Bangkok hadn't changed.
That was the first lie the city told me.
The streets still smelled like simmering noodles and exhaust. Students still hurried through the university gates with iced coffee and tangled earbuds. My alarm still rang at 5:40. The buses still came late.
But something in the air felt wrong — like I'd come back with lungs that no longer fit the breathing of this place.
Two months.
Sixty-one days, if I counted the night I left.
The apartment was the same too — small, quiet, a plant dying near the window despite the sunlight. Only Sorren moved like life inside it, his paws echoing gently on the floorboards whenever I stood still too long.
At night, the silence inside these walls felt heavier than before. It followed me into every room, curled beneath the bed, sat beside my books, watched me eat.
Sometimes I caught Sorren staring at the door, as if expecting a certain pair of footsteps.
The first week back, I kept turning when someone said my name in the hallway, expecting to see him. The second week, I stopped unpacking properly, because folding shirts into drawers made things feel… settled. Permanent.
Classes began the same way they always did — the professor walking in without looking, markers squeaking against glass, notebooks opening like wounds.
But every morning before lectures, I messaged him:
Are you awake?
And every time, the reply came quickly, like he'd been waiting with the phone in his hand.
Already by the temple.
Sometimes he sent no words at all — just a photo. The Bodhi tree in dawn light. His fingers holding a flute. The sky before rain.
I didn't tell him I saved every picture in a hidden folder named after nothing.
Nights were worse.
We called after dinner, when the only sounds in my apartment were Sorren's breathing and the refrigerator humming like a ghost. Anurak always answered on the second ring — never the first, never the third. Like our souls had agreed to meet there.
Some nights he spoke. Some nights he just listened.
And some nights, neither of us said a word — only the sound of his breathing and the occasional rustle of leaves on his side.
The ache wasn't sharp anymore. It was something worse — something gentle and constant, like wearing someone else's heartbeat under your ribs.
I still went to class. I still submitted assignments. I still laughed when my family said something stupid on group chat.
But my mind was always split in two — one part sitting in a lecture hall, the other picturing him pouring tea into the chipped white cup he always uses. The one with the faded red flowers by the rim.
The only time I felt fully inside my body was when he said my name on the phone.
"Kael."
Just that. As if he was making sure I hadn't slipped into another life by mistake.
Last night, before I fell asleep, I whispered into the dark — half dreaming, half praying:
"When will you come here?"
The line was silent for a long time.
Then he said,
"When the wind changes."
I almost laughed. Only he could answer like that and still make it feel like a promise.
Now the morning light is slipping through the curtains again. My bag is already packed. Sorren is asleep at the foot of my bed, nose tucked under his tail. The world keeps moving like nothing is missing.
I tie my shoelaces and stand up.
Before leaving the room, I check my phone.
No message yet.
But I know it will come.
The same way the river waits for the moon to pull it — even from miles away.