THE mother of Bangkok pub fire victim Lu Weiye thought nothing of it when she did not get a reply to an SMS she sent to him jut after midnight on New Year's Day wishing him 'Happy New Year'.
But when she read newspaper reports the next day of the blaze at the Santika pub, she frantically tried to reach him on the phone to no avail.
Her fears were confirmed when she called his flatmate and close friend Jeremy Lu, 25, later that day.
He told her: 'I'm sorry. I don't know what happened to Weiye. He is missing.'
The two were friends for more than 10 years and were studying business administration at the Assumption Business Administration College in Bangkok. Lu left Singapore to join his friend Jeremy last June.
Lu, 26, was among three Singaporean men killed in the blaze. His badly charred body, along with air traffic controller Leslie Yeo Bee Soon, 40, was only identified last Sunday through matching with his mother?s DNA which was sent from Singapore.
A total of 64 revellers died and more than 229 injured when a fire raced through the popular Santika Club shortly after midnight on New Year's Day.
When Madam Lu arrived at the Police General Hospital morgue in Bangkok on Monday, she sisistered on seeing her badly-charred son's body against the advice of relatives accompanying her.
She said: 'He is my own son. No matter what happened, how could I not see him one last time?'
At Lu's wake on Wednesday morning, a handful of relatives were seen preparing offerings to be burned. His body was flown back from Bangkok on Tuesday night in a sealed brown coffin and was taken directly from the airport to the wake held in the void deck of his block of flats at Bedok Reservoir Road.
Madam Lu, who who refused to give her full name, said: 'A blue butterfly flew into my bedroom on Sunday afternoon and I thought maybe he had returned home.'
Blue, grey and black were Lu's favourite colours, she said.
Lu was among seven friends who were on the second floor of the pub when the fire broke out.
They held on to each other as they made their way down to the first-floor entrance but Lu who has holding onto Jeremy's hand suddenly lost his grip in the darkness.
Seconds after Jeremy made it out, the ceiling came crashing down, blocking the entrace.
Madam Lu said: 'Jeremy told me that maybe a friend behind Weiye fell down and he went to help him.'
Lu's body was found next to a friend who also died, she added.
'I would like to think that he died helping a friend.'
Lu will be cremated at Mandai Crematorium after a funeral service on Friday morning.
