Bring me the Sun

2.

On Akk’s eighteenth birthday, his mother decided it was time for him to “get his head together” — which basically meant he had to put it in a book.

That was a not-too-tacit obligation for him to stop hiding in his room, careful not to make any noise, so as not to let people know that he – the twist of fate, the laughingstock of human beings, one in a million, the system error of Thailand's richest and most influential family – had not yet expired. Unfortunately.

He learned from the butler that his mother had already hired a tutor for him. “A young man who is almost your age, you know, your mother thought it would be nice for you to have a peer to have a conversation with.”

Obviously, Akk had no say in the matter. His utter lack of power to oppose her wishes sat heavy in his gut, churning with disgust and self-loathing. He didn't even know if his social ineptitude would allow him to hold this person's gaze.

But a child allergic to sunlight couldn’t afford to have such a common disorder as anxiety. Anxiety was an unbearable whim for the nobility anyway; a defect that Akk cultivated in secret, sowing its germs and watching them become tall trees inside of him.

His mother was never present and when she was, she did a poor job at feigning an interest that was not there. Since Akk had fallen ill and his father had died, she had become a distant ghost that Akk had learned to call “Madam” or “Mother” on the few occasions when he could speak to her.

Thus, at some point Mother must have remembered that she had a son and had determined that even if the official debut in society was denied to him, Akk deserved a full education.

Despite her years of neglect, it was because of her insistence about him having to be educated that she finally gave him something. A gift. She had arranged his meeting with Apollo. Or at least, that's what Akk called him at first. He hadn’t paid attention when Mr. Chadok was listing details about the young man he was being forced to know. Therefore, he decided to invent a name that suited him.

As radiant and blinding as Apollo, the son of the Sun; direct descendant of the star that had disfigured and confined him.

Fate, at times, really knew how to be funny.

*   ☼   *

“Hi... uh, sorry. Hello.” The boy seemed to be struggling, but for reasons Akk couldn't grasp.

Judging by the way he kept his chin up and slightly raised his eyebrows as if to give himself a noble demeanor he didn't fully believe in, one would think it was the same uneasiness that anyone would feel after stepping into Southeast Asia’s most renowned mansion.

But he... He was not like everyone else. He seemed to be repressing a less superficial emotion, Akk could feel it. He just hadn’t identified what it could be yet.

A hot flush of annoyance washed over him: he had expected inscrutability to be his prerogative. After eleven years of solitude and empty conversations with the house staff, all of them faced with his signature glassy expression, he should have been the best in terms of being enigmatic. This boy, however, seemed to stand up to him.

Akk decided it was worth studying him better.

“Hello,” He replied, his voice low and resolute. It had been several days since he had last made use of his vocal chords. However, he had no intention of getting used to speaking any further. It wasn't needed, he wouldn't have to talk again to... what was his name again?

The tutor smiled. It wasn't a full smile and certainly didn’t seem genuine. Yet, something in the way a corner of his lips bent upwards in a half-grin, exposing his teeth, filled Akk's head with a weird buzz. Akk was forced to swallow, a hint of panic spreading under his skin like a drop of water on an oil painting. The first thing he did, as he came back to his senses, was to look away and check that no one had opened the curtains of the big windows that only had an ornamental function now.