Plan B to U

Chapter 13 How to Move On From the Person You Were Seeing

 

"Little Nile, you weren't even gone an hour, and you're back again?"

 

Ever seen someone cry with the same wilted, dead-inside look as a damp dog? That was me. And I wasn't even embarrassed about being looked at with pity. At this point, the only things capable of healing my shattered mental state were alcohol and friends. So the moment I'd been turned down with zero mercy, I'd felt completely adrift and ended up riding straight back to P'Boo's bar.

 

"Have you closed up yet, P'Boo?" I asked, and he looked me over for a moment. When he saw the tears running down my face with no sign of

stopping, his eyes went soft.

 

"Still a while yet."

 

I nodded at that and let out a small sob. He didn't have any comforting words, just showed he understood in his bluntly practical way.

 

"What do you want? What do you need?"

 

"Something strong, please."

 

"Go sit down. I'll bring it over."

 

"Thank you, P'Boo. Really, thank you."

 

I pressed my palms together in an over-the-wai before marching straight through the crowd of curious stares. I didn't care. Just headed straight to my best friends at the back table. The moment they both looked up, they

jumped out of their seats and shrieked.

 

"A ghost!!"

 

"It's just me..."

 

I didn't even remember how long I'd spent lost on the motorbike in the estate. My head was completely stuffed. I'd barely been able to find my way out. The whole way, I'd cried hard, ugly, heaving sobs before finally landing on the clear truth that every feeling I had had been thoroughly wrecked.

 

"Then why are you back?"

 

"It's over, man."

 

I buckled to the ground like someone with nothing left, the tears that had barely dried starting again. Lucky for me, Nikm and Em rushed over and hauled me upright until I managed to sit at the table. 

 

P'Boo materialised soon after as backup, arriving with the herbal liquor and, thoughtfully, a smelling salts inhaler. Hard to say who would collapse first, me, the other customers, or the bar owner himself...

 

"Let's assess. How bad are we talking?"

 

Em probably meant how far gone I was on Krich. Easy enough to quantify.

 

"Not that bad. Two out of ten."

 

"Okay, grab a bucket; we're going to need it."

 

At the end of Em's assessment, the two of them set to work squeezing and rubbing life back into me physically and emotionally before asking what had happened to bring me back to a bar I'd just left.

 

So I walked them through the whole thing from start to finish: standing at his gate, the confession, the excruciating frame-by-frame replay of being turned down in front of him. And if that wasn't dramatic enough, fate had also seen fit to send his childhood friend waltzing in to greet us at precisely the wrong moment.

 

Still no idea how I'd held it together in front of him. Genuinely impressive that I hadn't cried right there. But as you could see, it hadn't lasted. The heaviest I'd ever cried before this was when my dad died. I'd never thought a broken heart could wreck you just as badly. 

 

After enough shots of herbal liquor taken in quick succession, I was facedown on the table sobbing, while both my friends were in roughly the same state. Not loving someone back isn't wrong, is it?

 

"Stop crying. Come on! There are more important things in your life to focus on."

 

Nikm rallied me. Em wasn't far behind, doing his absolute best to argue my side.

 

"What was ever good about liking someone like that anyway? All serious and impossible to reach."

 

"Exactly. Being rich isn't enough. Good thing he said no; now you can go find someone better."

 

"P'Boo! Can we get the 'How to Move On From the Person You Were Seeing' playlist?"

 

Once Em shouted the request, Boo got it and lined up a long, deeply heartbreaking playlist. You can tell how much the man cared about me. He actually switched the whole bar's style for the night. His place had always been strictly country folk music, but now he was spinning indie, opening with tracks from Offline Youth's previous album.

 

This man was hitting too hard. I barely kept myself upright before eventually tipping backwards off the chair and nearly shattering my entire skeleton. Even so, I just let myself stay on the floor, talking through the pain.

 

"I just cried my guts out because of my dad. Now I have to cry my guts out because of him."

 

"It's okay, man. It's okay.."

 

"How deep, really?"

 

"Two out of ten. If I could go back, I wouldn't have let myself end up sleeping with him."

 

I swiped at my face with my arm. Sadly, wiping them only made more come faster.

 

"Sex and love don't have to be the same thing. If you were happy then, that's not a loss."

 

Nikm had a point. With some people, physical and emotional connection stay separate. But I wasn't skilled enough to keep them apart. No matter how hard I tried to draw lines and understand where I stood, when it came down to it, I was still terrible at managing my own feelings.

 

"Watching you like this is making me scared for myself."

 

"What are you going on about now, Em?"

 

And just then, Em went quiet and droopy. After a long pause, he scrunched up his face and let the tears fall, to everyone's complete confusion.

 

"Even if it kills me, I am never confessing to P'Mee."

 

Whether it was the herbal liquor, group hysteria, or something else entirely, the heavy atmosphere already pressing down on us all pulled everyone deeper.

 

The three of us cried together with zero dignity remaining. But at least I felt warm because even if the whole world turned its back, we still had each other.

 

At some point, P'Boo had closed up. All my blurred vision could make out was the three of us sprawled across the floor. Every last customer had filtered out, the rolling shutter was pulled down, and the lights went off one by one.

 

I stared up at the ceiling, feeling nothing. My body lay motionless. And yet, through the blur and my fading consciousness, someone's face kept flashing up in my mind. The question was... what comes next for us?

 

"What am I supposed to do if I have to face him again? What do I do..."

 

The rolling shutter, a phone ringing off the hook, footsteps back and forth, and a whole assortment of other sounds too close to my ear all of it dragged me out of deep sleep and back into the present.

 

Every part of my body ached. Not entirely sure if I'd spent the night headbutting a wall, doing backflips, or what other bizarre things. The only certain thing was that I felt absolutely terrible. Head throbbing, eyes so swollen and bruised I could barely crack them open. In the end, I surrendered to exhaustion and lay perfectly still.

 

"We are in deep shit. Guys, wake up!"

 

Someone shook me until I rattled. My hand finally twitched.

 

"Wake up fast! We're all going to die!"

 

What kind of apocalypse was this!!

 

Nikm and Em's shrieking forced me to grit my teeth and haul myself upright. I stared at the two panicking disasters in front of me.

 

"What is it? Burglars?"

 

"What burglars’ nonsense? We're still in the herbal liquor bar."

 

I tried to look around. They weren't lying. We'd been sleeping on 'Boo's floor since last night, and now daylight had returned along with a fresh surge of dread.

 

A phone was shoved into my hand. The screen showed over ten missed calls from P Mee, plus hundreds of group Line notifications. Today was a major presentation meeting and we'd all gone completely unreachable. Anyone would be frantic.

 

"Don't just stand there frozen; we have to go. Now."

 

From the second I remembered what had to happen next, everything moved at speed. I scrambled after Em into his car, and we drove to work in last night's clothes, unwashed hair, reeking of alcohol. It was bad enough that I nearly threw up on the way there and had to keep the window down the whole ride. By the time we reached the studio, the meeting had been running for over an hour without us. Sick with guilt, I volunteered to go through the door first and take the heat for all three of us.

 

"I'm so sorry we're late"

 

Every eye in the room turned to us. The long conference table was packed with staff from multiple departments. Nobody said a word. The silence that followed was worse than being yelled at directly. Lucky for us, P'Mee stepped in swiftly and pulled us into our seats. The abruptly interrupted meeting resumed under heavy tension.

 

Since they were discussing the MV concept for the album's lead track, Grace was present too, representing the production company that had taken on the job. As for me, weighted down by everything, I sat quietly in my corner of the table trying to be as invisible as possible. I had almost no coherent thought left. Too much hitting at once; the hammering alcohol headache was the least of it. I was already dreading how to look at Krich after being turned down.

 

Unable to handle any of it properly, the simplest option wasn't to run; it was to shrink down and pretend I barely existed.

 

"Nile."

 

All that effort fell apart when P'Mee called my name. I wasn't even sure how many times she'd said it before I responded.

 

"Yes?"

 

"It's our turn to present."

 

Did it have to be now? I had genuinely no memory of needing to present. But here we were, so I straightened my spine, and the laptop connected to the projector slid in front of me. Honestly, my head was too empty to know where P'Mee had left off or what feedback the team had given. I was just improvising from whatever slide was on the screen.

 

"So the concept we're going for in ‘No Reply  No Signal of Love Returned'..."

 

I stopped short as nausea crept up my chest. I forced down the thick saliva and breathed deep, hoping it would pass.

 

"Sorry, what we think of this song is..."

 

But I never finished the sentence. The nausea surged all at once into something I couldn't argue with. My body had hit its limit. I shot to my feet.

 

"Excuse me for a moment."

 

I apologised and bolted from the meeting room in the most graceless exit imaginable, straight to a toilet bowl to throw up until there was nothing left. Then the self-disgust set in.

 

"Oh, Nile~"

 

Nikm followed me in, murmuring pitying things without stopping while simultaneously rubbing my back until I felt human again. I splashed water from the sink over my face. 

 

Having thrown up, I finally felt my body lighter. The fog in my head cleared, and my breathing steadied. With nothing more to worry about in here, we headed straight back where Em had taken over to help P'Mee with the rest of the presentation.

 

The meeting wrapped up an hour later. Lucky P'Mee was skilled enough to salvage things; she managed to bring everyone to a consensus on the Offline Youth album concept in a single session.

 

Everyone began gathering their things and filing out. I was about to follow, but Krich called my name before I could. We stood facing each other with some distance between us, both quiet for several beats. I was tangled in my own head over which apology to lead with last night's or today's. I'd been fighting with myself too long when he beat me to it.

 

"Are you okay?"

 

Krich's face was as composed as ever, unreadable. I couldn't tell at all what he was actually feeling.

 

"Better now. I'm genuinely sorry about today."

 

"Going forward, if you're not in a state to come in, let someone know in advance. You wasted everyone else's time."

 

Right. I could tell he wasn't concerned; he was angry. He was just the type who could control it. Which somehow made me feel worse. I dropped my eyes and answered honestly.

 

"I'll do better."

 

Krich gave a small nod and walked out, leaving me standing there to process for a while before I found the nerve to drag myself out and sink into my desk chair. P'Mee spotted me and came straight over, concerned.

 

"How are you doing, Nile? Still hungover?"

 

"Slight headache, but I'm better."

 

Because of me alone, the whole thing nearly fell apart. If she hadn't rescued it, things could've been so much worse.

 

"I'm sorry for causing you trouble."

 

"It's done. I don't care if you want to drink yourself into the ground somewhere, just don't let it affect the work. The internship is nearly over. I want you all to finish it properly."

 

Another lecture that hit exactly where it should. Guilt hit before anything else—no reason to argue or make excuses. One 'yes' to accept it was enough.

 

The office was the same as every day. What had changed was only my state of mind, and it coloured everything around me. No longer fun, barely talking to the team, unable to connect with the music playing in the background.  Post-rejection shock, I figured—an epic one, with no timeline for recovery.

 

Days passed. One became two, two became a week, now we were into week three. Office life had become a loop. I wasn't even aware at first of what I was doing until Em and Nikm started knocking on my skull, telling me things, sending me secretly recorded clips, doing everything they could to pull me back to reality. Didn't seem to help. To everyone around me, I seemed to have flipped overnight. 

 

No physical energy, no emotional energy. Spacing out over meals, not answering when spoken to, tearing up at love songs but somehow also crying at sad ones. Much as I'd tried hard to avoid him, and he'd tried to avoid me too, there were times it was simply unavoidable, and we had to work together. The distance and simmering atmosphere built up between us, quietly eroding from small accumulated friction and sooner or later, it had to blow.

 

"Could I have a word with you?"

 

And today, apparently, was that day...

 

Because he'd finally had enough, walking right to my desk and asking me to speak with him in his office.

 

Amid the curious stares from everyone around and the sympathetic faces from my two best friends, I dropped my gaze and followed him quietly. The moment I lowered myself into the chair across from him, the air in the room went heavy and suffocating.

 

"You've seemed completely unfocused lately. Your work quality has slipped too."

 

Krich opened the conversation in his direct, no-frills way. I'd been trying to push through, grit my teeth, keep moving, hold myself together enough not to drag anyone else's work down. I hadn't managed it well. No, I hadn't managed it at all.

 

"I'm truly sorry. I'll try harder."

 

I hated myself for the endless apologising. It had gotten so frequent that I could feel people's patience wearing out. Krich's probably no different.

 

"If the reason for this is me..."

 

His well-shaped lips hadn't even finished the sentence when I cut in fast.

 

"Not at all. It's entirely my own fault. I'll work on it going forward."

 

If I could wish for one magical object, it would be a memory eraser that would make him forget that embarrassing night so it would never need to be mentioned again. But in reality, there's no such thing. He remembered. I remembered. The only real option was to be honest and hope for some understanding.

 

"And about what happened between us, please don't feel guilty. Not loving someone back isn't something you did wrong..."

 

"So from here on — could you just look at me the way you did the first day we met?" Just look at me like a stranger. We'll get through this soon enough.

 

The internship was almost over. Whatever had happened between us would just become one of those things something that came, passed through, and moved on.

 

Weeks became a month, and life was turning into something hotter and messier by the day, edging steadily toward the word 'crisis.' I had no savings left to speak of as a buffer. The house had taken everything, and on top of that came maintenance costs and daily expenses; the internship stipend alone wasn't going to cut it. And there were bills stacked up waiting

 

Food delivery became a part-time job I returned to. After finishing at the studio, instead of heading straight home, I'd ride as many rounds as possible and come back later and later. On days when exhaustion hit too hard, I'd collapse on the sofa and shower in the morning before going in. Since I'd already been flagged for declining performance, I forced more time into work and kept myself going on coffee, energy drinks, and whatever else would keep me awake.

 

Today was the same as every day...

After closing out the last order, I got home just past midnight. For the first time in months, I stopped in the middle of the house and felt something strange wash over me. Not exhaustion, something else mixed in: hollow, low, adrift. A feeling I couldn't name. Only that it made me feel bad.

 

I looked around the house under the few lights left on, and all I could see inside myself was emptiness. It didn't feel like a happy place anymore. This had been our family's dream, hadn't it been a warm home, comfortable and well-equipped, beautiful enough to make anyone envious. And now it gave me nothing but loneliness. Mom and Dad were gone. Just me here, alone.

 

At first I'd told myself that having them in memory would be enough. I was wrong. How can a house be a home if there's no one in it to love? In the past, my home was a rented apartment, and the people in it were Mom and Dad. For the future 

 

I'd once hoped it might be Krich. There'd been a night I dreamed of him: a beautiful dream where we lived in the same house, cooked together, grew plants, watched films, fell asleep in each other's arms. Before I woke up and understood the truth. In the end, only I remained. In the end, everything faded.

 

No idea how long I stood there drifting in my own head. The fragile mood had my mind slipping off repeatedly. Unable to be alone in this house any longer, I grabbed the bike keys and rode out not to anywhere specific, but to the place that held more of my memories than anywhere else, from childhood through to now.

 

I went back to the old apartment building where we used to live. I climbed the fire escape stairs all the way up and stopped in the corridor on the same floor as our old room. The room belonged to someone new now. All I could do was stand at a distance and stare at the closed door, while happy images from the past drifted back to me.

 

Ten years old. Mom was washing up at the sink. Dad just got home from work. We'd prepared the meal together, then sat down at the table, all three of us. Simple food, just a few dishes. A conversation I can barely remember. And yet I could still feel something faint of what that had been.

 

I was happier then, even in that small, cramped room. Nobody wallows in the past unless the present has gotten bad enough. So here I was. Standing here... absorbing the old feeling until I'd had enough, then turning and walking back the way I came.

 

Step by step down the stairs, then slowly lowering myself to sit on one of the steps, turning everything over and over in my head. By the time the sun rose over the horizon, I was still sitting in the same spot, and I had made a decision. If we hold to the idea that place matters less than people, then there is no reason to keep holding on...

I pressed call. After a brief wait, I spoke.

 

"Good morning, Khun Net. Sorry to bother you so early."

 

"..."

 

"I was wondering... are you free this Saturday? I'd like to open up the house for you to come look."

 

A hired moving truck sat parked at the front of the house. A team of movers was carrying everything out and arranging it efficiently. After closing the sale, I'd let all the furniture go to the new owner. So what I was taking with me wasn't much, mostly things I'd had since the old apartment days, the ones I couldn't bring myself to leave behind.

 

"Anything left?"

 

"That's everything."

 

I answered Em as I tucked the framed photo of Mom and Dad into my favourite backpack. The urn of ashes I chose to carry in my arms.

 

"Thanks so much for finding me a new place  and for coming to help move on top of it."

 

"Oh, it's nothing. Easy."

 

"It's strange, isn't it? Letting go."

 

I swept my gaze around the inside of the house one final time. A sadness so suffocating it couldn't even turn into tears.

 

"Think of it as something that only ever belongs to us for a season. That way you don't hold on to anything too hard."

 

"You're right."

 

I agreed with Nikm. So it was time to wish the house well that had been everything to me for a while.

 

"I hope whoever lives here loves you well."

 

Be a warm home at last. My two best friends stepped outside to wait, wanting to give me the last hour alone to gather the house's memories before saying goodbye forever. And as I moved through each spot and stopped, the images from the past layered over the present.

 

In the kitchen… Krich was expertly chopping vegetables alongside me, which made me wonder, 'You're so comfortable in a kitchen. Used to cook for a partner?'

 

‘I did, yeah.'

 

'So romantic. You're not thinking about falling in love again, old man? You seem lonely! 

 

'Haven't found the right person yet.'

 

At the dining table...The two of us sitting at the table together, eating good food and talking. Would you believe I haven't had a proper sit-down meal at home in a very long time?'

 

He was the one who gave me back a sense of family.

 

In the living room...Both of us on the sofa, barely watching the TV, my eyes kept drifting to the side of his face instead. Are you like them?'

 

"What do you mean?'

 

"I mean... are you a romantic person?'

 

'What I'm doing right now, you'd call that romantic?'

 

‘It is. Cooking for someone, having dinner together, watching a legendary romance film together. Anyone else would have already fallen for you.'

 

The funny thing is, I really had.

 

Every corner of this house held a memory of him and me. Once I'd absorbed all I needed, it was finally time to leave. I stepped out of the house, pulled the heavy wooden door shut behind me, then turned and stood on the lawn to look at it one more time.

 

"Time to go," Nikm said, stepping over to pat my shoulder.

 

"Mmm."

 

The moving truck had already pulled out ahead. We followed. I wedged myself into the passenger seat, the engine started, and the truck moved slowly forward.

 

I turned to look in the side mirror, committing everything to memory. The clean white fence grew smaller and smaller until it disappeared. Only then did I let myself cry quietly.

 

Thank you for making my twenty-second year matter.