In Love With An Idiot

Special Chapter 7: Conclusion

I'd been married to P'Erng for almost six years. He was approaching forty and still ridiculously scorching hot, as far as I was concerned. Lately, he'd become more health-conscious because he was afraid that if he got too old, I'd cheat on him. So he'd taken an interest in triathlons. But it was me who ended up mad with jealousy, because the sight of P'Erng exercising could practically give me a heart attack.

 

And he liked posting photographs of himself working out on Instagram! I'd only taught him how to use it, and now look how seriously he was taking it! Most of his posts were still photographs of Araya's various property developments, to be fair. But his Instagram had become so hot that Pong secretly told me Araya's most important brand ambassador was P'Erng himself. More people had heard of our developments because fan pages kept reposting his photographs.

 

Besides P'Erng transforming into a sporty young man, my career had developed too. In my fifth year working at P'Ern's hospital, I was promoted to Deputy Manager of the hospital's Public Relations department.

 

We were a large hospital, so every department needed an information counter, staffed alongside the nurses and doctors. I'd started out at a quiet rear entrance, moved to the busy front entrance, then worked in one department after another. Most recently, before becoming deputy manager, I'd been stationed on the VIP floor. There weren't many visitors, and it was luxurious, but you had to be even more careful about the service because those were important clients.

 

At first, I wasn't confident about the promotion. But P'Ern assured me it wasn't because of connections. The manager had chosen me personally.

 

“Pei's worked here for years and knows all the jobs. I think the promotion is well deserved. Congratulations, Deputy Manager.”

 

P'Erng celebrated my new position by taking me on a boat trip. We enjoyed the breeze, admired the scenery and ate delicious food. I didn't know whether becoming a deputy manager at exactly thirty was early or late, but I was happy that I'd grown professionally. My salary had gone up too!

 

As for Araya, I still wasn't involved in its management. I didn't own shares or have any official role in the company. P'Erng kept our relationship private, completely separate from his work. I felt comfortable with that. I didn't want anyone to think I was with him just to live off his money.

 

I still had to get up early for work, and sometimes I had to work the night shift. During those periods, P'Erng would come to have dinner with me close to midnight, and we'd only see each other again at six in the morning. He'd cuddle me in bed until nine before getting up to go to work.

 

But I wasn't the only one whose life had changed. The person who'd made the biggest leap in his career was Pong. It was huuuge! In the end, he never left the company, despite constantly moaning about resigning. Instead, he'd become P'Erng's secretary, replacing Khun Ta!

 

Khun Ta retired two years ago. At the time, Pong was being considered as a likely candidate for the Deputy Marketing Manager role. He really was brilliant at his job. Even P'Erng said so. He called Pong talented, progressive and part of the energetic new generation. Honestly, the way he praised him, you'd think Pong was about to stand for prime minister.

 

But the reason Pong didn't become Deputy Marketing Manager and took over as P'Erng's secretary instead was that Pong was Khun Ta's son!

 

He'd pretended not to know Khun Ta all along! And Khun Ta had owned 10% of Araya since the previous tycoon's time, making him one of the company's major shareholders. Khun Ta was seriously wealthy, you know. Not quite Araya-family wealthy, but rich enough to live very comfortably as a shareholder.

 

Which meant every time that idiot Pong pretended to be broke, lived like an ordinary working man and cursed his tiny salary, he'd been lying! He'd obviously come to inherit his father's position!

 

Then another truth came out: he'd been dating Milan for three years. Three years! While Milan was breaking into the international market, acting in films in China and becoming increasingly famous, he'd secretly had Pong as his boyfriend all along.

 

I was still devotedly following Milan as a fan, so I couldn't accept that my favourite actor had a boyfriend. And that it was bloody Pong, of all people!

 

Nobody knew. Even I didn't know until Pong confessed to me himself.

 

What he'd originally come to confess was that he'd worked with P'Ern to trick me. There'd been that imaginary friend with a gold shop, and all those stories about Milan having a terrible personality. I brushed all of that aside. The moment he told me he was dating Milan, I was in shock. I wanted to set up a fan page demanding Milan back from Pong, but I couldn't. I was afraid my husband would tell me off.

 

Milan and I had still been talking over LINE all that time, you know. I hadn't suspected a thingggg!

 

I interrogated Pong until he finally gave me a few details. They'd met on that Hong Kong trip, of course, but they hadn't really started talking until several months later. Milan had wanted to leave the entertainment industry, but his application hadn't passed Araya's portfolio screening, so he'd continued acting. Then an opportunity came up in China, and he became very famous.

 

In those later years, Pong kept going on trips to China. I'd even teased him that he must have fallen for a Chinese girl. Turns out he was going to see Milan! They'd talked for a whole year before becoming a couple, and he'd waited another year before telling me.

 

That bastard!

 

He refused to tell me how they'd courted each other. I was so curious I couldn't sleep. P'Erng caught me and punished me by tying me up, so I ended up not sleeping at all, because I was too busy being possessive over Milan. Why didn't P'Erng ever consider that I might be possessive over Pong too? Honestly, my husband! I was sick of him seeing right through me.

 

So I secretly went to ask Milan instead. That was the first time we'd actually spoken on the phone. I didn't dare say anything bad about Pong, because Milan looked so happy to be dating him. I was desperate to blurt out that Pong had once spread nasty rumours about Milan, but I hadn't believed them. My devotion as a fan had overcome everything.

 

Milan told me that when Pong started courting him, he actually suggested taking out a joint mortgage together. Bloody hell, mate! No hesitation whatsoever. He'd moved fast and claimed his man even faster!

 

It had impressed Milan because he'd been uncertain about his future in entertainment at the time. His popularity had dipped a little after the Hong Kong trip, so having Pong there to encourage him meant a lot.

 

Pong was very good at encouraging people. Just look at the advice he'd always given me, thinking, analysing and sorting everything out as though he were Conan himself. Milan must have been as bewildered by Pong as I was and decided he was a good person. But the truth was, Pong had been fooling me all along!

 

Another thing Pong was good at was influencing people. He shouldn't be anyone's secretary. He ought to go straight into Marketing Management. He was brilliant at promoting things, talking and persuading people. My slippery, lying friend!

 

P'Erng hadn't liked him all that much at first because he'd helped P'Ern before. But Pong won P'Erng over by declaring that from then on, he'd stand on P'Erng's side alone.

 

After that, P'Ern complained to me that it was terribly hard to win against P'Erng. His plan to dump the position of family tycoon onto his younger brother still hadn't succeeded.

 

P'Ern was still trying to pass the burden to P'Erng, although he'd finally agreed to become the hospital director because P'Em had resigned from Chofa. I still wasn't sure what arrangement P'Ern and P'Em had made, but P'Erng said P'Em was like someone who'd drawn the booby prize in a raffle.

 

Enough about P'Ern for now. I hadn't finished talking about Pong!

 

The reason I wasn't particularly angry with him was that P'Ern had threatened him too. Besides, his relationship with Milan hadn't been easy. Milan confided in me, and Pong sometimes talked about it as well. Long-distance love brought nothing but problems. They'd argued so often over those three years that they were starting to reconsider their relationship, wondering whether they should take a step back and put a little more distance between themselves.

 

Pong was also busy proving himself as a shareholder. P'Erng said he probably wouldn't stay as secretary much longer, since the current Marketing Manager was due to retire. And Pong wasn't suited to being a secretary in the first place. P'Erng agreed with me: Pong needed to be a manager already!

 

“Pei thinks that ten-million-baht apartment might be worth twenty million by then, P'Erng.”

 

“Pong only became my secretary because he wanted to learn about management. He doesn't enjoy it all that much. You have to put people in the positions they're best suited to. Just like Pei becoming Deputy Public Relations Manager. My wife's clever.”

 

“P'Erng's the one who helped Pei so much. Pei is the product of P'Erng's brilliance.”

 

“Perhaps it's because I've been watering you so diligently that you've grown into my diamond cabbage.”

 

He was using my golden-cabbage joke against me, calling me a diamond cabbage! And as for that watering remark, you could tell straight away that my beloved husband was a pervert. I was happy enough to let him be as perverted as he wanted lately, though. His muscles were so firm, and hugging him felt absolutely heavenly. This was the sort of cabbage man I'd always dreamed of buying for myself.

 

Wait a minute! I couldn't get carried away yet. I still hadn't finished the story about Pong and Milan!

 

Milan was stressed because he had to spend so long filming dramas. He'd landed a part in a Chinese historical fantasy production, the sort with heavenly gods, emperors and all that. He played an inexperienced third prince. Milan was small, but he was getting too old to keep playing teenage roles in Thailand. Once he started acting in Chinese productions as princes and similar characters, he became a huge hit. He wasn't the lead, but he had looooads of screen time. And the shoots could last months, even years.

 

I could understand both of them, though. When I'd had to work night shifts and hardly saw P'Erng, I'd felt lonely too. Our schedules didn't match. I slept while he was awake, and he slept while I was awake. Trying to find time together meant one of us had to stay up late or wake up earlier than usual, and it was exhausting.

 

“It's not that they don't love each other,” P'Erng said. “But other things matter too. Pei has to let them work this out for themselves.”

 

“Pei knows. I'm just worried about them. What would P'Erng do if we had to live apart like that?”

 

“One of us would have to give up work so we could live together as a family. In my case, I'd ask Pei to come back to Thailand because I can't resign from Araya. And I believe Pei would be willing to leave his job and come back to me, because for us, family is the most important thing.”

 

“Pong definitely can't move to China. Would Milan agree to stop working? He's so famous right now.”

 

“He'll probably have to make the most of this period first. But if they still want to be together in the end, they'll have to sit down and talk about what comes next. If Milan stopped being an actor, what work would he return to? Could Pong support him? Would Milan feel bad about being supported by Pong? It's like how Pei doesn't want to be a burden to me. That's why I let you work in the way you want to. It's not that I wouldn't like you to stay at home. You're only this little; I could easily support you. But I care more about how Pei would feel.”

 

I agreed with everything P'Erng said. If I had to quit work and stay at home, I wouldn't like it either. I was proud to be able to support myself, save up to take P'Erng out for meals sometimes, buy him presents and send money to my mum and dad.

 

Yes, my mum and dad had come back.

 

They'd returned a little while after I married P'Erng. Mum had run away to work in a factory in Ayutthaya, while Dad had been working as a delivery driver in the north. The previous year, the police had arrested the entire gang of Dad's football-betting creditors. So in a way, his debts had been wiped clean. He took the opportunity to come back and apologise to P'Ern and P'Erng for stealing the jewellery all those years ago.

 

Dad returned the jewellery to P'Ern in exactly the condition it had been in when he stole it. He really had stolen the diamonds, but he'd never sold them. The jewellery was incredibly valuable. If he'd put it on the market, the police would certainly have traced it. His fear had kept the diamonds intact. At the time, though, he'd still had to run because the creditors were demanding payment and even threatening his life.

 

Having the jewellery returned made it much easier to resolve the criminal case P'Ern had reported to the police. I finally saw the five-million-baht diamonds that had brought me into the Araya family's life and led to me becoming P'Erng's boyfriend. The gems were huge and glittered so brightly I could barely look at them.

 

Even after all those years, P'Ern still thought it was funny to tease me, perhaps suggesting the jewellery had been a dowry P'Erng had paid in advance to marry me.

 

Enough! Stop! No more diamonds! The whole diamond business had become the emotional scar of my youth.

 

Then there was the money Mum had taken from her market friends' rotating savings group. I hadn't known the group was worth six or seven hundred thousand baht! The pork sellers, vegetable sellers, fish sellers and all the other market stallholders were apparently loaded!

 

Mum had no way of repaying the debt. So I withdrew my savings to help her pay it back. I also asked permission to sell the car P'Erng had given me. Once everyone had received their money in full, with a little interest, they agreed to withdraw the police complaint. Getting their money back was better than getting nothing at all.

 

I insisted on paying my mother's debt myself and didn't give P'Erng a chance to object. I was afraid he'd simply forgive the debt on Mum's behalf. Perhaps it was a sense of filial duty I'd been carrying in my heart. But after this, I'd done enough.

 

I loved Mum and Dad, of course. But I also knew they weren't people whose example I should follow. So I asked P'Ern and P'Erng to handle matters however they thought appropriate. I would accept whatever they decided.

 

P'Erng was probably afraid I'd be upset, though. Once all the outstanding legal matters were settled, he arranged for my parents to look after our house in Khao Kho instead. They could take care of the little cabbage farm and live there. There was nothing there to steal except cabbages. Since Mum had sold vegetables before, she even set up a small stall in front of the house. Every now and then, P'Ern took the whole family on an outing too.

 

With Mum and Dad back, a worry I'd been keeping buried inside me finally disappeared. They'd vanished for years, from when I was eighteen until I was almost twenty-six. I'd had no news of them, and they'd never contacted me. I admit I'd often been anxious and worried about them.

 

Thankfully, my parents didn't make things difficult for me. They knew I was with P'Erng and that we were living as a married couple. But they didn't demand that I send them lots of money.

 

I explained that my relationship with P'Erng had lasted because I didn't take advantage of him. I wasn't greedy. I'd never wanted a single baht of the Araya family's money. Dad, of all people, should have understood that best. So I set aside five thousand baht from my salary each month for my parents.

 

The thing was, even though I earned my own money, I hardly ever spent it. Apart from buying lunch, I barely paid for anything. We shopped for everything together, so P'Erng always paid. Even after sending money to Mum and Dad, I still had plenty left to save.

 

At first, I'd wanted to give them ten thousand a month. But P'Erng told me not to give them more than five thousand. My parents already received salaries from Araya. If I gave them too much, they might start playing cards or gambling again and lose everything. Araya paid the water and electricity bills too. It would be better if I bought household supplies for them now and then instead.

 

P'Erng had a point. Whenever we went to Khao Kho, I bought big packs of washing-up liquid, laundry detergent and other essentials from Makro. Mum and Dad could live quite comfortably now, so long as they didn't gamble. They had very few expenses of their own.

 

Everything was starting to settle into place. P'Erng and I were also moving past that newlywed, lovey-dovey phase. When I mentioned it to Pong, he accused me of showing off my husband. We'd been married six years, and apparently I had the nerve to act as though my husband had only just stopped being sweet to me. Hmph! I was sick of jealous people.

 

It's not that we'd stopped loving each other, you know. I simply didn't blush and get embarrassed around P'Erng as much as I used to. I could speak my mind more freely and even scold him when he was being unreasonable.

 

And P'Erng? He'd gone mad for sports competitions. Of course I was jealous, but I didn't chase after him or forbid him from doing things because I trusted him. However late it was, P'Erng always came home to sleep with his arms around me. He always told me where he was going and what he was doing.

 

Even if we didn't message each other on LINE all day, he'd occasionally leave me a message saying where he'd gone. I did the same. P'Erng didn't ask where I was going, what I was doing and who I was with as often as before. That didn't mean he cared less. We simply trusted each other.

 

Sometimes I went on trips with my colleagues. P'Erng didn't stop me. If I went out for food or karaoke, he didn't follow me. He let me enjoy having my own social life. And if P'Erng had a function to attend and came home late, I understood. Sometimes I waited up for him if I wasn't sleepy.

 

As for Kalam and Plee-chan, our guinea pigs had produced another four little babies. But I was struggling to look after so many, so I sent the youngsters to live with Mum and Dad in Khao Kho. I had much more work to do now that I was deputy manager.

 

I reckoned turning thirty had made me start ageing alongside P'Erng. In fact, perhaps I was ageing faster than he was! He was still bounding about, cycling and going to the gym, while I spent my days lying around getting fat in front of the television.

 

Yes, I'd put on five kilos since getting married. I'd started getting rounder cheeks and a little tummy. But P'Erng said I was still adorable, so I let myself carry on getting plumper. Hehe. He said there was more of me to cuddle. Pong might have called me moon-faced, but of course he would! Who could possibly be as cute as his boyfriend? Milan was the cutest person in the world!

 

P'Erng had started coming to terms with my obsession with Milan. It had eased in recent years because Milan hadn't done much work in Thailand. New stars had taken his place, and the fan groups had drifted apart. But I still kept up with Milan as a friend.

 

“Pei, may P'Erng go out for dinner with his friends from the gym?”

 

“What time will you be back? Pei will wait for you.”

 

“No later than ten. I'll buy you some of that custard bread you like on the way home.”

 

“Two bags, please. Otherwise Pei won't let you go next time.”

 

“Yes, sir. Love you. I hope you win the big prize this draw.”

 

P'Erng called just as I was switching channels to watch the lottery results. Hehe. He often went out for dinner with his friends on Sundays. Sometimes I went along too. There were women in the group, but P'Erng barely paid them any attention. We'd been together long enough for me to know exactly what sort of man my husband was. Occasionally someone tried to come between us, but P'Erng wasn't interested.

 

Those people clearly didn't know just how much of a nerd my husband was! P'Erng had been a nerd both at school and at university. He was also incredibly hard to talk to. His face was expressionless, he was difficult to approach, and he hardly seemed to enjoy anything. If you wanted a conversation that actually interested him, you had to talk about work or property development.

 

The people hoping to become his secret lovers weren't clever enough. Because if they really were clever, they'd be able to support themselves instead of trying to get P'Erng to support them.

 

I probably wouldn't have said that in the past, because I'd once thought P'Erng was keeping me too. And I was terribly stupid back then. But it turned out P'Erng had intended to claim me as his wife all along. So I'd officially escaped my former status as a kept boy. We needed to correct that misunderstanding first, all right?

 

In the past, I wasn't a kept boy… In the present, I'm not a debtor… And as for the future, I'm now completely certain of it.

 

I'm P'Erng's wife. ♥

 

The End