Prologue
PROLOGUE
The wind that pressed against his face was warm, heavy with the scent of rain that still lingered in the sky.
Chay sat behind the motorbike taxi driver with one hand gripping the edge of the seat and the other holding his bag so tightly that his knuckles ached, as if pain could anchor him to something solid in a world that already felt unsteady.
Ahead of them, the street dissolved into a blur of late afternoon glare, the asphalt reflecting light in uneven streaks where tires had worn it smooth, while the restless movement of traffic turned the road into something shifting and unreliable.
Chiang Mai was not supposed to feel like this; even though he had not been here long, he had already learned its rhythm well enough to recognize when something was wrong. The city, in his mind, belonged to slow mornings and lazy evenings, to cafés filled with the smell of roasted beans and melted sugar, to quiet conversations and warm air drifting through open doors. This, however, was not that Chiang Mai. This was noise and impatience, exhaust fumes trapped between buildings, and a kind of suffocating chaos that made the air itself feel crowded.
The driver swerved suddenly around a songthaew without even pretending to slow down, and Chay felt his stomach dip as the motorbike tilted beneath them, the motion sharp enough to steal the breath from his lungs. Instinctively, his grip tightened, not only on the seat but on the fragile calm he had been trying to maintain, because panic was always waiting just beneath his skin, eager to crawl into his bones if he gave it even the smallest opening. This was why he rather used taxis or the bus, but he didn't have the time today for either of these options.
His phone vibrated against his thigh where it was settled inside of his trouser pocket and the brief buzzing sensation seemed ordinary in comparison to everything around him, as if the device had no understanding of the danger of the road, no awareness that one careless movement could turn the moment into disaster. A reminder for his client meeting at 16:30.
Traffic slowed near the red light of an intersection, and the driver tapped the brake with the casual ease of someone who had done this a thousand times, leaning forward as though nothing about the situation deserved concern. Chay stared at the cars idling beside them, their metal bodies gleaming under the light, and the smell of exhaust hung low in the air, thick and stale, settling into his throat. Somewhere nearby, a dog wandered across the road without any urgency at all, unconcerned by the impatient roar of engines, moving as if the world would always wait for it.
His phone buzzed again just as the light turned green, and the motorbike surged forward with such suddenness that Chay’s body shifted automatically to balance the movement, his muscles reacting before his thoughts could catch up. The street opened ahead into a gentle curve, and through a break in the clouds a patch of sunlight spilled across the road, turning the city momentarily golden, almost soft, almost beautiful. For one fleeting second, he felt as though he could breathe again, as though perhaps the chaos was only temporary and the world might settle back into something recognizable.
But then the driver swerved again, and this time the movement was sharper, reckless in a way that made Chay’s breath catch painfully in his chest. His body leaned instinctively, his mind struggling to keep pace with the sudden shift, and in that same instant he felt the world tilt beneath him as if the ground itself had lost its balance.
A horn blared, close enough that the sound seemed to pierce straight through him, and the noise was followed by a flash of metal in the corner of his vision, something bright and fast and impossibly near. The driver shouted words that vanished into the wind before Chay could understand them and there was no time left for thought, no time left for fear to form properly, only the abrupt and terrifying certainty that impact was unavoidable.
The sound of it was not like it was in films, not one clean crash but several violent events unfolding at once, layered together into a chaos too fast to separate. There was a sharp jolt that tore through his body, the scrape of asphalt grinding against something, and a brutal pull through his shoulder that felt as though it might rip him apart. His bag flew from his hand, spinning away into the road as though it were weightless, and for a single suspended moment Chay’s body forgot what gravity was, forgot that it was meant to fall.
Then everything returned at once.
The world slammed back into him with unforgiving force, and his head struck something hard (he would never knew what) and his vision flared white at the edges as pain exploded through his skull, immediate and strange, as if heat had been poured into his bones. He tried to inhale, but the air did not come. It caught somewhere between his chest and his throat, and his mouth filled with the metallic taste of blood instead.
The street spun, the sky spinning with it, and the noise of the city blurred into something distant and distorted, as though he were already slipping away from it. Somewhere in the chaos he heard a voice shouting his name, or perhaps it was only his imagination, perhaps it was not his name at all, only a sound his mind clung to because it wanted to believe someone was calling for him.
The world did not narrow into darkness the way he expected it to. Instead it narrowed into silence, into distance, as though everything around him was moving farther and farther away, retreating beyond his reach. His body felt heavy and strangely detached, as if it belonged to someone else, and his thoughts began to slip from him one by one, like fingers losing their grip on a ledge.
The last thing he saw was his bag lying on the road a few meters away, its contents spilling into the chaos around it.
And then the light faded.
~•~
The voices came first.
Not words, not meaning, but sound itself, muffled and distant, as though he were submerged underwater and the world was speaking to him through layers of glass. A steady beeping pulsed somewhere close by, a mechanical rhythm that insisted on reminding him that time was still moving even if he could not feel it.
There were soft shuffling footsteps, the rustle of fabric, the faint murmur of people who were trying to be quiet but could not hide the urgency beneath their restraint.
Chay tried to move, but nothing happened.
His body did not respond the way it should have, as if it were hesitating, uncertain whether it still belonged to him, and the effort of trying to command it sent a dull ache spreading through his limbs. He swallowed, and his throat burned as though it had been scraped raw, the dryness sharp enough to make his eyes sting.
“His eyes—”
The voice was clearer now, closer, followed by another that spoke with sudden alertness.
“He’s waking up.”
Light struck him without warning, bright and clean and unbearable, forcing his eyes open whether he wanted them to be or not, and his vision filled with whiteness: a white ceiling, white walls, a curtain shifting slightly beneath the cold breath of air-conditioning. The word formed in his mind with strange certainty, immediate and unquestionable.
Hospital.
A face leaned into view, unfamiliar and yet oddly careful, as though the person was trying not to startle him. Their expression carried relief, but it was cautious relief, the kind that came with fear underneath it.
“Chayapon?” the voice asked gently. “Can you hear me?”
Chay stared, because the name felt like it belonged to him even though the rest of the world did not. His head throbbed with a deep, constant ache that made thinking feel like pushing through mud, and when he opened his mouth his voice emerged hoarse and broken, barely more than a rasp.
“…Where am I?”
“You’re in the hospital,” the person answered quickly, as if the explanation had been waiting on their tongue. “You had an accident. You’ve been unconscious for a while.”
Accident.
The word struck something loose inside his mind, and images flashed without sequence: the motorbike, the road, the glare of sunlight, the scream of a horn, the violent tilt of the world. They came in fragments, bright and sharp but disconnected, like pieces of a shattered mirror that could not form a whole reflection.
His heart began to race.
He tried to sit up, driven by a sudden need to understand, but pain shot through him instantly, fierce enough to force him back against the bed. His breath came shallow, uneven, and his hands clenched the sheet as though he could hold onto it and keep himself from slipping away again.
“Easy,” the person warned, their hand lifting as if to steady him. “Don’t move too fast.”
Chay looked down at his hands, studying them as if he needed proof that they were real, that he was still here, still intact, still himself. But something was wrong in a way that went beyond bruises or broken bones, something deeper and more terrifying than physical pain.
Something was missing.
He lifted his gaze again, and when he spoke this time his voice was quieter, stripped of urgency and replaced by something fragile.
“…What day is it?”
The person hesitated, only for a second, but it was long enough for Chay to feel dread settle in his stomach. Then they answered.
“It’s March. Two thousand twenty-four.”
Chay stared at them, the words echoing in his mind, heavy and impossible.
March.
Two thousand twenty-four.
The date landed inside him like a stone dropped into deep water, and he did not understand why it felt so wrong, only that it did. It was as though time had moved in a way he had not agreed to, as though something had been stolen from him without his awareness.
He swallowed again, and his throat tightened.
“…I don’t remember,” he admitted, his voice barely above a whisper.
The person’s expression softened, sympathy pulling at the edges of their features.
“You might not,” they said gently. “Not right away. It'll come back. Don't worry. This is normal after an accident like yours.”
Chay’s fingers trembled on top of the blanket, and he tried to pull something from the emptiness in his mind. A home, a familiar face, a reason why he had been on that motorbike, a life waiting for him outside these white walls. But nothing came. There was only blankness, only pressure behind his eyes, only the quiet terror of realizing that he did not know where he had been going, or who had been waiting for him when he never arrived.
