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Loving Barth should have been a difficult and demanding task, but instead it felt like taking in oxygen—completely selfless and effortless.
Loving God, though, proved far harder than Tanrak expected. Something that had, until a certain point, been as easy as breathing suddenly became suffocating and, on some days, even painful.
Barth’s gaze was loving, intense, and, in some moments, lustful.
God’s gaze, on the other hand, felt judgmental and heavy.
The calloused hands of Barth made Tanrak shiver and blush at the same time, but the hands of Father Anran or Master Phak felt cold and fierce.
Even though no one knew of the passion that had been ignited on that stormy night in the communal showers, Tanrak still felt as though every set of eyes was judging every second and minute the two spent hidden away in an abandoned storage room. Some days, they simply laughed and talked about everything and nothing, while on other nights, they shared sweet, slow kisses that left them both breathless.
Tanrak loved the feeling of the other boy stealing his breath directly from his lips.
What Tanrak had learned to dislike was how Father Anran and Kondech stole his breath with certain sermons and monologues that stabbed deeper and deeper into his heart.
Love should be selfless and welcomed.
Instead, the boy’s love felt caged and sinful in the very place where God and his family were praised.
“Do you think we will reach Heaven?” the young believer asked his lover, who was softly caressing his messy hair.
“Depends on who you ask. If you ask Father, he might disagree. But if you ask me, I believe that our love will reach Heaven’s gates.”
“Why do you believe that?” the believer asked as he caressed the other’s soft features, which he loved dearly.
“Because you are my religion, and in my religion, only a Heaven named Tanrak exists,” the young lover replied before sealing his lips against the other’s.
The words resonated through the small storage room, where laughter, tears, happiness, pleasure, and sadness had all been shared. The words penetrated the peeling wallpaper and seeped into the very foundation of the building. For words of love could both destroy and build an empire.