The walls in this house are paper thin. Their voices seep through the plaster like rain dripping from a cracked roof. I lie in bed and let the words soak into me, cold and familiar.
"She can't keep living like this," Dad says. His voice is low, even, like he's afraid anger will make it worse. He doesn't need anger to cut me open. "She's wasting her life."
Mom's voice follows, soft, an apology, as if I'm her fault. "She just needs time, Chaiyan."
Time. Like that will fix me. Like I'm a clock that's stopped ticking, a dead thing waiting for someone to wind me back up.
I stare at the ceiling. Glow-in-the-dark stars cling to it, some half-peeling, others gone completely. The gaps they've left look like a gap-toothed smile.
"She dropped out over a year ago." Dad doesn't yell. He never yells. He doesn't need to. "She's twenty-three. No school, no job. Just games and... whatever she does on that computer. That's not a life."
I pull the blanket over my head. It doesn't block out the sound.
"She's trying," Mom says, her words sagging under the weight of doubt.
I close my eyes, but the stars are still there, glowing faintly behind my eyelids.
°‧🫧⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𓆉𖦹*ੈ‧ 𓇼 ₊˚𓆝･:*.ೃ࿔⋆🐚‧°
The kitchen is bright and too warm. The sun streams in through the window over the sink, and Mom has the stove on high, a cloud of garlic-scented smoke clinging to the air. She's humming to herself, a song I think I've heard in every kitchen she's ever cooked in.
Dad is already sitting at the table, his tablet propped up against the sugar jar. He's not scrolling—he's watching me. His eyes flick to the clock on the wall, then back to me.
"Good morning," Mom says without looking up. She's busy ladling jok into bowls, the steam curling around her wrists.
"Morning," I mumble. The word feels thick in my mouth, heavier than it should.
Mom sets a bowl in front of me. The rice porridge is perfect, smooth and steaming, the egg on top shimmering like a tiny sun. She places a plate of fried pork belly and a dish of chili garlic sauce beside it, the colors so bright they almost hurt to look at.
"Eat," she says gently.
I pick up the spoon and stir the porridge. The scallions sink into the surface, disappearing like they were never there.
"What are you planning to do today?" Dad asks in Thai.
I keep stirring, answering in English. "I don't know. Stuff."
He swaps to English. "Stuff isn't an answer."
Mom sets the second bowl down for herself and sits across from me. "She's always researching things," she says quickly, her voice a little too bright. "It's good to stay curious, isn't it?"
Dad leans back in his chair, his eyes still on me. "Researching what?"
"Forums."
"Mai, when are you going to do something real? You can't just sit in your room all day playing games and looking at the internet."
The spoon slips from my fingers and clatters against the side of the bowl. "I'm trying, okay?"
His face doesn't change. "Are you? Because it doesn't look like it."
"Chaiyan," Mom says softly, reaching out to touch his arm, but I've already pushed my chair back. The legs scrape against the floor, loud enough to make both of them flinch.
"I'm not hungry," I say, and the words taste bitter in my mouth.
I leave the kitchen before they can say anything else.
°‧🫧⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𓆉𖦹*ੈ‧ 𓇼 ₊˚𓆝･:*.ೃ࿔⋆🐚‧°
The cool air in my room feels like a relief after the sticky warmth of the kitchen. I close the door and press my back against it, my pulse pounding in my ears.
On my desk, the monitors glow softly, their green light spilling onto the piles of notebooks and empty mugs. The game I left running last night is still there, frozen mid-action. The reef stretches out in front of my character, bright and alive, untouched by pollution and expectations.
I slide into my chair and put on my headphones. The hum of the ocean fills my head as I unpause the game. For a moment, I can pretend it's enough.
I press forward into the reef. My character swims through the glowing kelp, the camera tilting gently with the current. The fish move in hypnotic loops, always the same. Predictable. Safe.
But not safe enough to drown out Dad's words. They replay in my head, sharp and brittle. Are you trying? Because it doesn't look like it.
I push the thought aside and dive deeper, into a trench where the light barely reaches. The shadows here stretch long and jagged, like broken promises. The screen glows faintly, green and blue, but the edges feel too small, like they're closing in.
A knock at the door makes me flinch.
"Mai?" Mom's voice is soft, almost hesitant.
I pause the game, the underwater hum cutting out mid-note, and pull off my headphones. "Yeah?"
The door creaks open just enough for her to peek through. She's holding the plate I left behind on the table.
"You didn't eat," she says.
"I'm not hungry," I reply, but my stomach twists, a quiet betrayal.
She steps inside anyway and sets the plate down on my desk, nudging aside an empty mug and a tangle of charging cables. The scent of garlic and jasmine rice floods the room, sticking to the air.
"You should eat," she says again, her voice gentler this time, like she's trying not to spook me.
I don't look at her. My fingers twitch over the keyboard, even though the game is paused.
"You spend so much time in here," she says after a moment, her eyes flitting over the cluttered desk, the glowing monitors. Her words are careful, each one balanced on the edge of a knife. "Have you thought about doing something else? Something more?"
The question feels like a splinter under my skin. I grip the armrests of my chair, my nails digging into the fabric. "I'm trying, okay?"
The words come out sharp, louder than I meant.
Her shoulders tense, just slightly, but it's enough to twist the splinter deeper. She picks up one of my notebooks from the pile, flipping it open without asking. The pages crackle softly as she turns them, and I catch a glimpse of the diagrams inside—coral formations, migration patterns, notes scrawled in messy loops.
"You were always so good at this," she says quietly.
The knot in my chest tightens. I reach out and close the notebook gently, but firmly. "I don't do that anymore," I say.
She doesn't argue. Instead, she smooths the blanket on my bed, her fingers moving in neat, practiced lines. "Your dad worries, you know," she says eventually.
I laugh, a short, bitter sound. "Yeah. I know."
Her lips press together, but she doesn't say anything. She steps back toward the door, pausing with her hand on the frame.
"Just think about it, Mai," she says, not looking at me. Then she leaves, closing the door behind her with a quiet click.
The plate remains on my desk, untouched, the steam curling faintly in the air. She must have reheated it in the microwave before she brought it in. I don't deserve the food.
I unpause the game and dive back into the reef, but the hum of the water doesn't fill my head the way it's supposed to.
The fish are still there, moving in their endless, predictable loops. The coral sways with the current, each motion smooth and practiced. It's all the same. Too much the same.
I steer my character deeper, into the trench again, where the shadows grow darker and the light fades completely. I keep going until the screen is black.
"There's a cave somewhere around here," I mutter to myself, my voice small and tinny beneath the headphones. Narrating to myself calms me, helps me focus. It's a habit I picked up from years of ABA therapy. One of the only nice things my therapists did to me.
No one is listening, but it makes the silence less sharp.
I steer my character toward a jagged cluster of rocks. The gap between them is narrow, too narrow to be obvious. But I've read the forums. I know where to look.
"There it is," I say. The camera angle tilts as my character squeezes through the gap, and suddenly I'm inside.
The cave blooms around me, its walls pulsing with bioluminescent algae in shades of blue and green and violet. It's too bright, painfully bright, and for a moment I squint. After the darkness of the trench, the light hurts my eyes.
The algae shimmer like sequins sewn onto water. The walls ripple with color, like veins beneath skin, alive and thrumming.
"Beautiful," I whisper, though it feels inadequate.
The hum of the ocean changes here, a deeper, richer sound that reverberates through my headphones. It feels like it's coming from inside me, echoing in my chest.
For a while, I just swim. I collect meaningless treasures—shells, doubloons, pixelated fragments of data that glitter like promises. I take screenshots of the algae, framing them just so, as if anyone but me will ever see them.
The walls glow brighter the deeper I go, the colors shifting in patterns that almost make sense. Almost.
Time dissolves. I don't know how long I stay in the cave, drifting between the light and the hum. It feels safe here, like the world outside doesn't exist.
But eventually, the edges of the cave close in. The light becomes too much, too blinding. The patterns stop being beautiful and start feeling like static, buzzing behind my eyes.
I steer my character back out, into the open reef.
The coral is still swaying, the fish still looping in their endless, predictable paths. Everything is exactly as I left it, exactly as it's always been.
But it doesn't feel the same. The colors seem muted now, the movements slower. The reef feels small, cramped, like the boundaries of the screen are pressing in.
I press pause again. The reef freezes mid-sway, the fish suspended mid-loop.
I pull off my headphones and let them dangle around my neck. The quiet of the room rushes in, sharp and unforgiving.
On my desk, one of my old notebooks sits beneath a pile of empty mugs and crumpled receipts. I pull it free.
When I open it, the pages smell faintly of ink and dust. Inside are sketches of dolphins, diagrams of migration patterns, notes scrawled in the margins with a kind of reckless enthusiasm I barely recognize as my own.
I flip to a page near the middle, where a half-finished drawing of a reef stretches across the paper. The lines are delicate but purposeful, each one connecting to the next in a way that feels deliberate, meaningful. I trace them with my finger, and for a moment, I feel...
I close the notebook before I can name the feeling.
The game is still frozen behind me, the reef suspended in its endless sway. I grab my phone instead and scroll mindlessly through the forums, skimming post after post about dive sites and marine life and mysteries too deep to solve.
One thread catches my eye: "The Deepest Places on Earth."
Most of it is the usual—the Mariana Trench, hydrothermal vents, the kind of places that show up in documentaries narrated by voices so calm they feel unreal.
But there's a comment at the bottom that stops me.
"There are things we'll never see, never know. The ocean doesn't give up its secrets easily."
I read it again. And again. The words stick to me, heavy and wet, clinging like seaweed around my ankles.
The ocean doesn't give up its secrets easily.
I set my phone down and stare at the paused reef on the screen.
For once, it doesn't feel like enough.
The notebook sits on my desk, open to the page with the half-finished reef. It's staring at me, daring me to pick up a pencil and finish it. My hand hovers over the desk, twitching toward the drawer where I know the pencils are, but I stop myself.
The lines blur the longer I look at them. They twist and ripple, like the paper has turned to water. I blink hard, but the rippling doesn't stop.
I close the notebook and shove it back under the pile of mugs and wrappers, burying it.
I turn back to my game and press unpause, but it doesn't feel like waking up.
The hum of the ocean is thinner now, stretched like a thread pulled too tight. The fish dart in their loops, the coral sways, the light flickers across the sand—all of it the same, all of it wrong.
I steer my character forward, deeper into the reef, but there's nowhere to go. The edge of the map looms, the water growing darker, emptier. The world stops here.
I let my character drift in circles, aimless. I zoom in on a school of fish, watching them swim the same path over and over again. It's like they're trapped. Or maybe I am.
I quit the game.
The screen goes black, leaving my face reflected in the monitor. I look pale, ghostly, like I've already started to fade.
The forums are still open on my phone, the cryptic comment staring back at me: The ocean doesn't give up its secrets easily.
My fingers hover over the screen, hesitating. I want to reply, to ask the poster what they meant, but the words won't come. Instead, I scroll through more threads, more posts about things I've already read a hundred times. None of it feels real anymore.
There's a knock at the door.
"Mai?"
It's Mom again. Her voice is soft, but there's something underneath it this time, something careful. I don't answer right away. I want her to go away.
The door creaks open. She steps inside, looking the plate of jok again. The rice has gone cold, the egg congealed, but she doesn't seem to notice.
"You didn't eat," she says.
I don't look at her. My eyes move back to the monitor, where my reflection flickers faintly.
She sits on the edge of my bed, her hands folded neatly in her lap. "You know, you used to love drawing," she says, her voice light. I'm a timid, feral creature and she is my zookeeper. "You'd sit at the table for hours with your pencils and notebooks. You were so focused."
"I don't do that anymore," I say again, the words sharp enough to cut.
Her hands twitch in her lap, her fingers twisting together like tangled wires. "I know," she says. "I just..." She trails off, her words dissolving into the quiet.
The silence stretches between us, thick and heavy. She sighs and stands, smoothing the wrinkles from her skirt.
"I just want you to be happy, Mai," she says, not looking at me.
I don't answer.
She leaves, closing the door behind her with a soft click.
The plate of food sits on the desk, untouched. My stomach growls faintly, but I ignore it.
The ocean doesn't give up its secrets easily.
I grab the notebook again, my fingers brushing the worn edges of the cover. I flip it open to the half-finished reef and stare at it until the lines start to ripple again.
I pick up a pencil, just to see what will happen.
°‧🫧⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𓆉𖦹*ੈ‧ 𓇼 ₊˚𓆝･:*.ೃ࿔⋆🐚‧°
The stars are out again, not the ones in the sky, but the ones stuck to my ceiling. Their glow-in-the-dark powers have faded over the years, leaving them faint, ghosts of their former selves. I stare at them, letting my eyes trace the constellations I made as a kid. None of them are real.
The rice porridge is still on my desk, untouched. It's cold now, the surface cracked like dry earth. The egg stares up at me, accusing, its edges curled inward, retreating. The pork belly has lost all its shine, dull and stiff as cardboard.
I could eat it. I should eat it. But the thought makes my throat close up, so I leave it.
The notebook is still open, the reef half-drawn, half-forgotten. I drew a few lines earlier, faint and hesitant, but they don't connect. They hover on the page like ghosts, unsure of where they belong.
The girl who wrote these pages feels like a stranger.
I close the notebook and set it back on the pile. It teeters for a moment before settling, like it might fall over if I don't watch it.
I grab my phone and scroll through the forums again. The threads are the same as always—people sharing photos of dive sites, asking for equipment recommendations, speculating about the unexplored depths of the ocean.
I skim through them, but none of it sticks. It all feels flat, like trying to read a book underwater.
The comment is still there: The ocean doesn't give up its secrets easily.
I tap the screen, open the thread again, and stare at the words until they blur.
The ocean doesn't give up its secrets.
I think about the reef in my game, the cave with its glowing walls. The cave is a secret, but not a real one. It's just a secret someone else made up, programmed into a world that doesn't exist.
I set my phone down and stare at the ceiling again. The stars are dimmer now. Or maybe my eyes are just tired.
°‧🫧⋆.ೃ࿔*:･𓆉𖦹*ੈ‧ 𓇼 ₊˚𓆝･:*.ೃ࿔⋆🐚‧°
The house is quiet except for the faint hum of the refrigerator and the occasional creak of the floorboards. Mom and Dad have probably gone to bed by now. I picture them in their room, the light off, the space between them wide and heavy.
I wonder what they're dreaming about. If they dream at all.
I wonder if I'll dream tonight.
I restart my game, just to see if it feels different. It doesn't.
The hum of the water is thin and tinny, like an echo of an echo. The colors feel muted, the movements slower.
I steer my character toward the edge of the map, where the water grows darker and emptier. There's nothing out there—no fish, no coral, no light. Just a black void that stretches forever.
I press forward anyway, letting my character drift into the darkness.
The screen goes black. Then the hum of the ocean seems to grow louder. The screen flickers, and something glows in the distance.
It's faint, just a pinprick of light, but it pulses like a heartbeat. Probably a bad cell on the monitor. One you don't notice until the screen is all black.
I don't know why, but I can't look away.