"If survival means spreading my legs—
Then let starvation fuck me first."
—Nil
[ Note:
The character's full name Niloy, appears here for the last time. To reflect his personal journey and for narrative clarity, he will be called Nil in future chapters. This change honors his growth while keeping the story focused and intimate.
—The Author ]
The night lay gently over the café like a prayer too quiet to disturb the stars. Behind the kitchen, where the old servant quarters breathed with warmth and shadows, three friends gathered close around a flickering bulb and the remnants of supper—cold rice, warm laughter, and dreams still half-dressed in silence.
Mary spoke first. Her voice was soft, as though she feared her question might crumble something fragile if asked too loudly.
"Niloy," she said, "when will you go for the audition?"
Niloy, seated with his back against the wall and his eyes lost somewhere beyond it, answered after a moment, "In about a week... But before that, I need to save up a little more. I won't go with empty hands."
Techno, leaning over his knees with unshaken loyalty in his eyes, said, "If you need help, just say so. I'll lend you what I can."
Mary nodded instantly. "Me too."
Niloy's heart warmed, but he shook his head with a smile so faint it barely held its shape. "No. Thank you both. But this... I must carry myself."
The silence that followed was not awkward—it was the kind that made space for the dignity of solitude.
Mary, ever curious, twirled a thread from her sleeve. "Niloy, can I ask you something strange?"
Niloy turned toward her, eyes patient. "Ask anything."
Her voice dipped into something almost teasing. "Do you think... the singer—'Kao'—likes you?"
Niloy blinked. Then laughed.
"Mary," he said, voice light with disbelief, "what nonsense. That's like saying the moon has feelings for the reflection in a puddle."
But Mary didn't laugh. She just smiled and tilted her head, as if to say, and yet, puddles still reflect the moon, don't they?
The conversation moved on, as all things must, and soon Techno—who had grown quiet—spoke again.
"Hey," he said, tapping the ground with his knuckle, "maybe you should change your name."
Niloy looked puzzled. "Why?"
Techno's tone turned theatrical. "Have you seen Rocket-Men?"
Niloy squinted. "I have."
Mary broke in, giggling. "That was such a strange film!"
Techno ignored her with practiced grace. "I wasn't asking you."
Niloy chuckled. "Then what are you trying to say, Techno?"
Techno straightened his spine, quoting with exaggerated gravity, "If you want to become someone new, you must first let go of who you were born as."
Niloy fell into thought. The idea hovered like dust in lamplight.
"...But I can't," he said at last. "My name was given by my mother. I'm all she left behind. Letting go of that would be like burying her twice."
Techno, hearing the weight behind the words, softened. "Alright then. Don't change it. Just trim it a little."
"Trim it?"
"Nil," Techno offered. "Still you. But easier to remember when they put it on a poster."
Mary clapped her hands. "It's perfect!"
But Techno, smirking, pointed a finger at her. "Say another word, and I'll stuff your mouth with dish rags."
Mary narrowed her eyes. "Try it, and I'll shove you into the laundry barrel."
The quarrel ignited like sparks on dry straw—small, fiery, full of noise.
The morning sun filtered through glass walls like a reluctant blessing, golden but cold. Stranger sat at the head of a long conference table, surrounded by suits and strategy, but his mind wandered far from the numbers and graphs blinking before him.
He was thinking about him.
The boy with trembling hands and sharp words.
The boy who looked like he belonged nowhere—
And yet somehow carved space into every room he entered, simply by refusing to disappear.
A memory surfaced— unwelcome.
Nil, drenched in panic, tipping a bowl, then a jug. Water, soup, chaos—and after it all, that ridiculous, fragile laugh, trying to bandage shame with bravado.
A sharp huff escaped Stranger's throat. Not quite a laugh.
Then another. Louder.
And before he could pull it back, he was laughing—quietly at first, then all at once, as if a pressure valve had finally given way. His shoulders trembled with it. His eyes glinted—not with cruelty, but with something dangerously close to joy.
Across the table, the room fell utterly still.
Clients exchanged glances. Some blinked. Others whispered behind carefully folded hands. One, braver than most, leaned forward with a twinkle in their eye.
"Sir..." they said with mock gravity, "you smile like a man in love. Shall we cast you as the romantic lead in our next romantic drama?"
Stranger composed himself at once, but the mischief still flickered at the edge of his lips. "No need," he said dryly, brushing an imaginary thread from his sleeve. "I was merely thinking of something not important."
The meeting adjourned shortly after.
As the last guest bowed their head and left, Shian stepped in like a quiet shadow. He carried no files. No questions. Only concern.
"You laughed," he said gently. "In all the years we've known each other, from student halls to this very office... I can count your true smiles on one hand."
Stranger didn't reply. His eyes were fixed on the window—where Bangkok's skyline stood glittering, unfeeling.
But under the thin calm of his expression, something shifted.
"I saw his name," he murmured.
Shian blinked. "Whose?"
"...Online," Stranger added. "The video... from the café."
Shian's brows furrowed. "That waiter?"
Stranger didn't respond. He didn't need to.
A long pause stretched between them.
Shian eventually said, "You're not worried?"
"About what?"
"About what you'll do when you see him again."
Stranger looked away, voice soft as paper.
"I already saw him. And I still don't know what I did."
Meanwhile—
Nil stood outside the fourth studio of the day, his knuckles sore from knocking, his voice dry from rehearsing lines in a language that did not yet know how to hold him.
Inside, polite rejections formed a familiar chorus:
"We're not taking new talent without papers."
"Sorry, we're only casting Thai nationals."
"The pronunciation... it's close, but not quite."
They didn't laugh at him. They didn't mock him. But they closed the door all the same.
By sunset, Nil found himself sitting on a bench near Victory Monument. His file of headshots lay limp across his knees, corners crumpled. He didn't cry. He had already learned that some griefs dry themselves before they reach the surface.
His eyes lifted to the sky.
There were no stars. Only haze. But he imagined them anyway.
"I came here to be seen," he whispered to no one, "but even shadows seem to turn their backs."
Then he laughed. Quiet, small.
Suddenly, a call came.
The director's voice was brisk, almost casual—"There's an audition tonight. Come to this address."
Nil barely heard the rest. His heart, once dormant, surged with a quiet, sacred tremble. A call. A chance. A gate had opened.
He spent the evening rehearsing in whispers, heart thudding with each passing hour. At last, he arrived.
But what stood before him was not a studio.
It was a place that reeked of perfume and pretense—Sun Moon Bar, carved in flickering neon, its letters half-dead, half-possessed. From the entrance, a river of dim red light spilled onto the street like blood long dried. Inside, the air felt drunk. Smoke curled from corners like ghosts. Women danced on poles with soulless grace, their limbs bare, their eyes empty. Some wore nothing at all.
Nil froze.
Among the haze, he saw beautiful boys, their faces powdered, their smiles mechanical. They perched on the laps of old men dressed in expensive suits, hands glinting with rings heavy as guilt. Those hands wandered freely, as though ownership had been purchased and now demanded return on investment. The boys laughed, too brightly. Their backs were straight, but their spines—Nil could feel it—had broken long ago.
He felt something sink in him. Something that would not rise again.
"I shouldn't be here," he whispered to himself.
Just as he turned to leave, a voice rang out behind him, heavy and deliberate, like the closing of a gate.
"You. Nil, right?"
A tall man stepped forward from the shadows. He wore a jet-black suit that seemed to eat the light. His eyes were unreadable. His tone—impossible to disobey.
Nil hesitated. "...Hm."
The man nodded. "Boss is waiting."
Something cold slid down Nil's spine. "I—I'll come another time. I'm in a hurry."
But the man didn't blink.
"You don't leave without the boss's permission."
It wasn't a threat. It was a law. One that had already been written, somewhere far away from here.
Nil was led through a door padded in fake leather, then another, until the music vanished and the silence began to ring. Inside a room lined with velvet and mirrors, a man sat sprawled on a low leather sofa. He was old—fifty, maybe sixty—but his eyes gleamed like rusted blades. A glass of red wine hung loose in his grip. Flanking him were two figures, a boy and a girl, both half-dressed in scraps of silk. Their bare skin glowed under amber chandeliers. They didn't speak. They barely breathed.
Nil's breath caught.
That man—he recognized him from television, from headlines, from the unreachable echelons of power.
Phawin Lertprasertkul,
The kingmaker of Southeast Asia. A god in the entertainment world. And this room was his altar.
Nil had thought he came for an audition. But there were no cameras here. Only eyes.
Eyes that weighed. Eyes that bought.
And standing at the door, motionless, was the man from before—his secretary. Silent. Sealing the exit.
Nil felt sweat roll down his temple. It was not from heat. It was the feeling of being locked in a place where the price of dreams was measured in flesh.
He asked to sat on the edge of the velvet sofa like a boy balanced on the lip of a blade.
Phawinl, bloated with wealth and wine, lounged opposite him. A boy and a girl pressed to either side of the old man like living ornaments, draped in garments too scant to be called clothing. Their eyes were glass. Their presence, payment.
Nil's voice broke the suffocating air.
"I want to be an actor."
Phawin burst into laughter, the kind that curled like smoke—mocking, rich, and foul.
"An actor?" he scoffed. "Every day, thousands crawl into this city with the same dream. Most of them end up shaking their asses in some smoky bar. And the lucky ones? If I like what I see, I let them into my Harem."
"There's no money in acting," he spat. "Only fools chase art. You want success? Then drop the pretense. Be mine. Warm my bed, and I'll hand you the world."
The smile he offered Nil wasn't kindness—it was a snare.
Nil felt his stomach twist. Still, he held his composure.
"...Thank you. But I need to leave."
Phawin's voice turned low and oily. "Don't play coy. You came here. You knew what this was."
His eyes raked across Nil's seated figure.
"Those thighs... that frame... You look untouched."
Then, with a smirk that curdled the air, "You must be tight."
Nil stiffened. His voice was hoarse but steady. "You have the wrong person. I won't do this."
The secretary stepped forward.
"I told you," he said flatly. "You cannot leave without the boss's permission."
Nil turned to him, a fire slowly rising in his blood—but Phawin interrupted, voice now sharpened by offense.
"Have you looked in a mirror? That skin—brown like cheap earth. Who the hell would hire you? No one wants your kind."
"Then why call me?" Nil demanded.
Phawin chuckled, sipping his wine. "Because you looked innocent. And innocence sells better than gold."
His eyes dropped again—lewd and deliberate.
"You looked like a virgin. Like something I could break."
Nil stood. "I'm leaving."
"You golden slut," Phawin snapped. "Who do you think you are? You think anyone else will take you? You'll crawl back to me, starving and desperate, and then maybe—maybe—I'll still let you suck me off for scraps."
Nil froze, hand on the doorknob, the moment his fingers brushed the door again tightly, the secretary grabbed his arm—tight this time, bruising.
"Are you mad?" the man sneered, breath laced with disbelief and ridicule. "Do you even know what kind of man you're turning down?"
He leaned in, voice thick with mockery.
"There are actors—top-grade beauties—lining up for a single night with him. They'd kill for what you're spitting on. Just to be seen. Just to stay in the spotlight a little longer."
"And Boss—Boss—chose someone like you. A nobody. A mutt."
"You should be grateful."
Nil's eyes narrowed.
He did not shout.
He did not retreat.
He answered with a voice that cut like steel cooled in heartbreak.
"I am grateful," he said. "Grateful I survived long enough to get here. Grateful that I still wake up every day with breath in my lungs and a dream that hasn't rotted."
"But not grateful for this," he spat. "Not for your kind of charity."
"I'll crawl. I'll starve. I'll break every bone in my body to reach what I want. But I won't spread my legs and call it ambition."
"I don't need to sell my ass to buy my future."
A sharp intake of breath—and then, a slow, slithering laugh.
From behind them, Phawin's voice oozed like spoiled wine.
"Hot blood," he murmured, licking the words as if they were sweet. "I like it."
He stepped forward, each movement too smooth to be human.
"Tell me, little stray... what's your price?"
"I can offer anything," he said, teeth bared in a smile that did not reach his eyes. "Money, contracts, a lead role—your name in lights, your body in silk. Just say the number."
His tone dropped to a purr.
"Everyone has a price."
Nil didn't blink. Didn't move.
But something in his chest—snapped and annoyed.
"You all," he said slowly, voice rasped and cracking like a blade just unsheathed, "are so utterly, shamelessly uncultured."
Across the room, Phawin rose from his seat with the easy cruelty of a man too accustomed to being obeyed. His lips curled—not in a smile, but in something far filthier.
"You bitch," he hissed, each word dipped in rot. "You'll never get a job. Not here. Not anywhere."
"You'll wander the streets till your legs collapse, till your stomach knots on itself, till you cry in corners where no one looks twice. And when the hunger finally cracks your pride—" he stepped closer, "—you'll crawl back."
His voice dipped. Lower. Crueler.
"You'll beg to lie in my bed. But I won't hold you like a lover—I'll use you like a hole. Like a toy without a soul."
"I'll silence you with my cock till you puke. I'll fuck you till you forget your own name. And when you finally look in the mirror and see nothing left... only then will I call you mine."
The words hung in the air like poison—thick, suffocating, revolting.
But Nil did not flinch.
His lips quivered, but not with weakness. His whole body was shaking—not like a leaf in the wind, but like a bow pulled taut, moments before the arrow flies.
He took one step forward. Just one. And yet the entire room recoiled.
He spoke—his voice steady now. As if every syllable had been carved from bone.
"No job?" he said softly. "I'll survive."
"No money? I'll bleed before I beg."
"No food?" He smiled—faint and terrifying. "I can go ten days with nothing but spit and rain."
"But the moment I trade my body—my dignity—for shelter, I will already be dead."
"You say I'll come crawling? That I'll kneel before you?" His voice rose, each word sharp as broken glass. "If that day comes, let it be the day I throw myself into the gutter like trash. Let it be the day I cut open my chest and show the world what's left of a heart after it's been sold."
"I can force myself to endure. To smile. To obey."
"But the next day, I will hang myself with that same forced smile."
"Because that life isn't survival—it's rot."
"And I," he said, his eyes now blazing with the kind of righteous madness that only the truly cornered possess, "am not trash."
"In this world," he whispered, "there are still those who would rather shatter than be owned."
"And I am one of them."
Nil turned sharply, his hand gripping the brass door handle, ready to leave. His entire body was taut like a fraying wire, one tug away from snapping.
But just as he moved, a hand seized his wrist—tight, possessive, cold.
The secretary.
"You can't leave without Boss's permission," he said, not loud, not soft—just smug.
Nil looked down at the hand touching him like it was a leech latched to his skin.
With a jerk of disgust, he wrenched himself free. "Shit," he hissed, as if the man's touch had left a stain. "You think I want to stay in a place like this?"
He took a step back, eyes flashing.
"I'm an illegal immigrant. Every damn day, I report to the police station to sign my name like a criminal. I live with a rope around my neck—one wrong move and the noose tightens."
His voice dropped, slow and sharp.
"So if any of you try something—one whisper of coercion, one grain of force—then when this goes to court, when it hits the system..."
He glanced sideways at Phawin. His lips curled—not in a smile, but in warning.
"You all won't be watching me fall. You'll be falling with me."
Staring at them, '"And one more thingh...'' paused, "You can buy a hole, not a soul. And I—was born with both intact."
Silence. Heavy as thunder before a storm breaks.
The secretary looked at Phawin. Phawin didn't say a word.
The door was opened.
Nil stepped out.
He didn't run. He didn't look back.
But the moment the air outside touched his skin, the heat drained from his body like someone had punched a hole in his spine.
He was cold. So cold.
His legs moved on habit alone—down alleys, past flickering neon, past strangers with blank eyes—until finally he reached the narrow room he called "home."
He locked the door. Entered the bathroom. Closed it behind him.
He did not bother undressing.
The shower knobs screeched as he turned them. Cold water burst from the pipe like a storm breaking loose.
The first drop hit him—and he collapsed.
He dropped to his knees, back against tile, clothes soaking fast.
His shoulders trembled once.
Then again.
And then—
It all shattered.
Nil pressed a hand to his mouth, but the sob that escaped was too big, too broken to be caught. He folded forward, forehead knocking the cold floor, and wept like a dam had broken inside his chest. No sound at first—only gasps, choking breath, and then full cries.