The memory didn't just return; it dragged him back. Asnee's hand was a vice around Santichai's right wrist, pulling him toward the small cafe near the school gates. The shop was run by a teacher's family, and it stayed perpetually crowded, smelling of cheap coffee and teenage sweat.
Santichai followed in a daze, his eyes fixed on the pavement. He didn't need to see Asnee's face to know he was furious; he could feel it in the white-knuckled pressure on his arm. His fingers began to tingle, then go numb, the blood flow restricted by Asnee's hold, but Santichai didn't make a sound. He didn't complain. He just followed.
Inside, the cafe was a cacophony of shouting students and clattering ceramic. They found a small table by the window. Santichai sat, keeping his head low, his hands clasped so tightly in his lap that his palms began to burn with nervous sweat.
He began to count. One... two... three... Only when he reached a thousand did his heart stop hammering against his ribs. He gathered the courage to look up. Asnee was staring at him, his eyes burning with a dark, frustrated fire.
"Asnee..." Santichai whispered, his voice trembling. "Do you... have something you want to say?"
"Do you?" Asnee shot back, his voice sharp enough to cut.
Santichai flinched, his gaze dropping back to the scarred wood of the table. "I'm sorry," he breathed.
"You should be," Asnee snapped. He reached into his backpack and shoved a small, wrapped gift box across the table. It slid toward Santichai like a peace offering and a slap in the face all at once. "Happy birthday."
Asnee slammed a hundred-baht bill onto the table for the drinks they hadn't even ordered yet. Before Santichai could process the words, Asnee grabbed his bag and stormed out, the bell above the door ringing a frantic goodbye.
Santichai scrambled to grab the gift and the money, rushing out into the humid afternoon air, but the street was a sea of uniforms. Asnee was gone. He stood there, the hundred-baht bill crumpled in his hand, knowing he would have to wait until Monday to face the storm again.
The memories hit Santichai like a sudden downpour, cold and suffocating.
He sat at the dining table in the present-day apartment, the silence a sharp contrast to the noisy cafe of his youth. Before him sat a small tin box and fifteen photographs—ten years of a life distilled into glossy paper.
With slow, surgical precision, Santichai took a pair of scissors and began to cut. He didn't destroy the photos. Instead, he carefully cut his own silhouette out of every single one. He removed himself from the high school halls, from the beach trips, from the birthdays. He left Asnee alone in the frames, surrounded by empty white shapes where a partner used to be.
He tucked the fifteen tiny cut-outs of himself into his coat pocket—the only part of this life he would take with him. He put the hollowed-out photos back into the tin box and left it on the kitchen table.
The doorbell rang. It was a clinical sound. Three movers stood there with dollies, ready to erase his presence.
"When you reach the new building, just leave the boxes at the door," Santichai instructed, his voice devoid of the emotion currently wrecking his insides. "I've cleared it with the owner. Tell her I'm stopping at my old office to collect some files first."
"You got it, boss," one of the men said.
Santichai watched as the ten boxes—his entire life—were wheeled out of the apartment he had called home for seven years. When the door finally stood open and the movers were gone, he took one last walk through the rooms.
He stopped at the sofa and let out a soft, broken chuckle. He could almost see Asnee there, flinging his work bag to the floor and collapsing into the cushions, exhausted and demanding attention.
Then, he walked into the bedroom. The bed was a black void now, stripped of its sheets. For a moment, the memory of their shared warmth flickered in the dark.
"Asnee, don't hold me so tight," Santichai had murmured, breathless against the pillows. "I can't move."
"Don't move then," Asnee had whispered back, pressing a lingering kiss to his forehead. "I can't sleep unless I'm holding you like this."
The memory evaporated. Santichai stared at the empty mattress.
"Goodbye, Asnee," he whispered to the shadows.
He walked back to the kitchen, pulled the spare key from his pocket, and set it on the table next to the tin box full of ghost-photos. He didn't look back. He walked out, locked the door one last time, and headed down to the parking lot.
The engine of his moped sparked to life with a lonely roar, and Santichai rode away, leaving seven years of his life behind in a third-floor apartment.
Santichai drove away from his farewell party at the sewing company, the bittersweet well-wishes of his colleagues still ringing in his ears. He moved through the darkness toward his new life. Just as he reached the crest of a small bridge, the phone in his pocket hummed against his leg.
He pulled the moped to the side of the road, the engine idling with a low, mechanical thrum. Under the dim glow of a streetlight, he pulled out his phone. It was a message from Asnee.
He clicked it open to find a photo of a gold ring, polished and gleaming. Beneath it, the text read: Do you like it?
Santichai stared at the image. A ring. A promise of a forever that was already broken. His fingers trembled as he typed back three hollow words: I like it.
A second later, the phone erupted into a ringtone. Santichai pressed it to his ear.
"Asnee…?"
Immediately, his ear was filled with the chaotic roar of a party—thumping bass and the muffled cheers of a crowd.
"Chai!" Asnee shouted over the music, his voice bright and buzzing with excitement. "Do you really like it? I spent hours looking for the right one."
Santichai closed his eyes, leaning his forehead against the cool metal of the moped's handlebars. "Mmm... I like it."
"It's all settled, Chai! I'm coming home in two days. Everything went better than I thought," Asnee yelled. "Do you want me to bring you anything from here? Anything at all?"
"No," Santichai whispered, his voice catching. "I don't need anything."
"What? I can't hear you! The music is too loud!"
"I don't need anything!" Santichai said louder, the lie tasting like ash.
"Still can't hear you, but don't worry—I'll find you something perfect, okay?" Through the receiver, Santichai heard the familiar, sharp voices of Somsak and Ruangsak in the background, calling for Asnee to come back to the drinks.
"I have to go, the guys are haunting me," Asnee laughed. "See you in two days. Since you'll be at work, I'll just have Frank pick me up from the airport."
Panic flared in Santichai's chest. This was it. The end of ten years. "Asnee!" he blurted out, desperate to stop him from hanging up. "Can you... can you say you love me? I just want to hear it. Once more."
Asnee let out a soft, playful scoff. "Chai, don't be so dramatic. I promise when I get home, I'll say it a hundred times. I'll say it until you're sick of hearing it. But I really have to go."
"Mmm..." Santichai whispered. He knew there would be no hundred times. No "when I get home."
"Asnee... I love—"
The line went dead.
The busy tone hissed in his ear, a rhythmic, mechanical rejection. Santichai didn't pull the phone away. He listened to that empty sound for a long time, until the silence of the bridge felt heavier than the noise of the party. Finally, he pressed the end button on the worn keys of the Nokia 6680.
He held the phone in both hands, staring at its small, outdated screen. It was the first gift Asnee had ever given him, back when they were seventeen and the world was simple. Asnee had tried to replace it a dozen times with the newest iPhone, but Santichai had always refused. This phone was the only thing that had stayed the same.
He let out a long, shuddering sigh. "It's time to let go," he whispered to the dark water below.
He leaned over the railing and opened his hand. The Nokia fell, a small dark shadow cutting through the air until it hit the surface of the lake with a quiet plink. The ripples vanished almost instantly.
Santichai wiped the tears from his cheeks with the back of his hand, but his eyes remained fixed on the spot where the water had swallowed the light of the screen.
He climbed back onto his moped and kicked the stand. As he pulled away, he instinctively reached for his trouser pocket, but his fingers met only empty fabric. The weight was gone. For the first time in a decade, no one knew exactly where he was, and no one could call him back.
He twisted the throttle, the engine's roar drowning out the memory of the busy tone and drove off the bridge toward a destination Asnee didn't know existed.