Crashing In To You ( Freen x Becky)

Chapter 21

Khun Saint held up his hand to signal for Khun Beer to remain silent as the younger woman walked in to his office while he was on the phone. Beer came to a stop in front of Saint's desk, her military background showing as she stood to attention with her hands clasped behind her back. Her expression was one of impatience as Saint carried on with his conversation.

"Yes. Yes, I completely-" Saint pulled the receiver away from his ear, his eyes closing in disdain as the person on the other side spoke over him, going on and on.

Having reached her breaking point, Beer snatched a pen from the pot sitting on Saint's desk and scrawled a hasty note in his open diary. Saint glanced down at the three words, expecting the note to be something tedious, but his eyes widened as he read it. "I'm sorry, Khun President, but I have something of the utmost importance to see to."

Saint hung up, slamming the phone down hard enough to rattle the windows in his office.

Beer's mouth hung open in shock, not having realised who Saint was on the phone to at first. "Did you just hang up on the President of the Thailand?"

"Kub, I did." Saint bristled, sitting up straighter in his seat as he smoothed down his jacket. "And I would have done it much sooner had you led with that!" He gestured to the message written across the full page of his diary in large letters.

'They found them!'

Beer let Saint's scathing words go right over his head. She'd known the principal long enough to know his sharp tongue was his way of dealing with his stress; the vanishing of ten of his students had weighed heavily on his chest for the last five days.

"What's going on?" Saint demanded.

"The details are vague, but apparently a plane flying over the southwestern pacific spotted an SOS signal on an island that's uninhabited. We've had confirmation that all ten of the kids are alive, but one is in critical condition."

"Who?" Saint's eyes narrowed on the other woman as he held his breath. It was a sad fact of life, but the deaths of some of his students would have more consequences than others.

The President of Thailand hadn't been calling him to inquire about the welfare of a scholarship kid from Ranong, or a Chiang Rai farmer's daughter. The last thing Saint and the school needed was a lawsuit from the likes of the Austin's or the Mercado's.

"We're not sure at this time, Khun." Came Beer's clipped reply. She knew exactly why Saint was asking, and his disdain shone through. "All we know is one girl has been taken by chopper to a nearby Australian military ship. The others are being put on a civilian cruise ship that will dock in Papua New Guinea in two days' time. From there the our embassy will have them flown back. They should be home within three days."

"Why wasn't I informed of any of this?! I should have been the first point of call-"

"You couldn't be reached, Khun. You were on the phone with the President." Beer said, staring her superior down as Saint gave her the evil eye.

"Of course." Saint's shoulders dropped as he let out of a heavy sigh and rubbed at his face with his hands. The last few days had taken their toll on him, and it was showing. Beer wasn't sure when Saint had last gone home.

Saint's tone softened as he managed a weak smile for his friend and colleague. "They're alive, that's the important thing. We'll found out who's injured and how badly. After that I'll contact the parents directly and call a press conference for this afternoon. This is good news, Khun Beer. The best news."

🏝️

A thousand miles off the coast of Papua New Guinea, the tender of the cruise ship 'The Symphony of the Seas' bobbed in the ocean, carrying a group of exhausted survivors. The tender's primary use was to transfer passengers from the cruise ship to smaller ports where the huge passenger liner couldn't pull in to.