Chapter Text
PART THREE: LESS HAPPY THAN BEFORE
Pran was surprised to be alive.
Pain rocked every cell of his brain in a way he didn’t think was possible. Looking back to when he cried over getting a brain-freeze after eating his ice cream too fast seemed stupid now, completely laughable. That time he got a horrible migraine at the beginning of boarding school, when everything had gone to hell, was a pinch in the cheek compared to the throbbing and breaking happening right now. It wasn’t even the heartache from Pat that was shredding him apart.
Every mistake he ever made, every wrong he repeated, every unhealed heartache: He felt it all and more as the weight of his world crushed him. If one looked inside him, he’d bet that one would find two different hearts beating for the same person, like the sun and moon up at the same time, a terrible eclipse that he was the only witness to.
His worlds collided and he couldn’t get up.
Undergoing the procedure had been like a blackout. Leteo had dealt the cards on how he woke up. Some of his memories were altered, little disguises forced onto them to trick Pran. Others were beaten over the head with shovels, buried alive and out of his reach.
But Leteo fucked up.
Somewhere in the uncharted territories of his mind, they had failed to scrub something clean and Pran became the person he forgot.
The goal had been for him to forget about any positive feelings he held towards Pat. Easier said than done since no one could have exactly come up to him to inform him that he couldn’t get closer to Pat or else his brain would get fried and messed up. To beat love, Leteo had fostered the shortly-lived rivalrous Pran by targeting and burying memories connected to him seeing Pat nicely: their relationship, his growing appreciation and desire for Pat’s appearance (including quite a few dirty dreams), them becoming something akin to friends in high school, their plans and tricks to work together as kids, even Pran saving Paa that day at the lake.
If Pran could simply believe Pat was still that arrogant kid he used to dislike, then he would dislike him. Life would be easy. But Leteo didn’t have the power everyone involved hoped they had.
Pran’s eyes were too heavy to open.
It was hard to breathe, like whenever Pat had wrestled him to the ground (mostly) as kids. This headache felt like someone was playing a game of rugby in his skull. Thoughts bounced around like a rubber ball.
His elbow was bruised. Maybe because Pran had fallen on it when singing to Pat how much he loved him.
“Pran, blink if you can hear me.” He could hear Dr. Soonvichit calling to him. P’Kop.
He couldn’t face her or anyone else right now, so he kept his eyes shut and hid in the darkness where the awful pain drowned her out.
Pran couldn’t sleep anymore, no matter how hard he tried.
He could open his eyes a tad bit, but if he did it fully, the shrill light from the ceiling would cause his brain to explode. With what he was capable of, he could make out a pastel green color covering the walls around him, reminding him of a warm day in spring.
He turned his head a little to see P’Kop asleep in a chair with a clipboard on her lap. There was an absurd moment where Pran considered if maybe the visitor’s chair was cozier than the one in her office; after all, that one had always looked like hard wood and sharp edges when Pran had seen it during his previous visits to her office. Maybe it was to prevent her from getting too comfortable.
Next to her was his mother, sitting with her face in her hands, praying.
“Mae—“ Pran could barely croak out for her, throat parched and useless after not using it for who-knew-how-long, but she heard him anyway. P’Kop, too; she snapped awake.
“Baby, my son.” Dissaya kissed his forehead and the movement and close periphery and pressure on his head hurt like hell (something else too, maybe). She immediately apologized profusely, thanking whatever higher power out there that would listen that he was okay, until P’Kop carefully pulled her away to give Pran some space.
“You’re stable, Pran”, P'Kop told him, and her voice sounded professional and formal in a way that Pran remembered but also felt unfamiliar. She invited Dissaya to give him a glass of water through a straw. “I imagine your head hurts, but we’re all so impressed with how you’re recovering.”
“So impressed, my son”, his mae added.
Pran sipped more water and it soothed and stung. “Why am I… not in… a hospital?”
“You were originally, but your mother contacted me when she heard you screaming things you’d forgotten.” Pran looked up at her, even though it made his vision swim a bit. “The ambulance drove you here and we’ve spent the past four days returning your mind to its former state before it would collapse entirely under the weight of the unwound memories. We’ll perform some test work when you’re feeling up to it to make sure all is well.”
Four days. He had been knocked out for four days.
Pran felt like he knew everything he once had known, but he couldn’t be sure. He remembered believing P’Kop was Chai’s wife, as sure as he knew that the sky was blue or how he was in pain and a coward. “Did you… change anything?”
“Certainly not, nong. Too many complications.”
His mind was once again busy with terrible things: his parents’ terrible words, them sending him to boarding school; Pat giving up on them; Pat’s kisses; Wai giving him shit for liking not any engineering guy, but the one he was worried would hurt Pran again; the animosity of the other people in his faculty whenever seeing someone from engineering; and, the most pressing, his mae and one of their last memories together before the procedure.
The memory of telling his parents he liked boys for the first time felt both familiar and unfamiliar, like an old classmate one hadn’t seen in years but still kind of recognized, even all grown up. Even heavier sat the memories of when she found out that he liked Pat.
Pran knew that she knew that he knew, so he just shut up and focused on what needed to happen next.
“When can you change me back?” His throat started hurting less and less. “Make me stop liking him. Or better even, have me forget him completely this time.”
P’Kop didn’t answer. Dissaya cracked the silence with fresh tears. Pran’s voice hardened. “The procedure didn’t work this time. And we. We rely on you. We also paid a lot of money. So please make it work.”
“The procedure cannot be faulted for the heart remembering what the mind forgot.” P’Kop’s voice was a bit softer this time, reminding him more of the person he had interacted with these past few weeks. But her words were forceful enough, clear enough; she didn’t approve.
Pran turned to his mother, who shook her head. “No, I’m not signing off on this. Not again. I have my son back and I’m not giving you up again.”
It felt horrible to hear those words. They were too little, and definitely too late. Insincere. It made him want to either kick something or cry. It made him vulnerable, and he had never been more aghast about letting himself be vulnerable around these people. “Can you both leave? I want to be alone.”
Dissaya seemed reluctant, but P’Kop hooked his mae’s arm in hers, escorting her out.
Pran was dizzy. It felt like the awful combination of a head rush and a hangover. He ended up throwing up over the toilet bowl, almost passing out before delicate hands helped him move to his bed. Everything turned black.
His mae was keeping him company, worried he might faint again. She mentioned that his pa had been there this morning too, but he wasn’t the one Pran currently thought of.
“Any other visitors?”
“Wai and two girls have stopped by everyday”, she answered, face unreadable. “Wai was here last night and the girls hung around a few hours in the afternoon. You… you have kind friends.”
Pran stared at the green walls. He wondered who the second girl was, and going by his guesses of who the first one might be, he thought he knew. He wondered if his mother knew as well. There wasn’t enough strength in him to ask though, after all, she had not mentioned him.
The silence hung in the air, and they both knew who Pran was thinking of.
“Wai said you tried to keep your distance from him.”
“I guess this means you’re not disappointed in me this time around.”
She was crying again, and hiding behind her hands. “You weren’t supposed to remember…”
But he did. And he needed her to help him forget again.
“You can make me stop remembering it. I already told you once, that I can’t live like this. And that you wouldn’t want me to live this way either, because I still remember what you did. I remember how you looked at me for liking him, how angry you were, how much you hated me ignoring you.”
“Pran. Don’t say such things. We must talk this out.”
There were many emotions swiveling inside him at that moment; anger, as the lower part of his face turned even paler with the force that he was pressing his jaw together; grief, as his eyes filled up with desperate tears; stubbornness, as he kept those tears at bay, having cried enough already.
He turned his face to directly stare at her, unmovable. “What is there to talk about? I still love him.”
“Pran—”
“It isn’t my duty to be responsible for your feelings. Yet you’re always, constantly angry with me for my own ones. Why? Everyone wants to know the truth. Now that you all know, why can’t you take it? You always wanted us to be close. But because you raised me this way, that’s why I can’t do that.”
“I just need time—”
“It’s no—” His words got choked back, as he processed her words. He swallowed, deeply. “Time? What for?”
It obviously pained her to say it; the lines of her face were hard and her lips turned downward, but she said it nonetheless: “I can’t just suddenly be happy that you’re dating that family’s son, and I can’t invite him over to dinner like I would any other boyfriend of yours to welcome him with open arms. But I won’t stay in the way of you two anymore. Just give me time, please, to… to not disappoint you again.”
It had been all the right words. Not perfect, no, but it was what Pran had wanted to hear for years now. Hearing that, it was like experiencing one of his many dreams from his teenage years, where he would wake up to discard those fantasies because they would never come to fruition. It made him choke up.
And then he immediately started crying.
His mae was by his side in an instant, but Pran shook his head frantically, desperately. “He doesn’t want to be with me. We— we had wanted to meet up, but he didn’t come, he— he gave up on us. If he were to remember—”
A hand was drawing soothing circles on his back, and Pran felt twisted from the inside. Silence engulfed them once more until Pran finally stopped crying. Reluctantly, without looking up, he rasped out: “Can you get me something warm to drink?”
His mother stood up instantly, striding to the door. Yet before she could close it, there was a heavy sigh, and she turned around once more.
“That boy didn’t come to visit because he. He was apparently also brought here after being shot, and also seemed to remember your past.”
Pran’s head snapped up at that, but the door was already closing.
Later, P’Kop knocked on the door, telling him he had guests. It really was Ink and Paa. Together. And going by his mae’s expression – the way her eyes avoided the shorter girl, or the way that Paa was nervously looking away as well – she definitely recognized her. It would have been surprising if she hadn’t, really, but Pran had held out hope.
His mae invited them in and left the three alone.
It left Pran’s mind reeling, feeling the whiplash of seeing such a thing ever happening. It was as if Dissaya had been serious about trying.
Suddenly, he’s enveloped in two simultaneous hugs, and everything else was forgotten.
Pran was about to have his psych session with P’Kop - Dr. Soonvichit. It had been a while.
The first time he had entered this office, he had still been skeptical about whether such a procedure was legitimate. The first time he had met Dr. Soonvichit, he had feared she would send him away again, at the latest when he mentioned he wanted to do the procedure only because someone else did it first.
Years later, he was back in this office with its white walls, a table on a sleek desk, certificates he had spent awkward silences and uncomfortable subjects inspecting, and his blueprint architect waiting for Pran to share why he needed the procedure again.
The doctor had done great work – Pran never would have suspected she was a Leteo specialist. The only people in his life who knew about her were his parents, Chai and Wai. No one else in his life would question the status of their relationship, after all, and Wai had been there due to circumstances.
It only dawned on him now, that it was no coincidence when she had shown up at the mall shortly after he had sent a text to his mae, asking if she needed anything. Or when she had accompanied Pran to the Leteo institute once he got the idea, and people seemed to smile at her more than others.
“You can make me better.”
Dr. Soonvichit shook her head. “It’s not up to me to sign off on the procedure. But let’s review what happened in the past three years. We gave you a glimpse into what your life would look like if you disliked Napat Jindapat.” Pran’s heart clenched at hearing that name. “Your true feelings burst through the seams. I can’t elaborate much further than this, but many of our clients who have undergone similar work remain as we left them. So are your feelings really at fault here?”
He knew the answer but stayed quiet.
He needed the noise in his head to get loud again to drown out all the memories of rejection and heartache. Was he supposed to look at the happy memories and tell her how it made him feel better? That wasn’t something he could do. Sure, he thought he had, but he found happiness in the wrong person and that couldn’t count.
It didn’t count when he fell in love with Pat the first time, it didn’t count the second time, so he couldn’t count it now.
“I can’t do this.” His voice was barely above a whisper.
“As I said, this isn’t up to me. I agree that the memories you’re carrying around are painful…” Her eyes fell toward the constantly sad face on his wrist, “The day we were here together, my colleague scheduled you for an appointment. You remember the date? It was for a consultation, but if your mother signs off on your procedure, we’ll take care of your…” She continued talking, but Pran tuned her out.
The appointment. It was less than three weeks.
He could wait that long.
The house was silent, with his mae being out and his pa working quietly downstairs in his office. Pran himself was standing in front of the door to their guest room. With shaking hands, he turned the key that had been lying on the kitchen table that morning, and opened the door.
Two images clashed in his mind as he saw a sparsely furnished room and his bedroom of fifteen years.
What first caught his attention were the couple of boxes standing next to the bed, and again, he felt two different things, remembered images that didn’t quite fit logically. Those were the boxes that had been standing in their hallways next to the door, old things he didn’t need anymore, ready to be thrown away; the other image was of him, three years ago and full of betrayal, delicately placing trinkets into those boxes.
He opened one of them.
The first thing greeting him was the last thing that Pat had ever gifted him: a small, black box of earphones. He had never gotten the chance to thank his… to thank Pat, at the time.
There were other things as well, things that made Pran’s head hurt, while his heart betrayed him by beating faster. There were notes and papers – too meticulously stacked to have ever been mistreated even in his anger – with Pran’s doodles and writings. All about one boy in particular. There were also notes and papers that sported someone else’s handwriting: notes, that Pat had thrown at his window or left in his schoolbag or simply pushed to him in class.
There was a notebook. Pran hadn’t wanted to, but no pain could stop him from opening the pages.
insecure
The word was scribbled down at the beginning of the booklet, together with other words and phrases strewn about. They were all small and reasonable, except one: Phat ♡
Pran let out an involuntary smile and schooled his expression as soon as he noticed. It was hard, when he saw the lyrics of Just Friend? written out on the next pages, and later even, Our Song. It hurt. So much.
When Pran saw the tin cans in the box, he swallowed and closed it. Maybe it hadn’t been the greatest idea to come here. How was he supposed to let go otherwise?
There was a flickering of light in the corner of his eyes, and his curiosity won over the gnawing feeling in his chest, so he went to the window to check it out. There was a window opposite his, and next to it, a small balcony that was connected to Pran’s own window.
The curtains were pink, and the light that had flickered to life was a pastel-colored fairy light on the other wall of the room. A person was shuffling through the room, hair swooshing behind them. With a start, Pran realized it must be Paa’s room now.
Not glancing back, he left the room.