SPACE between Us

Chapter 1 & 2

{Credited to @OffGun2019 as this is their review that I have asked for permission to translate it into English. Sorry for any mistranslation peeps. The words in italic are those words from the novel.}

Chapter 1

This review will be from the first two chapters.

The story starts being narrated by our little boy, King. He starts talking about how he likes to draw, that when he was in kindergarten he even won a drawing contest, and that this made his parents very proud.

He's drawing and rambling in thoughts in the middle of a class, when Bohn asks "What are you doing King?"

[ ]

"King what are you doing?" My friend, Bohn looked at what I was doing. We are sitting and studying. No, we don't sit and study actually. We were sitting listening to the teacher reading slides on the screen. I'd better read it at home.

"I'm drawing a beautiful picture." I gave them the paper. This is the first picture that I drew. I won gold and silver medal in a drawing competition. I remember that at that time I was in Kindergarten and my parents were very proud of my success. At that time, I had to compete with the other 2 kids. One of them gave up because of diarrhea and the other one ate color. Therefore the judge crowned me as the winner.

[ ]

King replies that he is drawing and shows the drawing to his friend. But another friend, soon questions why he has such a distorted design in the middle. King sighs and responds.

"Don't worry, this is art!"

Then he rambles on about the fact that his friends have no art in their hearts, that everything they look at defects or finds ugly. That they need to be more like him, that he can see beauty even in a dog's rough nose.

The conversation about the drawing dies, when his friend comments that today they need to have a meeting to prepare things for a volunteer trip. That is nothing more than a trip to the countryside, for the purpose of reforestation. But the place where they will go has not yet been defined.

He says his name is King, that he always gets the best grades. That he is not very organized. But he is old and mature enough to know what to do and what not to do.

That he loves being Thai, loves culture, cuisine, customs and when he has a son he wants to put a name that is Thai, nothing foreign. But he has nothing against Western culture.

One of his friends asks, how many days will the camp be and how long did they need to organize it and says that he is already tired before starting (Preparations).

King remembers that in their second year, they had to spend the night at the university to prepare things, even though they didn't need to do this but they wanted the job to be done as quickly as possible. Reforesting does not seem to be something that needs a lot of preparation, but they need to provide repellents, gloves, crackers, ropes, water..etc...for it.

King replies that it must be three to four days of camping and looks out the window admiring the warm weather, he loves everything natural.

They go to the meeting and begin preparations for the trip. King asks if they already has the place to go, but the place has not yet been decided, only that it will be for some province in the north. And he thinks he would like it to go to the province where his grandmother lives.

King says that he always wanted to travel, to know new legacies, to have new experiences, because to stay always in the same place, he always sees the same things and is boring. But that his parents would not let him travel far, as they would be afraid that he would not return. And to alleviate this, he planted several trees around his house, which has a secret place in his backyard and which always slept there when he lived with his parents. But after moving to the condominium, he almost never returns home and misses his hiding place.