#khanthau

Because now it's likely that Kan was trying to defend Thua against the pain he himself experiences every time he heard that word, that idea, he's trying to protect the person he cares about but also can't care about at the same time.

Because Kan is all this anger and pain and hurt and yearning in contrast to the softness and acceptance and patience and love that makes up Thua.

Thua accepts when Kan cannot and Kan fights what Thua cannot.

To fight and to accept but both to be hurt in the end.

Because Kan cannot accept and Thua doesn't want to fight but they both love and yearn and want.

I want them to touch and to touch deliberately and to see the heartbreak on both of their faces when they realize that they cannot keep that moment forever.

It's about how both of them know there could be more if they'd just allow it, how they can both see that in each other and understand it and yet there is still a barrier between them that cannot be scaled.

It's how Thua quietly accepts mistreatment, insults, the way other people speak about him, because he's simply accepted that he will not be accepted as he is but will not stop being who he is.

It's the way Kan cannot accept that and fights for him but also cannot allow his own identity to be his own and denies himself even a taste of what could be.

It's the way Kan protects Thua but also Thua protects Kan in return, Kan with fists and Thua with words.

It's how Thua is filled with a gentle acceptance of who he is and who Kan is while Kan nearly trembles with yearning and self-hatred and desire for what he cannot have that comes out as anger.

It's about the contrast of the boy who aches with what he wants but denies himself and the boy who holds sadness in a gentle embrace and accepts himself for who he shall be.

It's how they're supposed to be studying but Kan piles the books up and lies his head down, ready to sleep, wanting to rest besides Thua, to take that calm and that energy, to be there with him even though he can have no more.

It's the anticipation. It's what will happen. Will Kan find the courage to act on his feelings, even in secret? Will Thua try to talk to him more? When will this equilibrium of secrets and pain they've found fall apart? How much will Thua hurt and how hard will Kan break? What will the aching and yearning between them become with time?

Thua stands by and watches the world rage and his stepfather yell and people suffer and he stands to the side because he's so sure his voice is useless, worthless, and so he stays silent because speaking up does nothing.

Kan tries to pretend he isn't queer and jokes about girls and flirts madly and hides the way he stares after Thua and aches inside each time he hesitates and wants to be a hero but cannot even begin to handle the judgement he knows will come.

They are both the story of what happens when the world has told you that are you not who you should be and so you either shut down or you pretend to be who they want you to be and either way you just keep hurting yourself, beating yourself against the expectations that you can never fulfill.

Kan is trying to fit a hundred year old mold of a man that can never be replicated and Thua is wondering if disappearing is easier than living.

Kan creates a secret identity to try to comfort the only true person in his life because Thua reached out in desperation to the clouds in the sky and he could not stay silent but he also could not find the courage to be himself at the same time.

Thua shown a light at the sky in the day and he did not get a hero but the secret that the hero keeps, the side of the hero that is hurt and scared, the side that the hero must hide. He did not get a hero because the hero has always been following him but cannot help him.

Kan is constantly trying to connect to Thua as his hero but he is realizing that he cannot be the hero Thua deserves.

But he can be a secret. He can be a comfort. He can be a whisper and a cloud and he can try to keep the friend he loves but cannot love in his life, at his side, as happy as he can be.

When Kan, Akk and Wat talk about the school alone they talk about the freedom that will come when they're done, the people they will be able to be when this is over and they are no longer part of this larger whole.