Sarawat's Story

Part I: A Concert and an Encounter

Wat, he's here.

Mann and Boss were teasing me again I was sure, so I nonchalantly shrugged. Since the summer before, my two best friends had repeated the same line at least once a week, and on the first day of the fall semester, I knew they were back at it. I had heard the line so many times, my reaction to it had become one of indifference. 

"Seriously, Wat," Boss said as we walked from our last class towards the parking lot, "this time, you've got to believe us!" 

Boss, walking along my right side, had been my friend since grade school. He was a cartoon character in human form: a hilariously expressive face on a lanky, flexible body. Boss was attractive with mahogany eyes that were always in a squint, and a boyish grin that had remained the same since we were little kids. He had a warm sand complexion, a thin and sharp nose, with unruly black hair he often kept hidden under a baseball cap. Girls fawned over him and his looks, but it was his overactive and animated personality that was his charm. He could make me laugh with his facial expressions alone.

On my left walked Mann, a wide smile on his face. He nodded in agreement with Boss.

If Boss was the north, Mann was the south. They were opposites, a joker versus a gentleman, but a great balance of crazy and calm in my life. Mann's face was handsome with the chiseled features of a gallant knight. His complexion was pale like a porcelain doll, with pink cheeks and thin, light pink lips. His ivory skin was a perfect match for his black, penetrating eyes. Like Boss, Mann was popular among the girls at our school. They liked Mann because he was the elegant and quiet type. But I knew he could easily be as devilish and cunning as Boss, and Mann never turned down a chance to play any prank on me.

"We really saw him!" Mann stressed. "Seriously!"

I rolled my eyes. "Like you saw him last week, and the week before that, right?"

"This time we're serious," Mann continued to stress to me.

I shrugged as if I didn't care, but I knew they could see through my apathy. It wasn't that I didn't want to believe them, but I knew the chances were slim that their words would be true this time. It would be a miracle for those words to become reality.

Seriously, Wat, he's here.

As we continued to walk on the outskirts of our college campus, Boss and Mann's words had sent my mind back to a little over a year before. Scrubb, a rock band that was popular around Thailand, would be playing a free concert on a college campus in Chiang Mai, not too far away from our school. Boss and Mann had convinced me to go along for the ride. As much as the two of them claimed to want to see Scrubb live in concert, I knew they were more interested in Scrubb's female fans.

The college campus in Chiang Mai had a large, open lawn surrounded by different college buildings, much like our own campus. The concert was in that huge middle area, and when we arrived, there was about two hundred or more people around our age already gathering around the small stage near one end of the lawn. The three of us decided to stand towards the back of the crowd rather than to try and push our way to the front. Besides, we could still see the stage well enough behind the concertgoers, and that was fine for me. Scrubb began playing at six o'clock, and as the crowd began singing and dancing along with the music, I enjoyed the warm, late summer breeze.

Scrubb was playing their third or fourth song when suddenly the person that had been singing, dancing, and jumping around in front of me launched backwards into me. I grabbed his waist instinctively, to keep him from falling back anymore, and to also steady the both of us. I was ready to scream at him to watch what he was doing.