It happened in the blink of an eye.

One moment, laughter echoed from the tiny playground in front of the house. The next, a ball rolled out of bounds, and a small figure dashed after it without a second thought. Tires squealed. A horn blared. The world tilted.

The paramedics had said it wasn’t fatal. That there was no internal bleeding. That they were lucky.

But lucky didn’t feel like the right word when YuYang and LiHuan stood at the edge of something that could’ve been irreversible.

The hospital room was dim and quiet. The doctor’s words had been clear: a concussion, bruised ribs, no internal damage. Lucky. Too lucky.

YuYang sat at the bedside, hand tightly wrapped around the little one’s fingers, eyes hollow.

“We almost lost them,” he muttered.

LiHuan stood by the window, arms crossed, face unreadable. “If that car had been even a little faster…”

He stopped himself. Swallowed hard. Turned toward the bed.

“We let them play out there like it was nothing,” he said, quietly. “We were right here. We watched them. And it still happened.”

Silence settled like a fog.

YuYang reached up, brushing sweat-matted hair back from their child’s forehead. His hand lingered, hesitant, reverent.

“We’re never making that mistake again.”

LiHuan nodded once. “We’re moving the playground. Installing a proper gate. And until we do... they don’t play alone. Not even for a minute.”

YuYang’s jaw clenched. “And we talk to them. When they wake up. We talk about safety. Even if they don’t understand everything yet.”

They both sat with the weight of it. The guilt. The fear. The memory of that motionless little form on the pavement.

LiHuan moved closer, resting a hand on YuYang’s shoulder.

“We were lucky.”

YuYang nodded. But he didn’t look away from the child.

“No. They were lucky. We were just slow.”

And then, he leaned closer, brushing a kiss to the little knuckles in his hand—gentle, and terrified.

They wouldn't let it happen again.