0.




It's an ordinary afternoon when Zhou Mi narrowly escapes getting run over by a car. Well, truthfully, it's more like he yanks a wandering boy by the hood of his jacket in the middle of a red stoplight, and they both tumble down to the ground, a mess of limbs and scarves and Zhou Mi hyperventilating and flailing as the car zooms past.

"Are you okay?" Zhou Mi asks, only it sounds more like an exclamation at this point, waving his hands around and feeling the stranger up for any bruises. The boy looks at him, bemused and a little lost, and Zhou Mi briefly wonders if perhaps he should be getting angry by now, only the adrenaline and the anxiety are coming at him in waves. Tsunami, more like.

"You're okay," Zhou Mi finally breathes in relief, helping the boy up, "you're okay, thank god."

"Thank you," the boy says, turning red in shame, "I-"

He turns around and runs, and Zhou Mi stares at him, mouth agape and fingers curling around the boy's cap.
 

1.




"Do me a favor?" Hankyung says, and it's always the commands phrased in questions that Zhou Mi recognizes in his tone, and Zhou Mi slurps the last of his noodles with as much dignity as he could muster before saying, "what is it?" only it comes out more as whussit?

"I have a friend who's in China for a... vacation right now," Hankyung says vacation like he'd rather replace it with something more apt like hiding, "and I was wondering if you could let him stay over for a couple of weeks. A month. Whatever it takes."

Zhou Mi doesn't say anything, and line crackles, subtly.

"It would mean a lot to me," Hankyung says pointedly, and Zhou Mi wonders when Hankyung ever got this good at making the guilt demons gnaw on his intestines some more, just to spite him.

"Okay," Zhou Mi says, and he figures it's time to re-evaluate this little boy crush, hero worship, whatever.

He ends up waiting in the lobby of the hotel Hankyung had told him his friend would be, half-focused on idly flipping through a fashion magazine, periodically looking around for any sign of a Korean face, whatever that's supposed to look like. He's absorbed in a rather expensive catalogue of bags when someone clears his throat behind him.

"Zhou... Mi?" The stranger tests out, and Zhou Mi doesn't need to look at him to be able to tell that the language is still all too new to him, his syllables too loose for his native tongue to be Chinese. Zhou Mi puts the magazine down, stands up, and turns around.

They stare at each other, eyes lighting up in recognition, and Zhou Mi takes in the shuffling of the boy (man, apparently) he'd bumped into, earlier, the one whose cap is still in Zhou Mi's apartment. "Small world," Zhou Mi tests out, speaking slowly for convenience's sake, and the man nods, unsure of what to say, of how to say it. Zhou Mi isn't a mind reader, but he thinks it must be unbearable to not know the right words. "What's your name?"

"Li Xu," he says with some awkwardness, "my name is Li Xu."

The lie is tangible enough. The syllables don't fit at all, and he says his name like there's some degree of detachment, indifference, that comes with it. But to what end, Zhou Mi wonders, and takes Li Xu's hand in his, fingers tightening around Li Xu's even as Li Xu smiles, weakly.