Chapter Text
∞
The conference room on the sixth floor of the anthropology building smelled faintly of burnt coffee, old paper, and academic despair. Which, Dr. Surachai thought privately as he stared into his third reheated coffee of the morning, was appropriate.
Rain pressed against the tall windows overlooking Bangkok’s traffic-choked morning while twelve exhausted academics sat around a table covered in excavation photographs, skeletal diagrams, and half-eaten pastries nobody remembered ordering.
At the far end of the room, a projector displayed an image of a partially excavated burial pit from Mae Saeng Province in northern Thailand. The atmosphere was tense. Not because the discovery was controversial. Because it was becoming expensive.
“We are entering the fourth week,” said a woman from the cultural heritage foundation seated beside the screen, calm in the way only people controlling grant money could be calm. “And media inquiries have tripled since the preliminary report leaked.”
“It did not leak,” muttered Associate Professor Kriangsak. “Someone posted drone footage on TikTok.”
“That,” she replied evenly, “is what leaking means now.”
A few people looked defeated by this. On the screen, the burial site glowed under floodlights against dark northern forest soil. Several excavation squares had already been opened, revealing aligned graves beneath compacted layers of earth and stone.
The problem was obvious even from the photographs spread across the conference table, because the skeletons emerging from the Mae Saeng burial site were not grotesque or impossible in the way popular media would eventually try to portray them, but simply and profoundly wrong for the historical period they appeared to belong to; the bodies were far too tall, the shoulder structures unusually broad, the femurs several centimeters longer than expected from existing regional records, while the pelvic formations and cranial measurements showed proportions inconsistent with population averages documented from comparable archaeological sites across northern Thailand.
In one of the images projected onto the screen, a field archaeologist crouched beside a partially excavated skeleton to provide scale, yet even with the visual reference, the exposed remains still looked absurdly large beneath the floodlights and dark mountain soil, as though someone had quietly distorted the familiar dimensions of the human body just enough to make every trained instinct in the room deeply uncomfortable.
“The average estimated height so far,” another lecturer said, tapping the report projected onto the screen, “is approximately one hundred ninety centimeters for males. One female skeleton is estimated near one hundred eighty.”
A brief silence settled over the room as several people stared at the image again. Then someone near the back muttered, “That’s taller than everyone in this department.”
Professor Nissara Pinthong, head of the department, continued flipping through excavation notes with the patience of a woman approaching the end of hers.
“The femoral ratios are unusual,” she said calmly. “But there is currently no evidence suggesting anything outside known human variation.”
Dr. Montree leaned back in his chair. “So officially we are not saying ancient giant civilization.”
Every head slowly turned toward him.
“No,” Professor Nissara said flatly.
“Not even slightly?”
“Especially not that.”
Montree nodded thoughtfully, then pulled out his phone.
“My nephew is going to be devastated.”
“Your nephew is eleven.”
Professor Nissara closed her eyes.
“I want everyone here to understand,” she said slowly, with the dangerous calm of someone one inconvenience away from committing a felony, “that if any member of the press uses the phrase ‘giant village,’ I will personally resign and haunt this department.”
“That still counts as staying involved academically, Professor.” Dr. Sompong muttered.
“Write that down,” said Dr. Montree. “Post-retirement spectral supervision.”
A folder hit the table near his elbow.
“Stop helping,” Professor Nissara said.
The room dissolved into another wave of tired laughter, the kind produced almost entirely by stress and insufficient sleep, before gradually settling again beneath the low hum of fluorescent lights and rain striking the windows.
Outside, Bangkok traffic crawled through the gray morning below the university buildings, but inside the conference room the mood shifted back toward something heavier as excavation photographs flicked across the projector screen once more. Burial alignments, measurement charts, carbon dating estimates, and the increasingly alarming budget projections attached to all of them. At the far end of the table, the representative from the cultural heritage foundation folded her hands neatly together.
“The ministry wants preliminary classification before the international symposium in August.”
Several people immediately began looking at the ceiling as if divine intervention might descend and save them.
“We cannot responsibly classify the site yet,” said Dr. Wimon. “The burial structure is inconsistent with known regional patterns.”
“We also lack sufficient osteological analysis,” someone added.
“And the excavation team is understaffed.”
“And underfunded.”
The foundation representative smiled politely without smiling at all.
“You already received additional funding.”
“Yes,” said Surachai. “For approximately four minutes.”
Professor Nissara pinched the bridge of her nose as the room gradually quieted again, the earlier laughter fading beneath the weight of what the excavation had already become over the past few weeks. Everyone in the department understood by now that the Mae Saeng site was no longer just an academic discovery buried in the mountains of northern Thailand; too many eyes had fixed themselves onto it too quickly, from government agencies demanding updates and academic journals already requesting preliminary findings, to international institutions suddenly expressing “collaborative interest” the moment foreign media picked up the story.
Even tourism authorities had begun circling with alarming enthusiasm around the phrase historically significant discovery, speaking about heritage routes and museum potential before the excavation team had even finished documenting the burial structures properly. And worst of all, at least from the collective expression around the table, reporters had started calling daily, each one sounding increasingly disappointed that the department continued refusing to confirm the existence of an ancient civilization of giants.
“We need specialists,” Professor Nissara said finally. “Not just graduate students surviving on caffeine and bad decisions.”
“That eliminates half the department.”
“That eliminates all archaeology departments globally.”
A ripple of exhausted agreement moved around the table. Professor Nissara clicked to another slide showing excavation maps and burial alignments.
“We specifically need someone with field excavation leadership experience for complex heritage sites,” she continued. “And someone capable of handling advanced osteological interpretation onsite.”
The silence this time felt thoughtful. People mentally shuffled through names. Most of the obvious candidates were unavailable.
Or abroad. Or impossible to work with. Usually both. Dr. Sompong, still eating someone else’s pastry, spoke absentmindedly.
“What about Dr. Phinya and Dr. Busaya?”
The room stopped. Immediately. Every single head turned toward him. Dr. Sompong froze mid-chew.
“…what?”
No one spoke. Across the table, one junior lecturer actually lowered her glasses in horror.
Another whispered, “Absolutely not.”
“Are you trying to kill the rest of us?”
“They cannot be sent into the mountains together unsupervised.”
Dr. Sompong blinked slowly. “I only meant academically.”
“That has never been the problem,” someone muttered.
Another lecturer looked genuinely concerned now. “Last time they attended the same conference panel, one moderator resigned.”
“They made a visiting professor cry.”
“To be fair,” someone else said carefully, “the visiting professor started it.”
Professor Nissara leaned back in her chair with the expression of a woman reconsidering every life decision that had led her here.
The foundation representative looked between them. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Who are these people?”
Half the room answered at once.
“No.”
“Don’t ask.”
“Former partners.”
“Academic terrorists.”
Professor Nissara closed her eyes briefly.
“They are,” she said with deep resignation, “unfortunately the two most qualified people in the country for this excavation.”
*****
Dr. Busaya Methin had not attended the faculty meeting that morning because she had spent the last nine hours in the osteology lab trying to determine whether a fracture line on a set of excavated remains was peri-mortem trauma or post-depositional damage caused by soil pressure, and at some point around eleven-thirty she had decided that if another academic interrupted her concentration for a “quick question,” she might commit a minor crime.
Unfortunately, none of that prevented her from being hungry. By lunchtime, she was exhausted enough to lose depth perception.
The anthropology building shared a courtyard with the university’s research foundation offices, an arrangement originally designed to “encourage interdisciplinary cooperation” and now functioning primarily as a convenient way for exhausted academics to obtain caffeine without crossing a major road. Between the two buildings sat a cramped campus cafeteria permanently crowded with graduate students, lecturers, administrative staff, and the occasional researcher who looked moments away from emotional collapse.
At nearly one in the afternoon, the place was loud with clattering trays, bad acoustics, and conversations happening in three languages simultaneously.
Bua stood in line wearing the same lab coat she had been wearing since six that morning. Her hair, usually neat, was now loosely twisted up with a pencil she didn’t remember putting there. Dark circles sat beneath her eyes with enough authority to qualify as tenure. One sleeve of her coat carried what looked suspiciously like soil residue from the osteology lab, and she had stopped caring approximately four hours ago.
Truthfully, this was the closest place she could get food without wasting precious energy trying to look like a functioning human being. If she walked back to her office to remove the lab coat, fix her hair, or wash her face properly, there was a genuine risk she would fall asleep against a bookshelf and wake up sometime next week.
The line moved slowly. Very slowly.
Somewhere behind her, two undergraduates were arguing about carbon dating while being catastrophically wrong about it. Bua briefly considered turning around and correcting them for sport.
Instead, she stared blankly at the menu board while holding a paper cup of iced coffee with the desperation of a woman sustaining consciousness through chemistry alone.
Three hours earlier, she had nearly fallen asleep sitting upright in her office chair while reviewing skeletal measurements from Mae Saeng. Her head had dipped forward just enough for her elbow to jerk violently across the desk, knocking her coffee directly into a stack of annotated reports.
At which point a male PhD student had appeared in her doorway like a romance novel written specifically for exhausted academics.
“Dr. Busaya,” he had said smoothly, immediately handing her tissues, “I think your coffee just sacrificed itself for science.”
Bua had stared at him for several seconds too long because her brain was buffering. He was one of the archaeology doctoral candidates. Tall. Conventionally attractive. The kind of student who somehow looked moisturized during field season.
“You should probably sleep,” he added gently.
“I prefer unrealistic goals,” Bua had replied.
He laughed. Which unfortunately encouraged him.
“I could buy you another coffee,” he offered, leaning casually against the doorway. “Maybe dinner too, if your schedule ever allows human interaction.”
Bua, still holding coffee-soaked excavation notes in one hand, had looked at him with complete sincerity and said:
“I need you to understand that if I had two free hours right now, I would spend them unconscious.”
The poor man had blinked.
“I meant—”
“I enjoy sleep more than a date,” she continued gravely. “Sleep has never disappointed me.”
There had been a long silence. Then the student, to his credit, nodded once and said, “That’s actually the healthiest boundary anyone’s ever set with me.”
Now, standing in the cafeteria line with her tray in hand, Bua rubbed tiredly at one eye and wondered vaguely whether she had accidentally traumatized him.
By the time Bua finally reached the front of the line, the cafeteria auntie had already decided what she needed more accurately than Bua herself.
“One basil pork. Fried egg,” the woman declared, scooping food onto a tray before Bua even opened her mouth. Then she narrowed her eyes. The cafeteria auntie took one look at her and immediately added an extra boiled egg to the tray without asking.
“Thank you,” Bua said quietly.
“You look like you died yesterday.”
“That’s encouraging, Auntie.”
“You want extra rice?”
Bua considered this carefully.
“Yes, auntie.”
“Eat properly.”
“I always eat properly.”
The auntie looked pointedly at the iced coffee in Bua’s hand.
“That is not food.”
Bua accepted defeat in silence.
A few minutes later, she escaped to the far corner of the cafeteria with her tray, choosing the table furthest from the undergraduate crowds and closest to the industrial fan rotating lazily near the windows. Afternoon rain still blurred the campus outside in soft gray streaks, students rushing beneath umbrellas between the anthropology building and the research foundation offices while thunder rolled faintly somewhere beyond the city.
For the first time all day, nobody was asking her questions. Nobody needed skeletal assessments. Nobody was emailing her revised excavation measurements at two-minute intervals.
Peace.
Bua sat down carefully, pushed several research papers aside to make room for her tray, and immediately stared blankly at the fried egg for nearly twenty seconds before remembering she was supposed to consume it.
Exhaustion pressed heavily behind her eyes. At this point, staying awake felt less like a biological function and more like an active moral choice.
She ate slowly, posture slumped inelegantly forward, one hand still loosely wrapped around her coffee while the industrial fan blew strands of escaped hair across her face. Somewhere nearby, students were laughing too loudly about something unimportant. Plates clattered. Someone dropped another spoon. Bua nearly fell asleep chewing.
A tray slammed onto the table across from her.
“Oh my god,” Fang said immediately, horrified. “You look like a Victorian woman dying of tuberculosis.”
Bua lifted her gaze with visible effort.
Dr. Supatra “Fang” Rojanasin from cultural anthropology dropped into the seat opposite her wearing oversized earrings, immaculate eyeliner, and the expression of someone spiritually sustained by gossip. Unlike Bua, Fang looked offensively alive.
“I feel like a Victorian woman dying of tuberculosis.”
Fang pointed a chopstick at her face. “No, because at least those women had romantic lighting. You look like you lost a custody battle with academia.”
“That’s fair.”
“And is that the same lab coat from yesterday?”
Bua looked down at herself.
“…possibly.”
“Bua.”
“I’m committed to consistency.”
Fang sighed dramatically, then leaned forward over the table with sudden intensity. Immediately, Bua became suspicious. Not because Fang was untrustworthy. Because that expression meant information was approaching at dangerous speed.
“You,” Fang said, eyes gleaming, “are not going to believe the meeting I just came from.”
Bua took another bite of rice.
“If this is about funding cuts again, I’ll walk directly into traffic.”
“It’s worse.”
That got her attention. Fang lowered her voice theatrically despite nobody around them caring.
“Mae Saeng.”
Bua stilled slightly.
“The excavation?”
Fang nodded once, visibly vibrating with excitement now.
“Guess whose names got mentioned.”
Bua groaned immediately, dropping her forehead briefly against one hand. “Don’t say it’s going to be me.”
Fang’s smile widened.
“Oh, it’s absolutely going to be you.”
“No.”
“You’re literally the department’s best osteology specialist.”
“I’m also severely tired.”
“That has never stopped this university before.”
Bua made a soft, pained noise into her coffee.
“I already have three active research reviews, two graduate committees, forty-seven unread emails, my mother has sent me six messages this week about some friend’s son who apparently owns a dental clinic and ‘looks emotionally stable.’ and a first-year class that still thinks carbon dating means taking rocks to dinner. If Professor Nissara gives me another project, I’m going to develop a medical condition out of spite.”
Fang looked delighted by this meltdown.
“She said the site needs additional osteological interpretation.”
“I need additional consciousness.”
“And apparently the burial structures are weird.”
“Everything is weird when you haven’t slept.”
Bua was already spiraling now, muttering half to herself while mentally composing increasingly passive-aggressive emails.
“She cannot just keep assigning me field analysis because I answer her messages quickly. That is not a sustainable administrative model. At some point this becomes institutionalized abuse. I’m going to tell her directly that my circadian rhythm has collapsed—”
“Phin’s going too.”
Bua kept talking.
“—and if she says this is good for my career again, I’m going to fake my own death—”
Fang blinked.
“…Bua.”
“Because honestly what more can academia take from me at this point—”
“Busaya Methin!.”
“What?”
Fang slowly lowered her spoon.
“I said,” she repeated carefully, visibly trying not to laugh, “Phin is going too.”
Silence. Bua stared at her. Then blinked once.
“…repeat that.”
Fang’s mouth curved upward with malicious satisfaction.
“Phin,” she said sweetly. “Dr. Phinya Thananont. Your ex-girlfriend. Former academic partner. Ex-work wife. Ongoing public health concern.”
Bua’s expression remained almost unnervingly calm.
“Oh.”
Fang frowned immediately. That was it? No choking. No visible emotional collapse. No dramatic denial. Honestly, slightly disappointing. She had expected at least one stress-induced eye twitch. Instead, Bua just leaned back slowly in her chair with the exhausted expression of someone realizing the universe had personally targeted her.
“…she’s back from England?”
“Apparently for two days already.”
“Hm.”
Fang narrowed her eyes suspiciously. That was way too normal.
Almost 3 years ago, when Phin abruptly accepted a long-term research position abroad right as their relationship imploded under the weight of ambition, distance, unresolved resentment, and two catastrophically stubborn personalities, Bua had spent nearly three months functioning like a haunted shell wearing cardigans.
Fang remembered. Everyone remembered. Bua had once stared at a faculty microwave for three straight minutes because Phin used to heat her lunch there. And now?
Now she was just sitting here eating basil pork like Fang had informed her about mild rain conditions.
“You are being alarmingly chill about this,” Fang said finally.
Bua took another sip of coffee.
“I’m too tired to have complex emotions.”
“That cannot possibly be healthy.”
“Neither was dating her.”
Fang let out a startled laugh.
“Oh my god. You have healed.”
“I said exhausted.” Bua corrected flatly.
Fang continued staring at her across the table like she was watching an unusually calm person walk away from an active explosion.
“No, seriously,” she said. “You once threatened to transfer departments because somebody mentioned Oxford and Phin in front of you.”
“That was different.”
“How?”
Bua stabbed aggressively at her fried egg.
“I had slept even less back then.”
“That is not the distinction I was expecting.”
“It’s the correct one.”
Fang leaned back in her chair, folding her arms. “We had a teleconference with the Oxford collaboration yesterdat and she joined for, like, fifteen minutes. You know she’s still terrifyingly attractive, right?”
Bua looked unimpressed.
“So are venomous snakes.”
“Oh, that’s lingering resentment. Good. You scared me for a second.”
Bua ignored her and continued eating with the detached focus of someone trying to keep her blood sugar high enough to sustain consciousness.
Around them, the cafeteria noise swelled and shifted with the lunch rush. Students dragged chairs across tile floors. Someone from engineering was loudly explaining cryptocurrency to a girl who visibly wanted to die.
*****
Dr. Phinya Thananont stepped off the overnight flight from London looking irritatingly composed for someone who had just survived eleven hours in economy-adjacent suffering.
The flight attendants at the aircraft door were already thanking passengers with the exhausted politeness of people nearing the end of a long shift when Phin paused briefly beside them, adjusting the strap of her leather bag over one shoulder.
“Thank you for taking care of us,” she said easily in Thai, warm smile appearing like it had been personally engineered for public relations disasters and poor decision-making alike. “And I’m deeply sorry about the man in seat 14C who treated the call button like a constitutional right.”
One of the stewardesses laughed immediately.
“We were wondering if anyone else noticed.”
“He asked for sparkling water six times.”
“Seven,” the other corrected with visible trauma.
Phin placed a hand lightly over her heart. “Heroes. Both of you, lovely ladies.”
By the time she walked away, one stewardess was visibly blushing while the other muttered something that sounded suspiciously like unfairly attractive people should pay additional taxes.
Phin smiled to herself and kept moving.
Three years in England had not changed the fundamental fact that she was devastatingly charming when she wanted to be. Unfortunately for society, she usually wanted to be.
An hour later, she emerged from Suvarnabhumi Airport wearing dark sunglasses, a charcoal blazer draped neatly over a crisp white shirt, and tailored trousers that suggested either wealth, confidence, or the ability to emotionally manipulate funding committees. Her long dark hair fell loose over one shoulder in soft waves slightly disrupted by the flight, though somehow even the disarray looked intentional. Bangkok heat wrapped around her immediately.
Familiar. Heavy. Alive.
Around her, travelers surged through the pickup lanes dragging luggage and children and existential exhaustion, but Phin moved through the chaos with the unhurried confidence of someone carrying unbearable main character aura completely against society’s will. Sunglasses on, posture effortless, phone in one hand, she crossed the airport exit looking less like a returning academic researcher and more like she personally contributed to Thailand’s GDP. Even the automatic doors seemed to open for her with dramatic timing.
Then something small and fast slammed directly into her left leg.
“AUNTIEEEEE!”
The shout echoed through the pickup area loudly enough that three nearby tourists turned. A tiny pair of arms wrapped around her waist with alarming force. Phin looked down.
A six-year-old boy clung to her dramatically like a shipwreck survivor reunited with civilization, his backpack hanging halfway off one shoulder and shoelaces untied in ways that suggested adult supervision had already failed him today. Behind him, someone yelled in horror.
“MEW!”
Too late. The child tightened his grip around Phin’s waist and looked up at her with absolute delight.
“You came back!” he announced accusingly, as though Phin had personally abandoned the nation.
And just like that, the impossibly cool airport entrance was ruined. Phin nearly lost her balance immediately.
“Whoa—”
Her suitcase swerved sideways, one heel slipping slightly against the polished floor as the small human attached to her leg continued hugging her with catastrophic commitment.
“Careful,” she laughed, reaching instinctively for the boy’s shoulder before finally pulling her sunglasses down. The second she saw his face, her entire expression changed.
“Mew.”
The six-year-old grinned up at her triumphantly, still wrapped around her leg like he intended to remain there permanently.
“You got taller,” Phin said in disbelief.
Mew beamed proudly, clearly taking personal credit for human growth. Across the pickup area, another voice called out breathlessly.
“Mew Natthamee, stop attacking people at the airport—”
Phin looked up just in time to see her older sister weaving through the crowd carrying a bag, car keys, and the exhausted dignity of a mother negotiating public embarrassment. Beside her, a tiny three-year-old girl waddled along stubbornly at toddler speed, one hand gripping Prapha’s fingers while the other held a half-melted snack pouch with intense concentration. Lily looked deeply committed to the act of walking independently. Unfortunately, her legs were approximately the size of breadsticks.
“Sorry!” Prapha called as she finally reached them. “Lily insisted on walking herself and your nephew has apparently never learned patience a single day in his life.”
“I heard that,” Mew declared from somewhere around Phin’s knees.
“You were supposed to.”
Little Lily finally looked up from the monumental task of walking independently and noticed Phin standing there. She stopped completely.
For a brief second, the three-year-old simply stared with wide, solemn eyes, as though trying to match the real person in front of her with the woman she only knew from phone screens, video calls, and the endless stream of family pictures her mother sent into the group chat.
“Auntee,” she whispered carefully, like she was testing whether the name belonged to a real person.
And something inside Phin folded instantly.
Because the last time she had seen Lily in person, the little girl had been a newborn wrapped in hospital blankets barely bigger than Phin’s forearm. After that, there had only been blurry FaceTime calls from tiny apartments in England, sleepy birthday videos sent across time zones, and photos of first steps, first words, first days at preschool that Phin had experienced through a screen six thousand miles away.
“Oh no,” Phin said softly, crouching down despite Mew still attached stubbornly to one leg. “You got big while I was gone.”
Lily continued staring for another deeply serious second. Then, very slowly, she toddled forward on unsteady little legs and walked directly into Phin’s open arms like she had always belonged there.
That was it. Phin was completely done for. Completely defeated.
Phin laughed softly as she gathered the little girl against her side while Mew continued clinging to her blazer with zero shame whatsoever.
God, she missed them.
The noise of the airport faded strangely around the edges for a moment, the announcements, luggage wheels, crowds moving endlessly past, because suddenly there was just her sister standing in front of her again after too long apart, tired but smiling warmly in the familiar way that always made Phin feel sixteen years old and safe.
Prapha stepped forward first and hugged her tightly.
“Welcome home, sis.” she murmured.
Phin hugged her back immediately, genuine affection softening all the sharp edges she usually carried so carelessly around the world.
“You didn’t have to come pick me up,” she said once they pulled apart.
“I know,” Prapha replied. “That’s why I did.”
“That’s emotionally manipulative.”
“I learned from our mother.”
“Fair.”
Prapha adjusted Lily more securely on her hip with the long-suffering expertise of an eldest daughter.
“I was actually planned to take Lily to mom’s shop and leave Mew at home with Pakin since he’s off duty today,” Prapha admitted, adjusting the strap of her bag on one shoulder. “But the second he heard I was picking up his favorite aunt from the airport—”
“—he started putting on shoes before I even finished the sentence.”
Phin laughed, warmth blooming unexpectedly in her chest as she looked down at the little boy still leaning against her leg possessively.
“You little menace,” she murmured fondly, reaching down to ruffle Mew’s hair. Mew only hugged her tighter.
Getting the children into the car turned into a negotiation process more complicated than most academic funding approvals.
“I sit with Aunt Phin,” Mew declared immediately, already climbing into the backseat before anyone could object.
Meanwhile, Lily stood beside the open car door clutching Phin’s hand with quiet determination.
“Auntee sit here,” she informed everyone solemnly, patting the middle seat like she was assigning official seating arrangements.
And just like that, Phin lost all authority over her own life.
Ten minutes later, she found herself trapped in the backseat between two small children who apparently believed physical contact was essential for survival.
Mew leaned dramatically against her shoulder while providing a nonstop stream of updates about his life, school, football, and a classmate he now considered a mortal enemy because the boy had once stolen his dinosaur eraser. Lily, meanwhile, remained tucked quietly against Phin’s side holding onto one sleeve of her blazer with tiny fingers as if reassuring herself the woman beside her was actually real.
Phin loved them so much it felt physically inconvenient. From the driver’s seat, Prapha watched the situation through the rearview mirror with obvious amusement.
Bangkok traffic crawled sluggishly around them beneath a cloudy afternoon sky, motorcycles weaving recklessly between lanes while rainwater shimmered across the roads in blurred reflections of neon signs and brake lights. Familiar buildings passed outside the windows in flashes. Shopping centers, old shophouses, tangled electrical wires, food vendors setting up beneath awnings before the evening rush. Home.
The realization settled strangely in Phin’s chest. Not uncomfortable. Just heavier than expected. Mew was currently explaining something extremely serious about Pokémon evolution when Prapha glanced at her again through the mirror.
“So,” her sister said casually, “where are you staying? Because mother reopened your room at the shop apartment.”
Phin sighed dramatically.
“Straight to interrogation.”
“You disappeared to England for three years. We’ve earned questions.”
“Fair.”
She adjusted Lily more comfortably against her side before answering.
“I still have my condo near campus. The tenant moved out last month.”
Prapha nodded. “And after that?”
Phin looked out the window for a moment. Bangkok blurred past in gray and gold beneath the rain.
“I don’t know yet,” she admitted honestly.
That answer made the car quieter. Not tense. Just attentive.
Prapha’s voice softened slightly when she asked, “Are you back for good this time?”
Mew stopped talking long enough to look up at her. Even Lily lifted her head slightly from Phin’s shoulder. Phin smiled faintly at that, suddenly aware of how many people had apparently been waiting for the answer to that question.
“I think so,” she said after a moment. “At least… I want to be.”
Prapha’s expression gentled immediately.
“Well,” she said lightly, steering the car through traffic, “mother’s already planning your entire future, so it’s a little late to leave again.”
Phin groaned. “That’s terrifying.”
“She also prepared three different herbal formulas because she thinks England damaged your organs.”
Prapha laughed softly. “Last month you told her sometimes you were too busy to eat proper meals and just had coffee and sandwiches.”
“In my defense, the sandwiches there were expensive.”
“That made it worse,” Prapha informed her. “Mother spent two days saying Western countries destroyed your internal balance and erased your Asian taste buds.”
Phin sighed deeply, then laughed under her breath despite herself.
“And if you come home refusing rice because you’ve become one of those people who think bread counts as emotional fulfillment,” Prapha added, “mother’s genuinely going to burn incense over your head and ask the ancestors where she went wrong.”
*****
The next morning, Bua was halfway through her second yawn before realizing her mother was actively trying to arrange her future. Again.
“You’re not listening to me,” Arunee Methin said accusingly from across the breakfast table.
Bua blinked slowly over her coffee.
“I’m physically present.”
“That is not the same thing.”
At seven-thirty in the morning, the Methin family dining table was already alive with the familiar rhythm of routine: bowls of rice porridge steaming beneath the ceiling fan, fried dough sticks piled on a plate in the center, morning news murmuring softly from the television in the next room. The smell of garlic, pepper, and strong coffee filled the house with the kind of warmth that only came from decades of repetition.
Bua had stopped by the house before work because her mother had texted her at six fifteen with the emotionally manipulative message:
I made your favorite breakfast.
Which, unfortunately, worked every time.
Now she sat at the table in wrinkled work clothes with her hair still damp from a rushed shower, clutching coffee like medical equipment while her mother enthusiastically scrolled through photos on her phone.
Across from her, her younger brother Than, ate breakfast with the detached calm of a man witnessing a disaster too familiar to interrupt. Their father, Somchai, remained peacefully focused on his newspaper and soft-boiled eggs, wisely refusing involvement.
Arunee turned her phone around again.
“This one,” she said, zooming dramatically into a photo of a smiling man in a blazer beside what appeared to be a luxury dental clinic. “Very polite family. His mother teaches at Saint Gabriel. Owns two dental clinics already and he’s only thirty-four.”
Bua nodded faintly.
“Mhm.”
“And look how kind his face is.”
Another enormous yawn escaped her before she could stop it. Arunee froze mid-sentence. Slowly lowered the phone.
“Bua.”
Bua blinked at her.
“What?”
“You keep yawning every time I speak.”
Than snorted quietly into his coffee. Their mother looked genuinely offended now.
“I am trying to introduce you to a good man,” she said. “Do you know how difficult it is to find educated, stable people nowadays?”
“I work at a university,” Bua muttered. “I’m surrounded by unstable educated people.”
“Busaya Methin.”
Another yawn hit her like a physical attack. This one was catastrophic. Her eyes watered. She nearly dropped the spoon in her hand. Arunee stared at her in disbelief.
“Am I truly that boring?”
“No, Mae.” Bua said weakly, still half-yawning. “My body is simply shutting down.”
“You’re impossible.”
Her mother huffed and continued anyway, now fueled partly by wounded pride.
“Now this one,” Arunee insisted, tapping the phone screen. “She graduated top of her class, Scholarship student. Speaks three languages. Volunteers with medical outreach programs. Very respectful to elders. Her mother says she meditates every morning.”
Than looked up immediately.
“That sounds like a fake tinder profile.”
“See?” Bua said, pointing tiredly at her brother. “Even Than thinks so.”
“I did not raise either of you correctly,” Arunee declared.
Somchai finally folded down one side of his newspaper.
“I think Bua just needs to sleep more.”
“Sleep will not continue the family line.”
Bua lowered her forehead briefly onto the dining table.
“I would genuinely rather enter another grant review process than go on a date right now. I don’t have time, Mae.”
“That is the saddest sentence you’ve ever spoken,” Than informed her.
“That’s because you’ve never read my peer evaluations.”
Arunee stared at her daughter for a long moment, the irritation gradually softening into something more helpless.
Honestly, Bua looked terrible. Not unhealthy exactly. Just profoundly overworked in a way that made maternal instincts activate aggressively.
Her hair was still damp and barely brushed, dark circles sat beneath her eyes like permanent residency, and she was hunched over breakfast with the posture of someone personally betrayed by consciousness.
Arunee sighed heavily and set her phone down on the table.
“I don’t know anymore,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone else. “A person this busy probably can only date someone in the same field.”
Than immediately made the sign of the cross despite none of them being Christian. “Horrifying sentence.”
“I’m serious,” Arunee continued, waving one hand vaguely toward Bua. “Who else would tolerate this schedule? Normal people sleep at night. Normal people eat dinner before ten.”
“I eat dinner.”
“At eleven-thirty.”
“Time is a social construct.”
“See?” Arunee pointed at her triumphantly, as though Bua had just proven severe psychological damage.
Somchai quietly hid a smile behind his coffee cup. Arunee shook her head again, still thinking out loud now. And then out of nowhere—
“Honestly, if you and Phinya hadn’t broken up back then, you probably would already be married by now.”
The sentence landed casually. Carelessly. Like tossing a match into dry grass. Bua froze mid-yawn. Completely. Across the table, Than slowly lowered his spoon.
Ah. There it was. For the first time that morning, Busaya looked fully awake. Arunee noticed the shift immediately. The sudden stillness, the microscopic tightening around Bua’s eyes, the way the entire atmosphere at the breakfast table changed temperature without anyone saying a word.
“…what?” she asked cautiously.
Bua blinked once. Then reached very calmly for her coffee.
“Nothing.”
That was worse somehow. Than leaned back slightly in his chair, openly fascinated now.
Their mother frowned. “Why are you acting strange? I was only saying you two understood each other well.”
“We also argued like two predators fighting over territory,” Bua replied flatly before taking a sip of coffee.
“Yes,” Arunee said immediately. “But intelligently.”
“That is not a relationship strength.”
Arunee looked unconvinced.
“She was always very good to this family,” she said, voice softening slightly now as old memories drifted naturally into the room. “Always polite. Never arrived empty-handed. Helped your father carry stock deliveries even when you both was still a student.”
Somchai hummed quietly in agreement behind his newspaper.
“And she remembered everyone’s birthdays,” Arunee continued. “Even Ah Ma’s. Do you know how impressed your grandmother was by that?”
“Ah Ma still talks about her,” Than said.
“Because Ah Ma likes anybody who argues loudly and wins,” Bua muttered.
“That’s true,” Than admitted.
Their grandmother was still asleep at this hour. One of the few privileges she had fully embraced with age. Ah Ma Prangtip believed mornings were unnecessary after seventy-five and usually wandered closer to ten demanding breakfast and gossip in equal measure.
“One rainy season the shop roof started leaking,” Arunee recalled, smiling faintly to herself “Your father was still looking for someone to repair it and suddenly Phinya arrived with a ladder and two workers because she said the ceiling ‘looked suspicious.’”
Somchai lowered the newspaper slightly.
“She negotiated the repair price better than me,” he admitted.
Bua stared into her coffee cup with sudden intensity. That, unfortunately, was true.
Phin remembered birthdays. Helped carry grocery deliveries without being asked. Fixed broken shelves around the house while arguing with Than about football. Sat beside Somchai listening to noodle shop stories like they were historical archives. Bought Arunee expensive tea she absolutely did not need. And somehow made all of it look effortless.
Which had honestly been part of the problem.
Phin moved through people’s lives naturally, warmly, leaving herself everywhere without seeming to notice she was doing it. Even after all these years, parts of her still lingered in this house in small invisible ways.
Arunee sighed again, softer this time.
“I liked her,” she admitted.
Than nodded immediately. “We all liked her.”
“Bunch of traitors,” Bua muttered.
Her brother looked offended.
“She bought me a PlayStation game once.”
“You cannot be emotionally purchased that easily.”
“I absolutely can.”
Bua closed her eyes slowly and pressed two fingers against her temple.
“Can this family please stop talking about Phinya like she died in battle?” she asked weakly. “We broke up almost three years ago.”
“Two years and eight months,” Than corrected automatically.
Bua opened one eye.
“That is genuinely disturbing that you remember.”
“I remember timelines.”
“You remember free gifts.”
“Also true.”
Bua let out a long suffering sigh and slumped deeper into her chair.
“I moved on,” she declared tiredly. “Why has nobody else in this house managed to do the same?”
Her mother looked mildly unconvinced.
Her brother looked extremely unconvinced.
Even her father slowly lowered his newspaper with the careful expression of a man choosing peace over honesty.
Bua huffed in annoyance. Unbelievable. She was the one who had actually dated Phin. And somehow her entire family had handled the breakup worse than she did. At this point, it honestly felt like she had accidentally gone through a divorce on behalf of four other people.
“You all got emotionally attached to my ex-girlfriend,” she accused.
“She helped me file taxes once,” Her father said quietly.
“She remembered my coffee order,” Her brother added.
Her mother folded her arms defensively. “She called me on Mother’s Day.”
Bua stared at them in disbelief.
“Oh my god,” she whispered. “You people were in a relationship with her too.”
Somewhere deep in her bones, she could feel it. Disaster. Not dramatic disaster. Not life-ending catastrophe.
Worse.
The specific kind of personal inconvenience the universe seemed to design exclusively for her. Because somehow, after years of relative peace, Phinya Thananont had suddenly started appearing everywhere again like an aggressively attractive haunting.
First Fang mentioning her over lunch two days ago. Then the Mae Saeng excavation meeting yesterday.
Now her mother casually bringing her up over breakfast like this family had collectively forgotten Busaya once spent nearly five months emotionally unraveling in quiet academic silence. It felt ominous. Like spotting the first dark clouds before monsoon season.
“You’re making that face again,” Than observed.
“What face.”
“The one before you either accept extra work or commit homicide.”
Bua opened her eyes slowly and pressed a hand against her stomach.
“I feel uneasy,” she said. “I genuinely feels like something terrible is approaching me.”
Somchai turned another page of the newspaper calmly. “That’s usually what happens when you skip meals and drink coffee on an empty stomach.”
“No,” Bua murmured, staring blankly into her coffee now. “This feels more targeted.”
Arunee frowned slightly. “Why are you acting like we mentioning Phinya’s name is… something dangerous?”
Bua exhaled slowly through her nose. The problem was not that she still loved Phin in some dramatic unresolved way. At least she didn’t think so. Enough time had passed that the sharpness of the breakup had long since dulled into something quieter and harder to define.
But Phin had always been disruptive. Even at her best. Especially at her best. She arrived loudly into spaces without meaning to. Changed routines. Rearranged emotional equilibrium. Pulled attention naturally like gravity while acting completely unaware of it.
Dating Phin back then had felt, at times, like sharing your life with a charming natural disaster who occasionally made you tea. And now every instinct Bua possessed was screaming that the universe was preparing to throw her directly back into the storm.
She looked at the clock. Already late. Wonderful.
Bua stood abruptly, grabbing her bag and remaining coffee with the frantic energy of someone fleeing both emotional vulnerability and family conversation simultaneously.
“I have to go.”
“But you barely ate,” Arunee complained.
“I’ll eat later.”
“You always say that.”
Than watched her shove papers into her bag with growing amusement.
“You know,” he said conversationally, “this is the most emotional reaction you’ve had to anything in months.”
Bua pointed at him immediately.
“You’re a bad sibling.”
“I’m observant.”
“You’re adopted.”
Their mother gasped. “Busaya!”
Than looked delighted. “See? She’s awake now.”
“Both of you are exhausting,” Arunee declared, already standing up from the table with the weary determination unique to mothers who had long accepted suffering as part of daily life. Bua recognized that movement instantly.
“Mae, no—”
Too late.
Arunee was already in the kitchen pulling out plastic containers with military efficiency.
“You didn’t finish breakfast, which means you’ll forget to eat lunch, then you’ll drink coffee until your hands shake and tell everyone it’s ‘fine.’”
“It is fine.”
“It is visibly not fine.”
“I’m thirty-two.”
“And somehow still incapable of feeding yourself properly.”
Bua sighed as her mother began aggressively packing food into containers without consulting her, muttering under her breath the entire time.
“Take the stir-fried pork. And fruit. No, more rice than that, you eat like a disappointed bird—”
“Mae.”
“Also take the soup.”
“I cannot carry soup to work.”
“You carried bones home once.”
“That was research.”
“This is nutrition.”
Than watched the entire exchange with the peaceful expression of a younger sibling who had escaped this specific form of maternal warfare years ago. Somchai lowered his newspaper slightly.
“Your mother woke up early to make that soup.”
Traitor.
Bua rubbed tiredly at her face while Arunee continued stuffing food into her tote bag with increasingly emotional intensity.
“You’re too thin,” her mother complained. “And tired all the time. Your eyes look hollow.”
“That’s just genetics.”
Arunee looked personally offended.
“None of you got this from me,” she said immediately. “I looked radiant at your age.”
Than nodded solemnly. “That’s true. You currently look like a Victorian orphan.”
Bua pointed at him without energy.
“And you continue to be the weakest link in this family.”
Arunee ignored that entirely and zipped the lunch bag shut with finality before marching back over and shoving it into Bua’s arms.
“Eat properly.”
Bua accepted the bag automatically, because resisting maternal food distribution in a Thai household was historically proven to be impossible.
“…thank you, Mae.”
Her mother immediately softened.
“Drive carefully, dear,” she said, smoothing back a strand of Bua’s hair despite the fact that her daughter was fully a grown woman with a doctorate.
Bua endured it with the exhausted resignation of someone who secretly liked being fussed over more than she admitted. Then Arunee narrowed her eyes suddenly.
“And if you happen to see Phinya again one day—”
“Mae.”
“I’m only saying—”
“I’m leaving now.”
*****
By the time Bua arrived at the anthropology building, she was already fifteen minutes late, emotionally fragile, and carrying enough paperwork to qualify as structural damage.
Rainwater still clung to the edges of the campus pathways outside, students weaving between buildings beneath umbrellas while motorcycles splashed recklessly through puddles near the faculty parking area. The anthropology department buzzed with its usual weekday chaos—graduate students running on caffeine and fear, lecturers carrying stacks of reports, the distant sound of someone arguing about carbon dating in a seminar room upstairs.
Bua moved through all of it half-awake. One hand held her coffee.
The other balanced excavation reports, skeletal analyses, and the lunch box her mother had aggressively forced into her tote bag that morning. Her phone kept vibrating. Unread emails. Probably suffering.
Ahead of her, two junior lecturers stood near the hallway whispering intensely about something. “…she’s really here?”
“I saw Professor Kriangsak almost fix his posture.”
“That’s terrifying.”
Bua walked past them without listening. At this point, unless the building was actively on fire, she no longer had the emotional range to care.
Meanwhile, at the opposite end of the corridor, Phinya Thananont stepped into the anthropology department for the first time in nearly three years.
And immediately caused social instability. It started subtly. One administrative assistant gasped. A graduate student walking too fast nearly dropped an entire archive box to avoid her.
Someone from archaeology whispered, “Oh my god.”
Phin removed her sunglasses with easy familiarity, smiling warmly and giving a polite wai at a senior lecturer approaching her while effortlessly adjusting the strap of her leather bag over one shoulder. The hallway felt too small for her somehow. Too bright. Too aware of itself.
She looked unfairly composed after a long international flight and one morning spent battling Bangkok traffic: crisp white shirt beneath a charcoal blazer, long dark hair falling loosely over one shoulder, confidence moving ahead of her like its own atmosphere.
People noticed when Phin entered spaces. They always had.
“Ajarn Phinya,” one faculty member greeted warmly. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you, Phi,” Phin replied easily, smiling as she removed her sunglasses and put it on top of her head. “Has the department survived without me?”
The woman let out a startled laugh immediately, awkward and slightly breathless in the way people often became around Phin without meaning to.
“No,” she admitted, already smiling too much now. “Honestly, productivity may have declined.”
Phin pressed a hand lightly to her chest in mock sincerity. “It’s nice to feel appreciated.”
The lecturer shook her head, visibly blushing despite herself. Dangerous woman, she thought privately as Phin moved past her with effortless charm and impossible confidence, somehow managing to make an anthropology hallway feel like a movie entrance. Then, halfway down the corridor, she saw someone familiar turning the corner too quickly.
Lab coat. Messy hair. Coffee. Exhaustion radiating off her like heat from concrete. The one and only Busaya Methin.
For one strange suspended second, Phin forgot the conversation she was in. Because there she was. Exactly the same and not the same at all. Still carrying too much. Still walking too fast. Still reading while moving like workplace injuries were merely theoretical.
And irritatingly still pretty. Unfairly cute.
Phin’s eyes traced her automatically, like muscle memory refusing to accept time had passed properly. The same sharp focus when she read. The same slight crease between her brows when she was thinking too hard. The same lips Phin used to kiss until they were breathless in moments between arguments about isotope ratios and whether Bua was “scientifically insufferable” or just “personally annoying.”
(It had been both. Usually both.)
Bua, distracted by the report in her hands and already balancing her coffee dangerously, collided directly into someone solid.
Everything tipped at once. The coffee lurched sideways. Papers slipped from her arms. And before gravity could fully decide the outcome, a hand caught the coffee cup cleanly mid-fall.
Another steadied the collapsing stack of papers against Bua’s chest.
A third movement, smooth, fast, instinctive. Closed lightly around her elbow before she lost balance completely.
Like muscle memory. Like reflex. Bua froze. Because she knew those hands, and worse than that, her body knew them too before her brain could finish refusing the information, there was the steady catch of her coffee mid-fall, the firm but careful grip at her elbow, the impossible familiarity of being held in place without being asked.
And then it hit her: the scent, subtle and infuriatingly consistent, something clean and expensive and faintly warm like travel air and confidence, the same perfume she had once, under highly questionable scientific justification, sniffed aggressively at Phin’s collar years ago and declared “unnecessarily distracting,” only to be told she was absolutely not conducting peer-reviewed research.
It was still there. Still exactly the same. Of course it was. Above her, warm and familiar enough to rearrange her entire nervous system, a voice said lightly—
“Still trying to kill yourself in public, Baibua?”
*****