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Loy Krathong came around again the way it always did — quietly, and then all at once.
The city had been building toward it for days. Lanterns in shop windows, the smell of flowers and incense starting to drift through certain streets, the particular anticipation of something that happened every year and still managed to feel like an event.
Duan had been talking about it for two weeks.
Jun had been listening to him talk about it for two weeks with the expression of someone who had made peace with something.
"It's the same festival," Jun said over dinner, four days before.
"It's not the same festival."
"It happens every year—"
"It's different this year." Duan pointed his chopsticks at him. "You know why it's different this year."
Jun looked at him flatly.
Duan grinned.
Jun went back to his food.
---
They went with the whole group.
Jet had organized it the way Jet organized everything — loudly and in a group chat that generated more messages than information. Dom and Fah took the train. Meen had driven down from somewhere and shown up two days early for reasons he explained at length and nobody fully followed. Chawin arrived exactly on time, which was the most Chawin thing possible.
They met at the riverside at dusk, the sky going orange and then pink and then the deep blue of early evening, the water already crowded with krathong floating out from the banks. Lanterns were rising somewhere downstream, a slow drift of light going up into the darkening sky.
Jun stood at the edge of the group and looked at it.
The crowd. The noise. The particular energy of a city celebrating something together. He'd been at this festival every year of his life and it had always been exactly this and he had always stood somewhere at the edge of it and watched.
A hand found his.
He looked down.
Duan was beside him, looking out at the water, fingers laced through his like it was the most natural thing in the world. Which it was, now. Which it had been for a while.
"Same spot?" Duan said.
Jun looked at him.
"What?"
"The spot. Where we—" Duan tilted his head, "—you know."
Jun looked back at the crowd. The press of bodies, the movement, the particular chaos of a festival night. Somewhere in there, a year ago, he had been pushed forward by the crowd and had landed on a stranger and gotten up and walked away without looking back.
"I don't know exactly where it was," Jun said.
"I do," Duan said.
Jun looked at him.
Duan was already smiling — not the wide performed version, just the real one, the quiet one that appeared when he wasn't thinking about how he looked.
"Of course you do," Jun said.
"I remember everything about that night." Duan looked at him sideways. "I was on the ground for like a minute after you left. Just sitting there."
"The crowd was pushing—"
"You didn't even look back."
"I didn't know who you were."
"You could have looked back."
Jun said nothing.
"I'm just saying," Duan said, "you could have looked back and you didn't and I still spent two weeks trying to find you."
"I know," Jun said. "You've told me."
"And I'd do it again."
Jun looked at him.
Duan looked back. The lanterns were going up somewhere behind him, the light of them catching in his eyes, and he looked at Jun with the expression he had when he meant something completely and wasn't going to dress it up.
Jun reached over and tucked his hair back from his face.
Duan went still the way he always did when Jun touched him first — that particular quiet, all the usual energy suspended.
"Come on," Jun said.
He kept Duan's hand and pulled him into the crowd.
---
They found a spot near the water.
The whole group had converged somewhere upstream and the noise of them carried across to where Jun and Duan stood, Jet's voice identifiable from thirty meters away. Meen had apparently done something with his krathong that was making Prae — who had driven down for the night just to be here, which she claimed was a coincidence and nobody believed — laugh from across the bank.
Jun crouched and set his krathong on the water.
It caught the current and moved out slowly, the candle on it steady despite the movement, carrying its small light away from the bank and out toward the middle of the river where dozens of others already floated.
He watched it go.
Duan crouched beside him and set his own beside it. They floated out together for a moment before the current took them in slightly different directions, drifting apart slowly, each with its own small flame.
Jun watched them.
"Hey," Duan said.
Jun looked at him. They were close, crouched at the water's edge, the city noise around them and the river in front of them and the lanterns somewhere above.
"I'm glad you fell on me," Duan said.
Jun looked at him for a moment.
"I fell because the crowd pushed me."
"I know." Duan smiled. "I'm still glad."
Jun looked back at the water. At the two krathong moving apart on the current, their candles still burning.
"So am I," he said.
Duan looked at him.
Jun didn't look back but he felt it — the particular quality of Duan's attention, the warmth of it, the way it had felt like too much once and now felt like exactly the right amount.
He stood up.
Duan stood up beside him.
The crowd pressed in around them the way it always did at this festival — noise and light and strangers moving in every direction — and Jun found Duan's hand in the middle of it and held on and Duan held back and they stood there at the edge of the water and watched the lanterns rise.
A year ago Jun had walked away from a stranger in this crowd without looking back.
He looked now.
He looked at Duan beside him — the light on his face, the easy set of his shoulders, the dimple already forming over something nobody had said yet — and felt, with the same certainty he felt everything that actually mattered, that this was the right place to be.
That this had always been where he was going.
He just hadn't known it yet.
The lanterns kept rising.
The river kept moving.
And in the middle of the crowd, with the city lit up around them and the sky full of light, Jun held on.