The krathongs drifted farther into the current, their flames scattering like constellations laid on the river. But I couldn't look at them. My eyes were locked on him.
The man across the river. The man from my dreams.
Someone brushed my arm—Granny, tugging me closer.
"Kael," she said cheerfully, "come, we'll greet the abbot before we return." Her bracelets chimed as she walked, but her smile carried no teasing—just the easy joy she gave to everyone.
As we moved along the lantern-lit banks, Sorren barked once, sharp. My gaze followed him—and froze.
There he was. The same man. No longer across the water, but here. On this side of the river. Standing near the temple steps, where villagers placed food into bowls for the monks.
Up close, he was even more vivid than the dream had given me—the lines of his jaw, the steady curves of his mouth, and in his eyes, a stillness that felt like it belonged to another lifetime.
Granny pressed her palms together, bowing gently toward the young man. I blinked, surprised. Never had I seen her greet anyone this way—so reverent, as though he were someone far older, someone who carried a weight I couldn't yet understand.
The man returned the gesture with equal grace. His posture held a quiet strength, his eyes calm, like still water under the moonlight. For an instant, the glow of the drifting krathongs caught on his face, and he looked almost unearthly, as though the river itself had summoned him.
A strange confusion tightened in my chest. I had seen him in my dreams—not once, but for half a year. How could a shape from the night step out into the lantern lights and be real? For a second, my whole body wanted to move, to close the distance between us and collapse into him, to test if the warmth I'd felt in sleep was true. But the moment passed like a held breath. I only stood there, rooted, while the impulse retreated, leaving a low, aching longing in its place.
"Kael," Granny said softly, breaking the silence, her voice filled with warmth but steady. "This is Anurak."
The name fell into me like a stone into still water, ripping through every dream I had carried for nights. At last, the faceless figure, the shadowed smile, the eyes I could never name—suddenly they belonged to someone real. Anurak.
A shiver of relief ran through me, as though the uncertainty of my dreams had loosened. Yet at the same time, a sharper, stranger emotion rose—something between wonder and fear. To know his name was a gift, but it also bound the dream to the waking world.
And as his eyes brushed mine—steady yet unreadable—it felt both found and lost at once.