Por finally had a weekend away from practicing with the music club. It has been a long time since he and Tiw were able to spend time having a perfect date. Normally, in order to avoid encountering acquaintances, the two often choose a restaurant far from their school as well as their home. Eating and drinking is the simplest and most passionate expression of love between them.
Tiw carefully unwrapped the shrimp for Por, the steamed shrimp just arrived making his hand so hot that he almost dropped it off the plate. At this moment, his phone rang continuously. Por noticed that his hands were so dirty, so he quickly touched the answer button and turned on the speakerphone.
Oh, that's Tinn.
"Ai'Tiw" Tinn spoke up, his voice not sounding very amused.
"I'm here. What's the matter, Tinn?" Tiw dipped the unwrapped shrimp in the sauce and placed it in front of Por's mouth.
"About the folk music contest, can you be a judge instead of me?"
"Huh?" Tiw and Por in unison.
"Are you staying with Por?" Tinn sighed, "That's it, I asked my mother, but she wanted me to attend a leadership workshop on the same day, so you should go to the temple for me."
Tiw did not know how to respond, just quietly observing Por's face, seeing his lover frowning and chewing on shrimp as if it had some kind of poison.
"After all, you were the one who offered to help the music club." Tinn continued.
Por froze. The chopsticks in his hand lost gravity, falling to the ground. Tiw asked the waiter to bring a new pair of chopsticks, despite Por's expression showing no sign of wanting to continue enjoying the meal.
"You're going to cheer for Por anyway. Going to this contest can both see your lover perform and make a good impression on the music club, so that they will be more accepting of you in the future."
Tinn realized that the other end was unusually silent.
"Let's talk later."
Tiw stretched out a greasy finger and hung up. He turned to Por, who was sitting contemplatively staring into space.
"Darling, what's wrong with you?"
"The contest, it isn't Tinn's intention, but yours?" Por took out a wet towel to wipe Tiw's hands and asked.
"Uhm, it was me asking Tinn for help. Babe, you don't want that, do you?"
"No" Por sighed. "It's just that Gun was so happy that Tinn helped him."
That sentence accidentally entered Tinn's ears through the audio transmission. Tiw must have forgotten to hang up, or missed the button, or for some other reason.
Tinn took the initiative to turn off the phone and lay down on the bed, letting that sentence linger in his mind.
Gun Guntaphon Wongwitthaya.
This person appeared in front of him more times in the past week than in the last two school years combined. Tinn believes that the way people meet each other, only a little is by chance, the rest is by arrangement. Whether it is God's plan or it is arranged by the human himself, it happens because someone wants to meet someone. As if we do not intentionally want to meet that person, there are so many people going through this life, two heartless people will pass each other and never meet again.
In Tinn's eyes, Gun is a very lively and bright boy.
But that's all.
He has received thousands of love letters poured out of the front petition box of the student council room, but he has never opened any of them. Because he did not have the name he expected to see on the letter.
No one.
The whole school knew that the number of love letters he has received over the years are arranged in piles, filled with large cardboard boxes, sealed in the student council's warehouse.
Perhaps it is because Tinn has a way of rejecting yet respecting others, even though he completely cuts off the other's hopes, but inadvertently makes them even more desire, because even if they do not have his love, they will not be embarrassed, even fortunate to be able to talk to him even if it was just a few brief conversation.
Tinn has heard thousands of confession lines, ranging from simple to cheesy and flowery, and he has also attended numerous challenging courses, listening to those most difficult questions, but now, he was lying here, and thinking about a sentence without a beginning nor ending.
Such a simple sentence that he could not understand.
Or he just refused to understand it.
Gun was so happy when Tinn helped him.
Tinn shook his head, telling himself to go to sleep. But when his eyes were just closed, he could not help but remember the moment when he was near Gun. Whenever the two unintentionally come close to one another, Gun will always have a really... peculiar face. He would hold back his breath, sometimes looking around confusedly, and other times looking up at Tinn with eager eyes. He will look like a robot that has been forced to stop functioning, with stiffened limbs and his face slowly turning red like a freshly ripe peach. Tinn likes the way his cheeks were pink as if he was applying a coating of powder, making Tinn feel that they were very... cool.
Tinn is not a fool. He realized something was wrong with Gun. Due to his rigid and logical thinking style, he is typically quite easy to analyze anything as every inference he draws is virtually entirely accurate.
He was followed by hundreds of people. Every-kind-of-people.
So he knows.
Those expressions are signs of something.
Yes, Gun lik- Oh, just maybe- maybe, Gun likes him.
As Tinn gently drifted off to sleep, he reminded himself that, when he was still awake enough to consider right and wrong, his reason must still be there and he was still far away from love.
Certainly so.
_______
And then the next day, as usual, Kajorn resumed his job of cleaning the student council petition box. No exaggeration, this petition box has to be cleaned once every two days, and has to take care of more than the ornamental plants in the school yard.
"If only the student council's budget could fill up as quickly as this petition box." Tiw joked again, we do not know if the council warehouse has run out of space, but this boy's love letter is actually several times more than the school's official documents.
Tinn did not care about that too much, he continued to process the requests of the clubs on the table. Closer to the time of budget reduction, many clubs submitted applications to appeal keeping or increasing their budgets as well as documentation of their ongoing operations.
"Ai'Jorn" Tiw was startled when he saw that Kajorn was about to dump all the letters into the cardboard box as if dumping trash. "At least filter them out first, maybe there is a complaint or request from the club or something?"
Kajorn looked at the box, which was filled with postcards of various colors, and shook his head in disgust.
"No way, Phi. It's all about P'Tinn's love letters here. If any club wanted to submit any documents, they would have come straight into the room and given it to us."
The box was sealed and stowed away in storage, until late that afternoon, when most members of the student council had left, Gun rushed into the room, shouting.
"AI SHIA TINNNNN"
Tinn sat up surprised and noticed his hurried manner, wondering what this boy wants to play again. Tinn had never witnessed him acting thus irately and loudly.
"What's going on?"
"Why don't you stamp our application form?" Gun grimaced as he spoke while pouting, as if he could not accept that this terrible thing could happen in the world.
"Application form?"
Tinn moved forward, hands in pockets, he wondered if he had met Gun today and received any papers from him, or if this was simply Gun's hallucinations and delusions. An idiot like Gun definitely could have forgotten to submit an application and still came here to claim it.
By the time that stubborn person realizes his mistake, he will probably be dreary like a deflated balloon, raising his apologetic eyes towards Tinn and begging immediately.
However, Gun's words pulled Tinn from his wild thoughts.
"This morning, I asked my friend to submit it..."
Gun beat around the bush as he considered how to explain this tale. Pat, who was given the responsibility by their club to submit the application and get a stamp, accidentally inserted their application into Tinn's love mailbox. Since this is the only one they have and the contest will only accept one application per unique ID, Gun, the band leader, must come here to locate it and get a stamp.
"Ai'Pat, he put the application in your love mailbox ." Gun shut his eyes, now it might be more reasonable to say that he purposely put a love letter in it.
In all honesty, Gun has no idea what Tinn's love mailbox is. According to Por, the reason Tinn's love mailbox came to be known as such was because so many people sent love letters to the student council petition box. Oh, so this guy gets a lot of admiration huh. Gun rolled his eyes at his Mr Casanova President, yes, that's the new nickname Gun gave him in his jealousy, quoted Por.
"That's the way to impress your crush" That damn Pat even told him excitedly like it was a proud feat "Por already told us you used to send tons of love letters to him without a reply."
That's it, from one surprise to another surprise, Gun did not expect that in the past he had also sent love letters to Tinn. But to be honest, it does not seem like a worthwhile endeavor when there are so many rivals. Tinn does not appear to be the kind to read all those, unless you include your CV with a cover letter.
"Put it in the petition box?" Tinn frowned confused, if it was someone else, this would have been a dominant trick to win Tinn's heart, but with Chinzhilla's intellectual level, Tinn was concerned that it was merely the act of submitting an application, which is kind of silly.
"That petition box was just put in the warehouse this morning." Tinn replied.
The student council warehouse is the place where all kinds of documents related to the activities of students in the school have been stored for so many years. Finding documents stored there is out of human's depth.
"So can we go in and find it now?" Gun asked, not knowing what awaited him. "Come on, this is the only application my club has."
Gun reached out and grabbed Tinn's arm and shook it repeatedly to beg, and then of course, Tinn also had to give in to his bewitching eyes. And now both of them have been sitting in the warehouse for an hour and still have not found that ill-fated paper.
"Ai shia Tinn why are there so many letters, are you a famous idol or something?"
Gun indignantly stuck his head in a box full of letters. He had a feeling he had rummaged through the whole place but had come up empty-handed. Pat seemed to have chewed up the letter.
"I did tell them to stop sending letters but they ignored."
Tinn sat on the storekeeper's desk, slowly going through the letters one by one, then stowing them neatly back into the box, while on the opposite side, Gun was floundering on the ground in a ocean of letters.
Gun boredly buried his head in another box, Tinn's explanation further proved how sought-after he is. If it was not Tinn, Gun would feel this person was definitely bragging. Gun continued his mole-like digging, convinced that the white application would stand out in this multicolored pile of letters, and that simply picking up the white colored sheets each time would be enough.
That's the theory, but just now Gun has taken hundreds of white letters and has yet to find the application form. Until he accidentally picked up a sturdy sheet of A4 paper folded in three halves with a plain white back. He was certain that this was the application he was looking for, so he happily flipped it open. The familiar handwriting caught his eye, making him involuntarily utter a word, because the content was completely unfamiliar.
"Hello my dear Tinn (I know we're not together yet, so if you don't like being called that, just let me know.)
I'm Gun here. Gun often sits at the back of the class and always has eyes on you. It must be because you don't have eyes on your back, so it's impossible for you to know of my existence right? But that's fine, I can let you know more about me later on..."
Gun's quivering hands made the letter flutter before his eyes. He swallowed hard, feeling his throat dry and burning like a sandy desert. He surreptitiously looked at Tinn with a trembling gaze to the extreme, realizing that Tinn was also staring at him.
"Found it?" Tinn raised an eyebrow and asked.
"N-No, haven't." Gun was startled and did not know where to hide the letter. He turned his face away to avoid Tinn's eyes. His hand struggled to fold the letter and put it in his pocket, accidentally letting the edge of the paper graze his palm. "I h-haven't found anything yet."
Tinn approached and sat down next to him, looking him straight in the eye with a strange look. Tinn's eyes are light tea brown under the orange-yellow light, his gaze was very steady and dignified, making the bad guy Gun here suddenly sweat. He was afraid that look would pierce his mind and heart, reading everything he had worked so hard to hide.
"Give me your hand." Tinn said with a demanding voice.
"I-I told you I couldn't find it." Gun's voice trembled like a criminal standing in front of the justice belt waiting to be questioned.
"Give me your hand." Tinn seemed to notice his tension, lowered his voice and spoke more softly, but his gaze remained the same.
"T-Tinn"
Gun begged. He didn't want Tinn to find out about his petty feelings. He did not want him to know that he, like everyone else, also dreamed of penning cheesy love letters that Tinn would never touch.
Tinn grabbed his wrist, gently removed his fingers and opened it. There was a very thin cut in the palm of his hand, although it did not bleed, it was extremely painful. Tinn took a piece of bandage from his shirt pocket, and gently stuck it on his hand.
"Do you know why even though the edge paper cut doesn't bleed, it still hurts?" Tinn asked thoughtfully.
Gun silently shook his head.
"Because the smooth edges we see are rough cuts, they're not as smooth as a knife, but a multitude of sharp saw blades protrude. It's an invisible torture, like being stabbed by a thousand saws."
Yes, love is also an invisible torture for those who do not be loved back. Is that so, Tinn, when you fell in love with me, you also endured such unspeakable pain and suffering, right? When that person did not know about our existence, did not care about the feelings we had cultivated by ourselves.
Gun looked at the bandage blankly, Tinn's warmth still seemed to linger.
"That's it for today, even if we take more time to look for it, we probably won't find it." Tinn turned his back to his feet and walked over to sort out those letters. "I will ask the organizers to send one more application form, after which you should remember to fill it out and return it for a stamp."
Gun did not know how he got out of that room and came back home, the only thing he knew was that the next day, the person who gave him the application and stamped it was Tiw. He also heard that Tinn was busy these days and had to attend several workshops for the election of school president.
The letter that Gun brought back that day, still neatly in the bottom of his cabinet. Gun still did not have enough courage to open and continue reading it.