The sky over Bangkok at 5:00 PM didn't look like a sunset; it looked like an bruise. A heavy, humid purple stain bled across the horizon, threatening a massive downpour that everyone knew would turn the streets into small rivers within ten minutes.
"We are breaking at least three traffic laws," Mali said, her voice muffled because her face was pressed directly into the back of Phuwin's school shirt. "And if my mother sees me on this thing, traffic laws will be the least of my problems."
"Relax, Mali, you're shifting the center of gravity," Krit called back from the front. He was gripping the handlebars of his older brother's beaten-up Honda Wave like he was racing in the Moto GP, his knees flared out, his school bag swinging wildly from his left shoulder. "And stop holding onto Phuwin like that, you're suffocating the driver."
"I'm not driving!" Phuwin yelled over the aggressive, lawnmower-like roar of the exhaust pipe. He was wedged uncomfortably in the middle, his long legs bent at a ridiculous angle to avoid the hot metal of the muffler. "I am a human sandwich. My ribs are collapsing. Krit, watch the pothole—!"
The bike hit the dip in the asphalt with a violent thunk. All three of them bounced six inches into the air, landing back on the vinyl seat with a collective, breathless groan.
"Krit!" Mali shrieked, her hands flying up to smack his shoulder. "I will literally jump off!"
"If you jump, we lean left, and then we all go down," Krit shouted back, a massive, unhinged grin visible in the cracked side-mirror. "We survive together or we die together, Mali! That's the pact!"
The street was a chaotic maze of stalled cars, exhaust fumes, and street vendors desperately pulling plastic tarps over their fruit carts before the rain hit. Krit wove through the stationary traffic with the casual confidence of someone who didn't care about the concept of human mortality.
Phuwin didn't say anything for a few minutes. He just held onto the metal bar behind the seat with one hand, his other arm securely locked around Mali's backpack so she wouldn't slide off the back. The wind—hot and smelling faintly of grilled pork and diesel—whipped his hair into his eyes, blinding him.
It was loud. It was terrifying. It was completely stupid.
And for the first time in forty-eight hours, he wasn't thinking about his phone. He couldn't. If he thought about his ex right now, he'd miss a cue to lean, and Krit would send them flying into a parked tuk-tuk.
The first fat, heavy drop of rain hit Phuwin directly in the center of his forehead.
"Oh, great," Mali groaned from behind him. "It's starting."
Within thirty seconds, the sky simply opened up. It wasn't a gentle drizzle; it was the kind of tropical monsoon that felt like someone was standing over the city with a fire hose. The rain hit the hot asphalt, sending up a thick, white mist that blurred the red taillights of the cars ahead of them.
"Pull over!" Phuwin yelled, the water immediately flattening his bangs against his forehead and running down his neck into his collar. "Krit, I can't see! Pull over under the overpass!"
"No way!" Krit shouted back, blinking furiously against the downpour. "If we stop now, the engine will flood! We're five minutes from my house! Hang on!"
Instead of slowing down, Krit aggressively twisted the throttle. The little motorbike gave a pathetic, high-pitched whine and surged forward into the grey wall of water.
Mali let out a loud, genuine scream that was half-terror, half-hilarity. Phuwin found himself laughing too—a wild, breathless sound that got trapped in his throat as he swallowed a mouthful of rainwater. They were completely soaked within three seconds. Their white school uniforms turned entirely translucent, sticking to their skin like plastic wrap, and their leather school shoes filled up with water like tiny buckets.
They looked completely ridiculous. Three teenagers, completely drenched, yelling at the top of their lungs on a five-hundred-dollar motorbike in the middle of a flood.
By the time Krit skidded the bike into the small, covered alleyway beside his family's grocery store, the engine gave one final, wet cough and died.
The silence under the metal awning was sudden and deafening, broken only by the loud, rhythmic thump-thump-thump of the rain hammering against the corrugated roof above them.
For a second, nobody moved. They just sat on the dead bike, water dripping from their noses, their chins, and the hems of their shorts.
Then, Krit slowly swung his leg off the front, stood up, and looked at them. His hair was slicked back completely, making his ears look huge, and his school tie was soaked through, sticking to his chest like a dead seaweed leaf.
He looked at Phuwin. Phuwin looked at Mali.
Mali let out a weird, wheezing sound, covered her face with her wet hands, and just started laughing. It started as a giggle, then turned into a full, shoulder-shaking laugh that made her slide off the back of the bike and lean against the concrete wall for support.
"Look at your hair," she gasped, pointing a dripping finger at Krit. "You look like a wet rat. A giant, wet rat."
"Me?" Krit scoffed, though his own shoulders were shaking. He reached out and aggressively ruffled Phuwin's hair, sending a spray of water everywhere. "Look at the main character. The tragedy boy. His waterproof mascara didn't work."
"I don't wear mascara!" Phuwin yelled, but a huge, stupid grin broke across his face anyway. He wiped his eyes with his wet palm, leaning his head back against the seat. "My shoes. I can literally hear fish swimming in my shoes."
"Come on, inside before my mom sees the mess," Krit said, kicking open the side door of the shop that led up to their small apartment.
The stairs were narrow and smelled like garlic and jasmine rice. They left a literal trail of puddles behind them, their wet socks making loud, squelching squish-squish sounds with every step. Krit's mother didn't even blink when they walked into the kitchen; she just sighed in that tired, universal mother way, tossed three mismatched towels at them, and went back to stirring a pot of soup.
Ten minutes later, they were sitting on the floor of Krit's small, cluttered bedroom.
The room was a mess of old comic books, discarded guitar strings, and clothes that hadn't quite made it into the hamper. Phuwin was wearing a pair of Krit's oversized basketball shorts that were so big they kept sliding down his hips, and Mali had borrowed a faded oversized t-shirt that reached her knees.
The rain outside was still furious, rattling the glass panes of the window, but inside, it was warm. The small electric fan in the corner was whirring, blowing the scent of damp fabric around the room.
Krit dropped a large, family-sized bag of sour cream chips between them. He threw himself onto his mattress, propping his head up with his arm. "Eat up. That ride cost me at least ten years of my life expectancy."
Mali reached for a chip, her knees pulled up to her chest inside the big shirt. "You drive like a maniac."
"I drove like a hero," Krit corrected, pointing a finger at her. "I saved us from drowning in the street. Phuwin, stop staring at the chips like they're going to bite you. Eat."
Phuwin was sitting with his back against the side of the bed. He wasn't looking at the chips. He was looking at his hands, which were wrinkled and white from the water.
His phone was sitting on Krit's desk, three feet away. It was dead—the battery had given up during the chemistry lab—and it looked completely harmless just lying there, a black piece of glass and metal.
"It's weird," Phuwin said quietly.
The laughter from the kitchen trail faded out. Mali paused, a chip halfway to her mouth, her eyes instantly shifting to his face. Krit didn't move, but his gaze dropped from the ceiling down to the back of Phuwin's head.
"What's weird?" Mali asked softly.
"When we were on the bike," Phuwin said, his voice dropping into that low, completely honest register that always made the room feel smaller. "And the rain was hitting us so hard it actually hurt... I wasn't sad. For like, ten minutes. I was just cold, and I was scared Mali was going to fall off, and I wanted a chip."
He gave a small, self-deprecating laugh, pulling his knees a little closer to his chest.
"And then we got inside, and it stopped. And the first thing I thought about when I sat down was... 'I wonder if he's watching the rain right now, too.'" Phuwin looked up at Mali, his eyes completely wide and clear, stripped of all the dramatic sighs and theater. "Why does it come back? Like, the second I'm not distracted, it just fills up the room again. It feels like a cheat code. Like no matter how much fun I have with you guys, the second we stop talking, I'm right back at the chicken shop."
Mali didn't answer right away. She slid off her spot by the wall, moving over until her shoulder was pressing against his. She didn't hug him—they didn't really do that—but she just sat there, solid and warm against his side.
"Because you liked him, Phuwin," she said simply. "You can't just turn it off like a light switch just because we went fast on a motorbike."
"It's annoying," Phuwin muttered, dropping his forehead onto his knees. "I want to be over it. I want to be the cool guy who doesn't care."
"You've never been the cool guy who doesn't care," Krit's voice cut through from the bed.
Phuwin lifted his head to glare at him, but Krit wasn't smirking. He was lying on his back, staring at a water stain on the ceiling, his hands laced behind his head.
"You care about everything," Krit said, his voice flat, almost clinical. "You care about the texture of the paper in your notebooks. You care if the guy at the noodle stall looks sad. You care about songs that came out ten years before we were born. That's just how your brain is built, Phuwin. You're loud, and you're annoying, and you feel things until your eyes turn into raisins."
Krit rolled onto his side, looking down at Phuwin from the edge of the mattress.
"So stop trying to be the cool guy," Krit said, reaching down to aggressively drop a single sour cream chip onto Phuwin's head. "It doesn't suit you anyway. Your face is too expressive. You'd suck at poker."
Phuwin blinked, the chip sliding off his wet hair and landing in his lap. He looked at the chip, then up at Krit's stupid, unchanging face.
The heavy, suffocating silence that usually followed Phuwin's confessions didn't stay this time. It couldn't. Krit's voice had broken through it like the Honda Wave cutting through the Bangkok floodwaters.
Phuwin picked up the chip and shoved it into his mouth. "You're a terrible life coach, Krit."
"I'm an excellent life coach," Krit retorted, reaching down to steal three chips from the bag before Mali could stop him. "I charge fifty baht an hour. You guys already owe me for the skytrain ticket I didn't buy you."
"We're not paying you," Mali said, reaching out to yank the bag closer to her side. "And you still have a piece of seaweed stuck to your ear from the street."
"Where?" Krit's hands flew to his head, his cool demeanor instantly shattering as he scrambled up to look in his closet mirror. "Mali, if you're lying to me, I'm throwing your wet socks out the window—!"
Phuwin watched them start bickering again, his jaw aching slightly from the sour cream seasoning, the sound of the rain outside turning into background noise. The hole in his chest was still there, wide and empty and dark. But sitting between the two of them on the messy floor, he realized something else.
Maybe the hole didn't go away. Maybe it just didn't matter as much when the rest of the room was this loud.