Monday morning assembly at eight o'clock was less an educational gathering and more a collective human sacrifice to the morning sun.
Five hundred boys in faded white uniforms stood in crooked rows across the cracked concrete courtyard, listening to the Vice Principal talk through a crackling, ancient speaker system about the importance of proper hair length and school pride.
"If I faint," Krit whispered, his head barely moving, his eyes fixed straight ahead, "do not call an ambulance. Just drag me under the stairs and let the janitor have my shoes."
"Your shoes have holes in the soles," Mali muttered two places down in the girls' line. She was standing perfectly straight, holding a rolled-up notebook over her forehead like an improvised sun visor. "The janitor would throw them in the incinerator."
"They have character," Krit whispered back. "Phuwin, tell her my shoes have character."
Phuwin didn't answer. He was squinting at the back of the neck of the boy standing three rows ahead of him.
The neck belonged to a junior whose hair was slightly too long on the left side. It wasn't the ex. It didn't look like the ex. But for three solid seconds, Phuwin had felt that old, automatic tightening in his throat—the phantom limb muscle memory of looking for a familiar silhouette in a sea of white shirts.
Then he blinked, the heat distortion on the concrete settled, and he realized it was just a kid named Prem who always failed history.
Phuwin let out a slow, quiet breath through his nose. His chest didn't cave in. His knees didn't go soft. It was just a guy with a bad haircut.
He reached down to pat his shorts pocket. The plastic frog wasn't there—it was currently sitting at the bottom of Krit's melted bag of ice somewhere in a townhouse kitchen—and for the first time in five days, his thumb didn't panic at the empty space.
"He's doing the thing where he stares into nothing again," Krit reported to Mali, keeping his voice low as the Vice Principal began reading the names of students who owed library fines. "Is his brain resetting?"
"He's fine," Mali said softly. "Leave him alone."
"I'm right here," Phuwin muttered, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right. His socks were still slightly damp from Sunday's laundry disaster, smelling faintly of cheap floral detergent. "I can hear both of you."
"Good," Krit said, stepping out of line by two inches just to kick the back of Phuwin's sneaker. "Then pay attention. Look at Sanan."
Phuwin glanced toward the shade of the grandstand.
Mr. Sanan was standing by the microphone stand, holding a heavy stack of blue folder files. His eyes were scanning the rows with the terrifying precision of a hawk looking for field mice, his gaze lingering dangerously on their section of the line.
"He's holding the chemistry lab reports," Mali whispered, her voice suddenly dropping an octave into genuine, unscripted panic. "Oh my god. He graded them over the weekend."
"He didn't," Phuwin said, his stomach doing a small, familiar flip.
"He did," Krit said, his tone instantly shifting from bored to hyper-alert. "Look at his left thumb. He only holds the folders like that when more than fifty percent of the class got a D."
"My notes were soaked in copper sulfate, Krit!" Mali hissed, her neat posture instantly crumbling as she leaned toward them. "I had to write the final equations on a paper napkin with a green gel pen! If he failed me, I'm moving to another province. I'm joining a farm."
"If you move to a farm, who's going to let me copy the physics homework?" Krit asked, genuinely concerned.
"Silence in the back!" Mr. Sanan's voice boomed through the crackling speaker, cutting through the hum of five hundred sweating teenagers. His eyes locked directly onto the three of them. "Table four. Master Krit, Master Phuwin. Step out of the line."
The entire row of students around them immediately shuffled back, creating a three-foot gulf of isolation around the three of them like they had infectious diseases.
Phuwin looked at Krit. Krit looked at Phuwin.
"Did he see the basketball at the festival?" Phuwin whispered, his heart taking one sharp, sudden leap.
"Impossible," Krit whispered back, though his shoulder twitched. "I wore a hat. It was dark. The tin cans can't testify."
"Just walk up there," Mali grumbled under her breath, taking two deliberate steps back into the crowd to blend in with the girls' line. "I don't know either of you. I'm an only child."
"Traitor," Krit hissed, but he smoothed down his shirt collar, pasted his trademark, dazzlingly fake smile onto his face, and began marching toward the grandstand.
Phuwin followed a pace behind, his sneakers squeaking on the hot concrete.
The morning sun beat down on the back of his neck, heavy and uncompromising. Three days ago, being called out in front of the whole school would have felt like the end of the world—another public disaster to add to the theatre of his heartbreak.
But as he walked past the rows of staring faces, Phuwin looked at the back of Krit's oversized uniform shirt, saw the small grease stain on the hem from the motorbike chain, and felt a weird, sudden lightness in his shoes.
It was just Monday. It was just chemistry.
And as Mr. Sanan held up a soggy, blue-stained piece of paper with a giant red mark at the top, Krit turned his head just enough for Phuwin to see his face, winking behind his hand.
Phuwin bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud right in front of the Vice Principal. The hole in his chest was still there—a small, dull mark where a five-month story used to live—but standing under the glaring yellow light with his wet socks and his disaster of a friend, he knew he was going to survive the period.