An Old Sweet Story About Rebirth

It was a quiet, clear autumn night.
Outside the windows: a few crickets in the grass, a cool breeze that slipped through the trees like a whisper.
But inside Tyler’s head, it was all thunder and chaos.

Shane’s face—unreasonably handsome in the soft lamplight—was still etched in his vision. The faint, clean scent he always carried lingered in the air between them, crisp and cold like early morning air.
Was that the echo of his own heartbeat in his ears, or Shane’s voice replaying again and again?
Tyler’s lips parted at last. He was going to say something—something dumb, probably, or embarrassing, or worse—

“Ty!”
Emily’s voice shattered the moment like a stone through glass.
Tyler nearly fell off the couch.

Shane reached out instantly to steady him, hands firm but careful.
Tyler recoiled on reflex, bolting upright. His heart was still hammering as he turned to see Emily blinking groggily in the hallway.
“You’re up? What are you doing out of bed?” he asked, voice too high, too fast.

Emily rubbed at her eyes. “I fell asleep? Did the news already end?”
“Yeah,” Tyler said, glancing at the clock. “It’s almost nine.”
She shuffled into the living room, dragging her fuzzy slippers, and flopped onto the couch with a yawn. “I’ll wait for the nine o’clock segment then. Our teacher says watching the news helps with essay questions.”

She picked up the remote, flipped the TV back on, then looked up and blinked.
“Oh. Shane’s still here?”
Tyler nearly panicked.

His voice came out way too loud. “We were just—just talking about comics!”
“And he’s leaving now!”
He shot to the entryway like a man on fire, hand gripping the doorknob like it might save him.
Shane didn’t flinch. Didn’t rush. Just let out a soft laugh.

“Yes,” he said. “I was just about to go.”
Tyler kept his eyes on the floor. He couldn’t meet Shane’s gaze if his life depended on it.
But then Shane moved.

He leaned down, effortlessly catching Tyler’s darting eyes with his own.
“About the question I asked earlier…”
Tyler tried to step back.

He couldn’t. His back was already pressed to the door.
He opened his mouth to say something—anything—but the inside of his head felt like a snowglobe someone had shaken too hard.
Shane’s face was close. Too close. And closer still.

Tyler’s chest seized—he braced himself, heart leaping into his throat—
But Shane didn’t kiss him.
He only touched their foreheads together.

Just that. Just skin to skin, light as dusk.
“The answer doesn’t have to come right away,” Shane murmured, his breath brushing Tyler’s ear. “Take your time.”
And then—like some perfectly timed cosmic joke—the righteous, orchestral opening of the nightly news blasted from the living room speakers.

Tyler’s brain short-circuited.
“Uh—learning!” he blurted out.
Shane blinked. “…Learning?”

“I—uh—I just wanna focus on studying right now!”
“…And?”
“And you said you were worried about my grades, right?” Tyler said in a rush. “So I think—I think we should wait until after finals! At least after finals!”

Shane straightened with a soft chuckle and ruffled Tyler’s hair. “Alright.”
 
****

To be fair, Tyler’s excuse wasn’t pure panic.
After Mid-Autumn break, he genuinely didn’t have a second to spare.
Being in the Computer Science program at Greenville meant every week was a warzone of assignments and technical exams. But Tyler had also joined a student team for the university’s Centennial Celebration competition.

Their idea?
A cheerful, fast-paced animated short introducing Greenville’s history to new students.
Tyler was the only one with a proper laptop—and his machine just happened to have a high-end animation software installed. Add in the fact that he had an artist’s eye and an intuitive sense for motion and design… and of course, he ended up as team leader.

His teammates handled the script, the voiceover, and different segments of the backgrounds. But the heavy lifting—the animation itself—was all on Tyler’s shoulders.
And during the day, his mind was consumed by it.
Once, while he was reviewing motion sequences with two of his roommates, Zhou Peng leaned over with a conspiratorial smirk.

“So, Fish,” he said, “what’s going on with you and Shane?”
Tyler’s ears went red on impact.
But his gaze never left the screen. “Haven’t had time to think about it.”

“After we finish this project… and pass finals… I’ll deal with it then.”
Zhou Peng tilted his head one way, Xu Rui tilted the other, like cartoon characters reacting in sync. Then they locked eyes and nodded solemnly.
Classic overachiever logic.

Still, sometimes—at night—when Tyler lay curled in his narrow bunk texting back and forth with Shane, he couldn’t help but wonder:
Does he really… like me?
After that night, Shane hadn’t brought it up again.

His tone stayed the same. Calm. Respectful. Like always.
But Tyler couldn’t unsee it now.
Every glance over his shoulder. Every silent gaze across the room. Every moment he turned around and found Shane already watching him.

Tyler pressed his hands to his burning face.
If Shane liked him—then what about the contract?
Were they still calling it a fake marriage?

And if it wasn’t fake… then what did that make them?
But even if Shane liked him, that didn’t mean Tyler knew how he felt in return.
He didn’t know how to name it.

Every time he tried to think it through, his thoughts turned into a tangled mess of feelings and memory and uncertainty, like a ball of yarn attacked by a very enthusiastic cat.
Eventually, he just gave up.
Tossed his phone aside, dragged the blanket over his head, and burrowed into the safety of darkness like a dumb little fish trying to hide in the sand.

 
****
Time passed.

The leaves on the trees around Greenville’s old clock tower shifted through orange and gold, then fell away entirely under a slow drumbeat of autumn rain.
By the time the sky cleared and winter touched the air, only the bare limbs remained—brown and bare against the century-old brick walls of the university.
Today, Tyler’s team was meeting again.

Their usual spot: a local fast-food diner near campus called “Greenville Grub.”
He waved to Zhao Feng, the cheerful staffer behind the counter, and found a big table in the corner. Unzipped his backpack. Booted up his laptop.
Only two days left before the final deadline.

Because the file was too large for email, they’d decided to burn it to a CD. Today was their final review—one last check for bugs, errors, or missing voice clips.
The others arrived soon after.
Tyler clicked play.

Onscreen, a group of round-faced cartoon characters tumbled into the campus courtyard, voices bright and high-pitched, asking goofy questions about history and student life.
It wasn’t professional by any means—but the lines were clean, the colors vibrant, the timing sharp. And most importantly, it felt real.
They’d made something that breathed.

Something that, for once, felt like it belonged to all of them.
The animation finished playing to a round of quiet, stunned excitement.
For a moment, no one said anything. Then, slowly, the buzz started—first a grin, then a laugh, then someone finally let out what they were all thinking:

“This… this might actually win something.”
“Okay, okay, maybe not the grand prize,” one teammate added with a grin. “But an Excellence Award? Feels like a sure thing.”
And then, inevitably, came the praise.

“Honestly, Tyler,” said one of the girls, folding her arms and giving him a knowing look, “can you please stop being so modest? Look at those dark circles—you were up all night again, weren’t you?”
“If you hadn’t kept tweaking it over and over, it wouldn’t look half as good.”
Xu Rui nodded. “Yeah, I’ve seen him stay up after we’ve all gone to bed. We’ll finish a script review and thirty minutes later I hear his laptop start up again.”

Zhou Peng leaned back in his chair, smirking. “Our little Fish has been so busy with this animation, he doesn’t even have time to talk to his boyfriend.”
That, of course, set off an immediate explosion of noise:
“Wait, what?”

“Tyler has a boyfriend?!”
“Class rep’s in a relationship?! Who is it?!”
Tyler’s face, already pink from the compliments, went full crimson.

“No! I mean—I’m not ignoring him!” he stammered, waving his hands frantically. “I mean—he actually helped me plan one of the animation scenes when I went home—”
He stopped. Realized what he’d just admitted to.
“Wait, no—no, he’s not my boyfriend! He’s just—he’s just—”

Too late.
They were already laughing, teasing, demanding that he bring “the mystery man” in to meet them sometime.
Tyler gave up trying to untangle himself. His voice turned faint and desperate.

“Anyway. Uh… if nobody has any changes, I’ll burn this version to a disc tomorrow.”
The others took pity on him and moved on, nodding their approval. No changes. This was the final cut.
Tyler clicked save, made a backup copy to his external hard drive—his usual habit.

After all, the file couldn’t be emailed. Too big. Too delicate. His laptop was the only place the full version existed. The hard drive was his safety net.
Or so he thought.
 

****
That evening.
They finished their last class of the day and wandered out ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ of the lecture hall in small clusters, shoulders hunched under heavy backpacks, conversation trailing behind them like breath in the cold air.

As usual, the three of them took a detour before heading back to the dorm.
The cat.
A fat, orange tabby that they’d half-jokingly adopted. He lived in the trees near the science building and had an appetite like a vacuum cleaner. They brought him snacks after class. It was routine now.

When they reached the edge of the woods, Xu Rui frowned.
The cat was gone.
His nest—lined with a scrappy old blanket and sheltered under a bench—was empty. A couple of smaller strays came over, blinking curiously, but Big Orange was nowhere in sight.

“Huh. Weird,” Zhou Peng muttered. “He usually comes waddling out to greet us like royalty.”
Xu Rui squatted, made a couple of chirping sounds he claimed were "fluent cat dialect." Unsurprisingly, no response.
Zhou Peng shrugged. “Probably off terrorizing the cafeteria dumpsters again. We’ll check back tomorrow.”

Tyler’s phone buzzed in his pocket.
Shane.
He answered automatically, still staring at the empty cat nest. “Big Orange’s not here tonight,” he reported, his voice soft.

Shane responded with calm interest, as always. Tyler relaxed into the call without even realizing it. They talked about the cat, then about finals, then—somehow—ended up on animation again.
This had become a rhythm.
Almost every time they came out to feed the cat, Shane would call. His stated reason? “I just want to make sure Big Orange is doing alright.”

Tyler never questioned it.
His roommates, on the other hand, exchanged a glance as soon as Tyler’s voice dropped into that half-laugh, half-whisper he used when he was smiling but trying to hide it.
They quietly moved ahead of him.

Polite ignorance. Unspoken understanding. A sacred roommate code.
 
****

They reached their dorm.
Zhou Peng reached for his keys, chatting casually as he stepped toward the door.
Except… the door wasn’t locked.

“Did I—forget to shut it?” he muttered.
Xu Rui frowned. “You told me you locked it.”
“Must’ve been in a rush. Again,” Zhou Peng said, brushing it off. He pushed the door open and flicked on the light. “God, today’s lecture nearly killed me—”

His voice stopped mid-sentence.
Xu Rui gasped.
Something yellow and round shot from the desk to the floor and dove into the corner like a cartoon fugitive.

Big Orange.
But it wasn’t the cat that made them freeze.
Tyler, walking in behind them, still on the phone, took one look inside and went pale.

He dropped to his knees by the desk, scrambling for the power button of his laptop.
Nothing.
His mouth opened. No sound came out.

The phone slipped from his fingers. Shane’s voice filtered out faintly: “Tyler? Tyler, are you there?”
It took Tyler half a minute to find words. When he did, they came out brittle and trembling.
“The laptop… and the hard drive… got soaked.”

The desk was a disaster zone. Half the items had been knocked to the floor—books, papers, a tipped-over container of snacks.
The laptop was lying at an angle. The external hard drive beside it was shattered open.
And worst of all, the kettle.

Someone—likely Big Orange—had knocked over the electric kettle. The entire reservoir of hot water had spilled across the desk.
Right onto the laptop.
And the hard drive.

The laptop wouldn’t even turn on. The drive… was ruined. Split open. Wet inside.
The data was gone.
All of it.

Their final project—the one they’d worked on for months, poured their hearts into—was gone.
Destroyed.