“Little boy?”

A seven year old Chanyeol looks up from his portable gaming device at the female employee, her face pulled down with concern, staring at him. He blinks.

“Are you lost? Do you need me to call for your parents over the intercom?”

The boy shakes his head, smiling wide and missing his two front teeth. “No, thank you, miss. My mommy said she’ll be back after trying on one of those dresses with the flowers on it.”

The woman’s face remains clouded — if anything, her expression sours more — but she still nods and leaves Chanyeol leaning against a free space of wall with his game. She keeps her eyes on the kid during her shift, worried and confused.

Their boutique doesn’t allow for customers to try on clothes before purchasing. They don’t even have a fitting room.

“Excuse me.”

Chanyeol slides his finger across the pause button and looks up at the same employee from three hours ago.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to call for your parents,” she bends down to his level, “or I could take you home. My shift just ended,” she says, reaching out to smooth down the wild strands of his messy hair.

She seems nice… But his mother always tells him not to get close to people he doesn’t know, that they could hurt him.

He cutely puffs out his cheeks, trying to decide if he should go with her or stay and wait for his mother. The woman smiles at him again, sweet and innocent, and he finds himself nodding, accepting her offer.

Patting his head once more, she straightens up and extends her hand for the child to take. Curling his small hand around three of her fingers, he follows her out of the high-class shopping plaza and to a small blue car. He tells her his address and he feels proud because there have been a few times where he’s slept in 24/7 convenience stores because he didn’t know how to ask how to get home.

Once outside his familiar large, historical-looking home, he thanks the lady with a bow and a kiss on the cheek and jumps out of the car. She asks if she needs to walk him to the door and he declines, saying he’ll be fine by himself. She sits outside his house until a sharp-faced woman opens the door and lets him in. She swears the woman (who must be his mother) glares at him before closing the door.

His mother was definitely not happy to see him home.

He sighs, leaning his head back against the chipping body of a tall, blooming tree. Pieces of bark are probably stuck in his hair but he doesn’t care, could care less. His guitar sits forgotten in his lap, his right hand resting calmly over the strings. He’s suddenly not in the mood to play anymore.

Usually he likes to come out on days when the weather is nice, find some place to sit, and make up melodies and songs to play in the open to whoever walks past. But today, no matter how warm the sun is on his skin, he cannot bring himself to play. Maybe it has something to do with the many happy families with smiling children and parents walking past today.

Maybe that’s it. He can’t play because he’s jealous. He’s seething with envy watching those children live lives he wished he could have had.

And then he feels pathetic.

Shifting, Chanyeol pats his pockets without disturbing his guitar. Nothing. He doesn’t have his cigarettes on him.

“Damn,” he mutters under his break, closing his eyes against the shine of the sun.

He’ll just sit here for a minute and then if he still isn’t in the mood he’ll go home.

He stiffens when he feels a hand curl around the awkward jut of his shoulder.

“Relax, it’s me.”

Chanyeol looks at the other person, immediately calming when he sees the familiar face.

“What are you doing—”

“Here.”

Furrowing his brows at the interjection, Chanyeol slowly casts his gaze down to the box of cigarettes offered to him.

“Where did you get these? How did you know I needed them?”

Minseok shrugs and softly kicks Chanyeol in the side, urging him to move over so he can sit beside him.

“What’s with the long face?” Minseok grabs the guitar from Chanyeol and sets it in his own lap. The latter watches the other man run his fingers over the strings.

He laughs because Minseok has no idea what he’s doing and yet the older man’s face is pulled tight, concentrating on the guitar as if he’s playing something difficult.

“I don’t appreciate you laughing at me.”

Minseok shoots him a glare out of the corner of his eyes but it only makes Chanyeol laugh harder.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up, . I bet you’ll laugh so much when I throw your precious guitar into the middle of a busy intersection,” Minseok says.

Despite the threat, he continues to laugh until he can’t do so anymore, knowing the other doesn’t mean it. “You're not funny, Minseok."

Hands cupped together, he breathes into them, hoping the warmth of his breath will stop the freezing of his fingers before he gets frostbite. He can’t do anything about his toes, only covered by the snow sodden cotton of his socks, but he thinks it could be cool having amputated feet. Missing limbs. It’s what all nine year olds contemplate having at some point. Or is that just him?

Exhaling heavily, Chanyeol wraps his arms around himself but the chill of his palms against his skin is so cold it burns and he drops his arms to his sides shortly after. He’s not sure what time it is but the sky is dark and street lamps are on and he hasn’t seen a car drive past in about twenty minutes. It must be late in the night. His mother tossed him out just a few minutes before he usually went to bed at half past nine. The fast food chain that has a sign that says they’re open throughout the night but really isn’t kicked him out about an hour ago. They told him to go home. He would. But he doesn’t have a home. That's his mother's house. He isn’t even welcomed there.

He finds himself in one of the neighborhoods the teachers at school always gossiped about. They say it’s dangerous or something like that. Chanyeol doesn’t believe them because this is Korea and nothing bad ever happens in Korea. It’s not like they live in some American action movie and dying people are just going to start falling out of windows and stuff.

“Hey, kid.”

Blinking, Chanyeol turns around. There's no one there.

“Over here.”

He wipes his running nose with the bottom of his shirt and looks toward the voice again. He takes a step back when a man, dressed in a simple jacket and pair of black jeans not suitable for the weather, walks from behind the house on the corner of the street.

“Yes,” Chanyeol answers, having since given up on following his mother’s words of not talking to strangers.

“You lost or something?”

Shrugging, Chanyeol breathes into his arms again. He needs to find somewhere to sleep tonight. He wonders if there is a convenience store around here.

“It’s not safe for a kid like you to be out on the street this late.”

“That’s what my teachers say but I don’t see anything wrong with it. Nothing has happened to me yet.”

The man stares at him for a while before pulling a cigarette out of his pocket and lighting up.

“Since you’re about half-dead anyway, why don’t I let you stay tonight and you do something with yourself in the morning.”

With numb toes, Chanyeol sees no reason to decline.

“Will someone please wake up that sleeping in the third row?” the algebra professor standing at the head of the class, writing quadratic functions on the chalkboard, requests.

The only thing is, Chanyeol isn’t sleeping; his eyes are closed because he’s lowering the sensory overload to his brain to fend off a monster headache. He’s much so aware of the professor’s dragging lecture, the pounding behind his right eye, and the idiot whose hand is brushing up against his shoulder.

His own hand darts out and wraps around the first finger he feels, snapping it back. For half a second he thinks he’ll find peace; as always, he’s wrong.

The ear-splitting shriek of his classmate does nothing to ease his headache, only makes it worse. At his limit, Chanyeol opens his eyes and lifts his head, grabbing for the bag sitting at his feet.

“What’s all the commotion?” The professor turns around to glare in their direction.

“He…My finger…I think it’s broken.”

Shrugging his bag over his shoulder, he catches the eye of his professor. “Chanyeol, where do you think you’re going so abruptly after inflicting pain on this girl?”

Walking out to leave, he turns back to the girl cradling her hand. “Put some ice on it, you’ll be alright.”

“Your name is Chanyeol, right?”

Chanyeol looks up from his game, pausing it. Standing in front of his desk is that strange kid with the baby fat, the one who sits in the front of the classroom by the window and makes frequent trips to the nurse’s office. No one really talks to him because he’s weird and talks to himself.

He nods.

“My name is Xiumin. I was assigned to be your partner for the poster project.”

Chanyeol only turns back to his game. “That’s nice.”

He sits there tapping away at buttons on his PSP as Xiumin does the work alone. He would feel bad, like he’s taking advantage of the other kid, but Chanyeol isn’t that kind of child anymore. He’s not that sweet, innocent boy he used to be.

Before their classes change, Xiumin pats him on his arm to get his attention. Chanyeol doesn’t bother with pausing his game this time.

“Are you listening?”

Chanyeol hums noncommittally.

“I was thinking maybe we should get together to work on the poster. I could go to your house one day—”

“No.” Because Chanyeol doesn’t live in a house. He wanders the street for most of the day and sometimes he’ll sleep in a bathhouse or some other place open overnight and sometimes he’ll crash over at his ‘father’s’ house. He’s homeless.

Xiumin mutters something under his breath and it’s evident that he’s talking to himself. Chanyeol ignores him for his game, hissing when his character dies.

He barely hears when Xiumin suggests going to his own house. He doesn’t hear the apprehension in the other kid’s voice.

Working with him in class, Chanyeol learns that Xiumin has intense mood swings and goes from a teddy bear holding crybaby to an attitudinal jerk. It’s strange and he doesn’t know how to react to that but he supposes all people have their quirks. Now that he’s standing outside Xiumin’s pretty house, he starts to think maybe Xiumin is one of those possessed kids like in the horror movies.

“, she’s home.”

Eyebrow raised, Chanyeol side-eyes the cursing Xiumin. He opens his mouth to suggest working on the poster later, when this unnamed ‘she’ is not home since it bothers the other so much. But then Xiumin shrugs and grabs his hand and pulls him into the house.

He’s almost hit with a phonebook when he walks through the door, Xiumin having ducked out of the way without any warning. Xiumin nods his head toward the stairs and Chanyeol shuffles over to them, hands stuffed in his pockets and uncaring about the boy confronting his obviously pissed mother. He pokes his head into every room on the top floor until he finds the one he assumes belongs to Xiumin (the nameplate on the door that says Kim Xiumin makes it pretty obvious). Pulling his PSP out of his bookbag he doesn’t know how much time passes before Xiumin comes trotting into the room, not the same cursing kid he was when they first arrived.

Taking one look at the other’s tears, Chanyeol rolls his eyes. He doesn’t say anything because there isn’t anything to say. He doesn’t know their situation and he isn’t going to offend or comfort Xiumin as if he understands.

The only thing he understands is that all mothers are terrible people.

A few weeks after the poster project, Chanyeol’s teachers realize his ‘father’ filled out the transfer papers wrong, putting down the wrong age and grade. They demote him a year and place him in the class he should have been in from the start. It’s not like he’ll do better in classes meant for his own age group.

Chanyeol is just happy he doesn’t have to work with the weird kid again.

“Why don’t you pay attention to me anymore, Yeollie?”

Chanyeol ignores the arms around his waist and the face buried just below his shoulder blades. Cigarette between his fingers as usual, he taps the ash off the side of the balcony. Replacing it between his lips, he reaches behind him and places his hand on the woman’s hip, squeezing gently.

“Sorry, I have a lot on my mind.”

The older woman presses her lips to his neck. “Why don’t you tell me about it? I can order up a bottle of wine if you want.”

Shaking his head, he exhales and tosses the rest of the cigarette over the balcony. Slipping away from the woman, he walks back into the hotel room, nose wrinkling automatically at the odor of an unfamiliar perfume hovering heavy in the air. He’s never been fond of the smell of pineapples and the hint of green apple and lemon don’t mesh well enough to create something non-offensive to his senses.

“I didn’t buy you that, did I?” he wonders, grabbing his pants from the day before from the floor and checking the pockets for his pack of gum.

She assures he didn’t, claiming it to be a gift from a friend. Nodding, he pops a square piece of the spearmint gum into his mouth, dropping his jeans back to the floor.

“That's nice. I want you to throw it out.”

Her protests are drowned out by the sudden ring of his phone and he answers the call without looking at the ID or paying his whiny girlfriend any attention.

“What do you want?”

“Hello to you too, you jerk.”

“Hm. As if you’re one for pleasantries, Kyungsoo.”

“Pleasant-what? You know I don’t like big words. Anyway, I was out doing some work today, and I came across something I thought you’d like.”

Chanyeol raises an eyebrow. “Thinking of me, are you? That’s a first. I never hear from you unless it has something to do with Kai. Or if you need to borrow money. Speaking of—”

“I’ll pay you back when I can, alright,” Kyungsoo rushes the words out like he expected this topic to come up. Chanyeol doesn’t expect to see his couple ten thousand won again.

Turning to the clock beside the bed, he decides to head home, knowing he has an early shift at the garage the next morning and not wanting to spend another night in some fancy rich people hotel. Beckoning his girlfriend over with a nod of his head, he leans down to kiss her cheek.

“But really, man, I saw this stiletto switchblade on the market this morning and I thought ‘hey, this would be an awesome birthday present for Yeol.’”

“I bet you don’t even know when my birthday is,” he deadpans, stopping by the door to slip on his boots. He waves goodbye to the woman, telling her he’ll be back to get his clothes another day.

“I know when your birthday is… It’s… Oh, I gotta go. Have, uh, stuff to do. I’ll stop by the garage tomorrow to show you the blade.”

He doesn’t expect to see the kid with the baby fat again. But there he is, walking out of the bathroom with those same cheeks and those same red, teary eyes. Xiumin. He hasn’t changed. Or at least it doesn’t look like he has. Looking at the busted watch around his wrist, Chanyeol decides to follow the kid. It’s not like he has anywhere to go. His ‘father’ isn’t going to let him into the house until after the sun sets. He has to pass the time between then somehow.

Xiumin walks into one of the classrooms at the end of the hall. Standing outside, Chanyeol waits half a minute before he pokes his head into the room. There are a few other students in the room, all talking amongst themselves. He doesn’t recognize any of them. For the couple of minutes he watches, they don't do anything interesting and when he boredom gets the best of him, he leaves.

He finds out a few days later that’s the music club. How exciting.

Something in Chanyeol snaps when he passes Xiumin in the hallway a few weeks later heading to class in the morning. The latter is smiling, laughing, happy, and it doesn’t make any sense. He remembers Xiumin’s fragile relationship with his mother and he knows from experience that things like that never get better, they only get worse. He shouldn't be able to smile that freely, that easily. Not when Chanyeol can't.

The next Friday Chanyeol joins the music club because Xiumin’s a member of the music club and he wants to mess with Xiumin, make his life a living hell. He doesn’t know why — it could be because he’s an angry person or because Xiumin isn't broken like he is. He needs Xiumin to break. He needs it to make himself feel better. Because hopefully when he cracks, Chanyeol will have a person to suffer with.

That’s all he wants.

guess what time i'm updating you guisee~ that's right, it's 3am as always (oh, now it's 4am) this fic makes me lose all my sleep

and here we have the first part of chanyeol's side story (i haven't read over this chapter so i apologize for any really bad mistakes)

yeol is actually my favorite character in this fic. (sehun is #2)

he's sort of a difficult character to explain so i hope all of this made sense. but but but i didn't know who would be a good pair for him, so idk who his girlfriend is if anyone wants to give suggestions

we're at 40,000+ words this is officially the longest fic i've ever written \o/ party time

i feel like i tell you guys i love you too much so i won't this time

(but be prepared for next time)

(●´□`)♡