronze and eyes that held the depths of the sea. To humans, he was a legend, a bringer of rain or a taker of souls. To himself, he was simply eternal. He spent centuries in the cold and silent palaces beneath the riverbed, guarding stones that held the light of dead stars.
One evening, bored by the silence of the water, he rose to the surface. He shifted his form, his coils folding into the shape of a man. He stood on the muddy bank.
That was when he saw him.
A boy was sitting on a fallen log, his feet splashing in the water. He was small and thin, wearing nothing but a faded wrap around his waist. He was holding a flute made of a hollowed reed, playing a melody that was clumsy, simple, and heartbreakingly beautiful.
Phuchagin should have turned away. The lives of mortals were like the bubbles that rose from the riverbed—brief, translucent, and destined to pop. But the boy turned and smiled. It wasn't a smile of a devotee seeing a god. It was the smile of a child seeing a friend.
"You’re new," the boy said, his voice as clear as a bell. "Did you come from the village upstream? The fish haven't been there either, have they?"
Phuchagin sat on the mud, unbothered by the grime. "I am not from the village."
"A traveler then," the boy decided, nodding to himself. "I’m nobody. The elders say I was found in a basket after a flood. I just live here. The river feeds me."
"The river is dangerous," Phuchagin warned, his voice a low rumble that made the water ripple.
The boy laughed, a sound that Phuchagin wanted to capture and keep in a jar of jade. "The river is my mother. Why would she hurt me?"
For a year, the God and the nameless boy met every evening. Phuchagin brought him things. Pearls, gold coins from sunken kingdoms, and smooth emeralds. The boy didn't care for their value. He used the gold coins to skip across the water and tied the pearls to his flute because he liked the way they clinked.
"What is your name, Great One?" the boy asked one night as they watched the fireflies.
"Phuchagin."
"I wish I had a name," the boy sighed, leaning his head on the Naga’s shoulder. "Then you could call for me when you come."
"I don't need a name to find you," Phuchagin whispered. "I know the rhythm of your heart. It’s the only sound I listen for."
But the village was a place of fear. They saw the boy’s treasures. They saw the giant shadow that moved beneath the water when he sat on the bank. They decided the boy was a witch, a consort of a demon who was stealing the river’s bounty. When a sudden fever swept through the huts, killing the infants, the elders demanded a sacrifice to appease the spirits.
Phuchagin had been called to the underwater courts to settle a dispute between the serpent clans. He was gone for three days. Only three days.
When he broke the surface on the fourth day, he smelled it. The scent of charred wood. The scent of burning hair.
He didn't walk this time. He rose from the river in his true form, a towering serpent of black and gold, his hood spreading wide enough to block the sun. He roared, a sound that cracked the earth.
In the center of the village, a pyre had been built. The boy was tied to the stake. The fire had already finished its work. The boy was a small, blackened husk amidst the embers. He had died screaming for a god who wasn't there.
He slithered into the ruin. With a surprisingly delicate movement, he nudged the boy’s remains free from the stake, carrying him away from the wood. Only then did he turn his gaze toward the villagers.
Phuchagin didn't just kill the villagers. He erased them. He called the river to rise, a wall of water that swept over the valley, burying the huts, the people, and the very ground they walked on. When the waters finally settled, nothing remained but the silence of what was done.
"I will find you," Phuchagin wept, his tears falling into the mud. "I will wait for the stars to fall and the world to remake itself. I will never let you be nameless again."
The cycle turned. The river god’s power faded as the world moved into the age of iron and gunpowder.
Pawat was a man who lived in the mud. The world was tearing itself apart. He was a combat medic, his hands stained with a mixture of iodine and blood. He had forgotten what it felt like to be dry. He had forgotten what it felt like to be at peace.
He was stationed in a remote village near the mountains, a place of temporary quiet. It was there he met Khemmika.
Khemmika was a vision of another era. He lived in a crumbling manor house with his mother. Because of a curse that had killed every son in their family before the age of twenty-one, Khemmika was raised as a girl. He wore silk sarongs, kept his hair long and braided with jasmine, and went by a daughter’s name.
The moment Pawat saw him standing under a willow by the pond, his heart stuttered. It was a memory he couldn't place.
"You shouldn't be out here," Pawat said, stepping out from the trees. "The patrols are getting closer."
Khemmika turned. He looked at Pawat’s uniform, the Red Cross armband, and the exhausted lines around his eyes. He didn't look afraid. "The willow protects me," Khemmika said softly. "And the spirits are quieter today."
Pawat found himself drawn to the manor every evening. He brought Khemmika canned peaches from his rations and stories of a world without war. Khemmika gave him jasmine tea and a reason to keep his heart beating.
"I know the secret," Pawat whispered one night as they sat in the shadows of the porch. "I know you're a son, not a daughter."
Khemmika’s breath hitched. "Are you going to tell?"
"No," Pawat said, reaching out to take Khemmika’s hand. "I don’t care what the world thinks you are. I see you. Just you."
He pulled a small silver ring from his pocket—a simple band he’d bought from a traveling merchant. "When this war ends, I’m coming back for you. We’ll go to the city. No more dresses, no more hiding. You’ll be my husband, and I’ll be your doctor. We’ll live until we’re old and gray."
Khemmika cried then. "Pawat, the curse... I'm almost twenty-one."
"I'm a medic," Pawat said fiercely, kissing his knuckles. "I fight death for a living. I won't let some old story take you from me."
But the war was a greedy beast. Pawat’s unit was ordered to move out at midnight. "Two weeks," Pawat promised, leaning out of the back of a military truck. "Just stay inside! I’ll be back in two weeks!"
The duty was a slaughter. Pawat spent fourteen days in a trench, sewing up limbs and holding the hands of dying boys. He moved through the world like a ghost, his mind fixed on the willow tree and the boy waiting beneath it.
On the fifteenth day, he left. He walked twenty miles through the jungle, dodging patrols, his feet bleeding into his boots.
He arrived at the village at dawn. The manor house was still standing, but the village was silent. He ran to the willow tree, his heart soaring as he saw a figure sitting on the bench beneath it.
"Khem! I'm back! I'm here!"
He reached the bench. Khemmika was sitting there, his head lolled back against the trunk of the tree. He was wearing his favorite white silk wrap. He looked peaceful.
But his skin was the color of marble.
There was no wound. No blood. His heart had simply stopped. The curse had found him on the eve of his birthday.
Pawat collapsed at his feet. He didn't check for a pulse. He knew. He simply knew. He could feel the sudden, terrifying silence in the world. He took the silver ring, which was still clutched in Khemmika’s cold hand, and slid it onto his own finger.
"I was one day late," Pawat whispered, his voice breaking into a sob. "I was right there. I was coming for you."
He stayed with the body for three days, talking to it as if Khemmika was just having a long nap. He told him about the house they would have had, the books they would have read. When the villagers finally found them, Pawat was gone. He lay beside Khemmika, following the ghost of a boy he couldn't save.
Years bled into decades, and the world grew loud and bright. But in the province of Ubon, the old ways still held sway.
Pharan was a man of shadows. He was a shaman, a master of the spirit world. He was young, but his eyes were the eyes of the Naga and the medic. He remembered everything. He was waiting. He knew the soul he loved was back.
Khemjira was a vibrant, messy whirlwind of a person. He was the youngest son of a family that had been cursed for generations by a vengeful spirit. His mother, desperate to save him, had given him a girl's name and sent him to live with the shaman when the hauntings became too much.
When Khemjira walked into Pharan’s yard, his backpack slung over one shoulder and a defiant pout on his lips, Pharan felt his soul finally stop its restless wandering.
"So you're the scary shaman," Khemjira said, squinting at Pharan. "You look more like a model."
"Go inside," Pharan said, his voice tight with a thousand years of repressed love. "The sun is setting. The shadows are hungry."
"Yeah, yeah. My mae says you’re the only one who can stop this. I think it’s all a bunch of ghost stories, but whatever. Nice to meet you."
Pharan spent the next three years in a state of constant vigilance. He didn't just protect Khemjira—he worshipped him. He cooked for him, taught him the protective chants, and spent every night sitting outside Khemjira’s door with a ritual blade in his lap.
Khemjira, for his part, was a nightmare of a student. He was loud, he hated the bitter herbal teas, and he constantly tried to sneak out to go to the local fairs. But he also looked at Pharan with an intensity that frightened the shaman.
"Por Khru," Khemjira said one evening, lying on the floor of the porch while Pharan cleaned his ritual tools. "Why do you stay here? You’re so talented. You could go to Bangkok. You could have a life."
"I have a life," Pharan replied without looking up.
"Me? I'm your life? That's sad, Por Khru. I’m just a cursed kid."
Pharan stopped what he was doing. He looked at Khemjira, the light of the oil lamp casting shadows across the boy’s face. "You are not just a cursed kid. You are the reason the sun rises for me. If you die, this world ends. I will make sure it ends."
Khemjira’s smile faded. He sat up, moving closer to Pharan. "Sometimes... I feel like I've known you before. Not like a friend. Like... like I've been looking for your face in every crowd since I was born."
Pharan reached out, his thumb tracing the curve of Khemjira’s bottom lip. "You have. And I’ve been waiting right here."
They kissed then, a desperate, clumsy collision of two souls that had been trying to find each other through the dark. It was a promise and a goodbye, though Khemjira didn't know it yet.
The night of Khemjira’s twenty-first birthday arrived with a storm that felt like the end of the world. The wind was intense, and the air was thick with the scent of rotting flowers.
Pharan had drawn a circle of protection around Khemjira. "Do not move," he commanded. "No matter what you see. No matter who calls you."
But Rampheung was a master of illusions. She didn't attack Pharan. She manifested as Pharan himself, standing outside the window, screaming in pain, being torn apart by shadows.
"P'Peem! No!" Khemjira screamed.
He didn't think. He broke the circle. He ran toward the window to save the man he loved.
The moment his foot crossed the line, the spirit lunged. She used a curse of internal rot. Khemjira fell to the floor, his skin turning gray in seconds, his blood cooling in his veins.
Pharan let out a roar of fury. He didn't care about his own soul anymore. He used a forbidden technique, drawing all the spiritual energy of the forest into his own body. He became a vessel of white light, a living sun that burned Rampheung into nothingness. He banished her so thoroughly that her very name was erased from the spirit world.
But the price was paid.
He turned back to find Khemjira gasping for air. Pharan scooped him up, pressing his forehead against the boy’s.
"Khem, stay. Look at me. Please. I'm right here."
"Phi..." Khemjira’s voice was a dry rattle. "I saved you... didn't I?"
"You did," Pharan lied, his heart shattering into a million pieces. "You saved me. You’re so brave."
"I'm tired. Can I... can I sleep now?"
"Yes," Pharan whispered, kissing his closed eyelids. "Sleep. I’ll be there when you wake up. I promise. No more ghosts next time. I promise."
Khemjira went still. Pharan sat in the ruins of his home, holding the body until the sun rose. He didn't want to live through another cycle. He took his ritual knife and carved a mark onto his own chest, a binding spell.
I will remember. I will always remember. Even if it kills me, I will be the one to carry the map back to him.
Pharan lived the rest of his days as a hollow man, waiting for the shadows to take him so he could try one more time.
The van slowed down as it entered the driveway of a condominium in Bangkok. The driver, a quiet man who had worked for the agency for years, looked back into the rearview mirror.
"Keng, we're here. Do you want me to help you wake him up?"
Keng shook his head gently. "No, Phi. I've got him. Thank you for the drive."
Keng waited until the driver had left before he leaned over Namping. "Ping? Wake up, baby. We’re home."
Namping stirred, groaning softly. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand, looking like a confused toddler. "Are we? Already?"
"You’ve been out for an hour. Come on. I'll carry your bag."
They walked into the lobby, the coolness a sharp contrast to the humid rain outside. They looked like any other pair of successful actors. Wearing designer clothes, carrying expensive phones, their faces a bit tired but still beautiful.
Once they were inside their shared apartment, Namping immediately kicked off his shoes and collapsed onto the sofa.
"I am so hungry I could eat the remote," Namping complained, stretching his legs out. "P'Keng, order that spicy chicken? The one with the extra cheese?"
Keng smiled, a genuine expression that reached his eyes. "You have a photoshoot tomorrow morning If I order that, your face will be puffy and you might have a stomachache."
Namping pouted, sticking out his lower lip. "But I worked so hard today! I did three interviews and that weird dance challenge. Please?"
Keng sighed, already opening the delivery app on his phone. "Fine. But you’re drinking a liter of water before bed."
"You’re the best! This is why you’re my favorite person in the whole world."
Namping hopped off the couch and walked over to Keng, wrapping his arms around Keng’s waist from behind. He rested his chin on Keng’s shoulder, watching the screen of the phone.
It was a simple gesture. An everyday hug. But for Keng, it was a miracle that surpassed the power of any god.
In the first life, he couldn't touch the boy without the fear of the village. In the second, he was separated by war. In the third, he was separated by a curse. Here, he could feel the warmth of Namping’s chest against his back. He could feel the soft puff of Namping’s breath against his neck.
"P'Keng?" Namping said softly.
"Hm?"
"Why did you look so sad in the van? I wasn't totally asleep, you know? I felt you looking at me."
Keng froze for a second. He put the phone down on the counter and turned around in Namping’s arms. He looked at the face he had spent thousands of years mourning.
"I wasn't sad," Keng said, his voice low and steady. "I was just thinking about how long it took to get here."
Namping tilted his head, his eyes curious and clear. "The traffic wasn't that bad."
Keng laughed. He reached up and cupped Namping’s face in his hands. "No. Not the traffic. Just... everything. Life. The world."
Namping leaned into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut. "You always say such deep things. It’s like you’re an old soul trapped in a young body."
"Maybe I am."
"Well, whoever you were before, I'm glad you're here now," Namping said, opening his eyes and grinning. "Because I don't think I'd know what to do without you. It’s weird. Since the day we met at the casting, I just... I felt like I could finally breathe. Does that make sense? Like I’d been holding my breath for a really long time."
Keng felt a tear escape, sliding down his cheek.
"Whoa, hey! Why are you crying?" Namping asked, panicked. He scrambled to wipe the tear away with his thumb. "Did I say something wrong? I was trying to be sweet!"
"No," Keng choked out, pulling Namping into a tight, crushing embrace. "You said exactly the right thing. You’re perfect. You’ve always been perfect."
Namping hugged him back, burying his face in Keng’s neck. "You're so dramatic, Phi. But I like it."
They stayed like that for a long time. Standing in the middle of their kitchen, surrounded by the distant sound of the city.
The chicken arrived. They ate it on the floor, sitting on the rug, fighting over the last piece of pickled radish. They talked about their upcoming fan meeting in Japan, about the stray cat that lived near the studio, and about how Namping wanted to dye his hair for the next project.
It was the most boring conversation Keng had ever had. And he loved every second of it.
He didn't need Namping to remember the river. He didn't need him to remember the war or the shaman’s hut. Those lives were over. The debt was paid.
Later that night, as they lay in bed, the rain finally began to wind down. The room was dark, lit only by the soft glow of the night light. Namping was already drifting off, his limbs heavy and relaxed.
"P'Keng..." Namping murmured, his voice barely audible.
"I'm here."
"Promise me something?"
"Anything."
"Don't ever go away. In the next life, if there is one... find me again. Okay? But maybe try to be my neighbor or something so we don't have to wait long to meet."
Keng reached across the space between them, finding Namping’s hand and interlacing their fingers. "I've already found you. And I'm never letting go."
"Good..." Namping’s grip tightened slightly before it loosened into sleep.
Keng stayed awake for a while longer, listening to the rhythm of Namping’s heart. It was the same rhythm he had heard on the river. The same rhythm that had stopped beneath the willow tree. The same rhythm that had faded in a shaman’s arms.
But tonight, it was strong. It was steady. It was alive.
Keng closed his eyes. For the first time in a thousand years, the ghosts were silent. He wasn't a god, a medic, or a shaman anymore. He was just a man in love. And that was more than enough.
As sleep finally took him, he didn't dream of the past. He didn't dream of ash or blood. He dreamed of a tomorrow where they would wake up, have coffee, and do it all over again.
The cycle was finally broken. Not by magic or power, but by a love that simply refused to give up. They had spent lifetimes waiting, and finally, the time was right.