Hugging the Future (SAMYU AU FF)

Lingering

Yu woke up on a sofa, one leg across the small coffee table and one hand over the backrest. He stretched with a loud moan and rubbed his eyes. He squinted to the bright light from what seems to be the window in his blurry eyes before came a sequence of wide eyes and half-opened mouth.

Yu looked around in a hurry, threw away the blanket on him and leapt on his feet. It took him a solid minute to remember last night's event.

It wasn't so eventful, to his relief. Sam invited him inside to wait while he put Ah Yan back to sleep during which Yu faintly listened to the man singing. Sam kept his room slightly opened and the medium-sized apartment with less furniture than his fingers, resonated sound pretty well. It wasn't any song he had ever heard of Sam. Sam used to sing ballad and pop but this one, this song, was more of a nursery rhyme.

Yu remembered his gleeful heart last night, taking the faint voice as his babysitting reward. But Sam took too long and Yu fell asleep on the sofa.

That nursery rhyme worked splendidly...

Dilemmatic time came again for one Yang Yu Teng.

He wanted to leave promptly, but that'd be rude of him towards the house owner who gave him a place to sleep. He paced back and forth in front of Sam's room, thinking of whether he should knock, or just leave a note before leaving. Or should he wait?

It was only 10 and Yu had already probably reached his average 2k steps.

Indecisiveness was exhausting. Realizing that, he decided to just knock, when he heard the front door beeping.

A long exhale escaped his lips. Sam wasn't even in the room the whole morning!

"What are you doing?" Sam asked as soon as he took off his shoes. He saw the blanket he covered Yu with last night on the floor, along with the towel and the fresh change of clothes he remembered putting on the coffee table this morning.

"Haven't you showered? I thought we can catch the afternoon ferry." Sam huffed a laugh at Yu's bed hair while placing the breakfast he bought on the kitchen counter.

Yu took notice of the mess he made and went to tidy them promptly. He found the towel and clothes, assumed they were his to wear, and swiftly ran to the bathroom. He got out in an oversized T-shirt and a jeans two sizes too big that he secured with his belt, with the towel around his head, not wrapped in a particular hair-drying style whatsoever.

He remembered something while he was in the bathroom. His eyes darted around the apartment as he walked out ignoring Sam who's standing in the kitchen, sipping on a cup of coffee.

"I sent her back," Sam told him as if knowing that he was searching for Ah Yan.

"Oh."

"Breakfast," Sam pushed a takeout container towards him as he walked over.

"Will you meet her again next week?" Yu asked, smiling at the smell of the still warm Dan Bing, a type of egg crepes filled with meat slices and vegies. Sam made him coffee too.

Sam sighed silently. He wished..

"Next month, probably." But very unlikely.

"Ouh, that long?"

Sam nodded, placing his half-drank coffee on the counter. "She can't miss her day-care more than four days a month and I can only meet her on weekdays."

"But she's two?" Yu's upper lips curled at the surprising information. The only day-care he knew was the free government-owned one and even that he had little memory of. But he sure skipped a whole lots of classes.

Maybe it's just rich children's day-care. Maybe that's how they keep their money to themselves, by having a disciplined child who'd eventually marry another disciplined rich child.

They ought to spread their wealth...

"Tell me about it," Sam complained, almost grunted at the moronic excuse. Maybe his ex-girlfriend thought he's that stupid.

"You're his father, you have the right to see her..," Yu said mindlessly. He sipped the hot coffee and scrunched his face with disgust for a mere second before pretending to enjoy the black bitter soul sucking water.

"Rights..," Sam smiled bitterly. "I have probably lost that." He scoffed to himself and they fell silent. He then offered Yu a glass of warm water before leaving the man to eat in peace. He wanted to say how he's just grateful for being given the chance to meet the girl but why would he want Yu to know that? The thought came fleeting and noticing the sweater he already placed on his bed, he forgot about it.

Instead, he thought back to the day he broke his wrist, the night he took Yu's sweater home purposely out of childish quip in which his heart truly despaired. Yu could really say hurtful words but that didn't mean there's no truth in them.

In fact, more so for Sam himself than Yu, there's only truth in them. Being called out, blatantly by a stranger proved to be upsetting but why was he ruefully smiling while holding another man's sweater on his bed?