A scream woke him up.

Head still clouded with sleep, Vicente's eyes snapped open and he promptly fell out of bed. Across the room, Leon sat up, rubbing his eyes groggily. "Wha?"

Back of his head throbbing from the fall, Vicente stood up, approaching his desk to look for his glasses, and then it hit him.

"Ling!"

Vicente shoved his glasses on and ran to her room, not caring that the loud thumping of his feet might wake up his parents. He threw the door open, fear rushing through him, and —

"Look!"

His little sister was standing on her bed, bouncing excitedly as she tried to look out the window. "Look outside!"

He joined Ling by the window and gasped.

Down on the ground, where everything seemed small from their apartment, the ground was carpeted in white. The roads, the sidewalks, the rooftops... everything was pure white. Even the top of some trees were white, like they were covered in powdered sugar.

And white was falling from the sky, little soft tufts like cotton descending down to earth. Ling squealed in excitement as one of the tufts landed on their outer windowsill. "Jia Lin, is this — is this — " she kicked the wall as she thought of the phrase. It came out in Mandarin. "Xià xuě?"

Snowing! They'd never had to use that term before, for Taiwan's winters never saw snow except on the highest hills. But that was the word for the white wonderland outside. "Yes, it's snowing."

"It's pretty!" She began to bounce on her bed, and the thin mattress creaked its protest. "Everything is so white!"

He pressed his nose against the ice-cold window, gazing at the snow that blanketed the ground. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a pillow hit him in the back, and he fell back to the mattress in shock.

"Quiet down." Yao's cranky, sleep-dulled voice came from the other bed in the room. Vicente looked behind him and saw a Yao-shaped lump underneath the quilt. "'m tired. Need t'sleep."

He realised that the sun was barely up, and it was most likely still early in the morning — on the weekend, too. A ratty stuffed panda whacked him in the chest next, and Vicente swiftly threw it back onto Yao's bed.

"I'll go back to sleep too, then." Vicente hopped off Ling's bed, feet landing on the freezing floor, and slowly padded back to his own bedroom. On the way back, he ruffled Ling's hair. "Don't disturb Yao, okay?"

"Mm." Ling went back to staring out the window.

Vicente sat down on his own bed, and Leon stared at him curiously. "Are you going back to sleep?"

He nodded.

Leon snorted, grabbing a comic book from his desk and spinning around on the chair while leafing through it. "Hah? You're still tired?"

"My teachers are giving me lots of homework, and I have to study for the exams next month," Vicente said, yawning. "And I nearly cracked my head open after falling off the bed. I need to recover from all that."

"You did not crack your head open."

"But I nearly did, and it still hurts." Vicente pulled the blankets over himself. Leon muttered something about over-dramatic older brothers, and that was all he heard before he drifted back to sleep.

...

The incessant, unfortunately-familiar feeling of poking at his sides woke Vicente up a second time. He cracked an eye open to see Ling, beaming with excitement. "Wake up! Wake up!" She hollered, pulling the blanket off of him. "Big Brother made breakfast and I want to go outside!"

Sunlight was peering in through the windows, and he could feel the side of his glasses pushing into his face. He sat up, squinting at the clock on the wall until the stars faded from his eyes and he could look at the hands.

"Oh," Vicente mumbled, as Ling grabbed his hand and tried to pull him out of bed, "it's... uh..." he glanced at the clock again. "Nine over-ten?"

"What does that mean?"

"It's nine fifty. I think." He approached his closet, shivering, and pulled clothes out at random. Already feeling his face freezing off, Vicente left his bedroom and ran into the bathroom to change.

...

"There's only one piece left." Leon slid a plate of buttered toast across the table. "Sorry, we ate everything else."

"Ay," Vicente mock-lamented, taking the piece of toast, "I guess I'll starve."

"Too bad, you should've woken up earlier. Poor Ling had to wake you up herself."

"Lazybones," Ling teased.

"Who would've thought you could sleep more than me?" Yao sat down at the dining table with a mug of hot milk. He put in a spoonful of sugar and stirred, the spoon clinking against the mug. "I thought for sure you'd be up first."

He bit into the cold piece of toast and accepted the glass that Yao passed him. He nearly dropped it when Ling shook his arm. "Hurry up, I want to play in the snow!"

"So do I," Leon said.

"You'll need to wear a sweater, a jacket and a scarf." Yao stirred his milk again. He shivered, rubbing his arms. "We're indoors, and I'm already cold!"

After another jab from Ling, Vicente polished off his toast and ran back to his room to grab his coat and scarf. His heart was pounding in excitement, and he childishly bounded back out, nearly slipping on his socked feet, and pulled his coat on. He felt just as excited, if not more, than Ling and Leon, and in minutes he was done. It was a little hard to bend down to put his shoes on with all the layers around him, but he managed to do it without falling on his face.

Poor Leon wasn't as lucky, and he shouted, surprised, as he slipped and nearly got a mouthful of shoes. Yao snorted and pulled him up.

Soon they were done, and Yao lead them out of the apartment and onto the sidewalk beside it. Ling stared out at the snowy ground longingly, but didn't go out to play with it. Instead, she tugged at Yao's sleeve, asking, "will Mother and Father be angry at us for playing by ourselves?"

"They are fast asleep," Yao reassured, "and we'll be back upstairs by lunchtime."

Or maybe, Vicente silently added, they'll be too busy arguing to realise we've been out. But all thoughts of their parents were expelled when he felt something cold and wet smack his face. He jumped, landing on snow with a loud crunch.

Already far away and gathering another handful of snow, Leon grinned and tossed another snowball at him. He jumped out of the way, looking back at the footprints in the pristine white snow as he ran. Leon gave chase, and Vicente kicked up footfuls of snow in an attempt to stop him.

Ling was piling up snow, making a tiny canvas on the ground and doodling pictures on it with her bare hands. Vicente bent down to look at her drawings, when a handful of snow was thrown on his head.

He shouted, the frigid pile of snow melting and sending rivulets of water running down his hair, and ran after Leon again. But his little brother ducked behind Yao a split second before he could retaliate via snowball in face, and Vicente could barely stop himself before he crashed into him.

Yao paid him no attention, scooping up a bit of snow and letting it melt in his hands. "Ah," he sighed, "it's good to see snow again."

"You're talking like it's an old friend of yours."

"Because it is!" Yao wiped his hands on his coat. "The last time I saw snow was when I lived in Beijing. It was really pretty, but everything was so cold, even colder than it is here." He stepped down, hard, into a pile of snow and heard it crunch. "But I had nobody to play with in Beijing." Yao kicked snow onto his shoes, and said, "this is far better!"

They fooled around all morning, until the snow turned a pale grey with the dirt on their shoes, and their hair and clothes were wet with melted snow and sweat. Laughing and hungry, they trouped back upstairs and threw off their jackets, and, as Vicente kicked his shoes off, he realised that their parents had yet to show themselves.

Back in his and Leon's room, as he bundled his coat and scarf back into their joint closet, and he flopped onto his creaky mattress with a book, he heard voices from their parents' bedroom.

"Oh, goody," Leon muttered. "They're up."

Then the voices turned into shouts, and Leon bolted, dropping his comic book and shooting across the room to sit on Vicente's bed. He'd always been the one most affected when their parents fought. Vicente patted his shoulder, trying to block out the shouting. "Everything's going to be fine," he whispered, like he'd done since they were kids, "we'll be fine."

"Will we?"

And once again, all he could answer was a bleak, "I don't know."

...

A/N: "Nine over-ten" is a rough translation of how time is told in Cantonese — minutes are counted in intervals of five, so five minutes past nine would be nine over-one, ten minutes past nine would be nine over-two, and so on.