Junak Baruah wants to win the prestigious short film competition in his university. But with hundreds of participants and a stellar jury on board, winning means making a film that's never been made before.
And that means breaking the rules and taki...
Holler if you see errors? I'm too sleepy to properly edit, heh *facepalm*
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Junak woke up at 7am sharp without any alarm. Next to him, Dikhou was sound asleep with one of his arms wrapped around Junak's waist.
The room was dark with the thick curtains filtering out most of the sunlight. Instead of the chirp of birds that Junak had gotten used to over the past few weeks, here, the only sounds greeting him were the swooshing of cars, the rumble of motorbikes and some kid crying. And of course, their neighbour's goddamn pressure cookers.
Junak wanted to stay in bed – he did not remember the last time he had woken up next to someone. Dikhou was warm and cosy and everything perfect. There was a ghost of a smile on his lips that Junak couldn't help but gently trace with a finger.
He remembered the first time he had met Dikhou, at the buffalo fight with Lohor perched on his shoulders. He was such an ass then, pranking Junak out of nowhere. He couldn't believe the same man was here, on his bed, swelling his heart to the point where it felt like it would burst.
"Why are you up so early?" Dikhou murmured without opening his eyes. "I thought urban kids slept till noon."
They did, but over these weeks Junak's body had gotten accustomed to a new schedule of waking up early, having tea with Grandpa, then breakfast with everyone else, and on and on and on. Junak traced his finger along Dikhou's cheek, over his jaw. "Why are you not up yet? I thought rural kids wake before dawn."
Dikhou smiled drowsily.
"Sleep." Junak kissed his forehead the way Dikhou had done for him last night. "I'll make breakfast."
Dikhou muttered something incomprehensible as Junak untangled himself from his arms and got up from the bed. He shivered slightly in the cold and almost went back to cuddling inside the blankets when he noticed Dikhou's hoodie neatly kept on the back of his desk chair. Smiling to himself, Junak put it on... and maybe spent two minutes sniffing it like a complete creep but whatever, it was nice and he hadn't had someone's clothes to sniff in a long, long time.
Making breakfast sounded extremely romantic in his head but proved a lot harder in reality when Junak walked into a near-empty kitchen. With him - the only resident of this ghost town - gone for weeks, there was of course nothing edible left in the house, except useless bottles of beer in the fridge.
Groaning and huffing, he pocketed his wallet, pulled on his shoes and walked out of the house. The city was colder than he had remembered; his breath steamed and he regretted not wearing a beanie. He pulled Dikhou's hoodie closer to himself and jogged to the nearest store. People, in workout clothes, were walking around in groups of two or three, and the street was filled with cyclists. Nobody greeted him, not even the woman who lived next door, but he couldn't really blame her – he hadn't been here for over five years now and even before that he wasn't exactly sociable with his neighbours. It was weird how that thought made him a little sad now; he blamed the residents of Nonrong for making him unnecessarily soft like this.
