Last night I learned that a friend of mine, L, had died.
I had known L for years. When I first heard it, I refused to believe it. I kept asking the same question again and again: was it really him?
The first thing I was sent was a news report from China. The basic story was that two Chinese nationals had been found dead in a luxury hotel in Thailand, and one of them had been strangled. But the report did not include identifying details, so I still could not accept that it was him.
Then more links came in: a foreign death record site in Thailand, and reports from Thai media. At that point there was no room left for denial. The name on the passport and the blurred photos were enough to tell it was the same person. My mind went blank.
The other person was also easy to identify. It was clearly L's boyfriend, A, because long ago L had sent us photos of him.
I went back through our group chat history. In early June, L had told us he was going to Thailand for a trip and was even planning to bring back local specialties. His last message was sent at 6:31 p.m. on June 3. After that, he disappeared.
According to Thai media reports, hotel staff discovered the two bodies in the room on June 7. The two of them had not been seen since after June 4. Thai police believed that L had been strangled on the bed on June 4, and that A hanged himself from the bathroom door handle two days later. They were found about ten hours after that.
I had seen stories like this before, but they had never hit me in the same way. At most, I used to feel that it was tragic. But when the person is someone you actually know, someone vivid and real, and then suddenly they are just gone, disbelief takes over. The whole world starts to feel unreal. The shock lands all at once.
I cannot guess what happened between them. I only know that in those two days afterward, A must have been swallowed by regret and grief before choosing to die as well, and in such a painful way. It is unbearable to imagine, and I do not really dare to.
I opened my chat with L on my phone. The profile picture was gray. He would never come online again. His status still said that he wanted to play Pokémon Sword and Shield on the Switch. I can only hope he gets to do that somewhere else.
This was not the first time death had come this close.
Last year, a colleague of mine died too.
Whenever I had to work late helping clients solve project issues, he was there with me, coordinating things and helping clear obstacles. To me, he was a dependable coworker, someone I could trust. Then one day I opened my social feed and saw an obituary. The same feeling crashed into me again.
Not long before that, we had held a celebration dinner because the project was going smoothly. I can still remember the scene clearly: he got drunk, and several of us took turns helping him back. Then, suddenly, he was gone.
Reality has always been cruel. Maybe I am simply too sensitive to this kind of thing, but I always carry a naive belief that the people around me will just remain where they are, that death is something far away, something that belongs to news reports rather than real life.
Only at moments like this does the truth become impossible to ignore: life is unimaginably fragile. If we are still here, then we have to live well while we can.