ATTENTION - (A/N) If you haven't read the forward, please do so. I cleared up some stuff there. Thank you and enjoy!

The day before Luhan left China for his new boarding school in Korea, he took out a blank sheet of paper and his favorite pencil, and sat on his bed. He rested his back against the headrest and bent his legs to use his thighs as a clipboard.

He looked around. Sunlight peeked out through the window into his room, illuminating his belongings that were in the shadows. A rubix cube, a baseball bat, a stuffed deer…he smiled as he remembered the memories.

He finally started writing. He wrote down every single name of every single person he ever met in China. He started with obvious ones – his mother, his father, his close friends…and he ended up with people he barely knew, like “bubble tea stand lady” and “girl who reads in library on Saturdays.”

He wrote down names of people he liked as well as people he hated. “Minseok,” he wrote, and then crossed it out and wrote “Baozi,” instead. He was his best friend from when they were young. They both loved and hated each other, like all best friends do, but they had times he wouldn’t trade for the world.

“Mean kid from P.E.,” he wrote. Luhan remembered how he came home from school cursing that kid, wondering why of all he schools, he had to attend the same school as him. And yet Luhan still found himself thinking that he was still going to miss him.

When he finished, he slid down his mattress so that his cheek was pressed up against his pillow and he held the paper in front of his face, taking in all the names he was going to leave behind. He started at the top and read every name. “Mother” – and images of his mother flashed through his mind – memories with her, what she looked like, the sound of her voice…and he did that with every name he saw until he finally got to “girl who reads in library on Saturdays.”

Luhan remembered that girl particularly well because he remembered how he saw her reading a book about learning Chinese once and he found out that the girl was actually of Korean descent and had only lived in China for about six months.

“My Chinese is still really bad and basic,” she said. He remembered resisting the urge to laugh at her slight accent.

I shouldn’t have laughed, he suddenly thought. Her Chinese was amazing for someone who was there for only six months.

“No, your Chinese is good,” he told her with a smile. He didn’t mean it at the time, but being the gentleman he was, he wanted to compliment her.

He remembered the way her eyes lit up. “Thank you! You’re the only person who thinks my Chinese is good,” she had said with grateful eyes.

I wonder if people will laugh at my Korean, Luhan thought miserably. Or will they say my Korean is good?

He took one last glance at the list – one last glance at his life in China – and slowly ripped the paper in half. And then he ripped it in half again. And again. And again. He kept ripping until eventually the paper was reduced to the size of confetti. He tossed it in his trashcan without giving it a second glance. It was a way of trying to forget his old life and clear his mind so he could start his new life in Korea.

He walked to the bathroom and stood in front of his mirror. He straightened his back and put a determined look on his face. From now on I’m going to be someone confident and someone who is always happy. He gave a little fist-pump.

“Luhan hwaiting,” he said in his best Korean accent, and then giggled at his silliness. And as he walked back to his suitcase to resume his packing, he caught sight of the ripped shreds of paper in the bottom of his trashcan, vestiges of the list. And he wondered what kinds of people he would meet in Korea. He wondered if he would meet good people, smart people, nice people, mean people (hopefully not too many of those), older people, younger people, and maybe someone who’d change his life forever.