[BL] Normal (Not) Normal

It started small.

Small enough that I could ignore it, which I did, for approximately one year and eight months.

A misplaced umbrella. A perfectly timed rainstorm. Leo tripping exactly when I happened to be close enough to catch him. These are the kinds of things that happen on a university campus. I am an engineer. I believe in systems. I believe in variables and load distribution and the structural integrity of well-built things. I do not believe in fate.

I believe, however, in patterns.

And patterns are what you get when you stop calling coincidences coincidences and start calling them data.

My name is Phakorn Sukhawong. Everyone calls me Fix. I am twenty-one years old, a fourth-year civil engineering student, the director of my faculty’s Moonlight Festival, and a person who functions very well on four hours of sleep, thank you, I don’t need your concern, please redirect it toward someone who has requested it.

I am also, I have recently begun to suspect, living in a very specific kind of story.

I haven’t named what kind yet. I’m still collecting evidence.

The engineering faculty courtyard at six-fifteen in the morning belongs to three kinds of people: the vendors setting up breakfast carts, the pigeons conducting their own logistical operations, and me.

I prefer it this way.

By seven-fifteen it would be loud — seniors arguing about project deadlines, juniors squealing over the festival pairing announcements, someone inevitably playing music from their phone speaker without headphones like a person who has given up on society. But at six-fifteen the air was still cool enough to be almost pleasant, the sky was the particular shade of grey-pink that Bangkok does before it decides to be aggressively sunny, and I had the entire space to myself and my clipboard.

The Moonlight Festival was in three weeks.

My to-do list had forty-seven items.

I walked the courtyard perimeter with my thermos, ticking things off in my head. Stage dimensions confirmed. Electrical load calculations submitted to facilities. Lantern vendor: confirmed, deposit paid, three backup vendors identified in case of cancellation because I have learned, over four years, that in event planning the word *confirmed* means *probably*. Budget breakdown: submitted, awaiting sign-off from Dr. Preecha, who would inevitably find something to object to because that was his primary function in the universe.

I was on item twelve — lighting rig placement — when my phone buzzed.

*P’Leo:* Saw your list. 47 items??????

*P’Leo:* nong fix. buddy. bestie. light of my life

*P’Leo:* that’s too many items

*Me:* It’s a festival. Festivals have items.

*P’Leo:* I’ll help you with the sign today ok? The big one. Don’t do it alone

*P’Leo:* [sticker: small bear giving thumbs up]

I looked at the message for a moment.

Then I put my phone back in my pocket and returned to item twelve.

Leo has been my closest friend for three years. He is warm in the way that open windows are warm — you don’t notice how much of the room’s temperature he’s responsible for until he’s gone. He is also, in the interest of accurate data, reliably late to things he has volunteered to help with, moderately forgetful, and constitutionally incapable of arriving before the hardest part is already done.

I believe him every time anyway.

This is either loyalty or a character flaw. Possibly both.

I wrote *sign installation — wait for Leo* on my list, because I am an optimist despite significant evidence to the contrary, and walked toward the canteen for a second coffee.

By ten o’clock the courtyard had become what it always became: organised chaos with a soundtrack.

Students in engineering faculty shirts moved equipment, argued cheerfully over cable lengths, and consumed alarming quantities of iced milk tea. Nina, my first-year junior and self-appointed assistant director, was running across the courtyard with a walkie-talkie pressed to her ear and a stack of printed schedules under her arm, radiating the particular energy of someone who has found her calling and is going to execute it at full volume.

“P’Fix!” she called, skidding to a stop beside me. “The sound system people just called. They want to know if we need two stacks or three.”

“Three,” I said. “Email me the confirmation.”

“Done. Also the lantern vendor wants to know if we’re doing the east side first or—”

“East. Less wind interference.”

“Right. Also—” she paused, lowering the walkie-talkie and looking at me with what I can only describe as maternal concern, which was alarming because she was three years younger than me. “P’Fix, you have your thermos. Is that the same coffee from this morning?”

“It’s insulated.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Nina.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Email me about the lanterns.”

She gave me a look that communicated several things simultaneously, the main one being *I am logging this*, and went back to her walkie-talkie. I appreciated her. She was good at her job. She also had opinions about my sleeping schedule that she had not been asked for, which I appreciated less but had accepted as part of the package.

I went back to my clipboard.

Item fourteen: the sign.

The Engineering Moonlight Festival sign — 300 centimetres wide, 200 centimetres tall, wooden frame, painted navy blue with gold lettering, the same sign that came out every year because the faculty was not going to commission a new one when this one still technically worked — was currently leaning against the engineering building wall, waiting to be hung on the brackets above the courtyard entrance.

It weighed, by my estimate, approximately fifteen to eighteen kilograms.

I am 165 centimetres tall and have been informed, on multiple occasions, that I look like someone who skips meals, which I do not, I simply eat at unconventional hours.

I looked at the sign. I looked at the ladder. I looked at the brackets.

I did the calculations.

It was fine. The angle of approach, the bracket height, the reach required — I had done harder things with less. I clipped my walkie-talkie to my collar, picked up the ladder, and started climbing.

I want to be clear that the calculations were correct.

I was on the fifth rung, sign balanced against my shoulder, working out the precise angle to hook the left bracket first, when a voice came from below me.

“That’s unsafe.”

I did not look down. People who stop what they’re doing every time someone has an opinion about it do not get forty-seven items done.

“I calculated the angle,” I said.

A pause.

“You’re about 165 centimetres.”

I recalibrated my opinion of this person. They had, apparently, looked at me and made an accurate assessment in under ten seconds. This was either impressive or annoying. Given the circumstances, I was going with annoying.

“That’s irrelevant,” I said.

“The sign is roughly fifteen kilograms and your centre of gravity is—”

“I know where my centre of gravity is.”

“—lower than ideal for this load distribution,” the voice finished, with the patient tone of someone who was going to complete their sentence regardless of interruption, which was a trait I respected in structural contexts and found irritating in this one. “You need someone holding the base.”

I looked down.

This, in retrospect, was a mistake. Not because of what followed — that happened regardless of where I was looking — but because looking down meant I saw him, and seeing him meant I had to process him, and processing him took a half-second longer than it should have.

He was tall. Not just tall in the way that people are tall, but tall in the specific architectural way of someone whose height seems deliberately load-bearing — like he had been designed to hold things up. 183 centimetres, I estimated automatically, the way engineers estimate things, and then was briefly annoyed at myself for estimating. Close-cropped dark hair. A face that was doing absolutely nothing in particular but doing it with a certain infuriating composure. He was holding a folder of what appeared to be accounting documents and looking up at me with the calm expression of someone watching a structural problem they’ve already correctly identified.

I did not think about any of this at the time. I filed it as *stranger, male, approximately 183 cm, unhelpfully observant* and returned to the task.

“I have my own system,” I said. “Thank you.”

“Your system has you on a ladder alone with a fifteen-kilogram sign.”

“My system has worked fine so far.”

“How far is so far?”

“Rung five.”

He was quiet for a moment. Then: “That’s not very far.”

“I didn’t ask for an assessment.”

“You’re getting one anyway.” He shifted his folder under one arm. “I’ll hold the base. It’ll take thirty seconds.”

“I don’t need—”

“It’s not about need. It’s about load distribution.” He said this the way I said things: not as an argument, just as a fact that existed independent of whether anyone wanted to hear it. “Thirty seconds.”

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

There was a brief moment in which I considered the structural merits of his offer, weighed them against my preference for doing things myself, and arrived at the conclusion that my preference would win.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Thank you.”

He looked at me for one more second. Then he shrugged — the specific shrug of someone who has identified the problem, offered the solution, and is now prepared to observe the consequences — and turned to walk away.

I turned back to the bracket.

I will reconstruct the next four seconds as accurately as I can.

I shifted my weight to hook the left bracket. The sign shifted. I adjusted. The adjustment was correct by approximately ninety-two percent, which under most circumstances would be sufficient. What I had not adequately factored was that the right side of the sign had drifted slightly further than calculated, creating a pendulum effect when I moved to correct, which caused the left side to swing outward and then back with more momentum than the original load distribution had predicted.

The sign struck the back of his head with a sound I will describe as *thunk* because that is the accurate word for it. There was no music. There was no slow motion. There was just the sound, and then silence, and then he turned around.

He touched the back of his head with two fingers. Looked at them.

There was blood.

Not a lot. Enough.

I came down the ladder faster than was probably wise.

“Oh my God,” I said. My voice was doing something I was not directing it to do. “You’re bleeding.”

He looked at his fingers. Then at me. His expression had not meaningfully changed. “So much for your calculations,” he said.

This was, objectively, a fair point.

“I’ll take you to the nurse,” I said. “Right now. I’m — that was my fault, I should have—” I was already reaching for my walkie-talkie, already running options. Nearest medical station: Student Union building, three minutes on foot. Or the faculty clinic, five minutes but better equipped for—

“There’s no need,” he said.

“You’re bleeding.”

“I’m aware.”

“From your head. That I hit. With a sign.”

“Yes.” He pressed two fingers to the cut with the brisk efficiency of someone who has dealt with minor injuries before and finds them unremarkable. “It’s not deep.”

“You can’t know that without—”

“I’ve had worse on construction sites.” He looked at me with an expression I couldn’t immediately categorise. Not angry. Not pained. Something more like: *observation confirmed.* “You weren’t concerned about the safety issue before,” he said. “There’s no need to be bothered by it now.”

Then he turned and walked away.

I stood in the courtyard holding the oversized sign, watching the back of his head — where there was, factually, blood — disappear around the corner of the engineering building, and I did not move for several seconds.

Then I looked at the ladder.

Then the sign.

Then the brackets, still empty, four metres above me.

I muttered, internally:

*I’m 165 centimetres. With the shoes I am currently wearing, I am at least 167.*

This changed nothing about the situation. I put the sign down, repositioned the ladder, and started again.

It took forty minutes.

In the direct Bangkok sun, in a faculty courtyard that offered approximately no shade at the relevant angle, I mounted the Moonlight Festival sign alone. My glasses fogged twice. I knocked a corner of the sign against the bracket mount once, corrected, tried again. My hands, when I finally climbed down, were shaking — not from exertion, I have been told I am stronger than I look, but from the specific adrenaline of having caused a person to bleed and then been told, calmly, that it was fine, and not being entirely able to believe that.

I looked at my sleeve.

There was a small smear of blood on the cuff. His, not mine.

I rolled the sleeve up.

The sign hung level and straight above the courtyard entrance, blue and gold, catching the light. I took a photo for my records and moved item fourteen to the completed column.

I did not feel as satisfied about it as I usually did.

“Fix! Fix, hey—”

Leo arrived at a run, slightly out of breath, hair slightly dishevelled in the way that always looked intentional on him and would have looked like a disaster on anyone else. He was wearing the faculty hoodie with the sleeves pushed up, carrying two iced coffees, and smiling the smile that had a thirty-seven percent success rate on the faculty gossip page’s weekly *Most Campus Crush-Worthy Senior* poll.

I had counted the votes once. Purely out of data curiosity.

“Sorry, sorry—” He stopped, looking up at the sign, and his expression shifted into something warm and uncomplicated. “Oh! You did it! P’Fix, I told you — I knew you could—” He stopped. His eyes dropped to my sleeve, which I had not unrolled. “What happened to your arm?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s blood.”

“It’s not mine.”

Leo’s brow furrowed. He did what Leo always did when he was concerned, which was close the distance immediately and put his hand on my arm, tilting my wrist toward him to look. “What do you mean it’s not — Fix, whose blood is this?”

“Someone walked under the sign when it slipped.”

“The sign—” He looked up, then back at me. “Are they okay? Did you take them to the nurse?”

“He said he was fine.”

“Fix.”

“He seemed fine. He was calm about it. Very calm.” Too calm, actually. Calm in a way that I was still, unreasonably, thinking about.

Leo made a sound that communicated several things, the dominant one being a fond and exasperated *only you.* He pressed the iced coffee into my hand, shifted closer, examined my sleeve more carefully. “You should have waited for me,” he said. “I was going to help you.”

I looked at the sign.

Perfectly level. Perfectly straight. Already done.

He was always here. I thought it the way I thought most things that I didn’t want to think — quickly, so I could log it and move on. He is always here. Just not when it counts.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s done.”

“Still.” He bumped my shoulder with his. “Next time, wait.”

I said: “Sure.”

I meant: *I know how this particular episode goes.*

The rain arrived at two forty-seven in the afternoon.

Not a drizzle. Not a forecast. A full, decisive Bangkok downpour that appeared without warning from a sky that had been clear thirty minutes earlier, which was standard atmospheric behaviour for this city and yet somehow always managed to feel personal.

Students shrieked and scattered. Tarps went up over festival equipment. Someone knocked over a display board and someone else caught it, and for one moment that looked like it should have been a scene in something but turned out to be just two freshmen being startled.

Leo, who had been next to me reviewing the stage layout, threw his head back and laughed.

“See?” he said, spreading his arms. “Even the weather ships us.”

I looked at the rain.

I was already running the calculation before I consciously decided to.

Sports Day, two months ago: rain had started at the exact moment Leo and I were stuck under the athletics pavilion awning together. Freshmen orientation, year one: rain had arrived during the faculty partner introduction, leaving Leo and me sharing a walkway for twenty minutes. The library, last semester: a sudden downpour had trapped us at the same study table for two hours, during which Leo had said something about wishing things didn’t have to change and I had said nothing and the moment had sat between us like a sentence that needed finishing.

Once: coincidence.

Twice: campus nonsense.

Three times: a trope.

Four times: a script.

I was on four.

I stood in the courtyard, half-sheltered by the overhang, iced coffee in hand, and looked at the sky with the specific expression I reserved for engineering problems that were technically someone else’s department.

*Three times is a trope,* I thought. *Four times is a script.*

I did not say this out loud. I am not the kind of person who says things like that out loud. I am the kind of person who opens a new note on his phone, labels it *Atmospheric Anomalies*, and enters the date, time, and a single-line observation.

*Day 1. Rain, unforecast, on cue. Occurrence 4. Pattern: confirmed.*

Leo was still talking — something about the lanterns, something about rehearsal schedules, something that ended with *“you’re always the one who makes everything work, Fix, I don’t know what we’d do without you”* — and I said *“ครับ”* in the tone that means *I’m listening* and means, underneath that, *I know.*

I know what I am in this particular story.

I know my function.

What I do not yet know is whether I am also the one who gets to decide when the story ends.

But I’m starting to think I might be.

I put my phone in my pocket.

*Episode 1,* I thought, watching the rain.

*Let’s see what Episode 2 brings.*