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The city downtown is as it always is in the mornings: dusty with smog, busy with the sounds of walking pedestrians and noisy cars. Rounds of rude beeping are nothing unusual, nor is the sight of a man, woman, or child dressed in rags, sleeping on the sidewalk or huddled into a street corner. Baekhyun is by no means a coward, but it’s taken him a long time to look directly into the eyes of the homeless. He expects what he sees there, but it still sends him into a disquieted mood. He doesn’t watch when the ragged man is kicked at by a couple teenagers, and he turns his head away when he sees the old lady being spit at. He drops a couple coins into the empty can, but fixes his gaze away from the child. He knows he can’t look, because then he’ll have to accept that he’s no better than the teenage bullies, or the spitting man. He knows he can’t look, because then it’s his own humanity that comes into question. It’s times like this when Baekhyun knows that for all life is praised, it’s no better than what comes after.

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