An Old Sweet Story About Rebirth

August was bleeding out slow.

The last days of summer came quiet, thick with heat. In the cramped little apartment, the air conditioner buzzed with the steady fatigue of a machine pushed too far. Tyler had just come back from orientation at Greenville High Prep—technically “parent orientation,” but no one had batted an eye when he showed up alone, younger than most of the students.
He dumped the folder onto the kitchen table, pulled out the checklist, and started marking things off. Twin XL sheets. Toiletries. Laundry bag. Shower sandals.
Then he stopped. Blinked.

“...‘Proper undergarments for developing girls’?”
He stared at the line like it had personally insulted him.
How was he supposed to figure out what counted as “proper”? Or what exactly defined a “developing girl”? Where did you even buy that kind of thing?

He scratched at his scalp, brow furrowed deep. It wasn’t just the bra issue. It was all of it. The checklist. The pamphlet. The concerned tone the counselor had used when saying, “At this age, it’s important to have these conversations at home.”
At this age.
Tyler had never had a real version of “at this age.” Not for himself, and definitely not for Emily. No one had sat him down to talk about his own body changing, much less someone else’s. And Milltown High sure as hell hadn’t offered much more than a single broken-down health video from the ‘90s.

He glanced at the clock.
Could he Google this? Or ask on a forum somewhere without sounding like a creep? Maybe there were books—could you just walk into a bookstore and buy a guide to puberty without getting looked at like a pervert?
The doorbell rang.

He flinched like it had shouted.
When he opened the door, Shane was standing there. Casual, hands in his pockets, the last light of dusk catching in his hair.
“You look like a sad cucumber,” Shane said, completely serious.

From inside, a voice piped up brightly.
“He’s freaking out about buying me a bra!”
Tyler froze. Emily was lounging on the couch, watching cartoons, completely unbothered.

“Emily!” he hissed, face blazing. “I am not freaking out.”
“Yes, you are,” she called back cheerfully.
Shane raised an eyebrow. Tyler scrambled to shut the door behind him.
“I’ve got it handled,” Tyler muttered, ears still pink.

Shane didn’t press. Just turned toward the fading sky and said, “Come on. Walk with me.”
—
Evening had taken on that velvet glow—soft air, golden light peeling off the tops of the buildings. The path through the complex was lined with old sycamores, their trunks thick and twisted, their branches forming a kind of archway draped in the fractured light of sunset.

They walked in silence for a while. Tyler’s head still swam with bra sizes, brand names, and a desperate urge to evaporate into the pavement.
Then Shane raised one hand and knocked twice, gently, on the nearest tree.
The sound was soft, hollow, deliberate.

Tyler glanced sideways.
It was their code. Not covered by the contract.
Shane said, “What’s your plan for getting Emily everything she needs?”

Tyler exhaled slowly. “I… haven’t figured it out yet. But I will.”
Shane nodded. Then: “I have a cousin. She’s kind. Easy to talk to. Really good with kids.”
Tyler looked at him, confused.

“I’m just saying,” Shane went on, “someone like that might be helpful. Especially now.”
He let it hang in the air.
And just like that, Tyler’s whole posture shifted. Eyes lighting up. Shoulders unspooling. His voice came fast, hopeful. “That’s true. I do want to talk to Emily about all this. But I—I don’t know how.”

Shane tucked his hands into his pockets again, voice measured. “My cousin happens to be in Greenville this week.”
“If she went with Emily to get supplies, maybe talked to her a little… it’d probably be good for her.”
He said it casually. But he knew exactly what he was doing.

Tyler was like a hedgehog—you couldn’t get near him if he thought you were trying to help him. He’d bristle, retreat, assume it came with strings.
But offer something for Emily?
All his spikes folded away in an instant.

Tyler nodded quickly. “Yeah, yeah. That would be… amazing, actually. I just don’t know what to say to her.”
Shane’s voice didn’t change. “If you want, I can ask my cousin.”
Tyler's eyes shone with something that looked like relief—but he didn’t quite know how to say yes. So instead he hedged.

“Is that… okay? I mean, is that weird?”
He had no idea that to Shane, he already looked like a little fish—mouth open, darting toward the bait with all the subtlety of a cartoon.
Shane smiled faintly. “It’s fine. It’s not a favor for nothing.”

Tyler tensed.
“What do you mean?” he asked, quiet.
There was already a contract between them. Legal and complicated and binding. What more could Shane possibly want?

Shane looked out over the sidewalk. “If you draw something again—anything. A little comic. A story. I want to see it.”
Tyler blinked. “...Huh?”
Shane shrugged. “You forgot? I told you. I like your drawings.”

“But you never show me. So now I have to bargain.”
Tyler stared at the sidewalk like it might open up and swallow him whole. The heat had reached his neck. His ears.
“I—uh—I haven’t really drawn anything lately,” he mumbled.

“Really?” Shane’s tone was amused. “Not even a doodle after reading something? Not even a sketch in the margins?”
Tyler’s ears burned red.
How did he know that?

He stammered, “Those don’t count. They’re just—they’re just dumb little scribbles. Not real stories.”
Shane’s voice was gentle. “That’s why I said—next time you draw a real one.”
There was no real way to say no after that. Tyler gave a sheepish little nod, eyes lowered. “Okay.”

Shane’s lips twitched, but he kept his face neutral. “Deal?”
Tyler nodded again.
But after a few seconds, his head snapped up, eyes wide. “Wait—your cousin. She’s… really your cousin, right?”

Shane’s face twitched slightly. “Yes.”
Tyler chewed the inside of his cheek. “Does she… know? About us?”
About the marriage. About the contract. About what they were supposed to become.

Should he act closer to Shane? Would the cousin bring it up with Emily?
Tyler’s breathing went a little uneven.
Shane’s voice was calm, precise. “No. She doesn’t know.”

“I told my family I met a friend. Someone with good energy.”
“She won’t say anything. And you don’t have to act like anything you’re not.”
Tyler let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.

Then frowned a little.
How did he know I was worried about that? I didn’t even say it.
It wasn’t the first time. Shane always seemed to know. What Tyler was thinking. What he was scared of. What he didn’t have words for.

Sometimes it felt less like intuition and more like—telepathy.
Or something older than that. Something carried over.
From a life he hadn’t lived. And Shane had.

 
****
That night, Shane made the call from the balcony, his voice low against the crickets outside the apartment window.

The line crackled once before a bright, amused voice answered, too loud for midnight.
“Shane Xie? Is that really you?”
“You didn’t fall and hit your head or something?”

“Wait—are you asking me to help you win over a boy?”
Shane closed his eyes. Regretted this immediately.
Lin Zhiyao, his cousin—currently vacationing somewhere tropical—was laughing so hard she had to gasp for breath.

“I mean, damn, I heard from Auntie you ran off to Greenville like a man on a mission, but I thought she was being dramatic—turns out it’s all true.”
Shane said nothing.
“I have to see this kid,” she said gleefully. “What kind of boy gets the great Shane Xie—the human calculator, the finance god, the emotionally constipated android—to start acting like a real person?”

She cackled again. “Count me in.”
 
****

Emily had no complaints about getting help shopping for clothes.
In fact, when they spotted Shane and Lin Zhiyao waiting by the bookstore plaza, she waved both arms like she was hailing a parade float.
“Doctor said no running,” Tyler muttered beside her.

She slowed obediently to a speed-walk.
Up close, Zhiyao was all brightness and charm, her smile warm and open. “You must be Emily!”
Emily beamed. “Hi, Miss Zhiyao!”

Zhiyao ruffled her hair. “You’re adorable. I’m stealing you for the afternoon, just so you know.”
As Shane had expected, the two clicked instantly—like magnets from opposite ends of the age spectrum, bound together by sheer energy. Emily’s mischief met Zhiyao’s humor halfway, and within minutes they were giggling like co-conspirators.
Then Zhiyao turned to Tyler.

He was standing a little behind his sister, quiet, shoulders slightly hunched in his oversized hoodie.
The moment she saw him, her breath caught—not out of shock, but… clarity. Everything made sense in that instant. Shane’s sudden change in behavior, the rumors, the reason he’d dropped his carefully engineered life for something messier, realer, closer to the ground.
Tyler wasn’t beautiful in any polished or traditional way. But there was something about him—his stillness, the tension in his frame, the way his eyes flicked up and then away. Like he was trying not to take up too much space. Like he didn’t quite trust the floor not to vanish beneath him.

“I’m Tyler,” he said softly. “Sorry to trouble you.”
Zhiyao felt herself smiling in a way she hadn’t expected. “This isn’t trouble. Really.”
She jerked her thumb toward Shane. “If anything, he’s the one who causes all the trouble. That guy’s had the social skills of a brick wall since birth. When he told the family he’d ‘made a good friend,’ we all nearly fainted.”

“Zhiyao.”
Shane’s voice cut in, smooth and quiet, but firm enough to make her grin.
“Right, right. I’m off,” she said, looping her arm through Emily’s.

“I’ll take her to shop, get her bangs trimmed, maybe a snack or two. Let’s say… four or five hours?”
She turned to Tyler with a wink. “You’ve got school starting soon, right? Got everything you need?”
Tyler blinked. “Oh, I don’t need anything fancy. Just a few basics—cheap stuff’s fine.”

He pointed vaguely at the chain store across the street. “I was gonna grab a couple shirts. Maybe some sneakers.”
Zhiyao clucked her tongue like a disapproving aunt. “What? No way. New semester means new look.”
“And besides,” she added, her voice sly, “don’t you want everyone to be jealous of Emily? Having a big brother who looks like a total knockout?”

Tyler /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ flushed.
Emily looked up at him expectantly, clearly delighted by the idea.
“…I guess I’ll… look around,” he murmured.

Zhiyao patted Shane’s shoulder. “Good. Then it’s settled.”
“Shane, you’re on Tyler duty. Emily’s with me.”
She gave Tyler a cheerful salute. “See you in five hours, champ.”

Then she turned and strolled into the plaza, her Mary Janes tapping softly on the concrete as Emily skipped beside her.
Shane waited a moment, then looked at Tyler. “Come on.”
Tyler hesitated. “You don’t have to—I mean, I can go by myself. Really. I’m just getting stuff like—like socks.”

He pointed again at the chain store.
Shane frowned. “There?”
Tyler gave a small shrug. “Yeah. I mean… it’s cheap.”

Of course Shane didn’t shop in places like that. Of course he didn’t wear ten-dollar shirts or five-dollar boxers.
Tyler saw the subtle tension in his brow and added quickly, “I’ll go alone.”
But Shane was already steering him toward the main avenue, one arm slipping around Tyler’s shoulders as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

“You’ve got a card,” he said, low and calm. “You’ve got money. Why aren’t you using it?”
Tyler’s gaze flinched sideways. He didn’t answer.
He didn’t need to.

The money was for emergencies. For rent, for medicine, for bad days that hadn’t come yet but always might. You didn’t spend that kind of money on yourself—not when you came from where he came from.
Shane’s voice dropped. “Tyler. I told you—that’s part of the role.”
“You don’t want to break the contract, do you?”

Tyler snapped to attention. “No! I mean—no, I don’t. I just… I don’t need much.”
I don’t need anything. Not for me.
Shane’s reply came sharp, quiet, undeniable:

“You do need something.”
“You need to treat yourself like you matter.”
Tyler stopped walking for half a second, like someone had said something in a language he didn’t know he understood.

“…What?”
Shane didn’t repeat it. Just kept walking.
Then, almost offhandedly: “My cousin—she’s well-connected in the family. Close to my parents.”

“If we follow her suggestion, it won’t hurt when the time comes to meet them officially.”
Tyler nodded slowly, something fragile and obedient settling in his chest. “…Okay.”
And just like that, he followed.

 
****
By late afternoon, Tyler had the dazed expression of someone who’d just lived through a war.

He sat slouched in a chair outside a frozen drink café, legs stretched out like they’d stopped responding to orders. His arms dangled at his sides, fingers twitching now and then like they still remembered the motion of pulling shirts off hangers and unlacing new sneakers.
One long hour at the hair salon. Four more being dragged in and out of boutiques. Trying on shirts, jackets, pants, socks—so many socks—sneakers, even a watch. Underwear, too. Shane hadn’t missed a detail.
Tyler had tried to protest, more than once.

“It’s too much,” he muttered somewhere between the fifth and sixth store. “This is too much.”
Shane had simply said, “Wardrobe expenses don’t come out of your pay.”
Which wasn’t a real argument. It was a sentence so bluntly reasonable Tyler couldn’t refute it.

Now, his head rested against the back of the chair as he stared at the ceiling of the open sky, thinking faintly:
Shopping feels like a job.
Shane glanced at him, at the flushed cheeks and unfocused gaze, and finally gave in. He reached over and gently flicked the cowlick sticking out from Tyler’s bangs.

It was soft. Ridiculously soft. The kind of soft that made your fingertips linger without realizing.
Exactly the same as it had been—when?
Shane didn’t say a word. Tyler didn’t even blink.

That was how he knew.
Tyler only dropped his defenses like this when he was truly, thoroughly exhausted. In their last life, it had been the same. He wouldn’t open up through coaxing or warmth. He’d unravel slowly, when he was too tired to remember to stay guarded.
Shane pulled his hand back, voice even. “Tired? Let’s get a drink. Then we’ll meet up with Emily and head back.”

Tyler nodded, still glassy-eyed.
“What kind of drink do you like?” Shane asked.
Tyler tilted his head. “…Anything’s fine.”

Shane tried again, softer. “Apple? Orange? Mango? Watermelon?”
He already knew the answer.
Mango.

He remembered the island trip, the way Tyler had waded waist-deep into the ocean, chomping into a ripe mango, letting the juice run down his wrists like he didn’t care about anything else in the world.
But the Tyler beside him now just looked confused.
Mango?

Fruit?
In Milltown, fruit was something you bought on clearance. Watermelon was cheap in the summer—half a melon for a dollar. Apples, when they were bruised and overripe, went for cents a bag. You could slice around the rot and still get something sweet.
Affordable fruits. Sensible fruits.

Shane pointed at the menu behind them. “This place is known for their mango sago. It’s full of fresh mango. You’d like it.”
Mango…
Tyler remembered the bamboo baskets at the grocery store, labeled “Island Mangoes – Air-shipped,” fragrant and golden and so very out of reach.

Just then, a server walked past with a tray—two towering bowls of mango shaved ice.
The scent hit Tyler like a wave.
His throat moved as he swallowed.

“…It… it smells good,” he mumbled, a little shy, a little hopeful.
It was that tone—tentative, soft, like he wasn’t quite sure he was allowed to want something—that made Shane’s chest ache in ways he never said out loud.
He reached over again, brushing Tyler’s cowlick like it was the most natural gesture in the world.

“Then let’s try it.”
Tyler’s eyes sparked faintly. “O-Okay.”
Shane headed into the café.

Tyler watched him go, brain slowly rebooting. And then, slowly, quietly:
Why does he always ask me what I like?
What major you want.
What comics you read.
What fruit you prefer.

No one had ever asked him these things before—not in a way that meant they’d wait for an answer. Like his answer mattered. Like it wasn’t just a courtesy.
And truth be told… Tyler rarely had an answer.
He’d spent most of his life believing what he liked didn’t matter. That his preferences were indulgent. Unimportant. Unwelcome.

But this person—this strange, sharp, controlled man—kept asking.
And waiting.
And asking again.

Tyler stared at the swirls in the wooden table, his thoughts drifting in small, spiraling circles.
He didn’t hate being asked.
…He almost… liked it?

He felt something stir in his chest, unfamiliar and tender. Like a seed cracking open in hard-packed soil. Not blossoming—no, not yet—but rooting. Quietly, uncertainly, growing.
—
Shane came back carrying two drinks.

He handed one to Tyler: a wide, frosted cup filled with bright yellow mango sago, dotted with pomelo and tiny pearls of tapioca.
“Try it,” he said.
Tyler leaned in. The scent was immediate. Sunlight, syrup, and something soft.

He took a tentative sip through the straw.
His eyes flew open.
Sweet.

Unreasonably, gloriously sweet. Sweeter than watermelon. Sweeter than sugar water. Sweeter than anything he’d had in recent memory.
He kept sipping. And sipping. It was cold and sticky and sun-warm and he didn’t even care.
Shane’s voice interrupted, amused and soft. “Slow down. It’s cold.”

Tyler jerked back, flustered. “It’s just—it’s really good. Really sweet.”
Shane watched him, voice barely above a whisper.
“You like it?”

Tyler looked down, cheeks warm, nodding slowly.
“…Yeah. I like it.”