Junhong sat in the back of the loud, cheerful classroom, fiddling with the buttons on his fleece jacket and watching his classmates interact. He'd exhausted himself last night, staying awake and pouring text onto reams of paper, composing his symphony of words. He documented his life in this manner, hoping one day he could come back and read this, and laugh at the impossibility of such crushing sorrow, the sinking feeling of being a nonentity, a nothing, a nobody. Someday he'd be new, and someday he'd be normal.

He toed his violin case, lying at his feet, and he resisted the urge to just grab it and play. The need for music was his favorite pain, slow and molten in his core as it suffused him with a mad desire. He wondered what his peers, quietly and studiously listening to the droning monotony of their newly arrived teacher, would think if he picked up his violin and played, here and now, with the selfsame reckless abandon he'd not allowed himself to feel for so very long. The urge was squashed and Junhong moved his restless hands to his lap, strings in his mind as his teacher taught him something he already knew.

Junhong had fought the urge all day, and, declining a ride home from his 'friends' he locked himself in the deserted music room as the rest of the school struggled its way through eighth period without him. He pulled his well-loved violin out of its dark, wooden prison and laid it across his lap as he shuffled through his books to find blank sheets of paper pens, and sheet music. He set his messenger bag on the seat next to him in the long, empty row and tried to breathe deeply. He was feeling jittery, his knee bouncing energetically as he fought to calm himself down. He sat in silence for endless seconds, and started playing.

The blue-haired senior was engrossed in the music, and the silence of the deserted hallway afforded him no distraction. He was rudely jolted from his abysmal reverie when he heard the sound of a locker slamming in the middle of the period. He continued to play, hearing the sound of the bathroom door being violently shut. He held the same note for a long second, and strained his ears over the noise of his music. He heard water running through the ancient pipes, and he stopped his song. Swiftly placing his violin within its velvet-lined case, he swung his bag over his shoulder, took the case, and snuck down the hall. The quiet padding of his feet was nearly imperceptible, but he didn't want to risk making much noise in the too-silent hallway. The bathroom door displayed a blatant lie, 'Bathroom closed for cleaning,' and he eased the door open carefully. The squeak of rusty hinges on the ancient door betrayed his entry, and he scanned the bathroom carefully, listening like an owl. Wary, but satisfied that there was probably no one in there with him, he sighed and relaxed.

He shuffled across the bathroom, pushing open the second to last door and relishing in the loud crash, and resounding echoes that reverberated around the room. He closed it gently, feeling remorseful, balanced his violin case on the close-lidded toilet and opened the ragged zipper pocket of his messenger bag.

The senior gingerly extracted the only sharp tool he had on him, an ancient Swiss army knife. He hadn't planned on this, hadn't had the precognizant thought to bring his regular arsenal. The satisfying scrape of metal against metal soothed his ragged nerves, assuaged the throbbing of his migraine. Pulling up his sleeve, the milk-white skin in gorgeous contrast to the deep sable of his shirt. He admired the complimentary vision, and steadied his right hand, drawing the blade slowly across flesh. Junhong cut shallowly, superficially, loving the moment of shock and incredulity his body registered before sending out small beads of blood, almost as an afterthought. He let a low moan escape his clenched lips, reveling in the tingle of the contact of cold steel on warm, soft skin, how it sent shivers down his spine and fed straight into the fire pooling just below his stomach.

The boy hissed as the blade bit too deeply, his nerves crying out in protest. He swabbed up the now free-flowing blood and moved the blade to the opposite arm. He pushed up his sleeve with a gentle hand, and in his haste he cut too deeply again. The pain overwhelmed the pleasure and a tidal wave of hurt overwhelmed his brain, and he cried out quietly. He stood, silent and careful for a few seconds longer, calming himself and surveying the damage.

The one on his right arm would barely hinder him, but the one on the left would need some sort of stitches when he got home. He admired the latticework of the myriad scars from his forearms to the palms of his hands, and he sighed. He flicked the knife shut again, the satisfying scrape no longer sending any expectant tingles through his body. He slipped it back into the pocket of his bag and gently opened the stall door again. He snagged his violin case off the toilet seat and moved over to the sinks. He rinsed the blood carefully, drying his arms and pulling bandages from a hidden pocket in his bag. He sterilized and bound the wound with the ease of great practice, and endless repetition. Junhong was just moving to cap his bottle of rubbing alcohol as the door to the last stall flew open, smacking against the wall with a resounding smash. A male stormed out of the tiny cubicle, and Junhong moved to pull his arms into the fleecy black safety of his jacket. He felt his eyes involuntarily widen, and his jaw dropped imperceptibly. The sheer amount of wounds on the male, slightly shorter than himself, was almost astonishing, and even through the angry grimace he could tell he was in pain.

He assessed the damage with a trained eye, noting that some scars were old and faded while the angry gashes and bruises seemed new – too new. He moved, silent as a ghost, to this mysterious male's side, gently pulling him to the sinks, moving to doctor these wounds.

His vision was tinted red with anger as he delicately cleaned the tortured flesh, until his alcohol-soaked cotton swabs were no longer pink with blood. He disposed of them carefully, cloaking them in wadded paper towels. He wrapped the worst parts of the boy's waist, chest, and arms in gauze, making sure it wouldn't be visible to the eye when he was wearing what Junhong assumed to be the wadded-up aqua blue t-shirt in his clenched hands. He s the wrinkled cloth carefully over his short brown locks, gingerly settling the shirt over the boy's bandaged midsection.

His hair fell in his eyes as the put his products away, an he sighed inwardly. The boy reached for Junhong's arms, brushing his fingers over the again-exposed bandages. He pushed the sleeves up past his elbows and searched out the end of Junhong's own piece of tightly wound gauze. Junhong winced as the bandage was unwrapped, cringing when the fibers that had stuck to his wounds with dried blood were pulled free, and watched in awe as the boy silently cried for him. The marks were traced gently with cool fingers, undermining the pride and self-assurance Junhong had gotten from hurting himself up to that moment. Junhong knew how it was to be abused, to hurt without reason, but he'd never been able to empathize with someone like this complete stranger.

He held back his own tears as the brunette male gingerly put his arm back together. The mysterious stranger kissed him once, on the thin, pale, pulse point of his wrist, before shouldering his own backpack and leaving the bathroom, taking his fake door-sign with him. Junhong stood alone, quiet and estranged in the empty room, echoes of the bright, sad boy still lapping at his ear like the tide on a beach. He pulled his own messenger bag onto his sore should and hefted his instrument, following the male into the silent desertion of a high-school hallway.