Badfriend: To Be With You

12.

Happy reading!!

Khaotung can no longer sleep alone even if the light is switched on.
He always goes looking for his mum to accompany him to sleep after studying with the window open. Where First is always by the roadside to chat to him while playing with his bicycle or football.

Mr Thana couldn't let Khaotung go on like this, being full of fear at night but looking fine the next morning.
He didn't like how Mike was still shadowing Khaotung, it made him want to get even more back at Mike but what the heck, Mike was already serving his sentence in prison.
Mr Thana wants Khaotung back to the way he was before, at any cost.

The incident that happened to Khaotung this time not only left Khaotung traumatised, it also affected the people who cared so much about him.
Mrs Thana still thinks about it often, how Khaotung was bleeding unconscious in the hospital surrounded by hospital staff. Mr Thana also couldn't contain his emotions when he met Mike at the police station, and his anger could not be vented because he couldn't hit Mike at all to avenge what he had done to his son.
Also, First.
He blamed himself so much that he had to go to a psychologist to calm himself down.

Mr Thana understood very well at this time that First was also a victim of what happened to Khaotung, he saw how First became full of fear like Khaotung, his emotions became more explosive in the early days after the incident. Compared to himself, Mr Thana knew that First suffered more at that time, seeing Khaotung almost die at Mike's hands.

But Mr Thana never asked him about it, he was too focused on his son's physical and mental health. This afternoon, First came in when he had just returned from his office.
For the first time since that day, First talks about how he worries about Khaotung at night.
So tonight, Khaotung's father invited First for a one-on-one talk in his back garden over sweet tea made by Mrs Thana.

"Khaotung still has to go to the psychologist next Sunday, what about you?"

First shook his head. "I don't need to, I never even felt  need to go."

First said that just seeing Khaotung was enough, as long as Khaotung was in his sight then he was fine. As time went by, First was able to control his fear and anxiety because he was surrounded by people like his schoolmates and Marc himself who never made him feel afraid of being alone when Khaotung could not be visited by anyone.
Marc, who liked Khaotung as deeply as First at that time, sincerely encouraged First that Khaotung was fine and that Khaotung would be fine.

"Because I feel that being with Khaotung will help me become better and vice versa." First continued.

"Uncle, everything I did for Khaotung was very sincere. I want to be with him for as long as I can, it torments me even when our distance at night is limited by the street and also the windows of our respective rooms."

Mr Thana had always heard his wife and First's mother talk about Khaotung and First getting married in the future. He didn't take it seriously, because who knows what the future holds?
Mr Thana had never seen how much these two children loved each other, and he began to remember how First was always the first one Khaotung wanted to come to, how First was the one who panicked the most when something happened to his son.

"Before this incident and even afterwards, he was still an annoying child. But underneath it all he tried to be okay and stay the same. The strong Khaotung has turned out to be more fragile than we imagined. He needs a lot of help now, he is no longer the same, First."

Behind their deep conversation, there was Khaotung listening in the room. Lying on the long sofa as he listened to how his father and First talked again about the incident, which they had previously promised not to discuss at all.
Since Khaotung had decided not to talk about it anymore, he didn't know that First was upset about it.
He felt suffocated when he learnt that First had to go to a psychologist because of all this.