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The last thing he feels before he falls into the darkness is a sharp pain spreading throughout his body and the deafening sound of a gunshot.
Big gasps for breath as he sits up in his bed.
The clock next to him shows 2:34 a.m. on March 16, his sheets are tangled around his body and his back is sticky with sweat. The unbearable pain disappears and leaves behind only a strange feeling of fear.
He treats it as a bad dream, hopefully not a prophetic one. Even when he wakes up in the morning, he has a strange feeling of déjà vu during his workout.
When Pol tells him something about relationships and jealousy, he can bet he's had this conversation before. Word for word, in the same place. Something is definitely wrong. It shouldn't be happening because it has already happened.
Big stops treating it like a strange dream right after Porsche and Vegas disappear, Tawan runs away, later Big receives a message from Kim about kidnapping of Porsche's younger brother.
He stops treating it as déjà vu when all the commotion in the warehouse begins. When Tawan stabs him in the back and points a gun directly at Porsche ready to shoot. So he throws himself in front of a bullet, just like in the dream, and bleeds on the dirty floor of the warehouse, just like in the dream. He can still hear distant screams, and feels someone's hands on his face.
-
Big wakes up.
The clock next to him shows 2:34 a.m. on March 16, and the sheets are twisted around his body, his back covered in cold sweat, just like last night. Last night...
He raises up from the pillow and looks around. The room he was in was not a hospital room, where he would have been placed given his injuries, but his room.
Big assumes that he was just sent back to the guards' rooms because there was no need to keep him in the hospital wing, but that would only work if his wounds weren't as bad as he thought, and from what he remembered, his injuries were... injuries were…
Big panickedly begins to examine his body in the darkness, expecting to feel dull pain from stitches or bruises. It is strange that there are no bandages on his body, or any hints of recent surgery, which was common with bullet wounds.
And,
There were no wounds at all. Neither knife nor bullet wounds. No scars or bruises. He was sure he wasn't wearing a bulletproof vest that day.
Big jumps out of bed, puts on a T-shirt and pants, and then heads barefoot to the door. He burst into Arm and Pol's room without knocking, ripping the blanket off the sleeping bodies curled in their arms.
"What the hell happened?" he asked, sitting down on the edge of the bed, irritated.
"What?" Pol had just woken up and was looking at him with sleepy eyes, and Arm blinked next to him, covering his naked torso with a blanket.
"At the warehouse," Big says impatiently. "Is Porsche alive?"
Pol and Arm look at each other in confusion. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"Tawan ran away and kidnapped Porsche." Big gestures. How could they forgot what happened just yesterday? Was it possible that Big had been in a coma for months and that's why these idiots didn't remember anything?
"Vegas... Vegas took Porsche to a warehouse and then Tawan was there and he wanted revenge or something and they tied Porsche up."
Big tried to piece together everything he remembered into one coherent story. "And Kim and I came to rescue Chay-Porchay, but Tawan was furious, so he attacked him and, and I, I... died?"
"What are you talking about," Arm's sleepy face is now clearly irritated. "You're not dead, and unfortunately, you're still keeping us awake."
"You were just dreaming, don't worry about it, go back to sleep," Pol mumbles, putting his head back on the pillow.
"No, it was not a dream. It was definitely not a dream." Big tried to prove it, getting out of bed. "That's what I thought at first, but then it happened again and," and he didn't know how to explain it properly. Pol and Arm are already looking at him with obvious embarrassment, so he silently leaves the room, leaving the other two guards behind.
He doesn't want to hear embarrassment or sympathy, he wants peace and understanding of the situation.
He is scared and confused, he wants answers to his questions, but he doesn't know where to find them.
So he runs back, pounding his bare feet on the cold tiles of the complex.
He spends the rest of the night and the morning in his bed, cross-legged and staring at the wall, trying to figure out what exactly happened.
Several times, when he was a young boy, he had a strange dream. In the dream, he would wake up and start getting ready for school, at some point the front door to his room would open by itself and he would wake up again. Not in reality, only in his dream. Big gets out of bed, gets ready for school, the door opens, and he wakes up. He remembered the fear he felt at not being able to wake up normally, but once he did hear a real alarm clock ring and got up for real to get ready for school.
He wondered if he should have waited for the alarm to ring this time, because for some reason the door did not open by itself.
Big doesn't go to help Kinn when Porsche runs away, the man wouldn't listen to him anyway, and he doesn't go to workout or to lunch either. He just sits in his room and tries to think, his legs hugging his chest and his eyes staring at his desk clock.
The dark screen next to him shows 6:30 a.m. on March 16. The clock works, and it definitely didn't break at 2:34 on the 16th.
It wasn't the next day. This was the day.
At 18:56 he receives a short message from Kim, with the address of the warehouse and a short text.
Khun Kim
They took Chay, I need you here.
And if Big is delayed for an extra five minutes to put on a bulletproof vest, it doesn't matter. Today, he didn't feel like taking a bullet for anyone.
With the vest on, he has a chance to live to see the next day.
With the vest on, he has a chance to wake up tomorrow.
The knife gets stuck between the layers of his vest, so Tawan shoots him in the head.
-
Big wakes up.
It's 2:40 a.m. on March 16 when he leaves.
Today is not his day off, and neither is tomorrow. He ran away from the complex, basically just disappeared before his shift, just a few hours before Porsche was going to escape. Normally, he would have been fired for this, normally he would have been afraid to come to the complex tomorrow, but did it really matter if that phantom tomorrow might not come at all.
He runs as far as he can, away from Vegas with Tawan, away from Kim and his boy-toy, away from the warehouse and knives with guns.
He is spending his fourth today at home, in a small, dusty apartment on the outskirts of Bangkok. He doesn't answer Pol's or Chan's calls. Big also ignores messages from Kim.
At least he won't get shot, he reminds himself. He won't die and wake up tomorrow and find a new job outside the mafia business. He still doesn't get paid enough for this shit.
All day, he basically does nothing. He just sits on the couch and looks at the wall with the clock on it.
The clock hands show 11:30 pm when Big falls asleep.
The door doesn't open, but alarm doesn't ring.
-
Big wakes up in his room in the complex, and the clock shows 2:34 a.m. on March 16. His back is covered in sticky cold sweat, and the blanket is uncomfortably wrapped around his throat.
He decides to spend his fifth loop on research. All night long he watches stupid comedy movies about time loops and writes down things that will potentially help him find a way out of this hell. Big isn't sure if this will give him anything but fatigue and a black eye, but it's worth a try.
The main reasons for his being here could be:
A) the goal of finding and exposing his killer (but Big already knew who the killer was from the beginning, so this option was the least likely and easiest to fulfill)
B) He needed to atone for all his sins and accept the fact that his life was sinful.
There was no option C. The clock shows 4:48, in a few minutes he should be informed about the disappearance of Porsche, and in a couple of hours Tawan will escape. This time he is going to follow the script, making changes only at the end of the day.
In general, he tries to stick to the old plan. Big helps Kim arrive at the warehouse and rescue his boyfriend, kills the minor family's bodyguards, and unleashes Porsche in the same way. The new thing is to kill Tawan before he decides to attack Porsche or Big.
The body falls to the ground with a heavy thud, and Kinn gives him an unreadable look.
It was hard to gauge the change given that he'd never actually seen the story end in the warehouse. When Big leaves the place, a couple of ambulances are already standing around, and Arm is actively telling Kinn something. In one of the ambulances, Porsche is arguing with his younger brother, and it's then that he notices the youngest Theerapanyakun is missing. Normally, Kim was willing to dust off the object of his adoration, but today he left him alone. No explanation for the situation, right after the kidnapping. Many of the family's bodyguards were still not used to kidnappings and shootings, so Big was pretty sure how confused the young man must have been. If he thought this was a cowardly and rude thing to do, Kim will never know.
"Wouldn't it be fair to let Khun Kinn do it?" Arm's tongue running his lips.
He and Pol sat down with him almost immediately after returning to the complex.
"What?"
"Well, killing Tawan. "Wouldn't it have made more sense to let Kinn get his revenge?"
"I did it because Tawan was threatening Porsche's life."
"Threatened his life on the ground?"
"If I hadn't shot him, he would have attacked us and tried to kill Porsche and Khun Kinn."
"And you're sure about that because?"
"Because I know what I'm doing."
He also meets Chan on the way to his room. The man gives him a strange, elusive look and walks past.
-
On the sixth day, the watch flies into the wall. Plastic box cracks and the glass scatters on the floor.
On his sixth day, Big spends his time researching the situation more deeply. The worst part of the whole time-loop-situation was the loneliness and lack of someone to talk to. Ken was out of complex, and even so, he didn't seem like the kind of person who could hold a conversation about conspiracy theories and quantum immortality. His conversations with Arm and Pol always came down to one thing. He begins his search for answers with a lecture from Pete on quantum physics.
It's strange how the guard accepts his story without question, perhaps trained by Khun Nu's strange behavior and unconventional whims, but it was to his advantage.
"In theoretical physics, time loops are often associated with the concept of closed time-like curves, which are hypothetical paths in space-time that return back on themselves. One potential theoretical cause of the time loop could be the presence of exotic matter with negative energy density, which could theoretically allow for the formation of closed time curves."
"What am I supposed to do with this information?"
"Essentially nothing, if you are sure that you have not passed through strange portals and have not participated in illegal human experiments, this information is unlikely to help you. Though there's always the possibility that the loop is caused by some kind of mission you have to fulfill."
"The mission?"
"Yeah, I saw it in one of Khun Nu's movies."
"And how do I know what exactly is my target?"
"I'm afraid you’ll not know it, until one day you wake up tomorrow and realize that you did everything right."
"What if I don't have a mission?"
"Then I can assume one of the theories of immortality, according to which you wake up every morning in the body of a different variation of yourself from another universe, but you already said you don't always die, so..."
Big decides to continue his research at the bar when he runs into Chan. He remembers that he hardly ever crossed paths with the man in any of the loops, and on the very first day, Chan never showed up. Tonight he's off the night shift, so he stands in the middle of the bar in a dark room and watches Big finish the first bottle of some expensive pretentious whiskey.
"What advice would you give me?"
"Go to your room, we'll talk about it in the morning," Chan's voice doesn't sound angry or offensive, instead he sounds almost disappointed.
"I don't think I'll see you in the morning," Big's eyes fall to his wrist, pretending to look at his wristwatch. "Vegas will take Porsche in an hour, and Tawan will escape in three, and then there will be panic here and you won't care about me at all."
"Porsche won't get away, Pete is guarding the cameras. You know he's one of the best-"
"He's Porsche's best friend. I wouldn't be surprised if he let it go," he hopes Chan hears him grumble. "That was stupid, letting Tawan into the house and locking up Porsche in hopes of keeping them both under your control."
"Maybe, but clearly not as stupid as getting drunk before you start your shift," the voice has grown closer to him.
In the darkness of the room, he sees a figure approaching the bar. Chan's fingers wrap around the neck of empty bottle and easily set it aside. His hands shake slightly, clearly not expecting such an ease.
"It's not what I expected you to do, not what I thought you would do."
"Oh, you must have thought a lot of me, sir. Did I not live up to your expectations?" He doesn't speak, though the venomous words are on the tip of his tongue.
"Perhaps I was wrong."
Big puts a bullet in himself a few minutes before Porsche leaves his cell.
-
"Are you really going to leave him there?"
He decides to let things run their course, repeating over and over the lines he had already said. Big felt like an old actor being forced to do the same play until he died. Except that this time he decides to pay attention to a detail that he has missed all the previous times.
Kim gives him an angry look from the passenger seat of the car. "Is this any of your damn business?"
"No, but you seemed pretty interested in this guy. You seemed more cheerful than before," he says.
"Keep your eyes on the road, Big."
Big shoots Tawan again, this time before he can get up, but this time it does make a difference. As Big walks past one of the ambulances, he can bet that in addition to the angry Porsche and Chay, he also heard Kim's voice.
Big’s encounter with Chan in the hallway also changes. Man's hand just slides onto his shoulder as he comes closer, and there's something about the way Chan says: "good job," and "maybe that's what you were supposed to do," that's very different from the last few times they've talked-the last few times he's lived that day. And some unpleasant strange feeling blooms in his lungs.
He falls asleep thinking that maybe this was really something he should have done.
-
It's 2:56 a.m. on March 16 when he finds him.
"What would you do if you were living the same day over and over again, and when you thought you should be out of the loop because you had accomplished the mission, you still woke up on the same day?" Floor of the room is cold, and the ram's rack rests uncomfortably on his shoulder.
Chan narrows his eyes at him. "A loop, like you're in a time loop?" He clarifies.
"Hypothetically, as if I'm stuck and don't know how to get out."
"And, hypothetically, you're sure that completing the mission should allow you to live on?"
"Yeah, that's kind of what Pete said and what happened in those stupid movies."
"Maybe the mission you completed was just the wrong mission, or you didn't fully complete it." Chan lets out a light laugh and returns to his glass. This time they opened some imported wine from Ukraine.
"Let's say I killed the guy who killed me and made me relive this day, but I did it right this time," he bites his lip.
"Wait, what movie are you talking about?"
"Happy Death Day, of course. There was also a movie about two people who got stuck at the wedding of the main character's sister, but there was a portal and physics. I didn't have a portal and I don't know physics."
"So you're like a little Bill Murray."
"Who?"
"Bill Murray, the one who was in Groundhog Day, don't tell me you haven't heard of it."
"Of course I hadn't heard of it, how would I know something so old," he muttered.
"This movie was one of the first of its kind, and if you should be inspired by anything for your drunken hypothetical stories, it should be this movie."
"Oh, I'm sorry I don't know any old movie classics, sir. Are you disappointed in my behavior?" His tongue runs along the edge of the glass before he takes a sip.
"Yeah, that's definitely the case. You're just as greedy as the main character. He also seemed to live the same day without knowing how to get out. All over again in the Groundhog Day."
"And what did he do to get out?"
"He fell in love with a person he hates."
Did that mean he now had to make Tawan fall in love with him? It definitely had to be something else, some subtle change in his normal behavior that really helped him last time.
"Well he also definitely rethought his attitude and started to help the people around him-" Then it hits him, something different and new was definitely Kim and their small, seemingly unfortunate conversation.
"What, don’t know anyone who would fall in
love with you ?" A soft voice snaps him out of his thoughts.
"No, it's just that I, well, I-"
"Never been in love?" It fit.
"Well, yeah."
"So no one and never? Isn't that strange for someone like you," the fingertips slide along his jawline before stopping and dropping to his neck. Big was sure that Chan would never allow himself to be like this when man was sober, but something about the idea that the older man only allowed himself to be in this state only in his presence was strangely satisfying.
So, if he's acting on impulse, who can really blame him? Either way, there's a chance this will all be erased and it won't matter. Though for now, when he pulls Chan in for a kiss that feels like the most dangerous thing he's done in days, it's worth it.
Especially because a second later, Chan kisses him back, and it's better than anything he could have imagined.The thing is, after all these times, Big has become kind of desperate.
"So, I stole your first kiss?"
"What makes you think it’s was?"
"It's noticeable. Not bad, but noticeable." Chan says.
"Then teach me how to do it right," he says, pressing his lips to the man's again.
They fall asleep before Kinn gets everyone up and makes them look for his boy.
He wonders what happens to the other versions of him. The ones that didn't die at the end of the day from bullets and the ones that weren't left bleeding on the cold floor of the warehouse. Or did everything go on as usual in those variations and that Big just returned to its place and everyone lived on? Did he live at all? Maybe Big did die at the end of the day while he was sleeping. Would Chan wake up with a cold body on the other side of the bed?
-
He even finds it amusing. Waking up every day and already knowing what all these people want, what they are doing and what they are going to do. Big already has a plan but there is not enough time to implement it all the time. The problem was that something else was distracting him. Someone else would. Living the same day over and over again, could he deny himself a little fun?
Big follows the basic plan he has created, but every time he talks to Kim, it falls through.
At 8:41 p.m. on March 16, he knocks on the door of Chan's room a little more insistently than usual.
-
"”Pulp Fiction” is a really good movie, I liked it, even though it's a little cliché to be a favorite movie for someone like you."
"Why I can’t remember telling you about my favorite movie?" Maybe now he understands Kim a little more.
That was the problem. Big has had the opportunity to get to know Chan, slowly, with each new day revealing him a little more, seeing more and more sides of him. Chan, on the other hand, saw him for only a few hours in total. Chan didn't have the opportunity to get to know him better, to develop these strange feelings for him as a person, not as one of his many charges. Chan hadn't had the chance to fall in love with him.
-
Big just walks up to Chan with a list of guards and a small bottle of something alcoholic, sits down next to him, and continues to talk about whatever is bothering him. Mostly small and insignificant things, and then Chan brings it up.
"That's a pretty bold for someone as jealous and patient as you," Chan remarked.
"Jealous and patient?" his eyebrow slides upward. "What's this about?"
"It's okay, forget it."
"Not until you tell me what it was all about," he insists.
"I just think too much about things that shouldn't normally bother me."
"And..."
"And that makes me feel strange. I don't think it's supposed to be like this."
"You're just like Khun Kim."
"Just as pretty and cocky?"
"Just like an idiot who doesn't know what to do with his feelings."
-
Everything happens exactly when he stops trying.
This time he doesn't drink with Chan. Surprisingly, the older man is much more interesting sober. His movements are much more gentle, and his lips feel so natural on Big’s body. His hands slide down his back.
"If this were your last day on earth, what would you do?"
"I would spend it like someone who should have their last day."
He leaves Chan's room just as Porsche is about to disappear. Big meets a man on the basement stairs, with a gun in his hand and wild eyes. Looked more like a scared animal. He does nothing to stop him. Some things were just meant to be.
When Tawan runs away, it becomes harder for him to act surprised. A new thing is his own hand, which rests on Kinn's shoulder and tells him that Porsche loves him, that everything will be fine. This time, Kinne's gaze are confused.
Big decides to say this as soon as Kim gets into the car.
"You shouldn't blame yourself for that, Khun Kim."
"I know."
"But you still feel bad," he concludes. "When we get him, don't go away, boy deserves to know the whole truth, and he deserves you to be the one to tell him."
"I should keep him away from this business," Kim says, staring out the window. Sometimes Big forgets that Kim is still a teen, with his own little problems and emotional constipation. The scariest scion of the Theerapanyakun family is definitely in love for the first time in his life and doesn't realize it.
"You deserve him," he says as Kim gets out of the car and turns toward the warehouse.
At the warehouse, he wastes no time in unlocking Porsche. Big knows that he is safe at this point. He doesn't kill Tawan this time, but he does shoot him in the leg.
"But if I can never be happy-"
This time, Tavan doesn't finish speaking because Kinn puts a bullet in his head before he does.
Big realizes that he has succeeded at least at one thing when Porsche slaps him for allowing Kim to follow his brother and give him private lessons. He gets a second slap while he tries to prove to Porsche that the private guitar lessons were really just private lessons. Big thinks he deserves it anyway.
Big’s meeting with Chan in the hallway ends with him being dragged by the hand to his own room.
"So how was your last day?" Chan’s hand was on his hip now.
"What?" He said, a little too quickly.
"This morning you asked me about my last day. Was it worth it?"
"I think so." Big leant in and kiss him.
-
When he wakes up, the clock shows 2:34 a.m. on March 16.
"You should change the batteries," says deep voice. This time he doesn't wake up alone in an empty room, this time he has someone with him.
"I think they stopped yesterday while you were asleep."
“Mhm, I think they are.”