Teaching Chay

Chapter 5

"Good evening Chan," Kim greets the older man after knocking on his door shortly after eight on Sunday evening.

"Khun Kim," Chan looks up from the monitor he is watching and seems surprised. "I wasn't expecting you back tonight."

"I know. Do you know if my brother is in tonight? I need a meeting with him as soon as possible about my father's house and a few other things."

"Khun Kinn should be at the compound, yes. I can check for you. I'll text you his answer?" Chan suggests and Kim nods.

"I'll be in my rooms unpacking."

He leaves and makes his way back to his old rooms in the compound, on autopilot. He's been sneaking around this house so many times that he knows every corner and plant pot.

What Chan said is true, he shouldn't be back yet, but he hasn't been able to calm the gnawing feeling in his gut since he found out that Namphueng was still imprisoned in his father's house. The fact that Porchay has been in and out of the house has only made that feeling worse.

So instead of working and mulling it over in the silence of his own office, Kim has decided to take a leap of faith. If it goes wrong, he probably won't survive, but he has to try one last time to establish some kind of connection between himself and his brother.

Kim has tried before, sending Kinn tickets to his concerts and backstage VIP passes, but Kinn has never shown up. Kinn is the heir to the empire built by his father and grandfather, and although Kim refuses to believe it, it seems that Kinn turned his back on his younger brother the moment he left home at sixteen. Kinn seems to think Kim is a traitor, a wayward lost child of the family who doesn't belong anymore. That's true of the organisation, at least if Kim has his way, but that doesn't mean Kim wants to lose his brothers. They are the only family he has left, and since friends are rare and he can never be completely honest with them, they are really the only people he can be himself with...Or he could, if he could trust Kinn and Tankhun to stop being unpredictable.

Kim puts the clothes he has brought with him for the week into the wardrobe, which otherwise only has clothes from his teenage years. A few old T-shirts, some jogging pants and jeans. When he left, Kim had packed a bag, grabbed his guitar and some memorabilia and just walked out. He'd set aside his hefty monthly allowance, embezzled some money from his father to pay for college in the future, and that was it.

Now that his father is dead, those rooms don't make his skin crawl, but they don't make him feel welcome or at home either, and for Kim, any hotel room in the world is more welcoming than his childhood bedroom. There are very few good memories he has of that place that aren't tainted by bad memories, the realisation that things weren't what they seemed, or the pain of what followed.

Kim opens one of the sock drawers and brushes aside the old underwear in it, because he needs to check something. He finds his mother's picture in there again. It had been gone for years, and for whatever reason his father must have put it back before he died. Kim hadn't been able to look at the picture for so many years. First because it made him panic, remembering the attack, hearing his mother's screams, seeing her blood on the floor before she blacked out. Waking up to the knowledge that she was gone forever, his brothers so distraught that all they could do was cry, even when their father commanded them to stop. Kim hadn't cried then, which had drawn his father's attention. Kim had paid for his numbness and lack of understanding as a child years later, when his father bet on his barely existing emotions. His father had never understood that he felt emotions, probably deeper than most, but he was just better at hiding them.

His brothers were in tears when their father had all pictures of their mother banned from the compound so that they could finally put an end to their grief. Kim had simply stolen a photo, hidden it in his room and avoided looking at it.