Somehow Yixing could not feel his own body as he walked along the familiar streets. His legs freely brought him back to his house and he just followed the flow. It was 7.30  at that time and the moon greeted happily in the sky accompanied by the half-visible clouds around it.

He did not know when he stopped from moving and he found himself stood in front of a souvenir store with a big teddy was displayed in front it. The small rectangle signboard was hung inside the store. It was plastered on the glass door and showed closed in capital letter. It was nothing much about it.

His gaze turned back to the moon.

Yixing sighed. He suddenly remembered Kyungsoo and Baekhyun.

He did not know what brought him back to the previous hours. Like playing a video, the scenes repeated in his mind. Yixing’s eyes looked tired and his face was pale. Unusually, his lips had sort of cherry’s color even though they were a little bit dry.

**

Baekhyun and Kyungsoo stopped from doing their works and they looked at each other. They prepared something for Yixing but they did not know how to bring this to surface. Their gaze sometimes landed on Yixing who was busy with his assignment. He thought that the materials were not enough.

“Kyungsoo…” Yixing called out of blue. Kyungsoo jolted. “Y-Yes?”

“Do you have any idea about this? Do you refer to the internet?” Yixing pointed out the question about blood circulation. “Do we have to explain about the cause of blood coagulation?” he continued.

Kyungsoo fell in the dark of silence.

“Ya! I’m asking…” Yixing frowned. “Yixing.” Kyungsoo cut.

“I… no. We want to tell you something.” Kyungsoo glanced at Baekhyun. Baekhyun cleared his throat and took a deep breath. They both could feel their own heart was pounding hardly.

“What is it?” Yixing blinked.

“Well… first you have to promise that you will not mad.” Baekhyun interjected.

“Mad? About what?”

“Promise first.”

“I’m not playing, guys. I need to complete this and go back home. I’m tired.” Yixing begged. His voice was clear and through his voice level, they knew he mean it. Baekhyun glanced at Kyungsoo.

“Okay, I will help you. We’ll end it quickly. Which one you don’t get the answer? Number 2 or 5?” Kyungsoo briskly took his question paper and checked Yixing’s answers.

“It’s number 2.” Yixing pointed.

“Okay, for this, you have to check on this website and about the second part, you just follow the given answer in the textbook. Done.” Kyungsoo wrote some note behind the paper. “Anything else?”

“No, uh, maybe… I just need to compile all of these papers according to the correct arrangement.” Yixing showed his file.

“No biggie, I’ll help you once you’ve done all of these. I’ll compile it for you.” Kyungsoo offered. Yixing was dumbfounded with the sudden conclusion.

“Anything else?” Baekhyun elbowed Yixing,

“N-no… I guess.”

Baekhyun nodded and closed all the books in front of them and put his laptop in hibernate. “So we call it a day. Can you promise now?” Baekhyun carefully asked. He made sure that his smile did not fade away.

“Okay, what is it?” Yixing surrendered.

“Xing ah.” Baekhyun started after a minute. “Kyungsoo and I went to the town. Starting from last few months until now, we... joined a club that related with musical and singing. So, through some activities, we made some money.”

“You guys performed?” Yixing’s eyes glittered. He showed his interested.

“Yeah, we did. We performed in small events and we helped with the background work like decorated the stage.” Baekhyun became a little bit excited.

“Wow! I want to see you guys perform too! You both had joined in our school musical and that was the last time I saw you guys singing.”

“Hah! Nah! You always hear me singing in the class.” Baekhyun laughed.

“So…” Kyungsoo continued. He hesitated for a while. He rose and went to his desk and took something from the book’s shelf. As he sat on his old position, he put a white envelop on the table.

“H-here. This is for you. Please accept this. We know this is nothing but we can make more.” Kyungsoo lowered his head. Yixing took it and checked the content. He looked at the content with disbelieved. He felt like he knew something unpleasant. It was something that he was trying to avoid.

Sympathy.

“Money?” Yixing sternly threw his gaze to both of them. “What do you mean with this is for me?” He threw the small envelop on the table and a loud thud was heard. Baekhyun and Kyungsoo exchanged their gaze. Yixing waited a word to be uttered by them. The clock was ticking tacitly.

“We… are trying to help you.” Baekhyun spoke. “Can’t you undergo the operation?”

Yixing turned to look Kyungsoo. “He knew it?” He frowned.

“I told…I told him. I’m sorry.”

“So I’m not the one who broke the promise at the first place.” Yixing smirked, Kyungsoo told his problem to Baekhyun and this was full with disbelieved.

“Yixing, even if Kyungsoo did not tell me about you. We can see that you’re changing.”

“Like what?!” Yixing angered.

“You are not playing basketball anymore, don’t you? You always forget this and that and your movement… You go to school early in the morning but you end up come when the first bell rings.” Baekhyun held his tear.  “I know there is something wrong with you.”

Yixing could not take it anymore. He closed his book and took all the papers into the files. “I’m leaving.” He rose.

“Whenever we are in visual art and we work in partner, you can’t even choose the right color as I tell you!” Baekhyun rose and held Yixing’s arm.

“Stop it!” Yixing pushed him away. “I’m fine! I’m totally fine!” His face was red with anger.

“The hell! What is fine with tumor inside your head?!” Baekhyun pushed Yixing back on his shoulders. “You will just going to die if you don’t throw the out of your head!”

“So let me die!" Yixing exclaimed. Baekhyun was taken aback, but he did not surrender.

“Can’t you guys act like nothing happen? Please stop like you’re really care about me. You are not my brothers.” Yixing tried hard to invoke their anger. So then they would hate him, cursed him for being ungrateful and left him alone with zero sympathy.

“I am your friend. At least I feel like one, Yixing.” Baekhyun was choked by his own tear. “ Is being a friend is nothing, Xing ah?”

Those words made Yixing speechless. He was cold-hearted. No, he was not. But he had to. He left them without any words.

**

A big and clear tear rolled on his cheeks. Yixing felt like he was a burden for others.

For once

I lied to myself

That I did not want to live anymore

But,

In the end…

It makes me want to live this world even longer

Because mom once said that

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard

**

It came again; the uninvited pain from his head already coagulated him and made him suffocated.

Yixing was struggling with his own body. He hardly set the key into the hole and turned the knob. Finally he barely entered the house.

The living room remained silent. The door closed itself as Yixing’s body met the floor. Yixing thought his secret would reveal soon. He finally lost in this game. He was expecting his mother and brother to come out from any angle of the house. However, reality was slipped away from his expectation. There was no Lu Fei An who suddenly came out from the kitchen and got panic with the loud thud. He waited for another seconds to see if Luhan would appeared from nowhere.

But Yixing was alone, weakly lying on the floor.

Nobody was there.

“Argh!” He tried to gulp down all the pain. He still thought that what if his mother would appear any second and saw he was lying on the floor? She would find he obviously struggled with the unbearable pressure in his head. His face was red and his forehead was damp with the sweat. Yixing covered his mouth with his right palm. He begged no one would appear at this time.  Please not now!

“It’s hurt!” he groaned as he felt a sharp pain in his head. He clenched his teeth and both of his hands already on his head. He grabbed his hair until he felt double pain on his scalp. A few strings of hot tear lined on his cheeks. He was suffocated. His lungs stubbornly consumed the oxygen that he hardly breathed in.

Yixing pulled his bag nearer.

His shaky hand tried to open the zip and fished the painkiller. But, every movement he made was a pain. His muscles stiffened and he felt like every vein in his body was about to explode one by one.

“Mom…”The word escaped between his lips. “Help me…”Another big tear rolled down from his eye and pooled on the cold floor. He silently cried. His vision was blurred and he saw nothing in front of him.

“Mom.” Half-whispered, he called the name again as if it could cure the pain within him. It was not like the pain was gone.  He could not tell it anymore since his nerve system was not functioning well. Yixing was paralyzed on the cold floor.

Where was Luhan?

**

June 2, 2010

Mom, actually,

I could not take it anymore.