call out my name [2gether]

CH 23 ‼️

Sarawat then threw his head back with a ragged, wet breath, banging his head against the wall painfully as he stared owlishly into the sky, looking for answers. The cigarette was forgotten, pinched between his fingertips, dropping ignited ashes to the floor while its tendrils of smoke rose forlornly into the air. He had to find out how Tine had died.

Sarawat's frown deepened as a thought filtered through his mind. Tine had claimed that he had haunted Sarawat so that he could confess to him. The confession had been Tine's goodbye, of sorts. So had Sarawat been Tine's unfinished business? Huh.

Except unfinished business had not been on the list of Natty's rules that proclaimed the three reasons why deceased souls still lingered in the living world. Was this then an exception to the rules? Although wait a minute. According to Natty these things always followed a strict pattern so this did not really make any sense. Sarawat raked a shaky hand through his hair. He needed to find out the details of Tine's death himself, maybe there was a connection that he was not seeing due to lack of facts. Surely Tine must have found out how it all happened, since he had said that he had remembered everything. But what was everything, really?

Everything was relative. Their goodbye could be just as relative too. So Sarawat had to preserve, he had to stay strong, especially now when he was tipping just at the breaking point. He would not rest until he had some actual evidence that Tine was really gone. Lost to the tides of time.

Sarawat frowned, his thoughts straying to the places on Tine's list that the ghost had asked Pear to visit. Obviously Tine would have tagged along with her since she had brought their guitar pick with her at that time. The places on that list must have been important to Tine. So following that list, just a few days ago Sarawat had stood there, on that pedestrian crossing where Tine had met his end. It was undoubtedly the same place where Phukong had crashed Sarawat's motorbike last year. Although none of these events seemed to be outwardly connected, it was highly suspicious and Sarawat certainly had his doubts.

There had been no serious causalities reported when his brother lost control of the bike, at least no official ones. If there had been something big it would have exploded all over the news immediately since the affairs of their family were quite the source for gossip. The accident in itself had been a severe backlash that their mother had to parry with an iron hand and if someone had died at that time, there would have been serious repercussions. So there could only be two reasons why Tine's accident had not been explicitly connected to Phukong; either Tine had not been severely hurt, not worthy of any media attention or some key facts had been altered.

Shit.

Sarawat moaned agonizingly into his hand, biting into his own flesh to keep himself grounded with the tingle of pain rushing through his limb. What the hell was going on? This was just like a Pandora's box, getting all the more chaotic the more Sarawat rattled the box, gradually unsealing lid.

Coming out of his stupor, Sarawat glanced alertly at his cell phone on the balcony floor next to him, reaching one tanned hand to turn on the screen so that the digital watch would flash forth on the bright display.

Shit! It was time to go.

Okay, so he would do this one step at a time. It was important that he kept his head cool, Sarawat had finally concluded while spending hours on the balcony in a panicked state, desperately looking for traces of Tine.

Sarawat would first find out who was digging for information about his family, if his hunch was correct then it was most likely connected to Phukong's accident. That was the only gray zone that he had chosen not to stick his nose into too deep while going through his mother's documents, since he wanted to give his brother some semblance of privacy in their already controlled home. Step two would be talking with Tine's friends once more and maybe even getting in touch with Tine's family. There were just too many events overlapping each other, surely Sarawat was bound to find something that would point him into the right direction, bringing him closer to finding Tine.