It is often said that certain people with great potential get restricted by the heavens to keep the world's balance from shattering. These restrictions come in many shapes. An incurable disease caught early. A financial situation so low they'd spend most of their youth just crawling out of it.

Later, even if they were finally free from having to worry about where their next meal was coming from — enough of their youth had already been carved away. Enough that they couldn't rise high enough to break the world's balance, even if they'd burned themselves to nothing trying.

Then again, it wasn't as if the heavens handed out incurable diseases and financial handicaps only to those carrying world-breaking potential. Nope. The heavens liked to, often, at complete random, dish those same burdens out to nobodies. People like Xuan.

He heaved a sigh. The people standing around him on the rumbling metal carriage — the bus — didn't pay him any mind. Neither did he.

As usual, it was suffocating in here. He could barely shift his weight, and in this humid season, being packed in tight with a bunch of dudes wasn't exactly what anyone would call a pleasant experience.

So he kept his mind busy with those silly thoughts. It wasn't like he could wrestle his phone out in this mess to pass the time anyway.

About an hour of being crammed in like cargo later, the bus reached his workplace stop. Xuan began wiggling his way out. Or trying to.

"Give me some space, man, my stop's here!" He said it loud enough to draw pointed looks from the people nearby.

A minute of shouldering his way through the crowd, and he finally stumbled off the bus and onto the scorching asphalt. It was barely nine in the morning, and yet the sun was radiating enough heat to make it feel like high noon.

"Come down man. Save some energy for the actual high noon." He said to the sun, tilting his face up.

A few people nearby smiled. In front of him rose a giant monstrosity of brick and mortar — impressive in size and efficiency only.

Seriously, where has the taste of humanity gone? In the name of efficiency, they now built buildings that drained something out of you just from looking at them.

He was still internally griping about the soulless architecture — like some displaced old aristocrat — when the hand of the department's actual aristocracy landed on his shoulder.

Turning, he found a face full of vitality and easy charm. Blonde hair. Chiseled jaw. Brown eyes that always seemed mildly amused.

"Yo, already deep in dreamland?" Said Jian — old school friend turned marketing boss.

"Kinda." Xuan shrugged. "Just thinking about how bad your uncle's taste in architecture is."

Jian gave him a pointed look before slapping him on the back, already smiling. "Huh. For once, I agree with you."

They headed inside. Standing out under that scorching sun any longer wasn't something either of them needed. Though the moment Xuan stepped in, he missed the natural breeze outside. What a dilemma. You could never truly have everything.

He was about to head to his desk when his legs started to give out beneath him. He looked down. They were trembling visibly. He smirked.

With effort, he made it to his seat. Thankfully Jian had already disappeared into his cabin, and the rest of his coworkers hadn't arrived yet — except for Chen Mei, the usual early bird, who was already buried deep in her work at her desk. So focused she probably hadn't even registered him and Jian coming in.

Good. He opened his small briefcase and pulled out tablets in a dozen different colors — okay, not a dozen. Ten. He counted them out, then hauled his increasingly unsteady body toward the water tap.

He poured a glass, then downed all ten tablets in a single long gulp. It saved time and effort. He'd put in a lot of practice to be able to swallow that many at once.

He made his way slowly back to his desk and sat. A few minutes passed. He watched his other colleagues file in one by one. And steadily, blessedly, his strength started returning.

This wasn't how it usually went. He normally took all his medication before leaving the house. But this morning, he'd had to leave early to drop a package at his sister's university dorm. She'd gotten a boyfriend recently. The guy seemed decent enough.

He would've objected, naturally. His sister, a boyfriend, while still studying? His brotherly instincts weren't exactly subtle. But his body hadn't exactly given him the option of asserting any kind of dominance over the guy. His illness — the one that had him losing strength and control at random — had been with him since birth. It had only gotten worse with time.

Their parents were gone too. Father first, then his mother not long after him. And who knew when it would be Xuan's turn to follow.

After all, swallowing this much medicine every day wasn't doing his body any favors. Doctors couldn't cure what he had, but they'd found a way to make things worse anyway by informing him, very professionally, that his condition would only deteriorate — and that the tablets were accelerating that process.

Their best advice, naturally, was rest. Don't exert himself. Stay home.

As if that meant anything. That was like telling him to stop needing food and shelter and clothes. To tell his sister to drop out of university and find work instead. Something he was fairly certain his parents weren't looking down from wherever they were hoping to see.

So. Work it was.

And with his sister now having someone solid beside her — he'd grilled the boyfriend thoroughly, he was a good one, even if a bit naive — Xuan could breathe a little easier. Because if something happened to him, she wouldn't have to face that particular loneliness. The kind their mother had known. The kind he knew. The kind, to some extent, she'd already grown familiar with.

Humans were social creatures. They did better with company. That much he believed.

Click, click, click.

The rhythmic tap of a keyboard pulled him up out of his thoughts and into the present.

Click, click.

It had a strange symmetry to it. Despite years on a keyboard himself, he was fairly certain he'd never managed anything that deliberate. This was closer to ASMR. He glanced up.

Chen Mei. Jet-black hair. Surrounded by a cluster of still-empty desks. She must have felt him looking, because she turned.

"Good morning, Xuan. You're rather early today." She closed her laptop with one hand. "Had urgent mail to send, you?"

He looked at her for just a moment. Her pupils were very dark, with a faint glint to them. Her build was slight. His crush. A one-sided thing. 

"Ah, errands," he replied. "Urgent ones, I woke up before the sun." He finished, feeling pride at the accomplishments. He was no early bird, far from it. 

"Huh, is that why Uncle Sun is in such a bad mood today?"

Laughter broke out behind him. Both of them turned to find Jian standing in his cabin doorway, shoulders shaking. Was it really that funny? Maybe. Or maybe it was as the legends said — Jian's laughter was contagious. Because before either of them had made a conscious decision about it, both he and Mei had started laughing too.

After that small piece of happiness that the day had so generously offered, Xuan turned back to his work. Emails to read. Emails to write. Phone calls to send. The usual. After that, the report he'd spent most of the previous night drafting needed to be cleaned up.

The office clock moved. An hour passed before Jian materialized at his desk, wearing a look Xuan recognized and didn't like.

"Wipe that look," he said, before Jian even opened his mouth. “And here's the work, it needs some cleaning up.” he slid the stack of papers across, he'd have cleaned it himself, but considering jian had come personally for it, he needed it immediately. 

“Thanks man.” He said, with a guilty smile. 

"Yeah, yeah. You're welcome." He waved him off and went back to work.

Jian knew his condition. Anyone who'd been around him since school would. He probably didn't know how much worse it had gotten. But still — at times like this, giving him more work than the others, despite Jian's own unwillingness, that look was the result. Xuan was no Ace performer at this office, that seat belonged to Chen Mei, but he was close. Close enough to be truly needed at times. 

More hours passed. Lunch arrived. He pulled out his lunchbox, nearly twice the size of the average one. His condition burned through food. The medication alone demanded it. But if he was being honest, buying and preparing this much food every day carved a noticeable chunk out of his salary — and whatever was left needed to go toward his sister's tuition.

He couldn't even eat in peace without running the numbers.

Was he getting too old? He was fairly certain the old men he'd watched as a child had thought exactly this way.

He finished the meal. Delicious, he called it, even in his own head. He'd decided a long time ago to call every food he ate delicious delicious. It helped. Even mediocre food tasted a little better when you told yourself it was good. Sorta.

Back to work. A new campaign, this one tied to some new chocolate brand. 

The afternoon stretched on, and the sun eventually gave up and went home. Good. Tomorrow, hopefully, it will be in a more forgiving mood — because he was planning to sleep in. He had serious sleep debt to recover.

"Hey, Xuan — let's go eat out tonight. It's on me!" 

He looked up. Mei. Was it really her? He stood, tablets already in hand, drifting toward the water tap.

"What gives? You win a lottery or something?"

She nodded like a pigeon bobbing for crumbs. He genuinely hadn't expected that from her. The strict, precise, always composed Chen Mei. But life had its ways of undoing people. Even the prim ones.

"Wow. Then I'm absolutely in," he said, matching her energy.

The night turned out to be legendary. The three of them sang, drank, and ate until the idea of eating another bite became genuinely threatening. It was the most fun he'd had in years.

Afterwards, Jian drove him home. Chen Mei's brother came to pick her up — she'd warned him ahead of time that she'd be in no state to get herself anywhere after the party, and she'd been right. She got rowdy after a couple drinks.

Back in the quiet of his apartment, Xuan collapsed onto the couch. His heart was still hammering — too fast, and somehow getting faster rather than settling.

Today had been good. A genuinely good day.

Then his chest started to hurt.

His breath snagged, caught somewhere between his lungs and his throat, and stayed there. He tried to sit up. His chest responded by throbbing violently, insistently.

Minutes passed. He lay there on the couch and struggled. The dark of the room seemed to deepen around him. Gradually, the pain began to dull at the edges.

“Huh. Must be a stroke. Good that it's naturally going away.”

Though — did that actually happen? Did strokes simply resolve on their own?

Maybe. That would be good.

But in his case, at least, that particular miracle didn't come.

When he opened his eyes, he was high up. Far above everything. Below him stretched a beautiful forest, and the breeze moved through him in slow, easy waves — rustling his leaves.

His leaves.

"Wait."