Anurak watched, then stepped forward as if by habit, as if the temple had asked him to. He was not the monk giving blessings; he was the one who assisted—holding a bowl, arranging flowers, helping an elderly woman. Quiet gestures that belonged to the backbone of a ceremony. Nothing theatrical. Everything meaningful.
When it was my turn, he handed me a small length of white thread, as the abbot indicated, and I felt his fingers brush mine. The contact was brief—a fraction of a second—and yet the world condensed into that brush. His fingers were dry but warm, and the pulse at his wrist felt slow and sure beneath the skin. A sound rose in my chest: a tiny, surprised laugh or a sob—I couldn't tell.
"May this tie keep you safe," he said, voice low. Not a recitation, not a formal line; it landed inside me like something that knew my edges.
"Thank you," I said, stupidly smiling. My tongue refused the name I most wanted to speak: Anurak.
He looked at me for a breath longer than necessary. There was no performance in it—only a look that tried to measure me and failed, like two people who'd been thinking of the same song from different corners of the world. Confusion sat in his eyes, the same unreadable thing I had felt in their dusk by the river. Not coldness, not warmth exactly—a careful stillness, as though he were cataloguing moments.
"You were at the river last night," he said finally, not a question, so much as an observation. His accent curled softly around the syllables. That small remark threw me—why the note of certainty? Had he noticed me? Had he also watched the lights drift, krathongs float, and felt the same small, fierce thing I had felt?
"I... yes," I answered. My voice sounded like it belonged to a different person. "I was with my granny."
His mouth softened at that. "I know her," he said. "She is kind." There was no explanation; only the plain fact of it, like a simple stone placed on a vast map.
Sorren, true to form, decided the moment needed less solemn punctuation. He nosed around Anurak's ankles and then sat back in his haunches, tail wagging once. Anurak's lip twitched; the motion was almost a smile. It softened the line at his mouth and made something in me loosen.
"He's cute. What's his name?" Anurak asked.
"Sorren," I said.
"Sorren, that's an interesting name," he said. I don't know why, but I laughed—and to my surprise, he joined me. The small sound bridged some distance, a tiny ladder across a well.
We stood there then, two people in a temple that smelled of incense and lemongrass, while the monk chanted behind us. Around us, life continued—people moved like gentle tides; a child flung a paper boat into a small pool for luck; an old man dozed, head tipped back. Yet the edges of the world felt intimate and close, as if the temple had folded around our breath.
There was something else in Anurak's manner—an economy of movement, a discipline in small actions. He placed the thread carefully, touched his forehead in private remembrance, then moved to adjust a mat for someone older, eyes briefly meeting mine at each small task.
I tried to read him, the steady rhythm of someone who has been taught devotion and restraint, perhaps, or someone who had chosen silence long ago. Whatever it was, it left me muddled.
Before he walked away to tend another duty, he hesitated. "I will be here most mornings," he said. "If you come again." It sounded like an offer and a statement, both. Simple, plain, and not dramatic. And in that plainness, there was a generosity that sent a current through me I hadn't expected.
"I will," I managed. It was not a promise; it felt like the first real thing I had said aloud in a long while.
He nodded, and then he was gone from the courtyard's centre, slipping between pillars like someone who belonged to the space between things. The monk's voices rose and fell, and the sunlight tilted, making the dust hang like gold. I sat down on the stone step after he left, hands pressed on the thread tied around my wrist. It felt thin but real. For a long time, I watched the spot where he'd vanished, and every time someone passed there, I half-expected him to reappear—to turn and say my name, tell me whether the dream inside me had any claim outside of sleep.
Sorren lay his head on my knees and looked up at me with the same uncomprehending, vast faith that only dogs keep. He didn't ask why I stared so hard. He only kept me company in my solitude.
I rose eventually and walked home slowly, the temple's sound receding behind me. Granny was waiting at the verandah with a slice of mango and her bright, ordinary smile. She didn't pry. She only asked, "Did you receive the blessings?"
"Yes," I said. "He was there."
She nodded, not saying more. There were things in the world she would tell me when I was ready to listen; other things she would leave to the shape of time.
That afternoon, I kept my wrist turned up, watching the thread catch the light. I said his name in my head until it felt like a secret and more like a map. Anurak.
When the day blurred into dusk, I found myself making plans that seemed ridiculous even as I made them: a morning walk by the temple, a small errand that would pass his path—the flimsiest of reasons to let my days brush against his. Fear gnawed at the edges—small, prickling worry of someone who loves quietly: What if he never loves me back? What if this is only something I made of moonlight?
But fear lived beside hope now, and hope had a voice: Go. See. Stay.
So I stayed. The thread on my wrist bumped against my palm as if to remind me I'd been given something small and holy. The longing had not tied; it had settled, patient fire waiting for tinder.
That evening, as the crickets filled the air with their endless rhythm, Granny poured me tea. The steam curled between us, carrying the faint sweetness of roasted rice.
"Anurak," she said softly, not looking at me but not at her cup, "is a gifted singer. His voice carries like the temple bells."
I stilled, the cup warming my hands.
"He teaches the children the old chants," she went on, as though it were nothing remarkable, only part of the air we breathed. "Sometimes the novices too. It's good work. His father would have been proud."
Her bracelet chimed as she set her cup down.
She didn't look at me, didn't mean to leave me trembling with her words—but she did.
"If you ever wish to learn music, Kael," she added almost idly, "he might help you."
The words lodged inside me like a hidden door swung open. I lowered my gaze quickly so she would not see the heat rising in my cheeks.
I nodded, though no answer seemed enough.
But when I lay down later, staring at the mosquito net glowing pale with moonlight, I whispered the thought into the silence—to learn from him… to sit close enough to hear his voice, not only in prayers, but in song.
And for the first time, my dreams did not bring Anurak to me. It was my longing that carried me to him.