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You know what I really love about it? I love that nobody explained Pat's feelings to him, nobody told him 'you're acting like this or that you must be into him'. He felt what he felt, and yes he got a nudge from Paa's 4 signs, but he went on this journey of discovery on his own, he really sat with himself and worked it out, and thought it through. He went all the way back through their history and questioned what he felt and did even then. His realisation came from within, it wasn't something anybody pushed him to, not even Pran. It came straight from his own heart.
There's a line in Pran's perspective from the novel that I really love that sparked for me here: There were times when I looked at Pat's face while treating his wounds and wondered what he meant to me. Here, Pat is the one who is going on that journey of trying to figure out what Pran means to him, and he's doing it not because anybody pointed something out to him, but because he felt something within himself and chose to explore it rather than ignore it like he would have done before. And he doesn't really discuss it with anybody, not Paa, not Korn, not Ink. Even when they try to draw him out about what he's thinking he demurs. He doesn't want anybody else's voice in his head about this. There's going to be enough of that if what he discovers within himself is love, enough voices saying this and that. And because it's Pran, something in him knows that he has to be absolutely sure if this is the path he's going to take. He can't go into this on a whim or anything less than 100% certainty. Because once he makes that move there will be absolutely no turning back.