Chapter Text
Por wasn't sure when he became aware that the world was wrong.
The realization hadn't arrived with the kind of dramatic fanfare stories usually liked to indulge in. He hadn't been struck by lightning, visited by a mysterious deity, or hit by a truck on his way home from school. One day, somewhere during the second semester of Matthayom Five, he had simply looked around his classroom and realized he couldn't remember anybody's name.
At first, he blamed himself.
Everyone forgot names sometimes. It happened. He wasn't particularly social to begin with, so it wasn't impossible that he'd simply never paid enough attention. Embarrassing, perhaps, but hardly supernatural.
Then he started asking.
"Sorry," he asked the boy beside him one afternoon while they waited for the teacher to arrive. "What's your name again?"
The boy looked up from his phone with an amused grin. "Again? That's, what, the third time you've asked me this week?"
"I know."
"So why are you asking again?"
"Because I forgot."
The grin widened. "Seriously?"
Por nodded.
The boy sighed dramatically before relenting. "Fine. My name's—"
The rest vanished beneath a burst of static.
It wasn't the ordinary crackle of poor reception or an old television searching for signal. The noise exploded directly inside his head, sharp enough to make him flinch. Every syllable dissolved before it reached him, swallowed by white noise that lingered in his ears long after the boy had finished speaking.
"...What?"
The boy frowned. "You're making that face again."
"What face?"
"The one where you look like your brain just blue-screened."
Por stared at him for a long moment before quietly deciding there was no point asking again.
It wasn't an isolated incident.
Teachers introduced themselves on the first day of every semester. Static.
Upperclassmen giving club orientations. Static.
The first-year students greeting their seniors. Static.
The old woman who sold grilled pork skewers outside the school gates every morning. Static.
If someone attempted to tell him their name, reality itself seemed to object.
Naturally, Por treated it like an experiment.
The first hypothesis was hearing.
He asked people to repeat themselves slower.
Static.
Louder.
Static.
Into his left ear.
Static.
Into his right.
Still static.
Fine.
Maybe it wasn't hearing.
He borrowed a pen and notebook, asking one of his classmates to write his name instead.
The handwriting was perfectly legible while the pen moved across the paper.
The moment the last stroke finished, the letters blurred together like wet ink left out in the rain. Within seconds, they became an indecipherable mess of lines that resembled no language Por had ever seen.
That was concerning.
His next attempt involved technology.
Typing should work. Computers weren't bound by whatever strange curse had settled over his life.
He watched someone enter their name into his phone.
The instant they pressed enter, every letter transformed into a string of question marks.
?????????
Autocorrect, apparently, had become an accomplice.
He escalated.
"Can you spell it letter by letter?"
"Sure."
"E."
Static.
"...I."
Static.
"...A."
Static.
By the time they reached the fourth letter, Por thanked them for their time and concluded that the universe was simply committed to the bit.
There wasn't much he could do after that.
People became easier to catalogue by appearance instead.
Tall Glasses.
Curly Hair.
Acne Guy.
Frog Keychain Girl.
Vice-President Eyebrows.
The names weren't particularly creative, but they were reliable. Hair couldn't dissolve into static, and eyebrows, thankfully, remained stubbornly recognizable.
His two closest friends never questioned it. They laughed whenever he called them by increasingly ridiculous descriptions, assuming he was developing another strange sense of humor. One of them even spent an entire month responding to "Tall Glasses" despite having switched to contact lenses nearly two years ago.
Por didn't notice until someone pointed it out.
Remembering faces turned out to be nearly as difficult as remembering names.
He could recognize someone perfectly well while looking directly at them, but the moment they walked away, their features began slipping from his memory like water through his fingers. Hair color disappeared first. Then expressions. Eventually all that remained was a vague outline and whatever physical trait he'd assigned them.
The truly frustrating part was that nobody else seemed to notice anything strange. Reality quietly patched over every inconsistency before anyone else could notice it.
Everyone.
Except him.
And Por was beginning to suspect that made him the unluckiest person in Thailand.
The system wasn't exactly elegant.
It was, however, functional.
More importantly, it was consistent.
Because there was only one exception.
Alisa Chatmanee.
Her name arrived with perfect clarity every single time.
The first time he'd heard it, he'd instinctively braced himself for the familiar burst of static that never came. Instead, the syllables settled comfortably inside his mind as though they'd always belonged there. He could repeat her full name without effort. He could remember it days later. Weeks later. He could have written it in his sleep.
He didn't know why reality had decided she deserved special treatment.
He only knew that she did.
Unfortunately, reality's favoritism didn't stop there.
"Uhm... P'Por?"
Por didn't bother looking up from his locker.
"No."
Silence stretched between them for a second.
"I... didn't ask anything yet."
"I know."
"..."
"My answer's still no."
Curiosity finally got the better of him.
He looked up.
Alisa stood in front of him, clutching her school bag against her chest. She was shorter than him by several inches, with soft features that somehow looked even softer beneath the afternoon sunlight pouring through the hallway windows. Her eyes were absurdly large, the sort artists gave heroines because ordinary anatomy simply wasn't romantic enough. When she smiled, the expression carried an almost unfair sincerity that would have been charming if it weren't directed exclusively at him.
The moment their eyes met, a breeze drifted through the corridor.
Por frowned.
The hallway windows were closed.
His bangs lifted anyway.
Loose ribbons fluttered behind several passing students. Papers rustled inside nearby classrooms. A handful of pale pink Himalayan cherry blossom petals floated lazily past the third-floor corridor despite the nearest tree being rooted somewhere below the building.
He looked outside.
The branches stood perfectly still beneath the afternoon sun.
Not a single leaf moved.
The petals continued drifting through the hallway.
Por slowly looked back at Alisa.
The breeze continued as if nothing about this situation deserved questioning.
"...This school is ridiculous."
"Hm?"
"Nothing."
She smiled.
Tiny specks of light shimmered around her face.
Por blinked.
The sparkles remained.
Not metaphorical sparkles. Not a trick of the sunlight.
Actual glittering particles appeared around her before quietly fading into the air.
He rubbed both eyes.
Still there.
He glanced around to see if anyone else had noticed.
Tall Glasses was arguing with Curly Hair over homework. Frog Keychain Girl laughed at something on her phone. Vice-President Eyebrows walked past carrying a stack of worksheets without sparing the floating sparkles a single glance.
Nobody reacted.
Apparently, everyone had collectively decided this was normal.
Por was beginning to suspect the problem wasn't the world.
It was that he alone had somehow become aware of it.
Alisa shifted her weight from one foot to the other before holding out the pink lunch box she'd been carrying all along. The cloth wrapped around it was embroidered with tiny white rabbits wearing aprons, each one smiling with an unsettling amount of optimism.
"I... made lunch."
"No."
"You don't even know what it is."
"I don't need to."
"I woke up at four this morning."
"I respect your poor decision-making."
She puffed her cheeks out in a way that Por suspected had been meticulously designed in a laboratory to be considered adorable.
"It wasn't a poor decision."
"You voluntarily reduced your sleeping hours."
"...You're making it sound like I committed a crime."
"You did. Against yourself."
Despite his complete lack of gratitude, Alisa smiled anyway.
It wasn't a defeated smile. It wasn't awkward or forced either. It was simply... hopeful, as though every rejection was merely another stepping stone toward eventual success. Por found that infinitely more disturbing than if she'd cried.
"I made your favorite."
"I don't have a favorite."
"You do."
"I don't."
"You like khao mun gai."
"I've eaten it twice."
"You smiled."
"I was having a stroke."
She giggled.
Actually giggled.
Por looked around the hallway, searching for hidden cameras.
There weren't any.
He looked back at Alisa.
She was still smiling.
His suspicion that she'd suffered some kind of head injury before entering high school became stronger by the day.
"I'll try again tomorrow," she said cheerfully, pulling the lunch box back into her arms.
"...Why?"
She blinked, looking genuinely confused by the question.
"Because you're nice."
Por instinctively turned around. The hallway behind him was empty except for a first-year struggling to carry a stack of sports equipment. He looked back at Alisa. "...There's nobody behind me."
"I know."
"So who are you talking about?"
"You."
"I'm many things."
"Mmhm."
"Nice isn't one of them."
"I think it is."
"You have catastrophically poor judgment."
"I don't think I do."
Por stared at her for several seconds, searching for even the smallest trace of sarcasm. There wasn't any. She meant every word.
Whatever standards the girl used to judge human beings clearly required immediate recalibration.
The warning bell rang overhead, sending students hurrying toward their classrooms. Lockers slammed shut in quick succession as conversations dissolved into the usual morning rush. Por took the opportunity to escape, stepping away before Alisa could continue whatever conversation she believed they were having.
Unfortunately, reality appeared to have scheduled today's romantic accident already. Someone rushed around the corner carrying a stack of worksheets taller than their face. The collision happened exactly as Por predicted. The student clipped Alisa's shoulder. She stumbled. Por watched it unfold with a growing sense of resignation.
"...No."
The breeze returned. His hair lifted. Cherry blossom petals appeared from absolutely nowhere, swirling dramatically through the corridor as though an invisible production crew had been waiting for their cue.
"This shit again," Por muttered.
Alisa pitched forward. Straight toward him.
Of course she did.
His body moved before he gave it permission. His right arm shot forward. His left foot stepped back.
His brain immediately objected.
No.
His fingers stretched toward her shoulder.
No.
His muscles ignored him completely.
He could actually feel it.
The terrifying part wasn't that he was moving.
It was that he wasn't the one deciding.
Every instinct inside him urged him to catch her. His heartbeat quickened, warmth rushed into his chest, and somewhere deep inside his mind an overwhelming certainty whispered that this was exactly what he was supposed to do.
Catch her.
Smile.
Lock eyes.
Fall in love.
"No, thank you." Por threw his entire weight sideways.
His own feet tangled together.
Instead of catching Alisa, he crashed shoulder-first into the row of lockers with enough force to rattle every metal door down the hallway.
Alisa continued falling. Her forehead met the polished floor with a spectacular thunk.
Silence swallowed the corridor.
Por slowly pushed himself off the lockers.
His shoulder hurt. But his pride was intact.
Alisa sat up, rubbing her forehead with watery eyes. "...Ow."
"You seem to have survived."
"I think so..."
"Congratulations."
Several students stared.
One girl covered her mouth.
Somewhere near the staircase, somebody whispered, "P'Por slammed himself into the lockers trying not to bump into her..."
Another sighed dreamily. "That's so romantic..."
Por's eye twitched.
Romantic?
She had headbutted the floor.
He had voluntarily concussed himself against school property.
Which part of that sequence qualified as romance?
Alisa looked up at him, cheeks pink.
"...Can you help me up?"
"You have functioning limbs."
"...Please?"
"No."
He stepped over her. Carefully.
He wasn't taking any chances.
Halfway down the hallway, he heard another dreamy sigh behind him.
"So cool..."
Por stopped walking.
Very slowly, he looked up at the ceiling.
"...Who exactly is finding this attractive?"
Nobody answered.
The fluorescent lights buzzed quietly overhead. A cherry blossom petal drifted past his face. He caught it between two fingers. It dissolved into glitter.
He stared at the empty space where the petal had been. Then he looked out the nearest window. The cherry blossom trees outside were nowhere near the building. The branches weren't moving. There wasn't even any wind.
Por closed his eyes.
He counted to five.
Opened them again.
Nothing had changed.
The universe had manufactured decorative flower petals exclusively for that interaction. He didn't know whether to be impressed or deeply offended.
Probably both.
By lunchtime, he'd added another page to the notebook hidden beneath his desk.
He titled every page the same way.
Evidence That Reality Has Lost Its Mind.
Today's additions were written in neat bullet points.
- Cherry blossom petals ignore the laws of physics.
- Invisible wind only appears around Alisa.
- My body attempted to catch her without my permission.
- Sparkles are apparently real.
He tapped the end of his pen against the paper.
After a moment's thought, he added one more.
- People think obvious accidents are romantic.
Por stared at the list.
There had to be a pattern. Individually, every incident was absurd. Together...
Together they resembled something strangely familiar.
He'd seen this somewhere before. The overdramatic lighting. The conveniently timed accidents. The tiny heroine with endless optimism. The handsome, emotionally unavailable upperclassman everyone insisted was secretly kind despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
Por's expression slowly flattened.
"...No."
The realization crept into his mind with horrifying clarity.
"...No, absolutely not."
His room remained stubbornly silent.
"This is a shoujo manga."
The words tasted ridiculous.
Unfortunately...
They also explained everything.
Everything except one thing.
If he really was trapped inside a generic high school romance...
Then why, out of everyone in school...
...did his favorite part of every day happen to be walking home with the annoyingly cheerful blond idiot who insisted they were best friends?
Por frowned.
"...No."
He quickly crossed that thought out before it could finish forming.
Por spent the rest of lunch avoiding Alisa with the efficiency of someone who had turned it into a lifestyle.
She wasn't particularly difficult to escape. The universe, strangely enough, seemed to operate on the assumption that a heroine should never actively chase the protagonist. She simply... appeared. Outside his classroom. At the lockers. Near the vending machines. Walking the same route home despite living in the opposite direction. The story handled the logistics for her. Por had watched her accidentally end up in the exact same convenience store as him three days in a row despite there being another branch much closer to her house.
Coincidence had long since become a meaningless concept.
He had just convinced himself that the rooftop would be the safest place to spend the remainder of his break when someone hooked an arm around his shoulders hard enough to nearly knock him sideways.
"There you are."
Warm.
That was always the first thing Por noticed.
Not the voice.
Not the blond hair.
Not the fact that the idiot insisted on greeting him like they hadn't seen each other in years despite sharing every class except chemistry.
Warm.
The arm slung comfortably around his shoulders, the easy grin stretching across a face that looked unfairly handsome beneath the afternoon sunlight, the familiar smell of laundry detergent mixed with citrus shampoo lingering just close enough for Por to recognize without thinking. Everything about him radiated the sort of effortless friendliness Por usually avoided in other people.
His body, unfortunately, had never received that memo.
The tension drained from his shoulders before he could stop it.
His heartbeat settled.
The irritation he'd been nursing since morning softened into something quieter, something dangerously close to comfort.
Por hated that.
"...Move."
"You say that every day."
"I mean it every day."
"So do I."
The blond only grinned wider, completely unbothered as he tightened his arm around Por's shoulders for exactly one second before letting go.
Por immediately missed the warmth.
He scowled at himself.
Traitor.
"So," the blond continued, walking beside him as though the conversation had already begun somewhere else, "I heard you dodged another romantic accident."
"I didn't dodge it."
"You threw yourself into a locker."
"I preferred the locker."
"I don't think the locker preferred you."
"It didn't have a choice."
The blond laughed.
It wasn't particularly loud, but it had an annoying habit of making other people smile along with it. Por had witnessed it happen often enough to suspect it was some kind of supernatural ability.
"...You're staring."
"I am not."
"You've been looking at me for like... ten seconds."
Por looked away.
"I was thinking."
"About?"
"Whether your jawline counts as a workplace safety hazard."
The blond blinked.
"...Was that a compliment?"
"It was an observation."
"I'll take it."
"You shouldn't."
"I already did."
Por sighed.
Conversations with him always went like this.
Somehow, every attempt at ending one only encouraged another.
The truly irritating part was that Por never actually minded.
He wasn't entirely sure when they'd become friends. According to everyone else, they'd been inseparable since middle school. They ate lunch together more often than not, partnered up whenever teachers allowed students to choose groups, and somehow always ended up walking home in the same direction despite living on opposite sides of Bangkok.
Por remembered all of those things.
He just couldn't remember why.
Or, more importantly...
His name.
It bothered him more than it should.
This wasn't some random classmate he'd nicknamed Tall Glasses and moved on from. This was supposedly his best friend. The person everyone insisted knew him better than anyone else.
Yet every time the blond introduced himself...
Static.
Every single time.
"So," Por began casually, "hypothetically."
The blond looked over.
"Hm?"
"If someone forgot your name."
A grin.
"Again?"
"Hypothetically."
"I'd think they were messing with me."
"What if they weren't?"
"I'd tell them."
"And if they forgot again?"
"I'd tell them again."
"And again?"
The blond laughed, rubbing the back of his neck.
"I'd probably wonder if they hit their head."
Reasonable.
Por appreciated reasonable answers.
"So..."
The blond waited.
"...Tell me."
"My name?"
"Yes."
"Sure."
He smiled.
"My name is—"
Static.
Por stopped walking.
The blond continued a few more steps before noticing.
"Hm?"
"...Say it again."
"My name?"
"Yes."
"My name is—"
Static.
Louder this time.
Por pinched the bridge of his nose.
One more try.
"Slower."
"...My."
Static.
"...Name."
Static.
"...Is."
Static.
"..."
The blond watched him with growing concern.
"...Are you okay?"
Por looked him dead in the eye.
"No."
"..."
"...Did you actually forget?"
"No."
"...Then?"
"I physically cannot hear your name."
The blond stared at him for several long seconds before bursting into laughter.
It wasn't mocking laughter.
It was the kind reserved for someone telling an especially committed joke.
"You've been keeping this one going for months."
"I'm not joking."
"You asked me the same thing yesterday."
"I know."
"And the day before."
"I know."
"...You're dedicated."
Por closed his eyes.
"I genuinely envy how simple your reality is."
"Huh?"
"Nothing."
He resumed walking.
The blond hurried to catch up almost immediately, naturally matching Por's pace without either of them consciously deciding to do so.
It happened every day.
Por had noticed.
If he walked faster, the blond sped up.
If he slowed down, so did the blond.
If he crossed the street unexpectedly, the blond followed without question.
It was... nice.
Comfortable.
Dangerously comfortable.
Por frowned.
"...Why are we friends?"
The blond looked genuinely surprised.
"What kind of question is that?"
"I don't remember."
"You don't remember becoming friends?"
"No."
"You cried because someone stole my pudding in second year."
"...What?"
"You challenged two seniors to a fight."
"...What?"
"You lost."
"...What?"
"I thought you were really cool."
Por stared.
"...I did all that?"
"You don't remember?"
"I don't even like pudding."
"You didn't."
"..."
"...It was mine."
Por was silent for a long moment.
"...That somehow makes it worse."
The blond laughed again, nudging Por's shoulder with his own.
Their uniforms brushed together for barely a second.
Por's body betrayed him immediately.
His shoulders relaxed.
The corner of his mouth lifted.
Warm.
Again.
He noticed it before he noticed himself smiling.
His expression froze.
"..."
"...Did you just smile?"
"I did not."
"You totally smiled."
"I experienced a muscle spasm."
"You smiled at me."
"I have seasonal allergies."
"It's February."
"I'm allergic to you."
The blond laughed so hard he had to grab Por's shoulder to steady himself.
Por's heart skipped.
He frowned harder.
This...
...was becoming a problem.