Changmin started off on the wrong foot with the coach, who had made it clear that he wasn't happy with Changmin having taken a spot on the Team to begin with.

Changmin had joined them and the assistant coach for the morning run, but to someone who wasn't used to running the 15 kilometres, with weights around their ankles at that, it would have been miraculous if they could keep up.

Yunho ran ahead of Changmin at his usual pace, because Yunho was never, ever willing to sacrifice his own training for anything or anyone else, but when he had made the course with the rest of the team an hour and a bit later and realized that Changmin had fallen behind, he felt a pang of guilt that he hadn't taken care of his roommate.

Changmin arrived after the rest of the team was getting ready for the morning swim. Yunho's guilt and worry for Changmin grew when Changmin still hadn't shown up by the time they had all lined up shoulder-to-shoulder by the side of the pool in front of the coach after stretching.

"Where the hell in Shim Changmin?" he asked.

No one was brave enough to speak except the assistant coach, who explained, "He's just getting back from the morning run."

As if on cue, Changmin pushed the doors into the pool, finally having changed into his swimsuit but still breathing heavily. Changmin took a glance at the line and figuring it out, joined the team at the end of the line.

"Look who's shown up."

The coach stepped slowly towards the new member, whose gaze was fixed down at the level of the coach's shoulders. The coach reached up and grabbed a fistful of Changmin's head, making him wince.

"The media calls you a star, so you really think you're one, don't you?"

"No, sir."

The bright smiles that Changmin had on last night was gone now, to be replaced with a look of – Yunho realized as a chill ran down his spine – of pure loathing.

"You think the National Team is a joke? You thought you could just walk in here and continue your pretense as an athlete?"

The coach let go of Changmin's hair with a push, making Changmin stumble back.

"Useless piece of ."

The coach raised his hand and pulled it back, and Yunho closed his eyes before the hand connect to the side of Changmin's head.

Although Changmin may not have been used to the running or the weight training, there was no doubt that he was a gifted swimmer.

Changmin's body was probably created by God Himself for swimming. One of his long, strong arms propelled him feet further than his competition, and his lean, perfectly streamlined body glided through the water with such effortless ease.

Over the next few months, Changmin polished up his technique and got stronger through the weight training and improved his breathing with the running. And once he did that, there was little doubt in Yunho's mind that Changmin would become the next big thing in the swimming world.

The fact that Changmin had so much to catch up on, though, meant that bruises almost never left Changmin's body, new ones appearing even before old ones began to fade.

He was beaten mercilessly for small errors, and Yunho rarely heard the coach call Changmin anything other than 'useless piece of '.

"I wonder what he wants from me when he calls me a useless piece of ," mused Changmin one day when Yunho and Changmin were alone in the room together. "Am I supposed to work harder to try to prove that I'm not a useless piece of ? Or am I supposed to just confirm my suspicions that the coach is an abusive dickhead?"

Yunho had chuckled, because he really didn't know how to answer that question.

Even with everything that he was going through though, in the permanently high-strung, tense environment, Changmin was a breath of fresh air.

After the first day of training, which had been rough, Yunho was careful when he entered their room, but he needn't have worried; Changmin was sitting on his bed with his legs swinging back and forth, again, eating his damn chocolate bar.

He cheerfully offered Yunho a piece again, but Yunho refused, thinking that Changmin deserved to eat the whole thing today. He asked Yunho a bunch of questions about how he did his schoolwork and how Changmin was supposed to get in touch with his tutor, but then he reverted back to listening to his music and playing games on his phone until he fell asleep.

The other athletes didn't talk about anything except swimming. When Worlds approached and the selection committee began to sit in on their practices, just being next to any of the other swimmers was suffocating for Yunho; he could feel their stress without even having to talk to them.

On the other hand, Changmin never seemed stressed. He was serious when he was training, to be sure, but he wasn't desperate.

Yunho used to think that desperation was something that was absolutely necessary to be a successful swimmer, but seeing Changmin, he wasn't so sure.

The fact that Changmin wasn't desperate meant that nerves never got to him. He was always a consistent swimmer – a consistently excellent swimmer. Changmin never had really great days in training, but that also meant that he never had bad days. It also meant that Changmin was always well-rested.

Once the World Team selection time period came around, many swimmers began to show their inconsistency and their nerves, and even Yunho wasn't immune, even though he knew that he basically had a guaranteed spot on the team. He'd walked away from a swim with several bruises across the back of his thighs, and that night, Changmin helped put medicine over the bruises.

"It's kind of interesting to me that you tolerate this," mused Changmin, fingers gliding over the bruises.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean this abuse."

Yunho turned his head to stare at Changmin. "What?"

Changmin rolled his eyes. "I mean you're national athletes. People watch you. People listen to you. And yet you choose to tolerate this abuse." Changmin hummed. "It's interesting. Maybe I overreacted after all, at the group home. I wasn't anything, and I couldn't stand it. I did everything I could to leave. And so I ended up here, which… I don't know. Maybe wasn't the best replacement anyway. You can sit up now, I'm all done."

Yunho was taken aback, because while beating was part of his training once he became serious in competitive swimming, he had never in his head classified it as 'abuse' so much as punishment.

This practice of coaches beating athletes to shave off extra milliseconds was never talked about. Everyone just accepted it. They had accepted it as children, and they accepted it now.

Yunho distinctly remembered never telling his parents that his coaches beat him because he was embarrassed to tell his parents that he had been so bad at practice that day that he had to be beaten. Even now, he felt the same as he was talking to Changmin. He would have preferred not talking about it at all.

Yunho sat up before speaking to his roommate.

"First off, you're a national athlete too. Be proud of it," chastised Yunho. "And secondly, our experiences with all this are different. Athletes have historically tolerated this."

"Have you ever thought about not tolerating it?"

Yunho thought for a second. Well… what could he really do? Call the police? The media?

It was the first time Yunho had ever thought seriously about the issue, and now that Changmin brought it up, he wondered why he didn't think about it sooner.

"No, I haven't," said Yunho slowly once his thoughts were organized. "I would never do anything about it because if I did, we're going to miss tons of practice because of investigations. I can feel it even when I miss one or two days of practice. If I decide to make a big deal from this, we're all going to be missing weeks of training. None of us deserve that."

"It's strange, right?" said Changmin with a chuckle. "I used to think tolerating abuse was a thing of people of lower class, like me. But here you all are, from really nice backgrounds and really nice families and tons of fans and a whole country who looks at you like you're their hero, and you still. You still have to go through it all. It's ed up."

Yunho was deep in thought when Changmin threw something into his lap from his bed. Yunho looked up at Changmin in surprise.

Changmin was smiling. "Wanna share a chocolate bar?"