Hemp Rope (English Translation)

20

Translator : Gia pohonjati

CHAPTER 20 MOVE FORWARD

T/N : the title ก้าวเดิน (gaao dern) literally means “step walk” while in term it means steps/(to) walk/pace/threads, in sentence it can mean charging ahead, walking up (a hill etc), walking through (rain etc), step toward (a direction), marches (parade/drumband), walk upon (the earth etc) and many more meaning based on the sentence.

***

The atmosphere in the room become uncomfortably silent, as if sinking deeply into the bottom of a cold pool.

On the soft bed today isn’t as warm as before. A tall and large figure staring at the face of the person next to him who is now filled with tears.

Team sits staring at the photograph in his hand. His fingertips touch on his older brother's face, who had never disappear from his memory.

“It was too late when we arrived at the hospital.”

His extremely good brother

“The people who came to help were the officers who came to clean the pool. They said I was leaning on the pool’s stairs but my older brother was at the bottom of the pool.”

The older boy raise his hand to wipe away the flowing tears of the younger who gasping for breath so he could continue.

"from CCTV I saw that my brother had reached the edge of the pool but quickly swam back to help me, hia. The power of a Ten to Twelve years old to pull me up and to drag me to the stairs. He was exhausted and drowned just like that."

But the more he speaks, the more his damned tears flows. Team raise his head up expecting that his tears would flow back somehow.

“I've been thinking about it all this time, that it should be me who died, not my brother.”

“Team!!” The older boy raise his eyebrows. He grabs his wet face and wipe his tears. “Don't say that. No one deserve to die at all.”

“But because I'm foolish and stubborn that it was happened. If I had believed my brother from the start… probably.”

The young boy cry his eyes out until he feel his head almost explodes. His tired body leans by force of the older's pull. Back to rest on the broad shoulder again.

“We can't fix the past.” Phawin rubs the trembling back, patting him lightly, as if lulling a frightened child.

“But we can do our best in the present.” Pressing a comforting kiss on the temple.

“Umh…”

“So all this time, you couldn’t sleep before a race because of this?”

Team nods and replies with a muffled voice. “It reminds me of that time when I competed with my brother, and remind me when I was drowning.”

For a swimmer like him, this is the biggest problem. "It took me a year before I could return to swim. At first, I didn't dare to enter the pool at all,"

because of the symptoms at that time, it made him miss both youth competitions and other programs. At first, just seeing the pool enough to make his whole body trembled.

The older boy make a serious face. As far as he knows Team, he was confident that Team had never shown any sign of fear of the swimming pools. “Right now, do you still have any fear of the pool?”

“Not anymore”

Phawin let out a sigh of relief. He move the hair that covers Team’s eyes.

“You had a promise to keep with your brother, right? That you would be an athlete, also will be a good coach.”
The younger boy nods again.