Chapter Text
Pond was out cold, gone in the way you are after a long week.
He was pulled back by a shattering sound—the front door hitting the wall.
Not an open, a slam.
He was still trying to piece together where he was when a fist, or maybe an elbow, slammed into his jaw.
Pond gasped—a choked, ugly sound—and instantly recoiled, his head whipping sideways from the impact.
“What the actual f—?” He didn't register pain, not yet; just a sickening hum inside his skull, the kind of confusing, electric static you got after a bad signal dropout.
When his vision snapped back, Dunk was right there. He was gasping for air, furious, and his eyes were locked on Pond like a thermal flare. He looked like he wanted to kill him or just burn him alive with the sheer heat of that gaze.
“What the fuck, Dunk?” Pond managed to grit out, his own hand coming up not to comfort the sting but to serve as a clumsy, useless shield. It did nothing but prove the impossible thing was undeniably real. He just hit me. He actually fucking hit me.
Dunk’s voice fractured, the sound catching deep in his throat. “Stop. Seriously, just shut up.”
It took Pond a beat to register what he was seeing. Dunk stood there—absurdly domestic in his flour-dusted chef’s apron, like he’d stepped straight from kneading dough into a street fight. But it wasn’t the apron that held Pond’s gaze. It was the fists—tight, white-knuckled, the thin, trembling line between holding it together and breaking something apart.
“I’ve kept my mouth shut this whole damn time,” Dunk spat, “because you’re my goddamn best friend. But Gemini? Gemini? Fuck that, Pond. He’s my actual, genetic-code cousin.”
“What the hell did you just say?” Pond leaned forward, eyes wide and fixed on Dunk, the vertigo of his movement barely registering. The whole impossible connection—it was a punch straight to his gut, knocking the air out of the argument.
Dunk let out a sharp, nasty sound that wasn't a laugh, just a cough of pure dismissal. He was looking at Pond like he was something shameful caught in the light.
“Cut the bullshit, Pond,” Dunk seethed. “Don’t pretend you don't know. I see what you’re doing.”
Pond felt the familiar, hot flare of anger he always defaulted to when he was wrong.
“Me? What the hell am I doing?” Pond demanded, the volume in his voice rising. “Dude, you’re just freaking out. You don’t even know what you’re mad about.”
The volume dropped completely out of Dunk’s voice, which somehow made it worse.
“God, Pond, you seriously have a type.” His tone was flat, the words a period at the end of a long, bad chapter. Dunk stared at him with that weary, I-knew-it look—like Pond was just proof of a theory Dunk had been trying to ignore for years.
Pond felt his brow furrow, the internal alarm bells screaming that Dunk was getting too close to the truth.
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” he challenged, his voice just above a mumble. “Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd say you're being super dramatic right now.”
Dunk inhaled sharply, dragging a frustrated hand through his hair—that familiar tic of impending meltdown.
“Am I?” Dunk fired back. “We got Yibo, Eunwoo, and now Gemini. They’re clones! Same fucking blueprint, Pond. The high nose bridge, the same sharp cut to the jaw, pretty faces, and always those innocent eyes. You’re not even trying to mix it up anymore—you’re just refilling the same damn trophy case.”
Pond let out a long, shuddering breath, dragging his palms across his eyes.
“Stop,” he muttered, dropping his hands. “You’re completely reaching now. That’s bullshit.”
“Don’t even try. You met him outside Thewalai. In front of the Maha Chakri Sirindhorn Building. Just admit it. You can’t stop yourself from making your life look like a low-budget GMMTV drama, can you?”
Pond straightened his spine, grabbing onto the only defense he had.
“I didn’t know he was your cousin,” he offered, meeting Dunk’s eyes.
“That’s not the point!” Dunk roared, his face went crimson. “Nineteen. Pond, he’s nineteen. And you’re twenty-four. Are you serious right now?”
“We didn’t even do anything, Dunk. I didn’t even kiss the guy,” Pond insisted.
“But you took him out.”
“Twice! That’s all it was, twice, okay?” Pond burst out. “Ice cream on Banthat Thong, and a walk in Suan Roi Pi. Nothing else happened. I cut it off. I knew he was too damn young.”
“You brought him to your places,” Dunk stated, articulating each word with brutal slowness.
Pond’s gut dropped out. That was not a misunderstanding; Dunk knew something.
He narrowed his eyes. “Run that back. What did you just say?”
Dunk leaned closer, his eyes drilling into Pond's, ensuring the name hit its target.
“I said, your places,” he reiterated. “The same damn spots. The ones you used to take him. The ones you shared with Phuwin.”
The name landed on Pond like a punch to the gut, a hit far cleaner than any slap. He didn't just clench his fists; the tendons in his forearms stood out, white-knuckled and vibrating with strain.
“Watch it, Dunk,” he ground out, the sound barely clearing his throat.
The heel of Dunk's palm slammed hard against Pond's sternum, shoving him back a step.
“Why, Pond?” Dunk demanded, stepping closer until their noses were almost touching. “You think I don't see it? You’re not even looking at these guys, Pond. You’ve been chasing a ghost in every goddamn face you meet. And now you’ve just dragged my blood into your messed-up search party.”
Pond tried to mount a defense, but the sound failed him.
“I don’t—” he started, the word catching halfway up his throat, choking on the guilt.
“Phuwin.” Dunk breathed the name, a curse he'd carried for years. “Five years I've kept my mouth shut. I felt sorry for you. But, Pond—for fuck’s sake—you're twenty-four. You're not some little kid chasing a crush anymore. Get your head straight.”
Pond kept his focus locked on a scuffed patch of floor, refusing to look up. He let out a harsh, fake laugh. “Relax. You’re blowing this way out of proportion.”
Dunk's eyes were sharp, scanning Pond as if measuring his lack of conscience.
“This is funny to you?” Dunk demanded. “All of them, Pond. Phuwin with a different name tag. Yibo, Eunwoo, that same damn cat smile and the same timid voice. Now Gemini—with the pout and the look in his eyes. He’s crushing on you, man. You can hear it in the way he whispers ‘Phi Pond.’ He’s still holding his breath, checking his screen, hoping you’re not done playing with him yet.”
Pond’s defensive posture crumbled. He lowered his gaze, the adrenaline draining out of him as he whispered the only thing that mattered. “How’s Gemini doing?”
Dunk let out a long, shuddering breath, the tension draining out of him to leave only weariness.
“He’s crushed,” Dunk whispered, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Locked himself in his room. My aunt actually rang me, worried about him not eating. I went over. He told me everything. You put your phone on ‘DND’ and just noped right out of his life, didn’t you?”
“I didn't mean to ignore him,” Pond murmured. “I was going to pull back, okay? I knew it was wrong. I was going to stop the texts and just... ghost him. I never wanted to be the asshole who hurt him.”
“He’s stalking your IG, man,” Dunk said. He didn’t laugh—just let out a choked, defeated sound that Pond recognized as pure pity. “Refreshes it every hundred and twenty seconds. Doesn’t even pretend he’s not obsessed. Then he said it—he actually looked at me and said, ‘Phom rak Phi Pond.’”
Dunk shuddered—a dramatic, full-body shake, like trying to dislodge poison.
Pond’s face went hot. “Fucking hell.”
“Yeah. Fucking hell.”
“I’ll text him now,” Pond mumbled, already dreading the keyboard. “Say I got back with an ex. Something clean. Make it a quick exit.”
Dunk gave a short, brusque nod. “He’ll lose his shit,” he stated, crossing his arms. “But whatever. He’s just a kid. He’ll bounce back fast enough.”
The room fell into a dead silence, the time between them stretching like a tripwire.
Then Dunk sniffed, drawing in a sharp, unnecessary breath. “Dude, you actually stink.”
Pond was frozen, his wide eyes blinking slowly. It was such a small, human thing to say—a weirdly juvenile, utterly deflating detail cutting through the entire blow-up. “Excuse me?”
A faint smirk broke Dunk’s lips—a detail Pond found himself unwillingly fixated on.
“Look, I honestly came here just to punch you,” Dunk confessed, shrugging. “But I’m staying now. I want you to meet my boyfriend. So unless you want to meet him looking and smelling like the hot mess you are, hop your ass in the shower, like, five minutes ago.”
Pond’s brain lagged. “A boyfriend? You have a boyfriend?”
Dunk only raised one eyebrow. “Honestly? You don’t deserve the timeline until you deal with your toxic bullshit.”
A tense knot finally unspooled in Pond’s chest as he hauled himself up.
“Fine, whatever,” he conceded. “Just keep your hands to yourself, yeah?”
Dunk rubbed his knuckles, his expression smug. “Didn’t even leave a mark, did I?”
Pond offered a quick, lopsided grin. “Zero. Not a scratch. You hit like my grandma.”
The fragile bridge of their old, easy banter had miraculously held.
Dunk gave him a withering look. “Move it, loser. I’m waiting.”
Pond headed for the bathroom, his shoulders felt a few pounds lighter, though the sting of the argument hadn't faded. Beneath the dread, a strange, unexpected lightness was starting to bubble up—the fight was over.
The shower screamed its white noise through the bathroom glass. Pond pressed his weight into the cold tiles, palms flat, needing the resistance.
He dragged in a breath of the steam, letting it settle on his skin—a temporary, stinging shield against Dunk and the fight.
The hot water streamed down his bowed neck, running a steady line over the curve of his spine. It was a soft, insistent whisper against the place where Dunk’s accusation had landed.
Pond pressed his fingertips against his jaw. No visible damage, but the pain wasn't on the surface; it was a sinking, gut-deep throb. Not a result of force, but the consequence of having a private lie dragged into the light.
He angled his skull into the heavy spray, begging the water to drown out the noise—anything for five seconds of dead silence.
But even here, Dunk’s voice was a phantom yelling in his ear, sharper than the water pressure:
“You’re twenty-four. You're not some little kid chasing a crush anymore. Get your head straight.”
The physical blow was nothing. Pond could handle a bruise. The actual impact—the one that really hurt, the one that broke him—was the savage accuracy of Dunk’s tirade. That was the wound he’d be carrying.
He genuinely didn't think Dunk cared enough to notice—not truly. Years of it, and not a single, cracking piece of evidence. Dunk never went overboard for Pond’s boyfriends—Yibo, especially, always pulled a kind of dead air out of him—but he hadn't actively been an asshole, either. Just that distant, almost bored neutrality: the kind of bland tolerance you gave a friend’s temporary bad tattoo that you hoped they’d eventually laser off. Pond, the delusional fuck-up he was, had interpreted that silence as a safe zone.
He dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, trying to flush out the shampoo, but all the sting did was amplify the failure. That memory, all sharp edges and unwelcome focus, had already set. You don’t just power-wash that kind of shit out of your head.
Yibo. Four years ago. That's how long it had been since he was at Chula, trying to make the family’s shredded blueprint of a future work. Aerospace Engineering. The whole International Program thing. It was fancy as fuck, sure, but it felt like a goddamn cage, not a life. He’d been underwater then, drowning in equations, the cold, dead logic of the subject. Getting out of bed and dragging himself to lectures and labs was the only battle he could fight.
Dunk was the one permanent fixture in Pond's chaotic life—still in the same building, different department. He never called ahead; he just materialized, coffee and pastries, or those greasy egg sandwiches he loved. “You look like actual hell, man,” Dunk would deadpan, but the insult was always delivered with a tone that meant the exact opposite.
And then, the dance studio. It was his real life, his own private universe, hidden behind a rusted-out shutter near Siam. That’s where he found Yibo. He was all carved muscle and sharp lines—terrifyingly beautiful and utterly controlled. Watching him dance was a kind of hypnosis, like seeing liquid mercury given human form: fluid, breaking, and snapping back with impossible grace. And when he was moving—whether dominating the floor or later, slammed down hard on top of Pond, pushing him into the mattress—the technique was flawless. There was never a wasted breath, never a single wasted sound; every gasp was choreographed, a second, instinctual heart Pond could feel against his own chest.
And Yibo was sweet. Too damn sweet. He’d waited out Pond's ghosting, never complaining about the forgotten texts. He’d been quiet and gentle about the black hole Pond carried behind his gaze. Yibo's Mandarin—the way it sounded so soft and familiar—couldn’t have been intentional. It had to be unintentional. Pond felt a twist of self-disgust. No, it wasn’t a coincidence. Because that was the language Phuwin would be speaking. Probably in China. Definitely in China.
Pond slammed the faucet shut, as if the abrupt, violent cut of the water could somehow drown out the memory clinging to the back of his neck.
It didn’t work.
Pond broke it off with Yibo after five agonizing months, pulling the oldest, shittiest trick in the book: “It’s not you, it’s me.” The awful part? It was absolutely true. Yibo had done nothing wrong. They were only scenery—the Chula campus, the cool air of lecture halls, the clatter of bright orange lunch trays. They were the humid air of Bangkok, the same damn air that Phuwin’s ghost breathed down his neck in the sun-drenched walls of the Engineering Building. They weren’t real. They were just Phuwin’s reflection.
So, he nuked it. Just like that. Dropped the classes, bailed on the whole degree. He got the hell out, transferring to KMITL and picking Biomedical Engineering almost randomly because, honestly, the name just sounded vaguely impressive enough. To the few who cared, he’d mumble something technical about robotics. The real, gut-deep reason was pathetic: he didn't know the major from a hole in the wall. He just needed a fresh wound, a different place to ache.
And then there was Eunwoo. Pond was twenty-two, so burnt out he saw the world in sepia, working doubles at an Ekkamai café, juggling dance competitions and classes. Eunwoo had that face: the kind of angelic perfection that shut down conversations. Café owner. Straight-up leading man material. He was too polite, too pretty, and honestly, too fucking good for the mess Pond was.
Even his mother was in on it, plastering their photos—Eunwoo’s perfect face next to his—everywhere with the cringey caption, “Future son-in-law.” She’d tag him on the grid and rave to her entire friend list: “His face is so small! He’s so respectful. Such a Khun Noo.”
The flattery felt like a punch in the gut—because that’s what she always said.
That’s exactly how she sold Phuwin to her circle.
Yet Pond kept dating him. He built the lie brick by brick. He even let himself feel happy—sometimes. Eunwoo was genuinely nice, intense as hell in bed, and looked at Pond like he was a goddamn miracle. But it was pointless. He was still cheating. Even then—always then—Pond would press his mouth into the pillow, tasting cotton and shame, and let that other name fill his head while Eunwoo fucked him.
He couldn’t voice it. The truth would break him, and it would break Eunwoo's pretty heart.
So he did the dirtiest thing possible.
Used Dunk. Invited him over, knowing exactly what it would look like. No warning for Eunwoo. Just let it play out.
They crashed out on the couch, a knot of limbs as usual—skin on skin, legs draped, half-naked in the afternoon light. It was never sexual. But it was definitely intimate. Too fucking intimate for an outsider.
Eunwoo came in with takeout, and the sight of them hit him like a physical blow. His expression shattered.
Pond stayed put. He could hear Dunk scrambling, shouting Eunwoo's name in the stairwell.
Pond just stared at the ceiling. Because he'd engineered it. That was the whole point.
He quit the job instantly. He got lost in his books and projects. Made those cringe TikToks with his crew just to look busy. The world kept turning, but not for him. His heart flatlined. He swore off dating for ages. Hard pass. Honestly, what was there left to prove?
And then there was Gemini.
It was so stupidly innocent at first—just arguing over NCT on the timeline, debating Jaehyun’s style versus Taeyong’s lyrics. Pond genuinely didn't know what the hell Gemini looked like. Or that he was Dunk's cousin, a kid Pond had met years ago when Gemini was, like, twelve.
They didn't trade face pics. Didn't matter. The connection was immediate. The fun was the point. Text replies slid into DMs. DMs casually became, “Hey, wanna grab food after uni?”
The first time Pond actually saw him—not on a screen, but for real—was at Chula, outside the Faculty of Arts building.
Gemini stood with his back to Pond, completely focused on his screen. For one terrifying, stomach-dropping second, Pond’s lungs just stopped. The perfect slope of that neck. The fit of the t-shirt across his shoulders. The way the hair went soft and fuzzy in the heat.
Phuwin.
The name hit Pond like a fucking seizure, collapsing five years into a single, painful inhale.
But then Gemini spun around, a blinding grin already in place, and called out, “Phi Pond?”
The spell broke. He was only a stranger.
Gemini was more. Brighter, bubblier. His smile was too wide, his laugh too damn loud. He wasn't Phuwin. Couldn't be. Not internally, not where it mattered.
They went for ice cream on Banthat Thong. Wandered through Centenary Park. They talked shit about professors and music, and the whole time, the chemistry was loud. A click that was impossible to ignore.
But Gemini was too young. The same age Phuwin had been when Pond lost him. Pond couldn't contaminate that. He had to back off. So he faded out. Set his phone to silence, ignored the texts.
He told himself that burning the bridge was the only decent thing to do.
But now, standing under the pulsing cold spray, water pooling at his feet, the shame hit him with the force of a punch: Dunk was 100% correct. He had to grow the fuck up. This wasn't just about Phuwin anymore. He was actively recruiting doppelgängers for his sad little life, ruining them in the process.
He was a leech. It had to end.
Today.
Pond took in Joong the second Dunk opened the door. Handsome, sure. But it wasn't the kind of look that made Pond's stomach flip. It was this unnerving, mirror-image quality. Joong had a face that was almost too perfectly symmetrical, with an intense stare that gave him serious presence. Whatever. That wasn't what mattered here.
Joong carried this unsettling stillness, like a photograph taken just a second too late—a fraction off, yet impossibly perfect. There was a feeling, an immediate pull. A reflection. It was the shock of seeing yourself in a mirror, except this one was shining back the better half: the one who had his shit together. The one who hadn't been completely hollowed out by grief.
Pond didn’t like feeling this discombobulated around anyone, let alone a stranger. It unsettled him to his core. But still, it was done. He’d fallen in love at first sight—the kind that had nothing to do with sex or romance.
He wasn't the kind of asshole who went after a friend's partner. Ever. Especially not Dunk’s. But the second Dunk introduced them, framed in the cramped condo doorway like a stupid photo op, Pond felt a desperate clutch in his ribs.
“Meet Joong,” Dunk supplied, forcing a nonchalant tone that didn't match the tightness in his shoulders. “Joong Archen.”
Archen. Pond swallowed, the name echoing in his head. It had a sound, a gravitas—the kind of weight that guaranteed it would stick in your memory forever.
Joong's hand was solid, his grip a beat longer than was strictly polite on Pond's palm. The eye contact was worse—unblinking, skeptical, and curious all at once. It made Pond's skin crawl and his ego swell at the same time.
Why? Pond had no idea.
Not until they exchanged a few words.
Then, he knew exactly why.
The whole thing began with a kiss. A Dunk and Joong kiss, to be clear.
Dunk was rolling out his Navori expansion and needed a decent interior designer for the new aesthetic. Some mutual friend threw Joong’s name out.
Just like that.
It escalated fast. Branding meetings and layout edits turned into those hazy, sleep-deprived brainstorms. They went from talking about moodboards to arguing about merchandise, drinking too much wine and sweating over spicy chicken larb for two nights straight. And then, that kiss—the one that ended the 'professional' part. Ninety days later, they weren't debating it anymore. They were boyfriends.
Pond couldn’t look away from Joong’s profile—the way his lips slightly worked when he concentrated, the annoying, boundless energy in his bouncing knee. He flashed back to Dunk charging into the condo, clocking him in the jaw, and then ordering the shower. That had happened, what, an hour ago? The memory was already dulling, as if it had happened to some other guy days ago.
Sitting at Dunk's small, square dining table, Pond immediately picked up the scent: acrid burnt garlic mixed with a choking amount of coriander. Classic Dunk. That was his sign—when the food was aggressively flavored, he was spiraling. Over-seasoning meant he was overthinking.
Pond's eyes kept catching on the absurd details: those wine glasses were way too delicate for the cheap IKEA table, and Dunk had actually folded the napkins into origami swans. Dunk’s need to stage every damn thing always grated on Pond's nerves.
He swallowed, clearing the sticky feeling in his throat. “You could’ve fucking told me.”
Joong looked at Pond, genuine confusion in his gaze. “Wait, told you what?”
“I'm talking to Dunk right now.”
Dunk remained fixated on his plate. “I wasn't ready to talk about it.”
“Three months? You literally ask my opinion on new underwear. You couldn’t manage a text saying, 'Oh, by the way, I have a fucking boyfriend now'?”
Joong glanced between them once, then went back to surgically cutting his chicken into perfect, identical squares. “You’re Pond.”
“You say that like I’m some kind of local legend,” Pond muttered, unable to stop the defensive bite in his voice.
“You sort of are,” Joong replied, his tone smooth, utterly unreadable. “Dunk won’t shut up about you.”
“Oh, yeah?” Pond’s gaze narrowed into a skeptical slit. “Must be nice. He never mentioned you existed.”
Dunk let his breath go, finally meeting Pond's eyes with reluctance. “It wasn’t about the time,” he muttered tightly.
Pond raised an eyebrow, pressing him. “Then spit it out.”
Dunk slammed his fork down hard enough to make the glasses jump. “It was about you, Pond! Because I didn't know if you could handle it.”
“That you have a boyfriend?”
“No.” He flicked his eyes to Joong. “That I have this boyfriend.”
That was the answer. The whole, fucked-up reason.
Joong pushed his plate away, finally dropping the act that the food was the most important thing in the room. He didn’t intercede, just sat there like a silent spectator. Pond could read him like a headline, except Joong was doing the exact same thing, reading Pond right back, syllable for strained syllable.
Pond leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. “And what the hell makes him so special?”
Dunk let out a strained breath. “Because you two are the same fucking person.”
Pond let out a rough, humorless little bark of a laugh. “Oh yeah? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“You both communicate in broken code,” Dunk delivered, his gaze drilling into Pond. “You dance out your heartbreak. You run when you’re terrified, but your words, Pond, they level people. Every time.”
Pond didn't move, the words hitting him square in the chest.
Dunk leaned in, his voice dropping to a low, strained register. “You both grip things too tightly. Keep them like shrapnel. And I had to know this one was for real before I invited a fucking hurricane into a thunderstorm.”
Joong let out a single, dismissive snort, but offered no argument.
Pond just raised a brow and waited, letting Dunk flounder.
“You're... Pond, you're my person,” Dunk finally said. “My person. Like, after my parents and my sister, it's always been you. I desperately needed you to like him. And for him to not walk away because of you.”
Joong frowned slightly at the exchange. “You were afraid I'd hate him?”
“I sure as hell didn’t need another Eunwoo round two,” Dunk shot, looking right at Pond now.
Joong looked confused, picking at the label on his drink. “Wait, Eunwoo? Who the hell is that?”
Dunk scoffed, leaning back. “Your story, Pond. You got this? Or should I just give him the highlights?”
“Go for it,” Pond ground out.
Dunk nodded, turning back to Joong with a solemn, theatrical look.
“Okay, so Pond dated this guy, Eunwoo. Insanely attractive, ridiculously sweet, completely wasted on Pond. But Pond couldn't commit. So, instead of breaking up, he invited me over, no warning to Eunwoo. And we were spooning, the way we always did. Just boxers, just sleeping, but anyone else looking in would think something else. It was a straight-up cheating.”
Joong squinted. “Wait—you guys spoon?”
Dunk grinned slightly. “When it’s cold, yeah.” He addressed Pond this time: “I just didn’t want people getting screwed over because of… this thing we have.”
Pond felt a cold wash of panic. “There is no thing,” he bit out. “Don’t even say that.”
“You and I are non-negotiable, Pond,” Dunk stated, dangerously calm. “We speak a language the rest of the world can’t touch.”
To prove his point—to rub it in, Pond realized—Dunk leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to the corner of Pond’s mouth. Just like he’d done for years. It was the instinctive grounding they’d always given each other. Always.
But this time, Joong was watching.
Joong’s entire body went rigid. His hand death-gripped the fork. Pond watched his jaw clench, a muscle ticking beneath the skin.
Pond clocked the calculation in Joong’s eyes instantly. It wasn’t a soft flutter of jealousy or simple possessiveness—it was a pure assessment. He was being weighed. Pond didn’t just see the punch coming; he could already taste the exact fight they were about to have.
“What the actual fuck?” Joong said.
“Don’t,” Dunk cut in quickly, turning his full attention to his boyfriend. “It’s fine. That’s just… that’s how we are. Always been like that.”
Joong’s eyes narrowed to slits. “You kiss your best friend like that?”
“It’s not romantic,” Pond muttered, using the napkin to scrub at a spot on the cheap table. “That’s cringe. He’s literally my brother. It’d be like swapping spit with your therapist.”
Dunk pulled a face. “Why are you even thinking about kissing your therapist?”
“Because it proves my point,” Pond countered, folding the napkin into useless, tiny squares. “It just fundamentally violates the contract.”
Dunk ticked off the details on his fingers. “We kiss hello, kiss goodbye. We eat off each other's plates, feed each other, crash in the same bed sometimes when one of us is having a shit day,” Dunk continued, completely nonplussed. “Our parents were confused, yeah. They still side-eye us. His mom got me silk boxers. And I definitely called him babe once when his grandmother was right there.”
Joong just blinked, his perfect calm momentarily fractured. “Hold up. What?”
Dunk smiled into his wine glass, the picture of smug contentment. “She loved it.”
Joong looked from Dunk to Pond, then massaged his temple, looking genuinely lost. “I seriously need to rethink every damn thing I know about you two.”
“Tell me about it,” Pond muttered.
“I mean, seriously,” Dunk tacked on, rolling his eyes slightly. “It’s only Pond. He’s totally not my type.”
Pond winced. “Uncalled for, man. Seriously.”
“Look, I didn’t say you weren’t a whole snack,” Dunk countered. “I just said I don’t eat that snack.”
Joong finally spoke, drawing the words out slowly. “And what exactly is the type you’re into, huh?”
“Oh, you know,” Dunk deadpanned, without missing a beat. “It's designers who whisper sweet things in Turkish and are a complete mess in the kitchen. Specifically with onions.”
Pond hated how effortlessly they tossed around their own inside jokes.
Joong gave a self-satisfied hum, but the question wasn't done. “You certain nothing ever happened? You two never slipped up, not even once?”
“Ew, no thanks.” Pond grimaced, holding up a hand. “Don't even mention it. Kissing him once was all I needed. It was like trying to drink water after a marathon session of flossing and using industrial-strength mint mouthwash.”
Dunk physically pulled back. “That is so unnecessarily detailed.”
“Well, it was unnecessarily unpleasant,” Pond countered.
Joong simply tilted his head. “You ever feel the urge to try again?”
“Nah, man. Never,” Pond replied, making sure his voice held no inflection. “Like, you know that dead feeling when your face is numbed for a root canal? That's the vibe.”
“You’re telling me you never had any feelings for him, then?”
Dunk, seeing the opening, plunged the knife. “Relax. He just dates copies of the guy who walked out on him.”
“Dunk, cut it out!” Pond spat.
“Why? I’m right.”
Joong observed them both, clearly intrigued. “Okay. What’s the ex-boyfriend’s name, then?”
Pond opened his mouth to deny it, but all the air had left his lungs. He closed it again, shaking his head. “That’s irrelevant.”
Dunk managed a short, empty laugh. “Let's not even open that can of worms.” He waved the topic away. “Look, if Pond was ever going to hook up with me, it was going to be in Hua Hin, two years ago, when we were trapped with one bed and no bars on our phones. It didn't happen.”
“I'm just saying—” Joong paused, the intensity in his gaze cracking into a grin. “You’ve seen his ass. You have to at least consider it.”
“Oh, spare me,” Pond said flatly. “I’ve seen him cry so hard he snot-bubbled all over his rice. That’s a permanent erection killer.”
Dunk dropped his head onto the table, groaning. “Could we not, for the love of God, discuss my ass or my crying habits while there’s food present, you animals?”
Joong scooted forward, crowding the small table space. “Alright, you two never even slept naked?”
Dunk actually had to pause before replying. “Boxers. At least a pair of boxers, always.”
Pond watched him closely. “Got any more questions?”
Joong nodded once. “Were you why Dunk swore off relationships for a year?”
Dunk buried his face in his hands. “Joong, stop.”
“Just need to check the facts,” Joong dismissed.
Pond’s smirk was instantaneous and felt brittle. “No. Dude, Dunk’s just picky as hell. And he needed a year to maniacally focus on getting that second location up and running. Nothing deep.”
“Why are you still calling him ‘Dunkie’? Seriously, who uses a nickname like that past, like, middle school?”
“I don't know, man. It bugs him. And I’ve been doing it for six years.”
“Why do you sit that close to him?”
“It’s my chair. Back off.”
Joong fought a smile. He just stared at Pond. “Okay. I’m convinced.”
“You are?” Pond couldn’t stop the question.
“Not really. But I believe you tell yourself that story.”
Eventually, Joong visibly stood down.
Enough that he actually started chewing his food instead of just worrying it.
Enough that the small, hard lines around his mouth eased into a smile—one that wasn’t guarded.
The appraisal was over.
He saw Pond for what he was: not a danger, but a double.
A mirror.
After a painfully obvious beat, Dunk disappeared. The excuse was something ridiculous about the rice being too dry and needing to re-steam it, even though the plates were already stacked and Pond had finished his second helping.
Left alone in the living room, Joong visibly softened. He settled back, one leg tucked beneath his thigh, slowly spinning the wine glass between his fingers—ready for the conversation.
Joong took a slow sip of wine, then met Pond's gaze over the rim. “You still busting out those dance moves?”
Pond gave a short, awkward nod. “A bit. Not, like, a career. I hook up with a crew in Yaowarat. We practice near Charoen Krung—just open street, running off a busted speaker. Zero glamour, man. It’s just for fun.” He toyed with the brittle top of his crème brûlée. “I need it, though. It’s the only thing that actually settles my brain.”
Joong nodded once. “I danced, too. Back when I was dreaming big. Before I got the contract with the Insight. That shut it down.”
Pond gave him a quick sidelong glance, catching the edge of resentment in his voice. “Right. Dunk filled me in during the car ride—you were in OXQ, yeah?”
Joong let out a frustrated, strangled sound and threw his head back against the sofa, as if the ceiling could absorb the trauma. “God, don’t remind me. We never even got an official glow stick. It was done before it even started, man.”
A full, genuine laugh burst out of Pond before he could stop it. “Ah, come on,” he chuckled, leaning back. “I definitely remember that single. You guys really tried, I’ll give you credit for that.”
“Tried is generous, dude. We totally tanked. We called it quits like, two weeks after the thing dropped, right? World-class joke, honestly.”
Pond looked down, tracing the rim of his glass with his thumb. “You still actually got up on stage,” he murmured. “Which is more than I can ever say for myself.”
“Didn’t you… didn’t you almost go K-Pop?”
“Yeah, I know,” Pond interrupted quickly. “SM audition, 2020. That was right after I won the Clean & Clear thing. I’m dead serious, so don’t even start laughing.”
Joong pressed his lips together, successfully stifling the grin. “So you were a pretty-boy model?”
“An exclusive contract, full GMMTV backing,” Pond said, his voice coated in bitter irony. “Yeah, I had it all. I was supposed to be the new star. Then I tore up the deal, walked away from the money, and bought a ticket to chase the K-idol dream.”
“And then?”
“Then the universe decided to fucking laugh at me,” Pond replied. “Thought I was making the right call. But the global lockdown peaked right after I got there. Everything ground to a halt. I was stuck in a hotel room for months. Totally stalled. I couldn’t move forward. Just rotting.”
Joong looked him dead in the eye and nodded. “Fucking same.”
“Same?”
Joong leaned his elbow on the table. “I was lined up for a Chinese survival show—Asia Super Young, if you know it? I’d been prepping for months, living and breathing it. Learning Mandarin, running the choreo until my feet bled, sticking to this fucking brutal diet. Packed everything, had the whole goodbye dinner with my aunt and everything.”
“And?”
“COVID. Same fucking deal as you,” Joong clipped out. “The whole production shut down. We were stuck, man. Literal jail in a hotel for months. No way back to Thailand.” He paused. “Two years since I came back from Turkey. I thought that was my actual shot.”
Pond just nodded. “I understand.”
“I was this close to quitting, for real,” Joong murmured, pulling Pond out of his head. “I changed my damn name four times! I know, right? How pathetic is that? I seriously thought I had bad karma weighing me down. You ever get that desperate?”
Pond scoffed. “Don’t even get me started. I became that guy: obsessively Googling every single fortune teller in Bang Rak. I went to temples, I prayed, I tried to undo the bad karma. I was convinced this was payback for something I screwed up ten lifetimes ago.”
“Oh, my mom was on a mission. We hit up four fortune-tellers, and I had a fresh name for every visit, but the luck just wouldn't stick. Rachen, Archen, Vachirawit, and then back to Archen again. The final prediction was supposed to make me rich, no joke. I even bought a freaking amulet to ‘fix my whole life.’”
“I almost hit my mom up for cash, but then I looked at her, and I saw the cost of it all,” Pond continued. “I couldn't do that to her. She was already working double shifts to cover my flights and fund the delusional fantasies I'd stuffed into my carry-on. I wasn't going to sink her any deeper.”
Joong let out a quiet breath, a faint wince crossing his face—he remembered that specific kind of old pain, Pond realized.
“When the show failed, I went into a deep hole. Mostly just depression. Couldn’t peel myself out of bed. Tried to bury that entire year. I thought, Okay, maybe this isn’t for me. But my family needs a breadwinner—I don't have the luxury of being depressed. I started doing design work to pay the rent and switched majors entirely. I went from Creative Media Design at Stamford to Broadcasting and Streaming at BU.”
Pond just hummed a small sound of absolute, grim understanding, as if failure was the only goddamn equation that ever added up for him.
“Right there with you. I bounced around majors too. Aerospace, then Biomedical, now I’m just winging it—or not even. Still haven’t figured my actual life out.”
Pond leaned back, letting the ceiling fan push stale air across his face. “The difference is, back then, I actually believed I could hit the reset button,” he admitted. “I thought the universe was just fucking with me. Like, okay, I lost the contract, I lost my shot—but I still had people. I had Dunk. And…”
His voice caught, the name stuck like a fishbone in his throat. It was too late to take it back.
“And someone else,” he forced out. “Someone I truly loved. Someone who mattered that much.”
Joong didn't press. He just held the silence, letting Pond choose the next word.
Pond nervously rubbed his thumb back and forth across the glass. “He left in 2020, too. No warning. Just gone. I came back to a place that felt like a stranger's house, and the one person who made home bearable wasn’t there anymore.”
Pond tried to swallow, but his throat locked up solid. He felt the sudden, terrifying pressure, like his chest was a cracked container, and everything trapped inside was now fighting to escape.
“That year fucked me up, honestly,” he admitted. “Not the career part. It was… losing him and never finding out why.”
Joong studied Pond’s face—like he was looking for permission, but knew he had to ask anyway. “So that chapter just never closed for you?”
“No,” Pond said simply. “He just... vanished. While I was trying to figure out how to un-fuck my life, he was gone. I spent so long running the numbers, convinced I was the problem. I’m still not sure I wasn’t.”
Joong stayed quiet, like he understood Pond didn't need some bullshit platitudes, just space to breathe out the rot.
Pond snorted. “The funny thing is, 2019 was my peak. I was winning the competition, I had the contract, and he was right there. I had everything. And somewhere in that same twelve months, you were debuting on actual TV.”
Joong just nodded. “Yeah, that's fair.”
Pond stared at the wine glass. “You were stepping into the spotlight right when I was dancing in it for the very last time.”
They sat in the wake of that truth for a long minute.
Joong shifted closer. “We both almost got there, didn't we? Just… missed the turn.”
An unwelcome lump was lodged in Pond’s windpipe. He forced out a rough, audible cough, just to shove some damn air past it.
“Yeah. Just missed. Like the universe decided it'd be hilarious to hold the door open, let us see inside, and then slam the shit shut at the last second.”
Joong raised his wine glass. “To almost.”
Pond quietly clinked his glass. “To not giving up,” he corrected.
They didn't talk for a long time, just sat there like two separate car crashes side-by-side. Pond didn't feel fixed, not even close, but the concrete shell of his loneliness had finally cracked open. He wasn't the only one left standing.
Pond broke the silence by reaching across and tapping Joong’s wine glass with his own. “Ditch Dunk one night. Come meet the crew. Yaowarat is insane after sunset. We're near the old cinema, and I know where to get squid skewers that will change your life.”
Joong arched one dark brow. “You serious right now?”
“Completely.”
Joong studied him closely—not just his face, but his entire posture, the way Pond was essentially mirroring his own guarded stance—except Joong didn’t wear his pain on his sleeve.
Then, he finally smiled. “Yeah. I’d be down for that.”
Notes:
The nickname เทวาลัย (Thewalai) is used exclusively for Chulalongkorn University’s Faculty of Arts. The term itself means “abode of the gods.” This name originated because the faculty’s original building was located next to a shrine and featured classical, temple-like architecture. Over time, students affectionately began referring to the building as เทวาลัย. Think of it as campus-specific slang, similar to how Harvard students refer to the Yard or Oxford students mention the Bod. While outsiders might find it confusing, those familiar with the university immediately understand what’s being referenced.
Locals often refer to the Chulalongkorn University Centenary Park (อุทยาน 100 ปี จุฬาลงกรณ์มหาวิทยาลัย) by its shortened name, Suan Roi Pi (สวนร้อยปี).