Chapter 1: Love by Design

At 7:42 PM, Pai was the last one at his desk. The message from Tong read: Sent the precedent studies. Check email na krub.

He clicked the attachment.

The document opened. The title page read:

Love by Design

A Novel

Pai stared. Precedent studies didn't have title pages. He scrolled down.

Chiang Mai University, 2003. The architecture faculty stood golden in the late afternoon sun. Paisarn "Pai" Wongwai, third-year student, leaned against the studio window, watching the courtyard below where the new juniors gathered...

Pai stopped.

Paisarn Wongwai. That was his name. His full, legal name—not a common one. He'd never met another Paisarn in thirty years of living, and now here one was, printed in some cheap romance novel's opening paragraph.

He kept reading. Curiosity, or something like it.

The novel's Pai was an architecture student nursing a quiet crush on his junior mentee, a girl named Ploy. He helped her with drafting assignments and brought her iced coffee during studio critiques. He was patient, gentle, and doomed—because the novel had another man in Ploy's orbit. A business faculty student named Ryu, same year as Ploy, who apparently did nothing but lean against doorframes and smirk.

The narration described Pai as "the second lead, the steady foundation she could always lean on, but never the architect of her heart."

Real Pai winced at the prose.

He skimmed faster. Chapter two: Pai and Ryu met at a faculty sports day and established their rivalry with stiff handshakes and loaded eye contact. Chapter three: Ploy cried over a failed model, and both men offered her tissues from opposite sides of the studio. The tension was mechanical, the dialogue predictable. The author—someone named Kamonrat S., according to the title page—wrote with the enthusiasm of a woman who'd read too many romance novels and absorbed all the wrong lessons.

By chapter seven, the Pai character had confessed to Ploy and been gently rejected. She chose Ryu. Novel-Pai accepted defeat with a tragic smile and the line: "As long as you're happy, that's enough for me."

Real Pai closed the file mid-chapter. He didn't care how it ended. The second lead would fade into the background, and the main couple would kiss under fairy lights or whatever these books did. He'd seen enough.

He typed a quick reply to Tong: Wrong file. Send the precedent studies.

Then he stood to leave.

His left leg had gone numb from sitting too long. He took one step, his ankle buckled, and his elbow caught the edge of the desk. A stack of project folders, his pen holder, and his empty mug slid off together in a clatter of plastic and paper.

Pai crouched, muttering. The folders had fanned out under the desk, their contents slipping free. He bent lower, reaching for a sheet wedged between the desk leg and the wall. Fingertips brushing the edge of the paper.

His temple hit the desk corner.

Crack. Sharp and dull at once. The pain was immediate, then distant, then gone, swallowed by a darkness that rose up like water.

The fluorescent lights buzzed. The rain began outside, tapping against the twelfth-floor windows. Pai's phone sat on the desk, screen still lit.

Then the desk was empty. The spilled papers settled. And the man who had been crouching there was no longer there at all.

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