The thin line [Complete]

Chapter 9

Arthit's POV

Hour after hour I have paced up and down my living room, more than conscience that I was sacrificing my sleep while overthinking about Mike spending the night over at Kongpob's apartment. Even I can agree it is weird for me to have spent the amount of time I did trying to remember how large his couch was, and if Mike could possibly fit his unnaturally large body on it and not spend the night cozying up next to Kongpob.

I was almost tempted to march one floor up and figure out what exactly was going on with the two of them, but I have a feeling banging on his door at 2 in the morning is not going to particularly win me a very sympathetic ear while I tell him how I am trying to warn his ass.

And after I saw the sliver of the rising sun through my window I finally realized I have officially lost my mind. I may have a similar problem that I am accusing Mike. I have no idea why exactly I am this obsessed with Kongpob. Actually, that might not be true. I know quite well how and when my obsession with the man started. I guess it might be the right time to get into a little more details regarding our history.

I began working at this company almost 10 years ago as a part time employee while I was in the first semester of engineering. I was wet behind the ears, untrained, unskilled and yet more excited about the opportunity I had just been given than absolutely anything else. And year after year as I continued my life connected to this company the more invested I got with its success and failures.

The first time I got to ever talk to the CEO of the company, Kongpob's father was the day after my graduation when I finally joined the company full-time. And since that day I knew I had met my mentor. The man I looked upto for most of future decisions, my career moves, my professional aspirations. He molded me into the person I am today. He helped me strengthen my technical knowledge, encouraged me to explore my innovative side, supported my sometime insane ideas and finally four years ago made me the head of product design and development.

So you can imagine the feeling of loyalty and gratitude I felt towards both the company and Kongpob's father for what he has enabled me to achieve in the short 10 years that I have been associated with them. Mind you until now I had no idea about who or what Kongpob was. I mean, sure I knew my boss had a son. At some point I even knew he had started engineering and would most likely join the company at some point, but other than that I had absolutely no inclination for prying out more information.

It was nearly four years ago when I was first introduced to the character called Kongpob. Not directly. Not in person. But through endless conversations with his father. It started with few anecdotes here and there. Sometimes while working late into the night, he would drop stories about his son. Some complimentary, some not so pleasant. He was obviously very proud of his son but also really worried about the path he was going down towards. Apparently, the people he hung out with, the parties he attended, the drinking, the not focusing on his education, wasting his time, money, and his life had his father constantly fearful.

And these late night conversations had caused me to increasingly dislike a guy I had yet to even meet. Now I know I was listening to just one side of a story. Maybe this boy was not all evil, and this was nothing more than a frustrated father unloading his ire about his rebellious son, and it wasn't meant for me to form opinions based on these off the cuff remarks. But it was fairly hard for me to remain emotionally disconnected when I could see daily how much my boss was harrowed by his unruly son. Infact my loyalty basically demanded my immediate and intense hatred for him. And yet I kept most of my feelings nicely locked up cause I knew one day in the near future I would have to work with him. Possibly even call him my boss at some point in the company's life. Hating him before having a chance to ever interact with him was probably not going to be beneficial for either of us.