Work Text:
'Shocking! Taiwan's famous band, Magnet, had a fatal car accident!'
Xiao Hai couldn't breathe. His feet pounded on the concrete as he ran, every heavy thud making his racing heart beat harder.
"Have you heard of Magnet?"
'One person was declared dead at the scene of the crash. The other was rushed to the nearest hospital.'
He crashed into his house, eerily silent in a way the world outside hadn't been, even alone on the street. The cluttered mess that was every available surface muffled Xiao Hai's gasping breaths, his muted, cut-off sobs. As usual, the house was empty. Xiao Hai's father wasn't home. He was alone.
"Everything will be alright."
Xiao Hai's life up until that point had been a series of disappointments and abandonment, of never being enough. Like the song that man—Neil—had played for him, Xiao Hai had felt swallowed up by a setting sun, his heart shattered. But that song…
"I want to piece them together to become a rising sun, giving you warmth."
Neil was in the hospital. Or he was already dead. The warmth of the sun was going away again, leaving Xiao Hai frozen.
No. No.
Xiao Hai hurried to the keyboard, a fervent, illogical compulsion taking over. His fingers found the keys to a tune he'd never played before. Clumsily, he played the first few notes of that song—Neil's song. Then Xiao Hai shuffled through the endless papers scattered around the keyboard until he found a song book he knew had some blank bars on the back pages. He flipped to them, grabbed a pen, and sat at the keyboard.
Neil couldn't die. The sun couldn't set. Not like this.
Xiao Hai had nothing, no power or skill or money, to help save Neil's life. But he had a keyboard and a melody and a jittering, intense notion that if he could remember the song—if he could just get it down on paper, something physical, something real—if he could play Neil's song, then somehow, Neil would be okay. It didn't make sense. It wasn't logical. But it was all he could do.
So Xiao Hai played, and drew in the notes, the runs, the rises and the falls on the composition paper. He jotted down the lyrics, even though his voice couldn't give them worth.
"How do I shout out my existence? Wandering in the dark, gathering courage."
The moon was high when Xiao Hai finished writing, his cheeks and composition paper wet with tears, his heart cracked in a million ways. Please, he begged, shutting his eyes and laying his forehead on the now silent keyboard. Please. Please be okay.
As if in answer, his phone dinged in his pocket. Xiao Hai shot upright, ripping his phone from his jacket and lighting up the screen to see the notification.
'Tragedy! Matt, of Taiwan's Famous Band Magnet, Dead at Twenty-Five'
Heart in his throat, Xiao Hai opened the news article. A lot of the information was the same as the article that announced the car accident earlier that afternoon, with the addition of naming which brother had died on impact and which one made it to the hospital. It wasn't until Xiao Hai read that Neil had made it through surgery and was recovering in a private room that Xiao Hai was able to take a breath—for the first time in what felt like hours.
"In the darkness, looking forward to the dawn."
Fresh tears spilled down his cheeks. He cried in relief, because Neil was going to live. His sun wasn't setting. He cried in sympathy, because Neil had just lost his brother. He cried because if he didn't, his heart might burst.
"Every piece of debris, I wish I could piece them together into a rising sun to provide you warmth."
"Everything will be alright," he whispered, and even though his voice didn't travel, was lost to the minutiae of stuff around him, Xiao Hai felt their truth as acutely then as he had when Neil spoke them under the sparkling sun.
Everything will be alright.