My Mistakes Were Made for You

Yixing first really notices Minseo when he leaves school late on the fifth Tuesday of the semester at the same time as girls’ tennis practice is ending. She’s leaving the court, shoulders slouched, dwarfing her adorably next to Li Hua. He vaguely remembers Yi Fan mentioning that the scholarship girl was Li Hua’s doubles partner this year and Chanyeol laughing and saying something about how funny they looked next to one another, chubby and wholesome next to skinny and skanky, but he’d tuned out after that, because Chanyeol is and always has been a dick. This is definitely that girl, now that he thinks about. This is Kim Minseo, and her cheeks are round and flushed pink as she stares at the ground. The short skirt and tight top that constitute the tennis uniform hug her curves way too nicely, especially when she’s walking next to the ever-twiggy Li Hua, and she wears her chestnut hair in pigtails and her shoulders rise and fall slightly with each breath, obviously defeated. Chanyeol would call her fat. Her sharp eyes catch his for a second before she walks into the locker room and Yixing doesn’t even realize he’s staring until she’s disappeared beyond the door and he’s left standing there, heart pounding.

He thinks she’s in his Biology class.

Her own stomach is in knots as she changes clothes, facing the bank of lockers as she puts her normal school uniform back on. She can’t stand to see the other girls laughing in their lacy little bras with their skinny little legs about whatever silly little parties they’re going to this weekend. Li Hua says Minseo should totally be her plus-one to the one at Jongdae’s house, and Minseo only wants to be one of them, but she hates standing there in her plain underwear with everyone’s eyes on the stretch marks on her hips, feeling like their charity case as she remembers the softness of the skinny boy’s eyes out there, so she just mumbles that she’ll think about it and turns back around to find solace in the empty beige locker. Four years of this and she’s still just everyone’s plus-one, not quite real enough to them to warrant her own invitations to parties.

She huffs softly when she walks out.

Twenty minutes later, Minseo still sits, just as she has for the last four years, waiting for the public bus under sprinkling rain, smoothing her uniform skirt down her thighs as she reads so that it’ll hide the way the fat bulges out over her stockings just above her knees. Nobody here takes the public bus besides the workers who ship in from other parts of the city in the morning and leave in the evening. Minseo is, in essence, one of them, but they all seem to glare scornfully at the emblem of the most prestigious private school in the city emblazoned over her right breast.

Minseo wants them to understand that she’s only here on scholarship, that she’s just like one of them, working for rich people to make their schools look better, but she’d never say a thing. Her dad just crunches numbers for an insurance company until midnight every night and her mother is a secretary at a law firm. Her brother is in university now, studying to become a lawyer on a decent scholarship, and Minseo used to work weekends at a clothing store until she got into this damn prestigious high school and didn’t have time anymore. Her younger sister is an ice-skating prodigy and so, by default, Minseo is the disappointing one, decent at tennis and good at math, but nowhere near as smart as her brother nor as poised as her sister. She feels like an alien in their apartment, let alone in the hallways of a school where most kids’ clothes are worth more than said apartment.

She feels like an alien even at the bus stop, even after all of the rich kids have left in their drivers’ cars. She watches them all pass by, Li Hua’s black Mercedes after Subin and Kyungsook’s black Porsche after someone else’s black Mercedes, and drops her face further into her book. It’s almost been four years and she’s still ashamed. They all know to stay in their separate spheres, to let her be as soon as the bell rings.

Or perhaps not all of them. A gunmetal gray Lexus slows to a stop in front of her and she looks up just as the boy from earlier rolls down the front window – he’s driving, which is a rarity among this little class of wealthy youth. He’s in her biology class, she remembers. He barely speaks. She can’t place his name, but she’s definitely seen that mess of brown hair before.

“Need a ride?” he asks, his Korean quiet and accented. His smile is warm and innocent, interrupted by a silvery ring through his lower lip, and his pale skin curls into a dimple on the right side of his face. He would seem creepy, but something about him doesn’t bother her, even if he can get away with such a flagrant disregard for dress code as a facial piercing.

She gulps and shakes her head, eyes wide. Water droplets fall from her bangs into her eyes, upsetting her makeup, but nobody needs to see her apartment, even if her uniform is wet and his eyes are pleading and the rain is only getting worse.

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. Thanks, though,” she murmurs, offering him a nervous smile.

He raises a confused eyebrow at the rain. “I – uh – okay,” he sighs, hoping he doesn’t seem like he has ulterior motives. He just doesn’t want her stuck in the rain. He lingers there for the eternity of a split second that passes before the bus pulls in and splashes dirty rainwater onto her stockings and the side of the Lexus. She thinks of him as she pays her fare, but when she looks out the window again, he’s gone.

The week passes quietly, but he doesn’t say anything to her, just sits in the corner of biology class and scrawls notes in his book. His name is Yixing and he’s only a junior.

Minseo just wants him to acknowledge her, but he’s just as scared as she is, and he never does.

She decides, rather irrationally, that she hates him.

Minseo hates Zhang Yixing in the same way she hates mirrors – she hates him because she can’t stop looking at him, but the view is always similarly disappointing. His eyes always stick to hers for a moment, then fall away, the way the fat on her thighs pushes her stockings down until they’re bunched up awkwardly above her knees every damn morning, and she hates that she can see them linger like the thin fabric does in the mirror.

She hates herself, too, for wanting to look. She knows that there’s some disconnect between him and the rest of the school’s ruling class – all of the rest of the school, really – even though he’s just as rich as the rest of them because his father owns a massive chain of factories that make cheap baked goods or some such things. He carries himself like a disaffected rebel, even in his regulation polo shirt and khakis, and he separates himself from everyone, but he’s always there for them. He’s beautiful. He deals weed. His parents aren’t around much, but his dad’s Chinese and his mom’s Korean. He’s okay at biology, but he’s amazing at history. He’s a dancer.

“Yixing?” Li Hua laughs, as Minseo sits next to her on the couch at Jongdae’s party that Friday in her borrowed finery, nursing some disgusting concoction of soda and booze and eager for information.

“Zhang Yixing,” Minseo confirms. “He’s only a junior, but he’s smart, even though he sits in the back of Biology and doesn’t really talk.” Minseo sits in the front and doesn’t say a word either, but she’s sure he does better than she does, and then Li Hua laughs and says he’s got a stick up his ass and totally sells everyone weed and then he walks past their couch, sober, and Minseo suddenly feels even more self-conscious in Li Hua’s shirt that fits Minseo like a very tight, short dress.

He doesn’t even seem to notice them, though, as he walks through the room, and Minseo just lets Li Hua go hunt down Jongdae or Binhye to kiss or fuck or fight. Minseo stands up and walks around, her head spinning a little, but she doesn’t see Kyungsook or Subin and Yi Fan is holding Chanyeol up while he does a keg stand so she just offers them a vaguely impressed smile and starts walking home even though it’s a little after one in the morning, heels in her hands as her head spins.

This time, she lets Yixing give her a ride home when he drives by. There are a few other kids in the car, and this time, he’s driving. She doesn’t talk, just listens to staticky pop on his car’s perfect stereo. He hums along to it, still sober, as his friends stammer on about girls and drugs. She knows them all but Yixing, somehow, even though she knows he’s been here all along. He drops them off first and then he beckons her to sit up front and they sit in a comfortable quiet. He asks about tennis and she asks about biology and then all of the words dissipate again and he drops her off a block away from her apartment complex – closer than anyone else has gotten, not that they’ve shown much interest in taking her home.

She’s drunk, and she decides rather irrationally that she might not hate Yixing.

Of course Minseo’s father is still awake when she gets home, though, and he wakes her mother up and they take turns whispering loudly so as not to wake her sister about their entire spectrum of concerns and disappointments about the fact that she’s probably turning into a drunken whore at this damn school while they’re paying for her food and her bus fare and the bunk bed she still shares with her sister and she’ll never get into a good school if she keeps on like this. Her mother gets a few words in edgewise about how terrible her cellulite looks in whoever the hell’s dress she’s wearing, and Minseo barely makes it into bed before the tears start falling. This happens every few months but she can’t help it. She’s just as bad at drinking as she as at eating and crying and holding herself together and it’s unfair. Four years should’ve taught her better.

Still, she spends Saturday hungover, trying to wash the black tear tracks off of her pillowcase, and spends Sunday shut in her room, writing an essay for Rhetoric.

All she eats over the weekend is a granola bar on Sunday morning.

Yixing keeps glancing over at her in Biology on Monday morning but doesn’t say anything.

A tennis ball hits her stomach on Tuesday evening because she’s not paying attention, and she feels even more stupid in the locker room because a bunch of cheerleaders are giggling about it and their boyfriends. She can’t say she wishes she were one of them, but she wishes she looked a little less stupid.

The bus is late again, but Yixing’s car never comes.

She pokes her fat in the mirror and drinks a glass of water for dinner.

The lump never leaves her throat. Yixing’s face never leaves her mind.

Minseo’s becoming a wreck, unable to get back on her feet after one disgustingly trivial fall. She wants to talk to him and thank him but she’s eternally tongue-tied.

The days go on, though. She hits a rhythm, hanging out less with Li Hua and more with the twins, Kyungsook and Subin, who are both some sort of student government and cheerleaders and tennis partners and everything proper in girl-world. Yi Fan, Subin’s sort-of-rival, is very tall and the student body president, and his best friend, Chanyeol, who’s almost as tall as him, makes snide comments about everyone’s asses and definitely has a thing for Kyungsook. They all sit together at lunch, but hardly eat.

The fat still won’t drop from Minseo’s body, nor will the weight. She just feels heavier and saggier and nastier but she won’t give up.

Yixing hangs out with them every once in a while, but he and Minseo only speak to one another in the general context of a group conversation. The air feels fuller and more staticky when they’re around one another, each of their throats lumped full of unsaid words, but nothing ever becomes of it.

Everything is in limbo, but Minseo knows how to keep her grades up and not come home drunk and not get hungry.

Everything is in limbo and it feels okay.

Everything is in limbo until their teacher is reading off pairs of names for a biology project and he’s read all of the names but theirs.

“Zhang Yixing and Kim Minseo.”

They’re supposed to do a project on photosynthesis, evidently. He walks over to her desk, swallowing his nerves. He brushes his hair out of his face when he sits down at the desk across the aisle from hers.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

She smiles a little bit despite herself, and he plays with his hair some more, spinning his lip ring with his teeth. He’s not sure why she makes him so nervous.

“So… when do you want to do this?” he asks.

“C-can we do this at your house?” she asks at the same time.

“Of course,” he replies.

“Um, Saturday?” she replies at the same time.

Saturday morning, she’s standing at his door in a blue dress and a gray cardigan, curves obscured by the loose fabric. Her bag looks heavy with whatever on earth they’re supposed to be working on. Yixing frowns when he opens the door. He knows she hasn’t eaten breakfast.

She’s so awestruck at the size of his house that he’s embarrassed. It’s on a hill in a wealthy part of town, and his parents are gone on business so often that he practically lives alone. He clears his throat as she stares at the ceiling. She looks down, ashamed.

“Do you want something to eat or… something?”

“No thanks.”

“Really?”

“Really. I swear I’m fine.”

She knows that he knows that she’s not, and most of what she wants is to let her bones fall loose into his lap and feel his warmth, but she hates the mere thought of being so weak as to let one of these rich assholes, the people she’s been raised to hate, govern her well-being.

Even if she might not hate Yixing, she doesn’t want him seeing her like a weakling.

He huffs, too nervous to push anything on her, and beckons for her to sit down next to him on the living room couch. They fidget and mumble and talk about pros and cons of watercolors and acrylics – it so happens that they both like art, and they’d far rather paint this than film it – and inch closer until Minseo’s basking in Yixing’s bizarre warmth and their hands are colliding as they discuss and lay out and create. Minseo’s hands are small and soft, her plain pink nail polish chipped at her fingertips, and Yixing’s fingers are long and pale, his nails bitten off. Minseo laughs more fully than she’s laughed in a long time when they both start blundering over scientific terms, and Yixing wants her to laugh more.

Then it becomes lunchtime and Minseo still denies food but Yixing makes it anyway: his favorite recipe, some spicy variety of noodles.

“Where’d you learn to cook?” she asks, pulling noodles into her mouth a few at a time, shy but clearly ravenous. He hopes like hell she won’t force it back up later because she’s so damn full of potential and she’s trying to reject it, trying to mold herself into Li Hua’s stick-like body, and she’s really cute when she eats.

Yixing shrugs. “I’m alone a lot.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah…”

“You’re lucky. I don’t get much time to myself.”

“I don’t know. It gets lonely a lot.”

“Oh.”

They keep eating in silence, but Minseo sets down her bowl hesitantly. Their knees are touching as they sit cross-legged on the couch and his arms ache to wrap around her and hold her. She aches to be held.

They’re both too incompetent to articulate their desires, though. She mumbles something about not wanting to go home yet, more condemning her own house than voicing any affection, and his dimple opens itself again as he shrugs.

“My parents won’t be home for a few weeks… You can stay as long as you want.”

Minseo’s heart flutters because that’s not what she meant and she’s not sure why his mind went that way but she has to say she kind of likes it. “I was more thinking a few hours, not a few weeks, but thanks,” she murmurs, blushing.

Yixing falls in love with the color in her cheeks, just as he has with her smudged eyeliner after tennis practice and her handwriting and the convex line from the backs of her knees to her thighs and the curve from the inside of her knee to her calf and every soft spot in between. “I figured.”

They end up flipping channels for hours, their shoulders mashing together until they’re forced to readjust, his hand behind her neck, her hand against his knee.

They hug goodbye when he drops her off at the block before hers, just a little past sunset. Yixing doesn’t like how fragile Minseo’s heartbeat feels against his own but he’s too shy to say a word. She’s still got meat on her bones, but there’s not as much of it as he wishes there would be, and it feels sadder and more tired than it should. They hold on for a while, because they both need comfort, and they both feel a little warmer when they leave.

Yixing doesn’t know what it is about her.

It gets colder.

The scent of his hands hangs onto her cardigan and her perfume sticks to his couch.

On Monday, Minseo doesn’t dread class.

Minseo decides she definitely doesn’t hate Zhang Yixing.

She doesn’t hate him in the way she doesn’t hate food. Glancing at him becomes a reward of sorts, just like those noodles he made for her; just like the bubble tea she allows herself once a week. He’s always smiling a little bit, and he always nods vaguely when they make eye contact, tonguing his lip ring with distressingly precious innocence. It makes her heart pound with the warmest blood she’s felt in a long time.

Everything she’s learned about him makes her hate him less and less. He pierced his own lip. He plays guitar. He fixes up cars. He’s lonely. He’s vulnerable, and Minseo shivers when she thinks about that.

Photosynthesis provides a shockingly decent backdrop for changing emotions.

Tennis practice goes well on Tuesday. She and Li Hua hit a rhythm and actually beat Subin and Kyungsook in a practice match for the first time ever. Coach Jonghyun disappeared after the last water break (Chanyeol says he’s whacking off, but Sehun insists he’s got Minjung – she’s out of his league, but not so far that she wouldn’t fuck him senseless) so all of the boys on the team plus Yixing and Jongdae are leaning against the chain-link fence, watching, but Minseo doesn’t notice until the girls have a water break and Li Hua rolls her skort twice more. Minseo turns around to hunt down the reason, brushing away the wisps of hair that have escaped from her headband, and Yixing offers her a thumbs-up and a grin. She blushes and almost giggles, nearly tripping over her own racket when Coach Minjung blows the whistle to call them back in.

Chanyeol definitely notices, nudging Yixing suggestively. Minseo and Li Hua are already serving by then, so Yixing just gives Chanyeol a dirty look and goes back to watching.

Minseo is so much more grounded than Li Hua, and that’s where their strength lies as a team. Li Hua can run all over the court and Minseo can hit anything to the back of the court and fuck with the ever-synchronized Kyungsook and Subin’s organized playbook. She has a strange finesse about her despite it all and fuck, Yixing’s in love with that too.

“Nice pair of asses there, huh?” Chanyeol asks, raising an eyebrow.

“What was that?”

“Oh, don’t play coy. Li Hua’s hot as hell, and I know you’re into Minseo. I mean, I don’t blame you. She’s cute – chubby, but cute. I’d love to get between those thick thighs myself.”

“I – what?”

“You heard me. HEY, THUNDERTHIGHS, YOUR BOYFRIEND HERE DOESN’T – ”

And then Yixing’s fist collides with Chanyeol’s cheek with a pretty spectacular sound just as Minseo turns around in abject confusion.

And then everyone else whirls around to look at them.

Chanyeol’s hand makes its way up to his aching, reddening face and Yixing brings his fist down, staring at it, wide-eyed. Yi Fan stands up, grabbing Chanyeol protectively by the shoulders, and Jongdae grabs the back of Yixing’s shirt, playing the referee. Sehun and Jongin just look shocked and confused.

Minseo runs. Kyungsook makes guilty eye contact with Chanyeol and then runs after her friend, letting Subin deal with the boys. Li Hua and Binhye snap their gum in unison, eyes wide. Chuntao looks scared.

Then Chanyeol shoves Yi Fan away and walks off, scowling.

“You should go see what’s up,” Subin murmurs, pushing at Yi Fan’s arm. “Yixing, you should probably wait til he cools down to apologize.”

Yixing rolls his eyes as Yi Fan leaves. “Fuck that,” he replies softly, shaking out his fist. “I’m not apologizing. He’s a dick.”

Subin, taking into account her own hatred for Chanyeol and the fact that those are the most words Yixing’s almost ever said to her, leaves him be, because Yixing’s still got a pretty dangerous look in his eyes.

She sighs. “Fine then. I’m gonna go hunt down Yi Fan. At least make sure Minseo isn’t totally fucked up over it, and tell Kyungsook to come talk to me.”

She leaves and Jongdae pats Yixing on the shoulder encouragingly before going over to talk to Li Hua. Coach Minjung evidently doesn’t care or has disappeared – Yixing doesn’t care. He walks off in the direction Minseo went.

He finds her behind the little complex that houses their locker rooms and swimming pool, sitting on the ground, Kyungsook’s arm around her awkwardly while she stares, wide-eyed, at the sky, trying to articulate something she probably doesn’t want to articulate. He knows she hates being comforted, and he hates Kyungsook for not knowing that. He clears his throat and Kyungsook stands up, hugging Minseo with one arm before heading off. She’s sensible enough to leave them alone.

Yixing sits down next to her, legs crossed as he stares at his knees, hands in his pockets and teeth tearing into his lip, until Minseo opens her mouth.

“What was that?”

“He was being an asshole.” Yixing shrugs.

“Yeah, but he’s always an asshole,” she insists, voice raw. “Why’d you punch him this time?”

Time passes as Yixing tries to form the words without admitting he’s in love with her.

“Because… I don’t know. It was sexist and gross and he was lying. You’re not fat. Your thighs… There’s nothing wrong with your thighs. He was trying to get a rise out of you and it was bullshit because you’re… you’re… you’re…”

“I’m what?” Minseo asks, her voice small and curious.

“Fuck it, Minseo, you’re gorgeous. And I know you don’t believe that, but you should, and assholes like him are just getting in the way of that happening.”

Her mouth is dry and her heart isn’t even skipping beats, it’s just pounding without leaving her time to breathe. Her eyes are burning. He’s lying, her head says. He’s lying.

She shakes her head in direct disobedience to her heart. She’s scared, honestly, and she can’t bring herself to say anything. She’s not gorgeous. Yixing’s stupid.

But she knows he’s not. She knows that there’s some disconnect between him and the rest of them even though he’s just as rich as them because his father owns a massive chain of factories that make cheap baked goods or some such things. She knows that he carries himself like a disaffected rebel, even in his regulation polo shirt and khakis, and he separates himself from everyone, but he’s always there for them. She knows that he’s beautiful. She knows that he deals weed. She knows that his parents aren’t around much, but his dad’s Chinese and his mom’s Korean. She knows that he’s okay at biology, but he’s better at history. She knows that he’s a dancer. She knows that he pierced his own lip. She knows that he plays guitar. She knows that he fixes up cars. She knows that he’s lonely. She knows that he’s vulnerable, and Minseo exhales softly because she knows that he’s almost everything but stupid.

“I – I – no,” she spits out, her neck crumpling until her head’s on his shoulder and the tears falling onto his shoulder. “I’m not. I don’t – I don’t deserve – just, shut up, please?”

He just holds her.

Buses pass and they sit in silence, trying to work their way through the noise in their own heads.

He’s in love with her. She hates him, she doesn’t hate him, she doesn’t deserve him, and, if she had any knowledge of what love felt like, she’d know she’s in love with him too. Right now, her chest just hurts.

Subin finds them a while later but doesn’t mention anything, just says that they’re going to lock up the school soon. Minseo gets up and Yixing follows.

She feels the absence of his hand on her shoulder and wipes the tear tracks off of her face.

He’s still there when she’s out of the locker room and he accompanies her to the bus stop, waiting with her for a while in a similar silence. Her whole body aches at the thought of him for the bus ride home. He won’t leave her head and so she lets his invisible weight fall over her.

She stares at her legs in the mirror for a while that night. She knows she’s just a mess to all of them. She’s too loud, too uncultured, too awkward, and Yixing was probably just trying to shut her up. It was nice of him, definitely, but she knows she’s not even pretty, let alone gorgeous. Her mind even spits around the word.

Gorgeous.

Everything just looks wrong when she looks in the mirror. Her pigtails are uneven, her bangs plaster to her forehead, her eyes are too thin, and her cheeks are just plain-old fat. They might’ve been cute when she was little, but now they just set off disproportionate shoulders and flabby arms and stubby fingers. Her breasts should be closer together and her waist should be thinner and her stomach shouldn’t spill over her skirt the way it does and her hips should be so many millions of times closer together. Her legs are a stormy mess, thunderthighs crisscrossed with stretch marks that descend and divide like lighting bolts, wrinkled knees, muscled calves, fat ankles, and tiny feet. She’s not even pretty, nowhere near gorgeous and as she puts herself to bed with her stomach still growling, she wishes she knew what she wanted out of Yixing.

He keeps catching her eyes when they drift away from the lecture in Biology on Wednesday morning and her heart goes all weightless and her throat goes all dry. She doesn’t know what she feels around him, she just knows that she feels more around him.

Chanyeol’s got a black eye, and he disappears at lunch. Yixing is absent too, probably out of a guilty sense of obligation. He doesn’t regret a thing, but that doesn’t mean he’s proud. His fist is still sore.

Subin goes on about how boys are crazy dicks and Minseo laughs and nods, dutifully but unfeelingly.

Yixing offers Minseo a ride home; she accepts, but they don’t speak.

Thursday, Chanyeol’s at lunch and Yixing isn’t. Friday, they both are, and it’s appropriately awkward. Chanyeol is withdrawn, but he doesn’t seem angry.

Minseo remains confused.

She falls asleep early on Friday night, positively exhausted.

She and Yixing are supposed to work on the project on Saturday even though they haven’t brought it up all week, and while every exhausted piece of her ribcage urges her not to put her heart through anything more, she still pulls on some clothes at nine in the morning and gets on the bus.

It’s warmer out, which is a welcome rarity, even though the clouds are threatening a rainy afternoon. She still regrets her cardigan and her stockings as soon as she’s on the empty bus, staring out the window and wishing vaguely that she had any sort of idea what she was doing, but she knows that she left her comfort zone four years ago and she’s been pretending ever since. No need to oppose the law of inertia and stop now, although Yixing is a pretty unbalanced force.

Still, intermixed with all the crazy, terrible things Yixing makes her feel, there’s a twinge of security and sense at their base, and she doesn’t really want to give that up right now.

Yixing feels anything but balanced. He’s lived in fear for the last five days – fear of Chanyeol’s revenge, fear of Minseo’s rejection, and fear of his own feelings. He hates knowing she doesn’t see what he sees. He doesn’t grasp her stubbornness no matter how clearly he sees it and he feels so guilty for his attraction to her and then his parents come home.

They show up around midnight on Friday. Yixing is on the couch in sweatpants, attempting to compose new songs with his laptop and guitar, and he freezes up when they come in. He’s not sure what they think he does when he’s alone.

He shuts the laptop as his father walks in and flicks on the light, his mother following. It looks like he bought her a new mink coat and a new facelift. He wonders if they know he punched a kid in the face.

His parents are decent people, all things considered. His father’s factories supply a million vending machines and convenience stores with cheap baked goods, undoubtedly through cheap labor in his native China, but he’s not quite the embodiment of corporate Satan. He’s grown rounder in his age, and his eyes are kind like his son’s. He’s got a trustworthy face, apparently, and he attributes that to his success in business, even if he is no more than a smiling, robotic figurehead for a company that probably kills kids in its factories.

His wife and Yixing’s mother is the youngest daughter of a Korean industrial tycoon. She’s sixteen years younger than Yixing’s father but she’s his only wife, and their marriage is a happy one, which is quite a rarity as far as corporate tabloids are concerned. She, too, is merely a figurehead. Her face is kept pretty by surgeries and her wardrobe is always in top condition – she’s a trophy wife and nothing more.

Neither one of them was ever really suited to parenthood, but their son proved sensible. They dismissed his nanny as soon as he turned thirteen and he navigated himself through adolescence while they were off at galas and meetings in big cities. He’s never been sure why they left him behind, but he stopped feeling very bad about it when they stopped kissing him goodbye.

He kisses his mother on each cheek and bows nervously at his father, who looks paler than usual. He realizes he’s surpassed the older man in height when his back straightens and wonders how long it’s been since they’ve seen one another. He wonders if his father was ever infatuated with his mother like he is with Minseo and he really, truly doubts it.

They ask him how school is going but quickly change the subject and start tittering on about how the owner of Kim Pharmaceuticals has a new wife and how they might start opening branches in Japan and so on. Yixing escapes to his bedroom because his life feels a lot more balanced when he’s alone. He also needs to hide his stash of weed and take out his lip ring.

He leaves his guitar on the couch.

He wakes up early and panics when he remembers Minseo’s at least supposed to be coming over. He doesn’t want to deal with his parents and his explanations and the girl who he’s scared he has no right to love even though he knows she deserves to be loved. She’s older than him and wiser than him and she won’t listen to a socially inept rich boy no matter how much she deserves to know she’s lovely.

Yixing walks downstairs, head hurting, and decides to stake his claim on the kitchen before his parents are out of their giant feather bed. He isn’t sure what strikes him, but he pulls the flour and sugar and eggs out of the pantry where a million of his dad’s cheap provisions are going stale.

Twenty minutes later, his sweatpants are covered in flour, and a massive chocolate cake is in the oven.

He goes upstairs to change and hears his father rattling a bottle of pills and his mother’s heels already clicking on their bedroom floor.

He exhales slowly and pulls on nice jeans and a newer shirt because he knows he needs to look some semblance of presentable to his parents. They don’t need to know he sings or dances or smokes. To them, he’s just a symbol of a child, a placeholder to make them look like a real family.

His mother has just come downstairs when he pulls the cake out of the oven and the doorbell rings.

He runs to get it, shoving the oven shut and yanking the door open.

Yixing’s stomach goes all stupid because fuck, Minseo is gorgeous. He can try to convince himself he’s not in love with her, but whenever he sees her, he knows that it’s irrevocable.

Her hair is down from its usual pigtails and she’s wearing a navy blue jumper over a white t-shirt and he can see the line where her bra dips down. He can’t stand knowing she’s lonely.

And Minseo sees the flour on Yixing’s nose and wants to wipe it off and learn more about him so she can form a concrete idea of how she feels. His lip ring isn’t in and she decides she kind of likes him that way, looking all put-together and gentlemanly. She smiles sheepishly and he murmurs hello.

His mother shows up behind him in the doorway.

“Who’s this, dear?”

Yixing takes a moment to scramble his thoughts together and smiles at his mother.

“This is Kim Minseo, one of my classmates. We’re working on a biology project together. Minseo, this is my mother.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Zhang,” Minseo says, her voice sugary-sweet, bowing her head politely.

“Wow, it’s nice to see girls with manners these days. Tell me, which Kim family are you from? I could swear the owner of Kim Pharmaceuticals only has a boy at your school, but I could’ve heard wrong.”

“Ah, no ma’am, I’m – my father works in insurance. I’m on – ”

Yixing clears his throat, interrupting her. He can see the gears in his mother’s head trying to think up a Kim insurance company and he gets nervous. He doesn’t want to bring up class barriers here, no matter what Minseo’s intentions are.

“If you’ll excuse us, Mother, we have a project to do,” he insists, gently taking Minseo by the arm into the kitchen.

“I’m sorry about that. She’s just… I don’t know…”

“Hates poor people?” Minseo asks, eyebrows raised as she looks at the cake. “Because I really don’t care.”

Yixing frowns and she folds her hands nervously in front of her.

“I’m sorry. I get that parents can be… less than great,” she says.

He shakes his head. “Don’t apologize. I’m just not used to having them around and I don’t want them concerned or whatever. I don’t want them to start caring or whatever.”

“I get it. I mean, I don’t, but I wish my parents cared less,” Minseo laughs bitterly.

“Oh,” he nods, looking in cabinets for something to top the unfinished cake. “Anyway, I thought we could work in the garage ‘cause we need to paint and my parents are around, unless you’d rather try to talk to the guy who pretty much has a monopoly over the cheap breakfast pastry market and his trophy wife.”

“Is that where you learned to bake?”

“What? Oh God, no, I told you I’m alone a lot. The house is full of that shit and it’s awful.”

“Why’d you bake a cake, though?” she asks, a teasing confusion in her eyes.

Yixing shrugs. “Stress relief. And you deserve better than old plastic-wrapped danishes.”

Minseo’s heart jumps from her throat to her stomach for a second, the little grin not leaving her face. They both know that there’s a lot more weight to this conversation than old plastic-wrapped danishes.

“You shouldn’t cook for me. But, um, thank you.”

He nods. “Of course.”

Minseo smiles politely and Yixing takes two slices out of the unfrosted cake. Minseo takes one graciously, tiny bites growing bigger as his playful eyes watch her warningly. She hasn’t allowed herself good food in a while because she’s so bad with temptation

“This is good,” she mumbles around a mouthful, and Yixing isn’t sure he’s ever felt happier.

After they eat, he washes the dishes – she stands awkwardly while he does, used to being the one to do the work – and then they head out to the garage, a glassed-in behemoth built to cars worth more than Minseo’s apartment. She’s gotten pretty good at keeping the surprise off her face when she visits friends’ houses, but she can’t help it here. She lets her guard down around Yixing anyway, and upon the sight of the little army of shiny cars, her jaw drops a little.

Yixing doesn’t think about the curve of her neck or the perfect ‘o’ of her mouth at all.

He smiles. “It’s a little much,” he sighs apologetically.

“Who keeps them all clean?” she asks.

Yixing shrugs. “Me.”

“Whoa.”

“My parents take their driver with them when they go places and cars just make more sense to me than people. I sleep here a lot.”

Minseo’s about to ask where when she spots a sink and a sofa tucked into a corner, blackened with motor grease and paint.

“I – oh, okay, uh, is there anything you don’t do?” she asks, skeptical. Yixing likes this chattier Minseo and he wonders what provoked her, but he knows he’s totally incompetent.

“Most things. Especially not this project on my own.”

Somehow he’s acquired paint and posterboard, too, and Minseo doesn’t know what to say so she just pulls her hair back with the rubber band from her wrist and takes off her sweater, sitting cross-legged in the empty space left by an absent car. Art is easier than conversation.

Yixing uncaps a bottle of acrylic and frowns when he looks over at Minseo. “W-wait a second,” he insists. She gives him that skeptical look again and he pulls off his buttoned shirt, leaving himself in a gray wifebeater as he offers it to her with an outstretched and muscular arm. “Don’t get your shirt dirty.”

She can’t help but crack a smile at his stupid little outburst of caring and pulls the shirt on over her own shirt and her fluttering heart.

They begin at opposite ends of the canvas with pencils and meet in the center, splitting apart again to work with acrylics. Minseo inhales sharply when green paint splatters onto his shirt, ready to panic, but he just laughs and flicks some more at her. She’s about to be indignant, terrified of ruin, but she meets his eyes and they’re childish and playful and she knows what he wants, so she gives it to him, throwing a glob of said green paint at him from her brush.

It smacks him between the collarbones – she’s got good range, but he knows he shouldn’t be surprised. He splatters his own shirt with yellow and she gets a few red splotches along his jaw and then they’re both laughing and paint is flying everywhere and the click of car keys shocks them both into spraying their own cheeks.

His parents are heading out, evidently, and it’s nearly noon.

“We should clean up,” Yixing mumbles, laughing. Minseo nods, breathless, her eyes almost as bright as the yellow paint on her right cheek. “And eat.”

She makes a glum little noise at the second statement but stands up anyway, examining the mess she’s made of her clothes. She offers Yixing her elbow and he stands up.

“You’re fuckin’ strong,” he observes, beckoning her to the back room.

She rolls her eyes but her smile forms again. “It’s all just bulk.”

“Are you kidding?”

“Hm?”

“Do you really think you’re all bulk? I swear to God, Minseo, you’re delusional.”

Minseo groans, propping herself up on the counter by the dirty sink and rolling her sharp eyes all over again. “What? Everyone else is wrong? I’m ‘thunderthighs,’ don’t you remember? I don’t care. I mean, look at who I’m up against. I’m not Li Hua or Chuntao or Binhye or the twins and I never will be and I don’t fucking care.”

Yixing can hear the lump in her throat.

“Minseo, I swear to God, you’re not. You’re so much more than thunderthighs and Li Hua and anyone else. You’re beautiful. I told you.”

“You’re full of shit. You don’t need to make me feel better. I don’t care.”

“I’m telling the truth. You’re fucking gorgeous.”

She shakes her head, swallowing back four years’ worth of tears, and pulls his shirt off over her head.

“No, Yixing. I’m not. I appreciate it, but I don’t need your niceness.”

“I – Minseo, no, shut up.”

“What? You don’t think – “

He shuts her up with his lips.

It’s totally still at first, ripe with the terror of the moment.

Minseo’s virginal, arms freckled and hands petrified, and Yixing’s not much better, tongue too big and hands too clumsy.

He pulls away.

She pulls back, wrapping her fingers into the collar of his dirty wifebeater and staining her hand red.

“W-wait. That was… nice…”

“Really?”

“Really,” she replies, tugging softly so that he’s standing between her thighs. She’s nearly his height when she’s perched on the counter and this time, even though their teeth crash a little, it works.

She hasn’t kissed anyone – like, really kissed them, sober and everything – since a boy kissed her goodbye from the realm of public schools and normalcy four damn years ago. She’s almost forgotten how strange kissing is, all wet and warm, but it does feel good. It feels safe and close, and Yixing’s good at it.

Yixing’s heart is beating so stupidly fast that he’s scared it’ll fall from his chest as his nose brushes her cheek and her tongue enters his mouth. His hands are shaking but this is all he’s ever wanted. Minseo’s eyelashes are long and her shoulders are tense, but she’s responding, and that’s more than Yixing could ever ask for.

They figure it out, and Yixing runs his errant right hand from Minseo’s hips up the indent of her waist and on to the soft line of her breast and then her shoulder and her chin, keeping his left hand anchored to the small of her back.

Minseo’s hands are tangled in Yixing’s shirt. She definitely doesn’t hate him.

His eyes are languid when they pull apart again, both of them red-handed and pink-cheeked (save the fleck of yellow on Minseo’s cheek that’s been halfway transferred to Yixing’s nose).

“Do you believe me now?”

She rolls her eyes and he attacks her lips again, sliding his trembling hands beneath her ass and picking her up. He has no idea where he wants to go, but he holds her up and she crosses her legs around his, and eventually he collapses onto the couch, both of them panting and laughing.

Minseo’s throat has a way of quivering when she’s breathless that makes Yixing want to bite it, mark her up, and make her know she’s fucking adored.

She just straightens up and tries to fix her hair.

He’s doing the same, but he forgets how, and then she perks up when she notices something.

She makes her way over to the old boombox, definitely not thinking about Yixing smeared with motor oil and grease and instead taking the liberty to flip through a few of the surrounding CDs – it’s weird to see such a silly old thing in a place that reeks so strongly of new money – and it provokes a damn honest smile on her face. He’s got a million mix CDs, all diligently tracklisted in his own handwriting.

They’re mostly sad songs.

She glances at him sideways over the cover of one of them and smiles softly. She knows these songs. She’s spent hours forcing them through blown-out headphones, aiming for solace and winding up with headaches.

She fumbles with buttons on his dashboard to put one in, turning on AM and FM and auxiliary static and everything but the actual CD she’s chosen.

She tries to fix her stupid handiwork when Yixing’s hand comes in front of hers. She hadn’t even noticed him stand.

He’s trying not to smile as he opens the compartment and slides the CD in. “Don’t worry about it.”

She can hardly hear him, she’s so worried about it, but then the songs start and she recognizes the chords and something visceral happens in her guts, twisting into a heart-shaped knot that makes her blood pump warmer because she’s sharing this song with someone like she’s never really shared anything before.

“Elliot Smith?” she asks, raising an eyebrow, and he falls in love with her again for knowing.

Sure, this song was in that Wes Anderson movie, and sure, it’s not that obscure, and sure, neither of them have any idea what it means, but it’s music, and nobody listens to music anymore, and her eyes are wide and his are heated.

Their kiss is full of admiration of common ground and painted hands and foreign lyrics, all embodied in an all-too-physical rush of tongues and teeth.

Their legs tangle. They fall down together onto the filthy couch cushion. Yixing’s wifebeater rides up when he starts to move his hand beyond Minseo’s jumper, neither of them with half an idea of what they’re doing until the song switches.

Yixing turns as red as the paint and tries to get up, but Minseo’s hand is still curled at his collar, scratching his chest when he tries to escape.

“What’s wrong with this song? I like it.”

Yixing’s cheeks are hot.

“What? Who’s it by?” she asks, her eyes big and innocent and childish, but before he can stammer out the response she sees it in his eyes and her face is stained a beautifully incredulous shade of pink. “Oh, God, it’s you, isn’t it?”

Yixing lets his blush serve as an answer.

Minseo shakes her head, smiling softly. “Shut up, Yixing, you’re fuckin’ talented.”

He sticks out his lower lip. She casts her eyes down for a second and he inhales deeply, shaking his head in return.

A short laugh escapes her throat and their lips meet in the epicenter of the space that moves them and separates them. Her hips start moving slowly, pushing upward into more negative space, and Yixing wants her more, his skin tingling with embarrassment that fades into arousal when she bites at the emptiness where his lip ring should be.

He unbuttons her jumper and she loosens her grip on his shirt. They pause to take them off, her eyes half-lidded as she listens to his voice on the speakers.

“Are you okay with this?” Yixing asks, chest bare and pale. Minseo knows she shouldn’t be, but he warps her brainwaves, and she hates being as lonely as she is. She doesn’t hate Yixing – in fact, she kind of really likes him. “Are you okay with me?”

“I am,” she replies, and lets the jumper be shoved to the end of the couch beyond where their feet are entangled. She’s left in the plain t-shirt and mild white stockings and dark blue underwear that are trimmed in sharp white lace, revealing nearly every godforsaken centimeter of her thighs. Yixing’s hands are drawn to them, every soft inch: she is more than fat and muscle and bone. She is strength and heat and shy, sweet, feminine power. He’s in awe of her as his calloused hands traverse the convexities of her legs, pressing kisses to her trembling knees.

But Minseo’s still shy. Yixing is so thin and so gentle and she’s scared of what his hands might find, so she tugs him up by the chin and brings his hands back to the known territory of her painted cheeks.

His hands rebel too soon, of course, this time traversing the milky skin of her stomach, excavating butterflies as they make their way past her ribs to the plain lavender nylon covering her breasts and explore the warm skin underneath.

Nervously, Minseo follows his lead, following his vertebrae down his spine with shaking fingers that eventually reach the small of his back. Goosebumps form on his pale skin.

He smiles at her and she catches his bottom lip in her teeth. Without exhaling, Yixing takes his right hand from her left breast and heads back down her stomach to the apex of her thighs, listening to her breath hitch when he rubs her over her underwear.

Minseo’s nearly eighteen and never been touched. Yixing’s barely seventeen and hasn’t ever touched anyone, but he’s halfway hard and she’s not scared anymore and it’s only natural for them to come undone for one another.

He’s got an old condom in his wallet for no real reason and the songs change as he kicks off his jeans and he’s inside of her and they fuck, hips moving to an imperfect rhythm as the garage heats up. It hurts, but neither of them are strangers to pain.

This pain feels a lot better than the pain they’re used to, at least.

Yixing comes first and works his fingers into Minseo until she does too, every inch of her body shaking with the pure newness of the sensation.

They come apart, breathless and dirty, and Yixing stands up to throw the condom away and pull on his underwear. He falls down next to Minseo on the couch and wraps an arm around her as she shivers in the early afternoon light. The sky outside is clouding over now, but her mind feels lighter than it did this morning.

They examine themselves in all of their painted glory, smiling softly, and their hands intertwine.

They stay as they are for a while, barely clothed on the couch as the rain begins to fall, until Minseo finally mumbles that they should probably start the poster over again.

Yixing kisses her goodbye that evening.

Minseo doesn’t even think about herself when she gets home, merely about Yixing.

Sunday morning, though, she feels it in her hips and tries to grasp the magnitude of what she’s done. She feels happy around Yixing, but she likes being in control of herself just as much, and he makes her feel a bit like she’s drowning.

She thinks it might be better to feel happy and feel like she’s drowning than to feel miserable but in control, and she wonders if she should ask Li Hua.

They’re supposed to go shopping anyway. Well, Li Hua will shop. Minseo will look at the clothes, created for people with the exact opposite proportion of body fat to spending money, and crawl into some kind of friendly, supportive depression as they trek through the mall.

Binhye and Chuntao are tagging along today, evidently shopping for the school’s winter dance, even though it’s still weeks away, and Minseo feels even poorer and lonelier than usual as she holds clothes up outside of dressing rooms, waiting for them to try on each dress and critique each nonexistant blemish supposedly scarring their perfect bodies. It’s all leather and lace and Minseo feels lonely and dirty in her plain cotton dress with her new and powerful secrets.

Her phone vibrates, though, and she nearly drops the six hangers on her hand when she goes to check it. It’s Yixing. He hopes she’s all right, and he punctuates but he doesn’t capitalize. She smiles.

And then somebody nudges her from behind, grinning. It’s Chuntao.

Chuntao’s new and full Chinese and hasn’t done much by way of helping Minseo’s self-image: she’s tall as hell and skinny and has this dangerous look in her eyes that’s equally terrifying and gorgeous and she’s only a freshman. Her mother teaches Chinese, and while she really should be in the same boat financially as Minseo, she got some modeling contract the moment she got off the plane in Korea and now she’s wearing lace-up boots with heels as tall and expensive as Minseo’s entire apartment building. Minseo could’ve sworn she was still in the fitting room.

She doesn’t speak much Korean nor is she as blatantly sexual as Li Hua and Binhye tend to be and so Minseo kind of likes her.

“Do you like him?” Chuntao asks bluntly, and the question startles Minseo because she’s felt so bizarrely disconnected from everyone since yesterday, and it hits her that she really does as she tries to stammer out a response.

She likes Yixing. She likes Yixing in a way that she’s never liked anyone or anything else before. He turns her chemical imbalances into something a little bit steadier, something concrete and inconsequential like cake crumbs or paint splatters. He makes her whole heart feel lighter and warmer and every awful thought feel like a fading bruise rather than an open wound. His pale skin and trail of vertebrae and the hole in his lip where a silver ring should be are not perfect, just brilliantly asymmetrical.

Minseo likes them anyway, especially because she’s just about the only one who’s ever seen them.

“Yeah,” she laughs, playing off her pounding heart.

Chuntao grins and Li Hua bursts out of the dressing room in a distressingly scandalous studded dress, demanding to know whom. Minseo’s hesitant to reveal anything, but Chuntao reads the characters over her shoulder.

“It’s Yixing,” Chuntao replies – Minseo’s learned enough Chinese to know that much.

Li Hua grins and Binhye emerges, nearly cackling. “I knew it!”

Minseo blushes as she’s surrounded and interrogated. Chuntao is quietly and adorably delighted, Binhye’s into the romance, and Li Hua’s like a proud, perverse mother even though Minseo is a good month older, instantly breaking out the most distressingly personal questions.

Minseo gulps and brushes off the worst questions. She nods at some of Binhye’s and probably makes a total mess of the truth before she responds with a simple i am, hope you are too! Eventually the other girls are satiated, happy to wait until the next message comes in, but Minseo pretends he doesn’t respond like she pretends they only kissed. They all conclude that it was the punch that pulled her down, but Minseo knows that this has been in the works much longer.

She wants some sort of secret to herself, even though she can tell that Li Hua knows.

Li Hua knows her too well. She and Minseo have both played tennis for years and Minseo’s always been her pet poor girl, but they’ve never been paired before because Li Hua and Binhye’s friendship has typically trumped their talent. Now Binhye’s with Chuntao, though, and Minseo and Li Hua have grown to know each other as something more than a slut and a charity case, and Li Hua can read the nuances in Minseo’s happy fidgeting. She tries to convince the shorter to try on some dresses, but Minseo is in no mood to discuss sizing or pricing.

So Li Hua just buys her a milkshake in congratulations before they head to their weekend practice and Minseo is proud of herself for barely drinking half. Just because she’s decided she likes Yixing doesn’t mean she can abandon control quite yet – she’ll reserve that for the moments where he makes control impossible.

After practice, Chuntao squeezes her shoulders goodbye, Binhye winks in congratulations, and Li Hua kisses her cheek when they all part ways. Minseo replies to Yixing’s reply with an almost-flirtatious little smiley face. She feels more confident than usual as she scales the steps, but she enters the door to find the mess that she should be used to by now, the mess where her little sister is crying on the kitchen floor because she’s finally discovered a boy and her father and mother are fighting in whispers behind the bedroom door they’ve left ajar over something to do with her brother and Minseo goes unnoticed in the oblivion of emotion.

Minseo smiles bitterly over the eternal curse of the middle child as she slips out of her shoes and sits down next to her sister. Sure, Minseo’s never quite been heartbroken by anyone besides herself, but she’s the elder sister, and she’s never really adhered to that role.

She’s never tried to comfort anyone, always too preoccupied with her own emotions to do anyone else’s any good, and while her sister probably doesn’t appreciate the effort, Yixing does.

He wakes up curled in a hospital chair at ten that night when his phone vibrates again, his head thudding and his mind blurry. The familiar face in the bed that stretches perpendicular to his legs is more gaunt than usual and the yesterday floods back into his head. He’d savored Minseo’s taste on his tongue, strumming his guitar laconically on the dirty couch for hours, refusing to think about the deeper implications of his infatuation because he was happier than he’d been in a long, long time, and he hadn’t realized time was passing until he got the panicked call from his mother urging him to meet her at the hospital.

His parents, shockingly enough, had forgotten to mention that Mr. Zhang had started showing signs of the same cardiovascular illness that had taken his father while they’d been off on some island vacation months ago. He’d started hemorrhaging in the car coming back from lunch on Saturday or something and, thanks to Yixing’s mother’s elitism, had nearly died on the long, rainy ride to the most renowned hospital in Seoul.

Yixing remembers the disconnect he felt when his mother grabbed him by the wrist to watch his sleeping father’s EKG monitor peak and trough through the night being set off by the knowledge that he was not, in fact, alone, because Minseo was a warm and gentle constant, and while she could be standoffish and quiet and totally oblivious to her own worth, Yixing couldn’t deny her goodness.

Even now, groggy and confused in the unforgiving chair, he feels bizarrely lucky. His father is alive and his emotions are no longer wrenched by the thought of losing the man – Yixing stopped worrying about his parents much when they stopped kissing him goodbye. The news of the disease jars him, but he’s not horrified. He doesn’t feel affected, really. He feels like he’s intruding on someone else’s mourning process even though nobody’s dead, and there’s a guilt attached to that lack of feeling, but he tries to eschew it from his head with logic. He knows that his mother is strong enough to keep up publicity, this hospital is bright enough to keep his father alive, the old man has powerful enough associates and attorneys to keep them living in luxury, and Yixing has a feeling Minseo won’t let him fall apart alone.

He doesn’t tell her he’s at the hospital, though, just types out questions about harmless things.

His mother comes in with a cup of tea and says they’re scheduling a surgery. Yixing raises an eyebrow and nods, pulling his thin hoodie further over his shoulders and only halfway thinking about the sweater Minseo left on the floor of his garage, wondering if it’s soaked with rain now or if it still smells like her.

He hates himself.

He hates himself for being so bitter and for not caring about his father. He knows it’s his own fault. His mother drinks her tea and falls asleep, the age starting to show in her long fingers as they tightly grip her purse handle in her sleep like it’s a security blanket.

Yixing has nothing to do but squirm until he can pretend he’s comfortable and fall back asleep until four in the morning, at which point he can’t stand it anymore. He decides to wander.

His bones hurt and his eyes are still sticky with sleep and the fluorescent hallways make it impossible to tell whether it’s day or night. The only sounds permeating the stagnant, recycled air are the occasional well-timed coughs and bumps. Yixing follows signs to the bathroom and just stares at his reflection in the mirror.

He doesn’t look like a rich kid. He looks stupid and tragic and overgrown and pale. His cheeks are emaciated and he realizes with a start that he’s going to be eighteen in less than two years and his dad might be dead by then and his mother will want to keep the business under the family name and fuck, he doesn’t want to be a businessman.

He wants to sing and sell weed and play guitar and dance and kiss Minseo and even if he was deprived of a childhood, he’s got a pretty good and carefree semblance of young adulthood going that he doesn’t want to give up on now. He’s finally happy.

But his father’s dying and his mother’s eyes barely register his presence and the girl he loves is fucked-up too and he’ll never make it anywhere if he doesn’t make money.

He knows his thoughts are nothing new, but he can’t help the way their weight crushes him like the cigarette butts tossed in the potted plant in the corner of the restroom. He’s trapped in the knowledge that his happiness is probably finite, and he panics.

He doesn’t care that it’s 4:23 in the morning; he needs to capitalize on this one potential moment of adolescence before everything goes to shit. He gulps his heart back down to his stomach and punches the call button.

Minseo picks up on the third ring, her whisper only as ragged as it was after they had sex. She doesn’t sound sleepy at all, and she isn’t. She’s sitting cross-legged on her top bunk, absentmindedly tracing the stretch marks on her thighs and watching the rain fall past her window, trying not to feel isolated as the drops fall on the roof six floors above her.

“Hello?”

“Hey, Minseo, I know it’s a bad time –”

“It’s totally fine… Are you okay?”

Yixing catches himself half-smiling in the smudged mirror and it only makes him smile wider and wonder what she thinks of the dimple that pulls his cheeks into distorted asymmetry when he’s this tired. He’s in love with her voice too, and even though he honestly doesn’t know if he’s okay, she makes him feel something very close to it. He nods, hoping she knows. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine.”

“Oh, God, Yixing, did something happen?”

She runs a hand through her damp hair, worry creasing her forehead. She’s already in too deep with him and she knows she’ll drown if he does. Sex is awful and strange and her head is turning somersaults. She has a history test in the morning. It’s still raining, but it should turn to snow before next week. She’s suddenly so desperately aware of most things and it’s not pleasant, because she realizes she needs Yixing, and it’s scary, because she doesn’t even have real problems. He’s not an emergency life vest but an oxygen tank, attached to her through her nose and lips and eyes.

“Nothing happened. Nothing happened to me, at least, but I’m kind of freaking out right now and I, uh, I wondered if you’d go to the dance with me.”

The corners of her eyes burn because he’s so disgustingly cryptic, but the one tear that falls is a happy one, and she nods.

“Yeah, I will,” she responds, grinning through the receiver so widely that Yixing can practically hear it.

“A – awesome.”

In two opposite corners of the city, two teenagers hang up their phones with their mouths dry and their hearts full. They’re both smiling, and they’re smiling because they love one another.

They love one another in the strangest way and neither one of them wants to bother trying to think it out. It’s young innocent and filthy and terrifying and all-consuming, but it’s love all the same, and no matter what happens between this Monday morning and the night of the dance, it will remain.