Orm Kornnaphat was late, as usual.
Not fashionably late; catastrophically. The kind of late that made directors send sarcastic Line stickers and assistants threaten to recast the lead. She sprinted down the skywalk from Siam station at 11:56 p.m., sunflower sundress flapping like a surrender flag, iced Milo sloshing in one hand, phone in the other, earbuds dangling around her neck like a failed noose.
"P'Fon, I swear I'm almost there!" she lied into the speaker. "Ten minutes, tops!"
"Five," P'Fon snapped. "We're losing the night permit at midnight."
Orm hung up, shoved the phone into her tiny cross-body bag, and took the escalator steps two at a time. The market below was already folding itself up: metal shutters clanging, aunties stacking plastic stools, the smell of charcoal smoke thinning into the humid air.
She had promised herself she would go straight to the van. She really had.
But the cassette stall caught her the way stray cats and half-price dessert stalls always caught her, like gravity with dimples.
The old vendor was still asleep, cigarette miraculously reborn between his fingers. The cardboard box still said 10฿ tapes – weird stuff.
Orm's eyes snagged on the one with the purple handwriting.
♡アナタノコエ♡ Your Voice.
She grinned. Cute. Probably some Japanese high-school confession from the Showa era. She had a soft spot for anything that looked like it had once belonged to a lovesick teenager.
"Khun lung, one of these?" She slipped a ten-baht coin onto the table (purple, like the ink) and palmed the cassette before good sense could stop her.
The van honked twice from the mouth of the alley. Orm waved frantically, sprinted, and dove into the back seat at 11:59 exactly.
"Miracle," P'Fon muttered, slamming the door. "Let's go before the spirits change their minds."
Orm laughed, breathless, hair sticking to her forehead. She pulled out her earbuds (cheap ones, the cord already fraying) and clicked the cassette into the ancient Sony Sports Walkman she had stolen from her older brother in 2014 and never returned. Yellow, waterproof, indestructible. It still worked because it had never been asked to be gentle.
The van lurched into traffic. Bangkok at midnight was all brake lights and bass lines leaking from passing motorbikes.
Orm pressed PLAY.
Hiss. Warm, grainy hiss, the sound her childhood smelled like.
Eight seconds of nothing.
Then a voice, low and a little rough from sleep, the kind of voice that belonged to someone who stayed up too late mixing music and forgot to drink water:
"Drive safe, little one."
Orm's stomach flipped. Not fear. Recognition. Like someone had reached through the foam of the earbuds and brushed the inside of her ribs.
The voice felt… protective. Fond. Exasperated in the way only people who love you are allowed to be.
She rewound. Played again.
Same four words. Same warmth.
The traffic lights turned red. The van idled. Orm closed her eyes and let the sentence live inside her skull.
Drive safe, little one.
No one called her that. Her mother called her "naughty gremlin." Her friends called her "disaster girl." Even her ex had just called her Orm, usually with an eye-roll.
She flipped the tape.
Side A.
More hiss. Then laughter, bright, sudden, impossible to hold in your hands.
"P'Ling," the laughing voice said, "you're gonna be late again!"
Orm's eyes snapped open.
P'Ling.
She didn't know any P'Ling. She would remember a name that tasted like that (quiet, careful, a little shy).
The laugh came again, closer, like the girl had leaned right into the microphone. There was wind in the background, motorbike engines, someone shouting in Isan dialect about discount jeans.
Then a whisper, playful and sweet: "I'll save you the last mango."
The tape clicked off. Leader flapping against the capstan.
Orm sat very still.
The traffic light turned green. The van rolled forward. Neon slid across the windows like colored water.
She rewound to the sleepy voice and played it once more, volume low so the driver wouldn't hear.
Drive safe, little one.
Something inside her chest answered, soft and terrifying: I'm trying.
Filming wrapped at 4:17 a.m. Orm stumbled into her tiny Phra Khanong condo as the sky was turning the color of weak milk tea. She kicked off her sneakers, dropped her bag and script on the floor, and face-planted onto the bed still wearing the sunflower dress.
The Walkman landed beside her pillow.
She meant to sleep. Instead she stared at the yellow plastic and felt the same tug she felt when a scene finally clicked on the twentieth take: the knowledge that something important was hiding in plain sight.
Orm pressed PLAY one last time.
The sleepy voice filled the dark.
She whispered back without meaning to: "Who are you?"
The tape gave no answer, only hiss.
She fell asleep with the headphones still on, cord tangled in her hair, city outside fading into cicadas and air-conditioner hum.
She dreamed of warm hands guiding hers over glowing VU meters, of someone tall in black standing behind her whispering "Left channel a little hotter" against her ear, of mango sticky rice melting on her tongue while rain tapped on a tin roof.
She woke to sunlight slicing through the blinds and her alarm screaming 7:30 a.m.
Same sunlight as yesterday. Same angle. Same dust motes dancing.
Orm groped for her phone.
Saturday, December 2, 2023 7:30 a.m.
She sat up slowly.
The Walkman was on the pillow, headphones still around her neck like a pet snake. The cassette was still inside.
Her call sheet for yesterday's night shoot was gone from the kitchen counter. Her Line chat with P'Fon had no angry voice notes about being late. The last message was from December 1: "See you tomorrow night!"
Tomorrow, which was supposed to be today.
Orm's mouth went dry.
She opened the fridge. The leftover tom yum from two nights ago was back, untouched, exactly as full as it had been the morning of December 2.
She closed the fridge and leaned her forehead against the cool door.
"Okay," she said to the empty condo. "Okay, universe. Joke's over."
She grabbed her bag, still wearing the sunflower dress (wrinkled now, smelling of night-market smoke), and ran.
Same BTS, same carriage, same auntie selling lottery tickets singing off-key. Same iced Milo, same everything.
She reached Pratunam at 8:45 a.m. The market was wide awake again, as if midnight had never happened.
The cassette stall was there.
The old man was asleep, cigarette whole, ash long and perfect.
The cardboard box waited.
Orm's legs carried her forward before her brain caught up. Her hand went straight to the spot.
The tape was there.
Same purple handwriting. Same red lips sticker on Side B.
She didn't buy it. She just stood holding it, feeling the plastic warm against her lifeline like it had a pulse.
A vendor shouted about fresh som tam. A motorbike revved. Life continued, loud and oblivious.
Orm looked at the cassette, then at the sky, then back at the cassette.
She laughed once, sharp and disbelieving, the same laugh that was hidden on Side A.
"Fine," she told the tape. "If we're doing this again, at least let me be on time for once."
She slipped the cassette into the Walkman, pressed PLAY, and started walking toward the van that would be waiting in the same alley in fifteen minutes.
The sleepy voice curled around her ears like smoke.
Drive safe, little one.
This time Orm smiled, small and secret.
"I will," she promised the stranger on the tape. "But you have to tell me your name first."
Somewhere across the city, in an apartment that smelled of solder and old vinyl, Lingling Kwong woke to the exact same morning, heart racing for reasons she couldn't name yet.
And in a quiet café that wouldn't open for another hour, a third cassette sat inside a Super 8 camera bag, waiting for the only person who would ever hear both voices at once.
But that was still many loops away.
For now, Orm walked into the bright noisy repeat of December 2 with headphones on and a stranger's voice keeping her safe.
The day had seventy-two hours, and she planned to use every minute looking for the girl who sounded like home.