Work Text:
Apartment 6A, in the heart of Bangkok, still smelled like vanilla and strawberries. Nakhun and Phop’s cat, Chuchu, was sleeping on the couch in the empty apartment. It was curled against the pillow Nakhun had claimed as his the time Phop and he got married. That felt like it was just yesterday.
In reality, it had been over twelve years.
The refrigerator hummed in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, a motorbike passed beneath the window, but inside the apartment there was nothing else, when Phop stepped in. It had felt that way for a while.
Phop sighed at the sight of the cat.
When he had been a child, his parents had been away for months at time. He should have been used to coming home to an empty house by then.
Fortunately, years ago, Nakhun had stepped into his life. He was the light of his life. Everything he had believed was over and impossible, had somehow become possible with Nakhun.
He made life worth living again.
Well, he had.
It still felt surreal.
It had been over two years since the day at the hospital that changed his world for good.
Death is an intense experience.
Watching someone you would give up everything for die right in front of you, knowing you are powerless to do anything about it, is even more intense.
Phop always assumed that he would die in his sleep peacefully, the same way his dad did, and the light would just go off.
But in the end, nothing ever really goes as planned, does it?
The light had gone out in a different way
Phop walked closer to the couch, leaving his bag and jacket on the floor, and slumped onto the couch near the cat.
For a while Phop just stared at the ceiling.
That had become his favorite hobby lately.
Chuchu meowed and rubbed his face against the man’s thigh.
Phop couldn’t help but smile slightly.
He lowered his gaze when he felt something hard press against his thigh.
Harder than a cat’s fur or palm…
Almost like paper.
His eyes locked into a piece paper under the cat.
His eyes widened slightly.
What is that…
He slowly took the piece of paper under the body of Chuchu.
The cat jumped off the couch and walked towards the bedroom.
Phop was now so interested in the paper, he didn’t even notice Chuchu leave.
He took a closer look at it and noticed that it was an envelope.
Judging by its dusty appearance and slightly folded edges, it seemed to be at least a few years old.
Where on earth has Chuchu pulled this..?
He had an odd feeling about this letter that he couldn’t quite place.
Like he had seen it before somewhere (which wasn’t that big of a surprise since it was found in their apartment nonetheless).
The curiosity got the best of him and he opened the letter carefully.
The paper inside the envelope was slightly yellowish.
Exactly the kind Nakhun loved to write and make notes.
The front said:
To the love of my life, Phop
Read this if I’m no longer here
Phop blinked once. Then again. The words on the page blurred.
His fingers tightened around the edge of the paper. For several seconds, he couldn’t bring himself to unfold it
He took a deep breath and unfolded the paper slowly.
“My love,
If you are reading this, then I suppose I finally ran out of time.
I wish I could have been there to see you open this letter. I wish I could have watched your face as you read the first few words, listened to you complain that my handwriting was impossible to read, and laughed when you told me I was being overly dramatic.
More than anything, I wish I could have stayed.
I wish I could have had more mornings with you. More ordinary afternoons. More evenings where we did absolutely nothing and somehow managed to make those moments feel like the most important things in the world.
I wish I could have grown old with you.
I wanted that more than you will ever know.
There are so many things I wanted to do with you. I wanted to see places we’d never been. I wanted to argue with you over what to have for dinner and pretend I wasn’t secretly happy whenever you won. I wanted to wake up beside you years from now and discover that your hair had gone gray, then tease you about it even though mine probably would have been worse.
I wanted all of it.
But life didn’t give us as much time as we deserved.
And I know that isn’t fair.
I know you might be angry. Maybe at me. Maybe at yourself. Maybe at the universe. Maybe at absolutely nothing and everything at once.
Please don’t blame yourself.
Please don’t spend your life wondering if there was something you could have done differently.
You loved me.
You loved me when things were easy, and you loved me when they weren’t. You held my hand when I was frightened. You made me laugh when I didn’t feel like smiling. You stayed when leaving would have been easier. You loved me through universes and centuries.
You gave me something that illness could never take away.
You gave me a life worth remembering.
So when you think about me, I don’t want you to only remember the hospital rooms, the difficult days, or the fear we both tried so hard not to show.
Remember me laughing.
Remember our stupid jokes.
Remember the places we went.
Remember the nights when neither of us wanted to say goodnight.
Remember the way you looked at me when you thought I wasn’t paying attention.
Remember every little thing that made us us.
Those are the memories I want you to keep.
Not the ending.
Please, my love, don’t let the ending become the whole story.
Our story was so much bigger than that.
And there is something I need you to promise me.
Keep going.
Please keep going.
Even on the days when getting out of bed feels impossible. Even on the days when the world feels unbearably quiet because I’m no longer in it. Even on the days when you see something that reminds you of me and suddenly your heart feels like it has forgotten how to beat normally.
Keep going.
Take your time.
Cry when you need to cry.
Miss me when you miss me.
Talk about me if you want to.
Be angry if you need to be angry.
But eventually, please let yourself live again.
Not because you are forgetting me.
You aren’t.
You never could.
You are allowed to laugh without me.
You are allowed to have good days.
You are allowed to make new memories.
And if that thought hurts right now, I understand.
And if you ever love someone again, don’t feel guilty.
Please.
Loving someone else won’t erase what we had.
My place in your heart doesn’t disappear simply because you make room for happiness.
I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life trying to prove that you loved me by being miserable.
You don’t owe me your sadness.
If you want to honor what we had, then live.
Live loudly.
Live gently.
See the sunrise.
Go somewhere you’ve always wanted to go.
Try things that scare you.
Make terrible decisions and laugh about them later.
Dance even when you don’t know how.
Stay up too late talking about nonsense.
Find people who make you feel safe.
Find reasons to be excited about tomorrow.
And when something wonderful happens, I hope your first instinct isn’t to think, I wish he were here.
I hope, eventually, you can think,
He would have loved this.
And then smile.
Because I would have.
I would have loved watching you become happy again.
I know there will be moments when you feel like you’ve left me behind.
You haven’t.
I’m in the memories we made.
I’m in the songs we listened to.
I’m in the places we went together.
I’m in the little habits you picked up from me without realizing it.
I’m in every story you tell about us.
And perhaps, in some strange way, I’m in the person you become because we loved each other.
So don’t be afraid to change.
Don’t stay frozen in the version of yourself that existed when I was alive.
Grow.
Become someone neither of us could have imagined.
Become someone you’re proud of.
I wish I could be there to see it.
I wish I could watch you accomplish every dream you told me about.
I wish I could stand in the crowd and cheer for you.
I wish I could annoy you by taking too many pictures.
I wish I could hold your hand afterward and tell you how proud I am.
Maybe that’s the hardest part.
There are so many tomorrows I will never get to see.
But you will.
And that’s why I need you to keep them.
Keep every tomorrow I couldn’t have.
Live them for yourself, not for me.
Don’t turn your life into a monument to my absence.
Let it become something beautiful.
I don’t know what comes after this.
I wish I could tell you.
I wish I could promise you exactly where I am and what happens next.
But I can’t.
All I can give you is hope.
And I choose to believe that love this powerful cannot simply disappear.
Maybe somewhere beyond everything we understand, there is another beginning.
Maybe there is another life.
Maybe somewhere, somehow, we find each other again.
Maybe I’ll meet you on an ordinary day, neither of us knowing why the other person’s smile feels strangely familiar.
Again.
Maybe I’ll hear your laugh from across a room and turn around.
Again.
Maybe you’ll look at me, and for some reason your heart will recognize mine before your mind does.
Again.
And maybe we’ll get another chance.
A longer one.
A kinder one.
A life where we aren’t counting days.
A life where we get to grow old together.
I like imagining that.
I like imagining you and me finding each other again.
And if there is another life waiting for us, I hope we’re happy there.
I hope we have all the ordinary days we didn’t get here.
I hope we argue over stupid things.
I hope we get lost somewhere and blame each other for it.
I hope we grow old.
I hope we complain about our backs hurting.
I hope we sit together somewhere peaceful and look at each other and think, I’ve known you forever.
Maybe we have.
Maybe that’s why meeting you felt like coming home.
But until then, you have a life to live here.
So live it.
Please.
For yourself.
Not because I asked you to forget me, but because I am asking you to remember that you are still here.
There are still people who need your laugh.
There are still places you’ve never seen.
There are still songs you’ve never heard.
There are still mornings waiting for you.
There are still people you haven’t met who will change your life.
There is still happiness you haven’t discovered.
Go find it.
And when you do, don’t look over your shoulder expecting me to be angry that you’re happy.
I’ll be nothing but grateful.
Because loving you was never about possessing you.
It was about wanting the world to be kind to you.
And if I can’t be the one standing beside you anymore, then I hope life finds other ways to be kind.
Take care of yourself.
Eat when you’re hungry.
Sleep when you’re tired.
Laugh when something is funny.
Cry when you need to.
Ask for help when things become too heavy.
Don’t pretend you’re okay just because you think that’s what I would want.
I don’t want you to be strong every second.
I just want you to keep trying.
One day at a time.
One morning at a time.
One breath at a time.
And someday, I hope you’ll wake up and realize that you went an entire morning without crying.
Then maybe an entire day.
Then maybe you’ll laugh so hard that you forget, just for a moment, that you ever thought you couldn’t laugh again.
When that happens, I hope you don’t feel guilty.
I hope you smile.
And maybe you’ll look toward the sky and say,
“I think I’m going to be okay.”
And I hope, wherever I am, somehow I can answer,
“I know.”
My love, I wish I could have given you more time.
But I will never regret the time we did have.
You were my favorite part of this life.
And every life.
If I had been given the choice between never meeting you and loving you knowing that our time would be short, I would choose you every single time.
Every time.
So don’t remember me as the person you lost.
Remember me as the person who got to love you.
That was the greatest gift I ever received.
And if there really is another life waiting somewhere beyond this one, I’ll find you.
Maybe not immediately.
Maybe not in the way we expect.
But somehow, somewhere, I’ll find you.
And when I do, I hope we don’t have to say goodbye this time.
Until then, live enough for both of us.
Be happy.
Love without fear.
Laugh until your cheeks hurt.
Watch sunsets.
Make memories.
Grow old.
And when you finally reach the end of your own long, beautiful life, I hope you can look back and know that you did exactly what I wanted for you.
You kept going.
You found happiness.
You lived.
And maybe, just maybe, when your journey finally brings you somewhere beyond this world, I’ll be there waiting.
Not to take you away from the life you built.
Not to ask you why you moved on.
Just to smile at you.
And perhaps I’ll say the simplest thing in the world.
“You came back.”
And you’ll know that I never stopped loving you.
Until we meet again,
Your forever love
Nakhun.”
Phop’s face was soaking wet from tears as he reached the end of the letter.
For a long time, he simply stared at the last words.
He didn’t move.
Phop didn’t turn the page, because there was no next page. There was nothing left to read.
No hidden message waiting at the bottom.
No final sentence that could somehow change what had already happened.
Every word seemed to echo in their mind…
Keep going. Be happy. Live.
He pressed the letter against their chest and finally let themselves cry because it had reminded them that their love had been real.
Phop carefully folded the letter and held it close.
“I’ll try..”
He whispered into the empty room.
His voice broke.
“I promise I’ll try.”
Phop stood up from the couch,
his knees shook a little when he stood up.
He walked towards the large window in their living room and stopped right in front of it to stare outside.
Phop held the letter close, wiped their tears, and took a breath.
Then another.
Phop hadn’t noticed, but Chuchu had came back and was now rubbing its body against the older man’s leg.
Phop let out a quiet laugh and bent down to slipped his fingers through the black fur.
And for the first time in a very long time, he looked toward tomorrow.