Pharan Got What He Wanted... Khem Is Letting Go
Pharan telling Khem they’re not in love would already hurt. Khemjira The Series Episode 6 then has the audacity to spend its time explaining exactly why Pharan might desperately need to believe that. And unfortunately, this has put me in a terrible position. Because now I understand him better.
I am also more annoyed with him.
Because Pharan has spent his entire life learning that being a shaman comes with consequences, that helping somebody can go horribly wrong, and that loving people absolutely does not mean you get to keep them. So when he tells Khem this is impossible, I believe Pharan believes that.
What I don’t think he’s prepared for is Khem finally listening. And that, more than the rejection itself, might be where his real problem starts.
Here’s What We’re Really Dealing With
Episode 6 feels quiet compared to some of the heavier episodes we’ve had, but quiet does not mean empty. Almost everybody here is dealing with something inherited.
Pharan inherits his family’s fear. Charn inherits memories and guilt from a relationship he didn’t even know he’d had. Khem is dealing with the emotional weight of Khemmika’s life while trying to make decisions about his own.
And then there’s Ramphueng, who somehow manages to create an entirely different problem by showing us that even after everything, there is still some humanity in her.
So this episode isn’t really asking whether the past matters. Obviously it matters. The interesting question is whether these people are actually trapped by it.
And This Is Where the Trouble Starts
And nowhere is that more obvious than with Pharan.
We go back to 2010, where young Pharan’s mother is already weak and sick. This is a much younger, sweeter Pharan. He snuggles with his mother, and she believes he’s going to become a great shaman even though both of them know she won’t live to see it. Then she tells him that as a shaman, he can’t have a lover.
And immediately I’m sitting up. Because what exactly are our rules here?
Is she teasing him because he’s so attached to his mom? Is this actually an absolute prohibition?
The episode doesn’t give me enough to settle that question completely. But psychologically, I’m not sure it needs to. Because Pharan is hearing this in the same childhood where shamanism, danger, and losing somebody you love are becoming tangled together.
Then his mother dies. His father later betroths him to Prim specifically so Pharan can’t become a shaman, with the father’s debts also involved in that choice. His father blames Master Sek dabbling in black magic for his wife’s death. Eventually Pharan’s father leaves the country, Master Sek takes care of the debt, and tells Pharan he can choose what he wants.
And I really like one detail here: Master Sek apologizes for what happened to Pharan’s mother, but he doesn’t ask Pharan to forgive him.
That is Pharan’s emotional education.
Good intentions don’t guarantee good outcomes. Helping people can have consequences. Family obligations can become traps. Love certainly doesn’t make anybody safe.
And suddenly present-day Pharan’s behavior makes a lot more sense. It doesn’t make it nicer. There is a difference. Because after all this, we return to Pharan telling Khem that they aren’t in love, that it’s impossible and that Khem shouldn’t cause trouble.
And Khem apologizes. He asks Pharan to pretend it never happened.
That is the part that gets me. Because Khem isn’t continuing to push. He’s embarrassed, he’s hurt, and he’s offering Pharan exactly the escape route Pharan supposedly wants. Then the next morning, Khem offers him breakfast and Pharan won’t even accept that.
Trauma explains the wall.
Khem still got hit by it.
And then something very important happens.
Khem starts letting go. He stops trying to be nice to Pharan in that way. And later Pharan seems to assume Khem is still doing exactly that when he isn’t.
And oh. Oh, that’s interesting.
Because you can’t insist that somebody withdraw from you and then be bewildered when they begin withdrawing.
What I love about this shift is that Khem doesn’t have to force Pharan into some dramatic confession. He doesn’t have to prove anything. All he has to do is respect the boundary Pharan himself created.
Now Pharan gets to live in it too.
I’m sympathetic to why Pharan built that wall. I’m still charging him for damages.
This Is Getting Embarrassing
Meanwhile Charn goes meditating and accidentally discovers an entire reincarnated relationship problem. During his vision, he sees Khemmika’s friends Jin and Da flirting. They’re planning to tell Khemmika about their relationship after Pawat comes back from the war.
Da has glasses. Jin doesn’t. Important investigative journalism.
Da is Charn’s past life. Jin is Jet’s.
And they were secret lovers.
Well. That seems relevant.
Especially because what Charn discovers isn’t purely romantic.
He later sees Jin and Da crying at Khemmika’s funeral and blaming themselves for making her lonely. So Charn has not just inherited knowledge of intimacy with Jet’s past self. He’s inherited guilt attached to Khem’s past life as well.
And Jet doesn’t consciously have that information.
Jet manages to fall asleep sitting upright while meditating, and Charn finds him adorable. Later Jet wakes up while Charn is mumbling apologies and saying Jin’s name. Jet doesn’t know who Jin is. And yet he strokes Charn’s head, then feels weird about having done it.
I’m not filing official reincarnation-soulmate paperwork with the government yet. But Charn now knows something about his relationship with Jet that Jet doesn’t.
Whether past lives determine their present relationship or not, Charn can’t un-know that. And that’s why I think Charn and Jet make such an interesting counterpoint to Khem and Pharan this week.
Khem knows what he wants in the present, but he’s trying to let it go.
Charn has just discovered something he wanted in another lifetime without knowing any of it existed.
One man is trying to escape attachment. One is having ancient attachment delivered directly to his brain through meditation.
And Jet?
Jet also finds time to spy on the Pong, Khem, and Pharan situation and discuss Khem’s love life with Charn.
A man of many responsibilities.
Oh, So We’re Doing THIS Now
And then Ramphueng saves a baby.
Which was not on my Episode 6 bingo card.
This starts with Earn, who’s been lying in bed for two days, repeating Big’s name and neglecting her baby. Her vital force is with Big. Grandma Si and Khem go to Big, and Big has a pregnant wife who is not Earn. He also tells Khem that being a horrible man is apparently an inevitable part of getting older.
Excellent philosophy, Big. No notes. Except all of the notes.
Grandma Si gets Earn’s vital force back, so magically, the immediate problem appears solved.
Emotionally?
No.
Because magic cannot cure the fact that Big is Big.
Khem has already seen Ramphueng near Earn’s baby. Then Earn and the baby disappear almost immediately after Grandma Si and Khem leave. So naturally Ramphueng looks suspicious. Pharan gets called in. Earn has gone to Big. She wants to know whether he still loves her, and he either can’t or won’t answer. But when Khem and Grandma Si arrive believing Ramphueng is responsible, Pharan says she isn’t there. What’s happening with Earn is Earn.
Then the situation escalates until Earn is holding the baby up with a car coming toward them.
Everything freezes.
Big gets the baby.
Earn collapses.
And because Khem apparently hasn’t suffered enough humiliation around this man today, he thinks Pharan saved the baby.
Pharan tells him to stop nagging.
Pharan. Chill.
Because it wasn’t him.
It was Ramphueng.
And this might be my favorite supernatural development of the episode because Grandma Si understands what the choice means. Ramphueng still has that much humanity left. She remembers what it means to be a mother.
Now please notice that I did not say Ramphueng is redeemed.
Absolutely not.
Saving this child doesn’t erase everything else. What it does is make her more complicated.
If motherhood can still reach whatever remains of Ramphueng’s humanity, then she isn’t functioning as something purely monstrous. And that changes the question I have about her ending. Maybe this isn’t heading toward conventional redemption at all.
My theory, and we’re putting THEORY in bright blinking lights here, is that whatever humanity remains in Ramphueng could affect her eventual fate.
Could that mean some possibility of a better rebirth? Maybe.
The evidence is nowhere near strong enough for me to plant a flag on that. But after this choice, I’m watching for it.
Apparently We Needed One More Problem
And because Khem has finally decided he’s going to start letting Pharan go, this is of course when Pharan’s former fiancée arrives. Because nobody told the plot Khem needed a minute.
Prim and her father show up, and her students are preparing a play commemorating the Holy Man’s Rebellion. She asks Pharan to perform a ritual. We also know Prim and Pharan were previously engaged. Then there’s talk as Prim’s family leaves about loving him and winning his heart.
Later Ake and Thong report that Prim is serious and that her father wants a grandchild. Pharan says Prim means well and it’s nothing that needs to be stopped. Khem overhears this and thinks about it as a present-life commitment. And the timing is awful. But I am keeping one eyebrow firmly elevated here. Because we have not heard Prim herself directly say that she wants to marry Pharan now. The show certainly seems to be encouraging us and Khem to make that connection. Maybe that’s exactly what’s happening. But it could also be withholding part of the story. I’m waiting for the full Prim file before I convict anybody.
What matters right now is Khem’s perspective.
Pharan has told him their relationship is impossible. Khem is starting to retreat.
And now he has a former engagement sitting there looking suspiciously like evidence that Pharan might have a completely different future available to him.
Then Pong arrives and aggressively hits on Khem.
Khem isn’t interested. Pharan scolds Pong.
And I am simply placing this behavior gently beside Pharan declaring that he and Khem are not in love. I’m not calling that proof of romantic jealousy because it isn’t. But for somebody demanding emotional distance, Pharan remains very involved. Also, Charn considering Pong as a possible option for Khem?
Charn.
Give him a moment. The man has barely finished being rejected.
This episode does feel quieter after the heavier material we’ve been dealing with, and honestly, I think that’s mostly a strength.
Pieces are moving.
Charn is now part of the group and learning magic. Jet can see ghosts again. The emotional logic behind Pharan’s resistance finally has some history. Ramphueng becomes more complicated. Most importantly, Pharan’s coldness isn’t being treated as attractive simply because he’s mysterious. We’re being shown where it might come from.
My frustration with him now has context.
I can look at that child being taught, directly and indirectly, that love, shamanism, sacrifice, and loss belong in the same emotional box, and understand how we got this adult. I can also look at adult Pharan refusing Khem’s breakfast and say, “Absolutely not.”
Both things can be true.
And Now We Have a New Problem
What fascinates me most going forward isn’t whether Khem can convince Pharan to change his mind. I actually don’t want him to keep trying right now.
Pharan told him no. Khem appears to be taking that seriously. So let him.
Because now Pharan has a different problem. He has spent this episode acting as if distance is the safe, responsible solution.
Fine.
What happens when he actually gets it? That’s where I think the romantic tension becomes much more interesting. Not because Pharan’s rejection secretly doesn’t count.
It counts.
But because choices have consequences in the present too. And this episode has spent a lot of time showing us people who inherited unfinished emotional business from somebody else. Maybe the next step is seeing what happens when they create some unfinished business of their own.
Meanwhile Charn has information Jet doesn’t have, Prim’s actual intentions still need clarification, and Ramphueng has just demonstrated a capacity for mercy that I absolutely did not trust her to have.
And apparently we’re getting bugs next.
Fun!
One Last Thing Before I Go
But Pharan is still the problem I can’t stop thinking about. His childhood gives him very real reasons to associate attachment with danger. I understand why he might believe refusing Khem is the responsible thing to do. But Khem finally seems prepared to accept the answer he’s been given. And I desperately want to know whether Pharan is prepared for that too.
So tell me this: Do you think Pharan truly wants Khem to let him go, or is Khem actually backing away going to be the thing that finally forces Pharan to confront why he’s been pushing him away?
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