Taemin slips out of French at five minutes to one. He is ghost-like, silent and invisible to ordinary human beings.

To all except for one.

“Taemin,” a voice calls him from behind. Minho has followed him out. He freezes for a brittle moment. His arms and neck go tight. He wants to keep walking away, but something holds him in place. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t turn. He hears the quick, light taps of Minho’s canvas sneakers against the scuffed linoleum. He senses, more than sees, when Minho reaches out a hand, and flinches away so violently his back hits the wall of lockers with a clang. He stares up at Minho like a cornered fox.

“What?” He snarls. “What?”

Minho looks like Taemin has just slapped him. He withdraws his reaching hand. Taemin watches it until Minho drops it safely to his side.

“I just thought,” Minho starts, stops, swallows. “I just wondered…”

There is silence. Taemin slowly raises his eyes from where he’d been watching Minho’s hands to his face, and is astonished to see that Minho is nearly in tears.

Did Taemin do that?

“What?” He says again, and this time it doesn’t come out snarling.

“I just wondered if we could do some more music,” Minho looks down as he says it, hanging his head as if asking to do music is something to be ashamed of. “Like we did last night.”

Taemin is silent, but his hands begin to shake. Again, the fear. Why?

Why?

Why fear Minho, who has never hurt him? If anything, it should be Minho who fears him, savage, sharp-edged creature that he is.

Is it Minho, though, who he fears? No. It is something else. Some madness-reason he cannot fathom.

He will not give in to madness. He will not step through the third door. He closes his eyes and with an inward breath he dampens down the confusion. He mutes the hopelessness. He catches the fear and soothes its quivering, cupped in his delicate hands.

He opens his eyes, and he does not trust his voice, but he nods, and the way Minho’s face lights up is more than enough reward for his courage.

So Taemin does not go to the safe space between the cafeteria and the playground wall, where Sehun and Jongin and the others smoke and joke and show the world they do not care what anyone thinks of them (except they do care, of course, they care all too much). Instead he trails after Minho to the music block. When they get inside, Minho goes into the big classroom where the guitars hang in a double row on the back wall. Taemin stands in the doorway and watches Minho look along the rows, inspecting each guitar carefully. When he finally takes one down, Taemin almost finds a smile, because it is just the guitar he would have picked. Then Minho lifts down another, and carries them both back across the room.

He holds out the guitar Taemin would have picked, and Taemin takes it. The varnished wood is smooth and cool. They go into one of the smaller practice rooms, and Minho sits on the piano stool, and Taemin perches on a chair and crosses one leg over the other and bends over the guitar to tune it. Minho strikes an E on the piano without being asked. They have done this routine before.

Taemin twists the E-string down, then gently brings it up until it is pitch perfect. He waits while Minho follows suit. They repeat it for the B string. Then the G. And as each string comes in tune, something inside Taemin comes in tune too. He resonates with pitch-perfection. Their bodies are not touching, but their cells vibrate with the same frequencies. They are connected by the vibration of their guitars.

Taemin remembers.

Of course he remembers. He remembers everything. But these are memories he has refused to touch. Why remember things that were so bright and full of joy that the loss of them hurts more than being surrounded in bitter blackness? Why long for things he can never have again?

Can it be true that he and Minho are sitting here, alone and yet together, connected by their music once again?

He does not deserve this. Something must be wrong. The universe hates him too much to let this kind of luck last long. The other shoe will drop. But until it does, Taemin cannot force himself to withdraw anymore. He needs this. He needs it.

When the strings are all in tune, his fingers A minor, D minor, G. He hasn’t played an acoustic guitar for years. He only has an electric at home, which is safe, because his father cannot hear the sounds of the strings when they are unplugged. The strings stir beneath his fingers. Sound surrounds him.

He starts to play a song they once knew and loved, and he doesn’t look at Minho, but he can sense him smile. His friend joins the chord progression, his fingers as strong and sure on the fretboard as they were on the piano.

The verse begins, and Minho starts to sing, and for a brief breath of eternity, Taemin’s torment fades. There is no sadness. No madness. No fear, or anger, or pain. There are no creeping shadows. There are no visions of things that do not exist.

There is only music.

---

When Taemin arrives at school the next day, he knows at once that something is wrong. Whispers and echoes creep in the corners, sharp edges and gathering storm, and kids cluster around the lockers like vultures waiting for their prey to die.

Usually Taemin wouldn’t care what the other students are up to, but the feeling of something is wrong prompts him forwards, and without really knowing why he uses his sharp elbows to slip and wriggle his way to the front of the crowd.

What he sees then freezes him in place for a long, cold moment while his eyes process what he is seeing. Something deep inside him snaps with the sickening crack of a broken bird’s wing, and he begins to burn.

He leaps forward in a blaze of fury. Park Chanyeol looks up from where he has pinned Minho against the lockers just in time to be knocked to the ground by the flying force of Taemin’s body. Taemin tumbles down on top of him and doesn’t even feel his elbows bash painfully against the floor. His lungs begin to burn, and it is only when he takes a breath that he realizes that the howl of rage that rings in his ears was