Breath (TulHin)

Chapter 4

The hidden truth

[Flowing water]

In the quiet room you can only hear the sound of water falling and running across the tile floor from the ajar door. Although it's a familiar sound that is usually heard every day, this time it causes even more stress on Hin's face. At this moment, the young servant is standing near the door, his hands clutching the towel. Khun Tul has been in the bathroom for too long... he is a boy who doesn't like to waste time for no reason, even if he is taking a bath but he's been inside for almost forty minutes now. Which makes the servant feel more and more worried. The young master of him is too restless and silent. Everyone thinks that this is caused by shock, but for the person who has been with him since childhood and even grew up with him, he knows that there is something else. It's something Hin doesn't want to happen at all. So today, all day, he tried to always stay close to Tul, identifying the symptoms and capturing the anomalies, fearing that something could happen.

[Yell out]

[Bang, bang, bang, bang]

“Khun Tul!”

And then it happened. Behind the door Gornhin rushes into, amidst the steam billowing into the bathtub, his heart freezes as he looks at the naked, weathered body of the young mixedrace boy standing under the spray of cold water and he repeatedly pounds his fists against the wall as if he were oblivious to any pain. Even if there is no blood flowing, at any moment his knuckles could be broken.

“Enough, Khun Tul!”

Gornhin immediately takes the other's wrist. Regardless of whether the cold water makes his clothes wet, ignoring anything, he only cares about who gets hurt. Before his left fist hit the wall, the servant raised it in time with a shout as if trying to get his attention.

“Khun Tul, don't do it!”

The beautiful face lifts to reveal his empty eyes... like those of a person who has died.

“Khun Tul, don't hurt yourself like that.”

“I... did it again.”

When he answers, Tul’s voice is almost inaudible. His hands are balled into fists, and although the water isn't that cold, he can feel the cold in his heart. This makes Hin take a deep breath as he looks into that pair of sharp eyes.

“Then why? Why don't you stop? Stop hurting others because then she hurts you even more.”

Gornhin says it in a calm voice. His eyelids flutter as he remembers the countless times he was the only one to see what happens to this person when he hurts others. Eventually, the pain will return and irrevocably attack its master.

The first day she saw him was... the day her grandmother fell down the stairs. The day everything changed. Khun Tul didn't want this to happen, but that damned woman pushed her boss to the extreme. On the brink of pain, at the bottom of the abyss with no way out, in the abyss where this boy thinks he is alone but he is not...

“Khun Tul, you have to stop. Don't hurt anyone else..."

“I won't stop!"

But then the person who seems to continue to feel his anger...

“I'll never stop, you hear me? Why do I have to let them destroy my life? For twenty years Ihad to live through hell in that house, was I ever happy like the others? I can only smile at them with false happiness. For them I... I... it's just that... I'm a child who shouldn't have been born. No one thought about how I felt, why should I care if they die?”

For someone else, the screaming voice might fill them with fear. But not for Hin. Not for this loyal servant.

“But Khun Tul has me!”