Big Mistake!

That evening, right after they finished their last lecture while approaching the car park, a group of three handsome boys walked over to them.

"Hey, you are freshmen, right?" One of the boys asked.

"Yes," New answered with a frown.

"Hey, chill. We are from the engineering basketball team. You are tall and have the stance of a basketball player. We just want to invite you for a tryout."

"Basketball tryout." New turned to Anurak who was standing quietly beside him. "What do you think?" He asked.

Anurak shrugged, "We can check it out… When is the tryout?"

"Saturday morning."

Anurak and New shook their heads at the same time. "Not possible."

The leading guy's face fell when he heard their rejection.

"Okay, what about tomorrow? We always play on Fridays, in the evening. If you join us and perform well, our coach will definitely consider you without the tryout." He said excitedly.

"What's your name?" New asked the guy.

"Oh, sorry!" The guy apologized as he realized that he never introduced himself and his friends.

"I am Joke, this is Man and Rak. We are your seniors from Civil engineering."

"Nice meeting you seniors. I am New and this is my friend Anurak."

They all greeted each other properly and exchanged numbers and Line.

"What time is the Friday game?" Asked New.

"4 pm. We play for two hours." Answered Rak.

"We will see you tomorrow," New promised them before bidding them goodbye.

"More like you will be there." Anurak snorted after they walked away from the three boys. He didn't like how New just roped him into something he wasn't interested in.

New paused and grabbed his hand, forcing him to stop, too.

"You don't like basketball?"

Anurak shook his head in the negative and frowned.

It wasn't that he didn't like basketball. The problem was that he wasn't used to hanging out with so many people. But he couldn't tell New that.

"Oh," New nodded in understanding. "You can just watch me play then. And I can also teach you. It's not that hard." He ruffled Anurak's head and ran off. "The first person to get in the car gets the papaya salad you made last night!" He called out.

Anurak scoffed and ran after him.

This boy, all he thinks about is food and how to scam me.

"Do you play very well?" Anurak asked New when they were driving back to the hostel.

"Yes. And you?"

"Not much. I am more of a football guy."

"Football is also good. Do you want to join the football team?"

"I would rather join the swimming team."

"You can swim that much?"

"Yes."

"Then let's join both the swimming and basketball teams."

"I also have to join the basketball team?" Anurak asked in amusement.

"You don't want to?"

"Won't it be too much? Swimming, basketball, and then bike racing?" Anorak pointed out.

Just thinking about how he would have to keep a calendar for all these activities, Anurak could already feel a headache coming.

There is no way I am joining three sporting teams. He swore inwardly.

"The swimming team is enough," Anurak said outwardly.

"Okay." New shrugged as he maneuvered the car and parked it. They had gotten to the hostel.

"Doesn't matter. Even if you don't want to join any of the school sports teams, nobody will disturb you."

As the two friends walked off, they didn't notice a tall guy in cowboy overalls, silently watching them from the second floor of a building nearby.

It was Payu. After dropping King at home, he returned to school on a personal business but stumbled on Anurak and New. On a whim, he decided to follow them.

Having grown up bodyguarding King, it was Payu's job to know everything about his young master.

The last time King had anything related to friendship was in middle school, before his accident.

After the accident, he couldn't remember his friends and stopped rolling with them. When it was time for him to attend high school, he was shipped overseas. He spent ten years in Britain and in those ten years, King didn't make a single friend. His parents were worried and made him see a therapist. But nothing changed.

Due to his 'loner' lifestyle, he was exceptionally focused on his studies and entered the University at age 17.

When it was time for him to start liking and talking about girls, the ones who were brave enough to approach him came to regret it.

He was shipped back home because of one such case.

A girl had slipped into King's house on a dare. It happened that one of the staff members was her cousin and she had helped her to gain access to his room.

The unfortunate staff thought they were doing King a favor since their young master, who pays them well and never questioned their work ethics, hardly talked to anybody.

At the end of the whole incident, King nearly killed the girl and one of the staff members involved died in captivity.

At that time, King was already at the university. After his father went to a great extent to settle the case, he was instantly transferred back home to finish his studies in his parent's school.

Now, this same King, someone that four therapists had declared a psychopath after he made the said girl sleep with all his dogs for a week before he was discovered and stopped. That same King actually went out of his way to ask some random guy for his name?

Payu had good reasons to be curious.

Thinking that maybe King knew something about Anurak that he didn't know, Payu instantly had Anurak's life looked into. He was even more shocked when he discovered that Anurak was just a small boy from a small town, 7 hours away from Bangkok.

He was also from a middle-class home and in Sunny-Uni on a half-scholarship program. Anurak and King's paths had never crossed before. There should be no reason why he should want to know Anurak's name.

In the following days, Payu paid special attention to Anurak's movements and King's reactions.

He discovered two things.

First, Anurak seemed to hate King. Each time he arrived in class, the first thing he would do was to look for King and once he found him, he would give him a stink eye. Payu didn't escape this treatment either.

Secondly, Anurak made sure to stay away from King. If they happened to walk into each other in the corridors or anywhere, Anurak would drag New, so they could go another way. This was beginning to piss Payu off, but since King already told him to leave Anurak alone, there was nothing he could do.

As for King, the only time he seemed to care about Anurak's existence was first thing in the morning when he stepped into the class. He already knew where Anurak sat. He would first get to his seat and when he thought everyone wasn't watching him, he would steal a glance at Anurak. Thereafter, he would stop paying any attention to the boy.

Payu suddenly found himself having sleepless nights, worrying about the changes seen in King and what they could mean.

If only he knew that this was just the beginning…

In the evening on Thursday, with nothing to do, Anurak decided to do some cooking for himself, New and Sud. Sud had turned him into a personal chef after eating the Tom Kha Gai that Anurak gifted him.

While he was cooking, he discovered that he ran out of *Galangal and it was essential for the dish he was preparing. He turned off the heat and went out of his room. There was a mall by the entrance to the hostel area and if he was fast, he could do it in 20 minutes to and fro.

As Anurak walked out of his hostel, he took a longing gaze at his bike. New had refused to give him the key. He said since the bike was now for racing, it wasn't wise to randomly ride it around. In fact, New had arranged for a moving truck to come to transport the bike to the racing track first thing on Saturday morning. He told Anurak to see this period when he wasn't allowed to ride the bike as therapy. New said he should use this time to detach himself from the bike because once they moved it to the racing track studio, Anurak would only get to see his bike once a week.

Though Anurak felt that New was being overdramatic and didn't agree with his perspective, he still couldn't bring himself to argue or fight.

Anurak spent precisely 5 minutes at the mall. He bought the spices he needed and some canned beer, paid, and set off.

Just a few meters from the entrance of his hostel, two boys crossed him. One had a pocket knife poking at his stomach. They signaled for him to walk towards the car park.

The car park was quite large. It was built like a city's parking lot with floors. Since Anurak arrived at his school, this was the first time he would be entering the interior of the car park. His bike was always parked outside. Same with New's car.

He had always wondered why most students didn't use the front door, but as he got forced to keep moving, he kept looking around and discovered stairs that he suspected went to the hostels. With a plan to use the nearest one in his escape, he kept his eyes out.