“So does anyone know what happened next?”

Lion let the words of his homeroom teacher wash over him as he continued to sketch on his exercise book’s cover. He had been drawing a man with the mask of a white monkey, resplendent gold clothes and a chiselled, muscular torso.

“Lion?”

Lion shivered as he realised his name had been called. He flicked his eyes up to see Miss Bpuu staring hard at him, clearly having noticed his distraction. Lion cleared his throat,

“The monkey warrior Hanuman was now stuck in the demon palace of Longka with five thousand demon guards between him and the exit.”

“That’s correct!” Miss Bpuu looked pleased. “Our glorious hero must have been pretty terrified no?”

“This is boring,” another student groaned quietly.

“This,” Miss Bpuu snapped, batting the student round the back of the head with the text book, eliciting a chorus of giggles from the rest of the class, “is our national epic!”

Miss Bpuu pursed her lips disapprovingly, “No one bothers to read anymore, you're all too busy texting each other and going to the mall.”

Lion smirked as he remembered the thick old book containing the stories of the Ramakien that was currently nestled in his backpack. Lion had grown up learning about the courageous monkey warrior Hanuman and how he had assisted the benevolent god prince Phra Ram against the forces of evil.

His grandmother had used to read him the myths every night before bed. After every nightmare, Lion had cuddled his Hanuman plushie close, knowing that the monkey would protect him.

Miss Bpuu sighed and continued, “Hanuman managed victory over the demon guards of Longka, but his difficulties had only just begun as the Demon Prince Intrachit was approaching.”

Lion wrinkled his nose. Here was the true baddie of the story, the one that had haunted his dreams when he was younger.

“Now, Intrachit was the son of the twenty armed and ten headed evil giant Tosokan and his wife Nang Monto. So as you can imagine, he was a pretty scary guy,” Miss Bpuu nodded, “Intrachit was an archer and could fire arrows from his magical bow that would turn into snakes!”

Lion shivered again, he hated snakes. Ever since he had been bitten by a pit viper on a school hiking trip and nearly lost part of his leg to necrosis. It had almost put an end to Lion’s dancing career and he’d had to do rehabilitation exercises for months.

A moment later, the bell rang out loud and clear through the school, causing everyone to jump and start shuffling their books away in their bags. Stretching after a long, hard day.

“Hey, hey P’Lion,” Bluebell groaned, coming over and nudging Lion’s arm. “I’m hungry, let’s go eat barbeque.”

“Can’t,” Lion shook his head, “I need to run to the store and get groceries for Grandma.”

“Ehh,” Bluebell whined petulantly, “but if I go straight home my mom will make me do chores.”

Lion chuckled but shrugged as he stuffed the last of his books into his bag and swung it up over his shoulder.

“But I want to show you this boy I’m talking to,” Bluebell continued to complain as they walked out of the school and headed for the busy street outside. It was an unbearably hot day and Lion’s pale blue uniform shirt was sticking uncomfortably to his bronzed skin.

They passed by the scrap of concrete that the other boys used to play football on after school. Half of them were already shirtless and lunging across the pitch in powerful movements.

Lion tamped down on the urge to hug his arms across himself. He was already self conscious about his own skinny frame. No matter how many exercises he did or how much sweet milk he drank, he couldn’t seem to bulk up.

“You have bad taste in boys,” Lion murmured absently, looking at Bluebell who was trying to open up the Line messaging app to show him photos.

“And you don’t?” Bluebell snorted. “You had a crush on Boon for a whole year!”

“That’s before I knew him,” Lion muttered, casting an anxious look around to check that the other boy was nowhere near.

Boon had joined the school two years previously and quickly amassed a popular following, including some of the more loutish boys from the year. Boon was tall and reasonably good looking and the day he had first decided to flip Lion’s lunch tray in front of the whole school and laugh nastily had been the day Lion first felt heartbreak.

Ever since then, Lion had been hounded by the same group of boys who considered him too weak, too smart, too annoying.

Lion wasn’t all that short, but he was skinny and instead of football he did ballet, with calloused toes and aching joints. Dance was one of the few times when Lion felt truly free, able to express any story he wanted through arching and flexing his limbs.

His grandmother had taken him to see a traditional dance performance of the Ramakien once. He had watched as the men moved, their faces concealed by intricately carved masks, their skin oiled and glistening as they pounced across the stage.

Lion had slept fitfully that night and woken up embarrassingly hard as he remembered the dancer that had played Hanuman, his abdominals rolling as his strong thighs stamped against the wooden platform.

“You’re zoning out,” Bluebell interrupted, jerking Lion back into the present and the busy, noisy street.

Pickup trucks were speeding past, road workers crammed on the backs of them wearing large brimmed hats and fabric strips over their faces to shield from the sun. A hoard of motorbikes wove in and out of the obstacles of pedestrians and flea ridden stray dogs. Some of the drivers wore orange bibs denoting them as taxis.

“Yeah, sorry,” Lion replied, flagging one of the bikers down and clambering on the back, “I’m in a rush, I need to get there before they close the pharmacy. I’ll see you at school tomorrow okay?”

“Whatever,” Bluebell shrugged, her eyes now focussed back on her phone. “Hey,” she said, lifting up the screen. “Does this sticker look flirty to you?”

Lion shielded his eyes to look at the twerking white rabbit cartoon.

“He sent you that?” Lion frowned as Bluebell nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah,” Lion laughed as the bike began to pull away from the curb, “you’ve got terrible taste in boys.”