Third person's POV
The library was never silent. It had its own pulse—the slow hiss of pages turning, the creak of shelves, the tiny breath of dust lifting when a book was opened. Even the lamps flickered like eyelids.
That's where Chaiyan (Kael) first saw him—Rungsak (Anurak)—the young teacher from the monastery school, sitting with one ankle folded under him, hair loose, a fountain pen balanced between his fingers. He wasn't just reading; he was listening—as if the books whispered secrets only he could hear.
Chaiyan—the son of the village chief—had been raised to fear and admire men like him: men of words. He was heir to a household built on obedience, meant to carry his father's name like a sword. But when Rungsak lifted his eyes for the first time, Chaiyan felt as if he had stumbled into a hidden room of his own soul.
He didn't speak. He left a note instead, tucked between the pages of Mahachart:
"Doesn't it get lonely reading so late?"
When Rungsak found it, the corner of his mouth curved—not a full smile, just the soft tremor of one. He wrote back in the margin:
"Books don't judge."
---
The next evening, Chaiyan slipped another note between the pages of a dusty old book in the village library:
"I am not sure why I look for your eyes in the pages... but I do."
Rungsak, discovering it the next day, wrote in reply along the margin:
"Then perhaps these pages are lucky, carrying our gaze across ink and time."
Chaiyan hesitantly underlined a sentence in a fable:
"Do you think some stories are meant to find certain hearts?"
Rungsak, in the corner of the page, almost a whisper:
"Yes. And I think this one has found mine."
---
A day before Loi Krathong, Chaiyan slipped notes between the pages of stories of ancients:
"If the world could carry thoughts, would it bring mine to you?"
Rungsak wrote back in the margin of the same book:
"It does. And I wait for the ones that whisper louder than the storms."
Another evening, Chaiyan left a line under a poem:
"I trace your name in every shadow I see. Will you ever know?"
Rungsak wrote back softly:
"I do. And it feels like the world itself leans in to hear it."
Chaiyan wrote back boldly:
"I fear I am learning your voice through ink, and yet, it haunts me like sunlight through my window."
Rungsak smiled lightly:
"Then let it haunt you. Let it remind you that even without hands, we are touching."
---
And that's how it began. Each night, they spoke only in ink—a scribble here, a borrowed line of poetry there. Chaiyan left fragments of ancient verses; Rungsak replied with modern proverbs.
They built a bridge of words across the table but never crossed it. Sometimes their hands almost touched when passing a page, but not quite.
Weeks passed. The lamp-light grew warmer. Their eyes lingered longer. One night, Chaiyan left an entire poem:
"You are a page I cannot dog-ear,
A silence I keep rereading,
A hand that moves without touching,
A name I whisper without sound."
Rungsak replied with a simple line carved gently into the edge of the paper:
"You always touch me without your hands."
---
From then on, even the smallest gesture felt like thunder. When Rungsak adjusted his spectacles, Chaiyan's breath caught. When Chaiyan dipped his pen, Rungsak's eye flicked up like a sparrow.
They were no longer just words on paper; they were shadows leaning towards each other. They met when the world was silent, spoke with eyes—they never needed a mouth, because eyes never stopped talking.
But whispers began to start... and they traveled faster than ink.
The errand boys in the library began to stare. Older men muttered. Women looked away. The chief's son and the teacher—the murmurs went. Something shameful.
Yet by then, they had already begun to dream aloud: a home near the edge of the mountains, a small puppy named Sorren, a room with books stacked to the ceiling, children learning to read at their feet. No more hiding.
---
They set a date—a night. Rungsak wrote it, trembling, on a slip of paper and tucked it inside a copy of Jataka Tales:
"By the old Bodhi tree, when the moon turns silver."
He didn't sign his name. He didn't need to.
The night came soft and wet with rain, without knowing the tragedy that was going to happen.
Rungsak waited under the Bodhi trees with a beating heart because, at last, they were going to go away—to start a life together. He carried a bundle of books, dried rice, and the sound of his own heartbeat. The moon slid between clouds like a blade. He kept touching the paper with Chaiyan's writing as if it could hold him until he arrived.
---
But instead of Chaiyan, the men arrived. Not faces—just hands, rough and merciless.
They dragged him from the roots. They called him unclean, poison, a sinner, a curse, a corrupter. They beat him until his mouth bled. They tied him to a post in the temple courtyard where everyone could see. Children threw pebbles. Women covered their eyes but did not look away. Someone hissed, "Make that sinner pay."
Then they brought Chaiyan. Not bound, but held. His father's men at his arms. His father's voice like iron:
"Look at what you've done. This is your shame."
Chaiyan struggled, screaming, "It's not his fault!" His voice cracked into sobs. He begged. He tried to break free.
They all ignored him. They pressed a blade to Rungsak's skin. Each cut deliberate. Each blow a sermon. Rungsak bit back his cries until the taste of iron filled his mouth.
Finally, he lifted his eyes. He found Chaiyan in the crowd. Struggling, screaming, his face wet with tears. When their eyes met, his lips trembled.
Rungsak tried to smile, but his eyes spoke louder. "Don't cry," he whispered, becoming teary, seeing Chaiyan cry louder. "Please let him go... please... he didn't do anything wrong..." Chaiyan begged helplessly.
---
But every time they heard Chaiyan screaming, they hurt Rungsak more. Rungsak's body trembled with each cruel strike, his breath ragged, and the world around him blurred with pain.
Chaiyan pushed harder, struggling, almost collapsing from desperation and weight. He reached the last few steps. His hands stretched out, fingers quivering, brushing against Rungsak's—just barely. In that instant, Rungsak's eyes closed slowly—not in fear, not in regret, but with the certainty that Chaiyan had arrived.
"I will find you... my little Falcon," Rungsak whispered, his lips barely moving.
And then the last thread of his life slipped away.
---
Chaiyan's scream tore through the night as he watched his beloved Rungsak leave this world. His body shook, tears streaming down his face, the sound of his cries swallowed by the indifferent night.
Suddenly, he stopped struggling against the hold of others. His hand hung limp, trembling at his side. The frantic rhythm of his heartbeat slowed to a hollow, ragged echo. The world seemed to pause, as if even the night itself dared not move.
Rungsak was gone. His body, once so warm, so alive, was now still—a fragile vessel emptied of everything that had made it his.
---
Chaiyan's chest ached in a way words could not touch. His soul had been ripped in two, and no breath could fill the space left behind. The cries that had poured from him earlier were gone, replaced by a silence so profound it pressed against his eardrums.
Every sound, every movement around him felt distant, muffled, unreal. The people who had surrounded them were shadows, blurred and meaningless. Nothing mattered except the absence of the one who had carried his heart.
He walked—and when someone tried to hold him back, he gave a look that made them stay. He walked to Rungsak.
When he reached near, his legs gave way beneath him, and he sank to the cold ground, staring at the lifeless form.
A part of him refused to believe—a small, desperate flame whispered that this was some cruel dream, that he would awaken and find Rungsak smiling at him, as if nothing had happened. But the cruel weight of reality pressed in, and that tiny flame died.
Chaiyan's hands shook violently as they hovered over Rungsak's fallen form. A scream tore from his throat—long, raw, a sound that carried older than his years.
"No... please... not you... please don't leave me..."
But there was no answer. Only silence. Only the empty echo of what had been.
He gently touched Rungsak's cheek—it felt cold, lifeless.
And then, in a single, irrevocable moment, Chaiyan understood that he could not survive this world without Rungsak. His mind, frayed and drowning in despair, made a tragic, irrevocable choice.
Hands trembling, he reached for the sharp knife he had carried for protection, the cold metal biting into his palms. Every breath was a thunderous scream of heartbreak, every heartbeat a drum of mourning, with one final, agonized sob. He pressed the knife against his stomach—the edge cutting deep.
Pain flared sharply, and blood—hot, alive—ran across his hands and chest. But it was nothing compared to the hollow, burning emptiness inside him. Every nerve, every fiber of his being felt only one truth: a world without Rungsak was no world at all.
---
As the life bled from him, Chaiyan's vision blurred. He saw Rungsak's face in his mind, smiling, whispering promises no living world could contain.
And with a final, whispered, "I love you, Rungsak," he let himself go, the sound of his own blood mingling with the silence around him, leaving only the echo of love and loss behind.