Chapter Text
Hi. I’m Namtan Tipnaree. And I have the most popular, beautiful, and smartest girlfriend in this whole damn university—Film Rachanun. Our class president, the pride of the professors, and just Miss Perfect, whom everyone looks up to. I remember chasing after her for a whole month with a stupid smile on my face, waiting for her outside the library, carrying her heavy folders with lecture notes, and bringing her a caramel latte every single morning. I calculated every tiny detail—the milk temperature, the exact amount of sugar—just to please her. When, after a month of my clumsy courting, she finally said "yes," quietly hiding a smile in the collar of her coat, I almost tore the locker room apart with joy. And here we are, dating for six months now. Six months that felt like absolute, pure happiness to me.
I was ready to do anything for her. Literally. My life had always revolved around basketball, but for Film, I made any compromise. If she had an important exam, I could sit for three hours on a hard step in the hallway of her faculty building, just to hug her during a five-minute break and hand her a chocolate bar for brainpower. If she asked me not to wear ripped jeans to joint lectures, I submissively pulled on uncomfortable trousers, even though I felt ridiculous in them. I changed my habits, my training schedule, pushed my own desires into the background—all so that Film Rachanun would be happy with me.
It felt especially sharp during our group hangouts. The six of us often gathered in a small, cozy cafe around the corner from the campus. Our company was divided into perfect unions: Milk was dating Love, and Emmy was with Bonnie. Watching them was my personal, quiet torture mixed with joy for my friends.
Milk could easily wrap her arm around Love’s waist right in front of the waiter, kiss her temple, and laugh loudly at her joke. Emmy openly held Bonnie’s hand, lacing their fingers together above the table, and neither of them looked around. They dated without fights, without this eternal, invisible tension. Their relationships were light, transparent, like spring water.
And then there was me. Film and I always stood apart. At the table, Film sat perfectly straight, her hands always on her lap or resting on her teacup. The moment I moved closer out of habit or tried to take her hand under the table, she would gently but firmly pull away. Others thought Film was just shy and strict, but inside me, a biting, suffocating envy settled every single time. I envied Milk and Emmy. Why didn't they have to hide their feelings? Why didn't their girlfriends build invisible walls of "decency" between them? But I suppressed that inner voice. "Film is just different," I justified her every night. "She needs time. She loves me, just differently."
Besides, Film protected me. In her own way, but she did. I remember an incident last week when a strict macroeconomics professor called me out during a joint lecture and scolded me in front of the entire auditorium for a failed midterm test: "Athlete Tipnaree, you are a disgrace to our faculty. With C-grades like these, your place is in the yard with a ball, not in a higher education institution." My cheeks burned crimson then; I was ready to sink through the floor from humiliation.
And right then, Film stood up from the front row. Boldly, confidently, looking the professor straight in the eye:
"Excuse me, Professor, but Namtan defends the honor of our university in intercollegiate competitions. She doesn't miss lectures out of laziness, but because of a grueling training schedule. She will definitely make up for everything, and I will personally oversee her preparation for the finals."
At that moment, I was ready to worship her. My protector. My ideal.
But as soon as the lecture ended and we were left alone in the empty classroom, the savior mask slipped off Film. She slammed her textbooks onto the table and turned to me. Her eyes burned with anger and resentment.
"Do you even understand how sick to my stomach I felt just now?!" she almost hissed, curling her lips. "I am the class president! I am supposed to be an example! Instead, I am forced to stand up and lie to a professor, covering for my C-student girlfriend! Namtan, I am tired of blushing for you! Is it really that hard to open a damn book and study well enough to get at least a B? Milk and Emmy play too, but they don't make their partners and friends feel ashamed of them! Do something about this, or I will simply burn with shame standing next to you!"
She left, slamming the door loudly. And I remained standing there, clenching my fists so hard that my nails dug into my skin until it bled. Everything inside me burned with injustice, but my love for her was stronger. "I’ll get better. I’ll be better," I promised myself then.
Tonight was supposed to be the turning point of reconciliation.
The ball fit familiarly into my palm, hitting the hardwood of the empty gym with a dull thud. Practice had ended an hour ago, Milk and Emmy had already gone to the dorm, inviting me along, but I stayed behind to practice a couple dozen more free throws. I was exhausted, my jersey uncomfortably clung to my body, a fresh bruise bloomed on my knee from a hard collision on the court, but inside, I felt light. I was thinking about Film. I had memorized half of the lecture notes she gave me. I wanted to surprise her. To go up to her faculty, hug her from behind, burying my nose in her neck that smelled of chamomile shampoo, and tell her that I was trying for us, for our sake.
Throwing my duffel bag over one shoulder and lazily spinning the ball on my index finger, I walked down the darkening, quiet corridor of the main building. Near lecture hall No. 305, I noticed a sliver of light. Familiar voices drifted through the cracked door. I smiled—Film was in there with her inseparable friends, Love and Bonnie.
I was just about to push the door open and shout my usual, loud, "Hey, honor students, stop cramming!" when I suddenly heard my name. Love was speaking.
"Film, seriously, that end-of-semester celebratory family dinner is coming up soon. Your dad is hosting it at a restaurant. Are you finally going to introduce Namtan to your parents? You’ve been together for six months, it’s serious."
I froze at the door. My heart treacherously skipped a beat, and a warm, foolish glow spread through my chest. Meeting Film’s parents... I was terrified of it, but secretly, I dreamed of it so much. I wanted to become an official part of her life, so she wouldn't let go of my hand in the cafe anymore.
"Yeah," Bonnie chimed in, rustling some papers. "Namtan might look like a troublemaker, always in those oversized hoodies of hers, but she’s so cool and genuine. Your dad will like that she’s real, not arrogant like those guys from the economics department."
I held my breath, waiting to hear Film’s beloved, soft voice. I wanted to hear her say that she was proud of me despite my C-grades.
But what echoed from the classroom made me root to the floor. Film’s voice was cold, irritated, and somehow... merciless.
"Are you guys out of your minds?" she snapped. "I am not going to introduce her to my parents. I am simply ashamed of her in front of my father."
The word "ashamed" hit me in the gut so hard it knocked the wind out of me. The basketball slipped from my weakened fingers. Luckily, it fell against my soft hoodie, and I caught it with both hands, pressing it to my stomach like a shield. My vision went dark.
"Film, why are you being like this?" Love tried to stop her gently. "Nam is an athlete, all her time goes into training and away games..."
"So what?!" Film interrupted, a cutting cruelty piercing her tone. "Milk and Emmy are basketball players too! They play on the same team. But at least they get B's, they use their heads, they turn everything in on time. But Namtan? She barely scrapes by with C's! She has nothing but a hoop and a ball in her head. My father wants to see a smart, high-status girl next to me, someone you can talk to about art or economics, not a thug basketball player. I have to blush for her grades in front of every single professor in our department. I just won't survive that humiliation at home."
An awkward silence fell over the classroom. It seemed even Love and Bonnie didn't expect such coldness from their friend, especially after seeing how Namtan was literally afraid to breathe on her out of sheer love.
And I stood in the dark corridor, alone. Completely alone. It felt as though I had been buried alive in ice. My hands shook, squeezing the miserable basketball. Every word Film said, like a shard of dirty glass, stabbed into my soul.
Ashamed. Thug. C-student. Blush. Disgrace.
So that’s who I was to her all these six months? Not a loved one for whom I changed my damn habits, but a convenient toy for secret hookups, to be hidden in a closet when important guests arrived? And the scariest, most unbearable part—she compared me to Milk and Emmy again. Even her own friends saw a human being in me, but Film saw only a badge of dishonor. I was below her standards. Below everything she valued.
I took a step back. Then another. Slowly, trying not to make a single sound, I turned around and walked away down the corridor. For the first time in my life, I didn't want to enter that room. For the first time in my life, I wanted to run as far away from Film Rachanun as possible.
When I stepped outside, the cool night air hit my face. Tears finally burst from my eyes—hot, angry, full of humiliation. I smeared them across my cheeks with a palm dirty from the court, swallowing my sobs.
"You want someone smart?" I thought, almost suffocating from the pain as I walked toward the dorms. "You want your father not to feel ashamed? You hold my own friends up as an example to me? Fine. I will make sure that you never, do you hear me, never feel ashamed of me again."
I didn't sleep that night. Milk and Emmy were already snoring softly in their beds when I entered the room. I didn't turn on the light so they wouldn't see my tear-stained eyes—I would be too ashamed to admit to them that Film considered them better than me. I turned on a small desk lamp, pulled the dust-covered macroeconomics and calculus textbooks from the very bottom of my backpack.
Everything blurred before my eyes from tears and exhaustion, the letters tangled, but I grit my teeth until they ground together and read. Page after page. Terms, graphs, formulas.
The next morning, my personal hell began, and it lasted for a whole week.
My day turned into an endless survival strip. In the morning—lectures, where I sat in the front row, locking my eyes onto the blackboard, and wrote and wrote until my fingers cramped. Film tried to approach me several times, looking into my eyes, asking why I didn't come to her that night and why the circles under my eyes had turned pitch black. I only smiled dryly, turned away, and said, "Just getting ready for the cup final, Film. Everything's fine." I couldn't look her in the face. I felt disgusted with myself, disgusted that I still loved her to madness despite her cruelty.
After lectures, I ran to the gym. The coach yelled, demanding a hundred percent effort before the final match of the year. And I gave it. I flew across the hardwood like a woman possessed, sinking basket after basket until my lungs began to burn from a lack of oxygen.
"Namtan, slow down! Are you crazy?! You’re going to kill yourself!" Milk screamed, grabbing my shoulders after another practice when I just collapsed onto the bench, hyperventilating. My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat, delivering a wild, arrhythmic beat.
"Everything’s fine, Milk..." I rasped, pushing her hand away and opening my third energy drink of the day. My head was splitting as if a rusty nail had been driven inside. I took a pack of strong painkillers from my bag and swallowed two pills at once, washing them down with the sickeningly sweet liquid. "I need to practice. And I need to study."
"Nam, you’re pale as a corpse," Emmy looked at my trembling hands with worry. "Why are you tearing yourself apart like this? Is it because of Film? Did you guys fight?"
"No. We didn't fight," I snapped, standing up. My legs buckled for a second, gray circles swimming before my eyes, but I stubbornly held my balance. "Everything's perfect."
At night, I didn't sleep. At all. My body, pumped full of caffeine, taurine, and pills, refused to shut down, even though my physical frame begged for mercy. I sat over blueprints and notes until 5 AM, hammering knowledge into my head that was supposed to make me "worthy." In my notebook, among the coach's tactical schemes, my daily to-do lists now ran in neat columns: “Buy Film her favorite latte. Write the essay. Memorize topic 4. Be the best. Make her proud.”
The day of the final exam coincided with the day of the championship match.
When I walked into the auditorium, I was swaying. My insides trembled from the wild overstrain, my heart either stopping or starting to beat like crazy, pulsing hard in my temples. I drew my exam ticket, sat at the desk, and started writing. I wrote down everything I had crammed during those sleepless nights. Line after line.
When I placed the sheet on the professor’s desk, he lifted his glasses, carefully studying my work. Film sat in the front row, watching me in surprise.
"Well, look at that, Namtan Tipnaree," the professor voiced, genuinely astonished. "A perfectly structured answer. Not a single mistake. You can do it when you want to! A solid B, practically an A. Well done."
Someone in the auditorium whistled. I offered a faint, barely noticeable smile. I turned my head and looked at Film. Shocked amazement mixed with pride filled her eyes. She gave me a restrained nod, wordlessly mouthing with her lips: "Well done." But that nod... it brought me no joy. Inside, there was only a ringing, dead emptiness. “I did it, Film. See? Now I’m just like Milk and Emmy. You don't have to waste your precious nerves on me anymore.”
I had no time to celebrate. The final was starting in two hours.
The gym was packed to capacity. The roar of the stands was deafening. Everyone was shouting, waving our university flags. In the first row of the VIP section, I immediately spotted Film. She was sitting with Love and Bonnie, her cheeks painted with our team's colors. She was smiling at me, waving her hand.
I pulled my usual mask of a confident rebel over my face and winked at her, but inside... inside, I was barely holding on. Every movement required a massive effort, my muscles felt like lead, and a strange, dull, crushing pain was building up in my chest, right behind my ribs. "Just a little longer," I commanded my body. "Just four quarters. Endure it. For her."
The whistle blew. The match began.
It was a dirty, grueling game. The opponents pressed hard, but I saw nothing but the hoop. I gave two hundred percent. Passes, steals, jumps. My body worked on pure autopilot, driven by a hellish mix of adrenaline and the energy drinks I had downed in the locker room. White spots flashed before my eyes every now and then, the air felt scorching hot, my lungs were tearing apart.
"Nam, pass! You can barely breathe, slow down the pace!" Milk screamed at me, running past, but I could barely hear her. The sounds of the crowd merged into one continuous, droning roar, like the hum of a speeding train.
The fourth quarter. The score was tied. Ten seconds left on the clock before the final buzzer. The ball was in my hands. I bypassed one defender, then a second. Time seemed to slow down. Each echo of the ball bouncing off the hardwood resonated as a terrible, sharp pang in my heart. It was beating so fast it felt like it was about to burn right through my rib cage.
Out of the corner of my eye, I looked at the stands. Film was standing up, her fists clenched, her eyes full of awe and tension. She was looking only at me.
“Look, Film... Look at your thug.”
I made the leap. My signature three-pointer. The ball left the tips of my fingers, describing a perfect arc, and dropped cleanly through the net with a soft rustle.
The deafening blast of the siren. Final buzzer. We won.
The arena exploded into such a roar that the walls seemed to shake. Milk and Emmy ran toward me from the bench, screaming with joy. In the stands, Film was jumping with happiness, shouting something to Love and Bonnie. She looked at me with the kind of love and pride I had dreamily yearned for all these six months.
I stood in the middle of the court. My arms dropped helplessly along my torso. I looked directly at Film. My lips moved faintly, forming wordless syllables: “I did it... Are you not ashamed now?”
And at that exact moment, the pain in my chest exploded into a blinding, black flash. It felt as if someone had driven a red-hot crowbar into my heart and twisted it. A sharp spasm gripped my lungs, robbing me of the ability to take even a tiny breath. The air vanished.
In Film's eyes, joy instantly gave way to a wild, mortal terror. She saw me suddenly clutch my jersey over my heart. She saw my face turn deathly pale.
I tried to take a step toward my running friends, but my legs wouldn't hold me anymore. The ground gave way beneath me. The roar of the crowd abruptly went quiet, turning into a ringing, absolute silence.
I fell backward, the hard floor striking the back of my head, but I barely felt the pain anymore. The last thing I saw before the world around me finally went out and plunged into eternal darkness was Film's face, as she vaulted over the spectator railing and ran toward me with a scream of horror.