High Energy Collision [Completed]

Chapter 5 - you might need somebody

Wasn't there a cliché about lonely customers talking to barkeepers about their problems?

Well... there was no rule that said it couldn't be the other way around, too. Plan had taken a few steps over to the staff room door and had invited the stranger to accompany him on his break. The staff room wasn't a very comfortable place – Plan suspected that it wasn't by accident.

They didn't have any scheduled breaks, but were allowed to step out when the customer flow allowed it – which usually led to staff barely taking any breaks at all. And those who did rarely stayed away long, no doubt also because of this cold and bleak room.

There was a row of lockers for the employees to store their change of clothes and bags alongside one wall and next to the door, and a bench like in a locker room in a gym alongside the two other walls. In the corner, where the two benches met, was an old, dented metal table that the staff could sit at to eat during their break.

But the most uncomfortable feature about the room was the bright neon light that illuminated it all, making the raw grey walls look even more bleak than necessary.

Plan blinked to adjust his eyes from the dim light in the corridor outside.

He avoided looking at the stranger he had brought here. There was a sense of familiarity creeping up on him, not just from having been so physically close to him just before, but also from the suspicion that they had met previously. Plan just didn't remember.

He didn't want to dwell on it.

Now that they were inside and Plan had taken a seat at the table – he didn't bother inviting the other guy to sit with him, he correctly assumed that he would follow on his own – the exhaustion that had built up in his body over the last days suddenly came crashing down on him.

He lowered his front onto the table and needed to fight against his urge to fall asleep.

He had arrived on an overnight train from Chiang Mai on Monday morning and had gone on to attend the freshmen orientation directly afterwards. He had used his first day at university almost exclusively to download and read through the most interesting papers in particle physics that had been hidden behind a pay wall when he had tried to access them from his old school.

Since he hadn't had a place to stay in Bangkok on Monday, he had talked Birk and Ellie into letting him stay with them – which had been such an uncomfortable and stuffy situation in their small apartment without air conditioning, that he had barely been able to doze off, let alone sleep.

Bare conditions were fine in the village where night often brought a fresh breeze from the mountains, cooled by the flooded rice paddies like natural air conditioning, and you could always sleep in a hammock outside on the porch if it still got too stuffy inside.

But in Bangkok in the hot, polluted city air, even the night air was torture.

The next day, they had met one of Ellie's friends for breakfast. She worked as a maid for some rich household, and even though she didn't know Plan at all and he had already forgotten her name by now, she had taken him with her to work and had talked the housekeeper there into allowing him to stay in the empty side-room of the pool house.

Similar to the arrangement he had had with the school director in Chiang Mai, he had promised to help out the gardener on weekends in return. The housekeeper seemed pleased to hear that he was both a farmer and a university student.

She had muttered something about wishing her son was this hard working and dedicated.

Plan genuinely liked staying at the pool house. It was naturally cooler due to the proximity of the water and the flower garden behind it reminded him of his high school years. He could almost forget about the big city outside.