It's always been you

Starting over again

"So you stole it from, Daddy?" Shu Yi's eyes are wide and disbelieving. His older brother was the best person he knows after his daddy and his baba. So hearing that was a shock to his young mind.

Shi De smiles sheepishly. "It looks pretty, so I take it." He sounds so unrepentant with a tint of pride in it. "But don't do something similar, hao? You are the angel of the family. And I'm the black sheep."

The little kid shakes his head and hugs him tightly. "Nah... we all love you, gege. Let's stay like this, okay? Forever?"

Shi De always has a soft spot for his younger brother's persuasions. So with one last nod of his head, he slips under the covers and accompany Shu Yi towards the dreamland.

~~~

One missed call. One minute too late. One missed train. One unnoticed code red alert.

In life, sometimes one small miss of something can lead to a very different outcome from what it should be if it wasn't missed. But there are too many things like that in the span of a person's life. As YU wallows in the pool of his tears, eyes blurry and mind so preoccupied, he has almost a hundred percent chance of missing that code red alert that's blinking on his home screen.

But maybe... heaven finally took pity on his misery and point him in the right direction. His head tilted to the side, eyes welling with tears as he gazes at the blinking red light. It took a few seconds before Yusuke managed to register in his foggy brain what it means. 

His entire body that was trembling earlier, now stops at a standstill, his eyes never leaving his phone. His hand hesitantly creeping forward to pick it up, so slowly as if he was afraid that just like any images of Sam or Lin Zi Hong all over this apartment... one touch and they're gone.

When the tip of his fingers touches it and it remains blinking with the alert, he snatches it like his life depends on it. He moves it nearer to his face as his convo with Sam before they went to the orchard for the first time in this second lifetime resurface in his mind.

"I downloaded the Heartbeat app on both of our phones." 

"Oh... so who's our point of contact then?" 

"Each other,"

"You are my life, YU. So I think it is just normal to place in your hands its safety. Do you trust me enough to save you when you need saving?"

His hand tremors and the phone almost fell back to the floor, but YU's reflex kicked in and he managed to save it. His lips parted as tears fall one after another. "Oh... god... Oh my god." His other hand covers his eyes as he sobs there while hugging the phone over his chest. "Xie xie ni... Xie xie ni."

YU wipes his tears, his chest is rising and falling like he ran a marathon and his hands are sweaty now but he tremblingly checks the location. The Heartbeat app on his phone is the Taiwanese version... so it only means one thing... 

So when he sees Lyudao boldly blinking in red on the map of the app, YU couldn't help but close his eyes and savor the moment. The questions, the doubts, the fears... he set it aside for now until he sees him once again. Because at this moment, at this very second... the fact that he's alive... is more than his fragile heart could handle right now.