WinTeam Week 2020 & 2021 - Short stories (WinTeam - HempRope - BetweenUs)

Do You Remember Me

THE PIERCING PAIN

Full of broken thoughts
I cannot repair
Beneath the stains of time
The feelings disappear
You are someone else
I am still right here
~ Hurt - Famous Last Words ~

A tall, blond man sat on the beach, immersed in his own thoughts. Dressed in jeans and a patterned blouse with the top buttons open revealing a sculpted chest. He had drawn his knees up to his chin and hugged them. It was late in the evening, but the darkness had not yet descended. Absentmindedly he buried toes in the sun-heated sand and lifted them off as the sand flowed between his toes back into the beach sand. Breeze from the sea gently fluffed his golden blond hair but he did not push them back. It was as if he did not even notice their play on his face. A gaze of the dark eyes fixed to the horizon, where the ocean met the sky without seeing the view in front of them. His thoughts were miles away, or rather, years away. As so often over the years, his thoughts have traveled to his childhood. To those years when there had been someone special in his life.

He had been 4 years old when the new boy had arrived at the orphanage. He still remembered that day vividly. The boy had been small, cute and hiding behind the nurse's feet, looking at the other children with scared, sad eyes.

The little boy had jet black hair, monolid eyes, chubby cheeks and Win saw how the nurse looked at him tenderly.

But the newcomer did not arouse any more interest in him. The boy was so cute, however, that he would be adopted soon, so there was no point in getting to know him anyway. Win had already learned not to be attached to anyone, people came and went in his life. There was no bitterness in his thoughts, it was just a fact.

Later he learned that the boy was barely two years old. His family had died in the car accident and there were no relatives who could take care of him. So he was placed in the same orphanage that Win called home. The caregivers told the other children that the boy's name was Teerayu and he was called Team.

The orphanage had its own hierarchy among the children. There were too few caregivers, and everyone fought for their attention, to get into their arms and get rare expressions of affection from them. The newest children were always at the lowest level of the hierarchy until they learned to fight for their own place and climb the upper level in it or when someone else came and took their position as the newcomer.

Because Win was one of the children who had been in the orphanage for the longest, and was one of the eldest, he was at the top of the hierarchy. Also outgoing personality, witty intelligence and being an innate type of leader made him popular. The group of older children had their own activities in which the smaller ones were not even included. He did not hate the newcomer, he just did not pay any attention to him. Being the smallest and cutest in the ward, the nurses paid special attention to Team, often hugging him or taking him to sit on their lap. This caused envy in others who began to torment the little boy at every opportunity.

At first, Win did not notice anything, as others had already learned how he dealt with all kinds of bullying and did it when he was not around. He was fair and considerate of others. Bullying was something he did not tolerate and intervened whenever he noticed it. One day on his way from the yard to the dining room for dinner, he heard suffocated sobs. Someone was crying as if his heart was broken. Crying was not uncommon in an orphanage, but something in this crying caught his attention and he turned to the voice instead of his original target.

The yard of the orphanage was half wild due to inadequate care and it took a moment to locate the weeping boy who sobbed inconsolably under a tree, partly hidden by the branches. When he found him, he gasped in surprise. The little boy's clothes were muddy, his cheeks stained with tears and his knees bleeding. At first, the boy refused to tell anything, just shook his head without saying a word in response to his questions. Wiping the tears from his cheeks with his small dirty fists, he tried to suppress the crying. When Win wrapped his arm around his small shoulders and comforted him, the boy finally spoke to him.