(Dis)order (A Never Let Me Go Fanfiction) (Bilingual Book)

Chapter 9 - Imbroglio

Later that morning, Nueng distractedly listened to his Chinese teacher's lecture. He spent more time casting glances at Palm than filling his notebook with phrases that he already knew anyway, having studied them beforehand. He liked being one step ahead. About everything. But when it came to Palm, things didn't always, or rather often, go according to schedule. He enjoyed thwarting his plans. But what Palm didn't realize was that he too was pretty good at it.

Meanwhile, Palm was trying to follow what the teacher was saying, as he was showing a Chinese character on the board that he could not, as he did almost every time, read, while all his other classmates seemed relatively at ease. He always felt like he was falling behind, and the more things went on, the more his weaknesses grew. Especially if Nueng continued to behave like this towards him. He, who not long ago had promised to assist him in his studies, was actually jeopardizing his chances to catch up one day. The young man kept distracting him by staring at him, and it wasn't thinking about it that was going to help Palm make any significant progress. Well, that wasn't the only reason. Because the problem also came from him. For him too, the temptation was immense. He longed to look at him. If he could, he would do nothing else.

But he couldn't. Do that, let alone more.

Luckily, or not, it was him that the teacher chose to make a sentence with the vocabulary displayed on the board, which allowed him to escape, at least for a few moments, from these thoughts that had been tormenting him since a certain incident occurred during the previous night... He straightened up and religiously listened to the teacher's instructions.

The purpose of the exercise was to use as many of the words as possible that had been brought up during today's class, about the use of 为了 (for/in order to), as well as during the earlier lessons. But since Palm was still at the stage of learning terms without knowing much about combining them to form a coherent whole, it took him a while before he tried something that roughly matched the definition of the word "sentence." Fortunately for him, his class had studied a roughly similar structure in the previous session, which he had taken the time to write down at the bottom of his notebook, judging that given his current state of near-zero knowledge, it would still be useful. So he reused it for this exercise, customizing it a little with the new words he had learned in the day's lesson, to show the teacher, but also all those who looked down on him, that he was interested in making progress:

"我要吻一个朋友为了研究。"

And when he had finished stringing these few words together in Chinese, he finally felt rather proud of himself for reusing words like 朋友 that they had studied in class many weeks ago already, and thought that this initiative would please their teacher. But the main thing it raised in the class was general hilarity. At first, Palm thought that the reason for this mocking reaction was that his classmates, who had dared to point at him, must have been smarter than he was, and that he must have been talking nonsense to make them laugh so hard. But in fact, his sentence did make sense. It just wasn't the meaning he had intended.

(Author's note: "wen" can mean "question/ask" when spelled "问" but it's also the word for "kiss" (another Hanzi character, 吻 in Chinese)... it all depends on the tone used to say it. So Palm's sentence can be understood as "I want/need to kiss one of my friends for (my) research" when he intended to say "I want/need to ask one of my friends for my research", because he got the pronunciation wrong. ^^' It's been ages since I wrote in Chinese, and I'm having so much fun writing this part...)

"Hey, Palm, what kind of research (研究) are you doing?" joked one of his classmates, to whom Palm gave a confused sideways glance, and when a second boy in turn ventured a comment of much the same nature, the young man seriously began to be wondering:

"And who is this friend you want to do this research with?"

Before his students completely lose track of the day's lesson, the teacher decided to interfere, clearing his throat loudly. From the look of him, the bespectacled man seemed about as embarrassed and eager to close this discussion as Palm was now:

"I think you will need to do a little more '研究 (research),' indeed, Pannakorn. With or without a 'friend', that is..."

In response to his teacher, Palm gave him a tight smile before bowing his head in apology:

"对不起 (Sorry)," he said in a shaky voice, before sitting back down in his seat and their lesson picked up right where they left off.

The young man still didn't know what he'd said, but considering the reaction he'd received, it was best he didn't do it again.

Still, he didn't think anything was wrong. He just wanted to try to prove that he could do it, too. To his teacher, but also... to Nueng. The one who had thought he was capable of something and who had even offered him his support to help him up.

He threw an eye on his left, and noticed that he was still watching him. With however, as new, a smile on the lips. He also seemed to find quite entertaining the awkward situation in which Palm had put himself believing to do right. But contrary to what the laughter of his classmates had made him feel, this time the young fisherman did not feel hurt. On the contrary, he was even happy. Happy to have made him laugh. Happy to the point of sensing a sweet warming infiltrating in his chest. More and more deeply.

As he realized this, Palm let out a quiet laugh. 

For sure, he was really a hopeless case.

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Hi dear readers. Sorry for the late update, it is just that due to work, I have quite a lot in my mind at the moment ^^' thank you for your loyalty toward this story anyway. Gathering 2k views so far was totally unexpected. ^^ I have already written a few new chapters in French, but the translation process might take some time, I hope you will understand. <3 Thank you for your patience and hope to see you soon again for a new episode.

= 19.03.2023 =