(BACKSTORY)

(31) YIXING I

Sunlight peers through the trees as Yixing studies his biology textbook, lap warming as the hours passed. It’s around mid-day now, where the sun’s rays are at it’s peak, and the heat begins to make him drowsier minute by minute. The only thing keeping him awake is the constant whirring of the vacuum cleaner in the next room. There was a cleaner next door cleaning up the dust in his father’s large book collection, only really getting the memo once he had been woken up by the noise.

It’s been awhile since he’s heard people in the house. Nobody has been around for about a week now since everyone else was busy with other things. He tended to not pay attention to the secretive house workers since they always stood out of his sight under the instruction of his parents. Once or twice does he see them after preparing his meals in the dining room, but after that, they’re gone with the wind.

Now it was just him and his studies, the large pile of books keeping him company rather than the presence of actual people. It wasn’t hard at all, but over the course of time, Yixing had grown bored of chronic reading and learning.

Yixing’s father was a man of simple things, spending the majority of his time at work or at company parties, which was still all the same since it involved the people that worked under him. His father stood at a high position in the medical field, a brain surgeon of the best degree, and he is known for owning a good few hospitals in the area. That was just an estimate since Yixing didn’t really know how many he really owned, or rather, how his father has been doing for the past couple months.

His mother was the complete opposite. From her designer shoes to the expensive jewelry that adorned her body, Yixing’s mother really took pride in being one of the country’s top fashion designers. She was in charge of everything flashy around the house, this also being the reason why he lived in such a big mansion all by himself, contemporary and all. His mother had said that they needed a rather large house as a place to host the most respected of house parties, and Yixing’s father let her do what she pleased since she took care of anything that took he didn’t, ordinary housewife jobs not included.

Yixing’s parents completed one another in the most abnormal of ways, but this is especially why Yixing had fallen unlucky from the moment he had been born.

His parents didn’t love one another or even said the phrase aloud, to Yixing’s knowledge. They took advantage of each other’s wealth and positions to better themselves in their own fields of work, creating the best ‘power couple’ of the century.

He was the product of the need of an heir.

This was never stated outfront to him, though that was another problem that he had heard his parents speak of before. It was whether or not he should take over his father’s position at the hospital or to gain control of his mother’s assets in the fashion industry. Every time they came home, this being separately from one another, they’d bring back all sorts of books and new information regarding their own special fields of work for Yixing to study.

He’s learned it all, too. From the proper way to hem a piece of silken underwear to how to stop a blood clot in the brain without permanently paralyzing a patient for the rest of their lives. Yixing knew all of this and he just spent the rest of his days waiting for one of them to return so he would have something else to do in the dreary house. It would have been better if they had just stayed in China where he was born. He would have been able to speak the language instead of learning a whole new one right when the decision was made.

Despite the moving process, Yixing was required to learn Chinese along with Korean. He’s had personal teachers of all sorts to help him with his languages, whereas everything else had come from his online lessons.

Having more children was not an option. He often wondered why he couldn’t just have a sibling, but the reason was often evaded with over things. Eventually, he’s come to learn that branching out and splitting the money would have been too difficult- Yixing was the only one who could inherit everything, simply because he had been born into it.

There was also the matter of having no friends. Often times, usually during his father or mother’s house parties, guests would point out that they had children of their own who they’d like to introduce to Yixing. His parents would smile and nod, but in the end, no arrangements were ever made. Yixing notices that this is purposeful and that they do not want him to engage with others that might make him vulnerable. He lives a lonely life, though it is a rich one, full of whatever he wants that can be bought, but it also holds the duty of future-heir. So, all he does is study for hours at a time.

Placing his book down onto the nearby coffee table, Yixing leaned against the window frame to look outside and get lost in the sea of green out in the backyard. The mansion was located in the midst of a large forest, so the entire place was surrounded by nature. It was the same thing everyday, though seeing the bushes shake with such vigor was something that he did not see before, even on the windiest of days.

He leaned forward to see what was happening and to his surprise, a boy popped out of the shrubbery. The boy was covered in scratches and dirt, dusting off the leaves from his clothes. When he stepped forward, another boy came out of the bush and then another, this leaving Yixing wondering if they had been some kind of children’s event gone wrong.

Once he had confirmed there weren’t any other uninvited visitors, he watched the three boys as they walked through the meadow. The way they pushed each other around made him wonder if they were friends or just people stuck together from the products of unfortunate events. Little did he know that the bubbling questions that were popping up were all from the curiosity of something new coming into his life.

For once, he puts his studies aside.

--

“See? I told you we weren’t lost.” Kris almost boasted as he shook out a couple of leaves from the inside of his shirt.

The three of them had been wandering around for a couple hours after Kris led them into what seemed to be a neverending loop of trees and dangerous roots that would trip them up every five minutes.

“So you know where we are then?” Xiumin said while watching as Kris tripped over another fallen branch.

That was an obvious no. The farther Kris looked onward, the more he thought they had fallen into some other universe. He’s never seen such green grass before, nor such a large scale house in front of him. It was at least three times bigger than Suho’s house, and the more he thought about it, the more the house resembled a mansion instead.

“I know we’re not lost, that’s for sure.”

“Oh yeah?” Xiumin challenged, “where’s Suho then?”

Kris looked back at him before turning around to yank Suho out of another branch trap he’d gotten himself into. “He’s right here-”

When he turned around to grab him, his fingers made contact with purely air. Suho was nowhere in sight, and Kris panicked before checking to see that Xiumin already knew where he was. The latter just wanted to see Kris freak out before reminding him that the youngest member was the most curious of them three.

Suho had made his way over to the mansion and peeked his head in through the window, almost letting out a sneeze at all of the dust clogging his airways. The place looked deserted and he wasn’t able to process the fact that someone else could live there before he climbed in. Standing inside the house now, he couldn’t help but marvel at how high the ceiling was and how the shelves of books seemed to be endless.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Suho didn’t have time to turn and see Kris and Xiumin come in through the window before he felt a sharp smack to the back of his head, the blow belonging to Kris’ outstretched palm.

“Why did you hit me?” Suho cried out, rubbing the sore spot as Kris just shook his head.

“Why would you just go into someone’s house like that? And you can’t just run off whenever you feel like it.” Kris hissed, already ready to smack him again for even asking him why.

Xiumin whistled at the fancy interior before sitting down in one of the plush chairs, amazed how his body could sink into such luxurious material. “Tell us next time. I think someone lives here too.”

“But no one is here though?” Suho said, watching as Xiumin hopped up out of the chair.

Taking his sweet time, Xiumin wandered over to one of the bookshelves before plucking off the thickest book and tossing it over to Kris, who caught it with ease. The cover read ‘Thirty Two Ways to Perform Surgery Without a Scalpel’. While Kris had been trying to decipher what that meant, Suho saw something peek out from the space that Xiumin had gotten the book from, making his way over to take books off the shelf. Sure enough, after pulling off a few books of his own, he had seen an ear and a patch of black hair, the entire picture being revealed once the person had revealed himself.

“It’s not polite to come into a house without being invited.”

Kris stopped trying to look through the book to see where the unfamiliar voice came from, almost dropping what was in his hands at the pair of eyes looking at him from behind the shelf.

“Oh my god, why are you hiding?” Kris said with a slight crack in his voice.

He took a step back as the boy came into plain sight, his appearance making Suho and Xiumin back up too, though he didn’t look like he’d do anything. He had another thick book in his own arms and a look of pure wonder at the uninvited guests in his house.

“Because I didn’t know if you were going to steal anything.” The boy stated plainly, watching them even as he placed the book in his arms back on the shelf. He motioned towards Suho and Xiumin for their books as well, taking them and putting them nicely back where they had belonged.

“I wouldn’t want any lame books though.” Kris muttered in Chinese, unaware that the boy could speak the language.

“I don’t think you’d want any considering that you don’t seem to enjoy reading all that much.”

Kris watched as the boy came closer to him, motioning for the book that almost seemed glued to Kris’ fingers. He handed it over easily though, and once the boy had gone back to the shelf, he had filled the empty space with the last out of place book.

“My name is Yixing.”

“Yi… What?” Suho asked again, though out of pure curiosity rather than not being able to hear Yixing speak.

“Nice to meet you Yixing. I’m Xiumin, that’s Kris and he’s Suho.” Xiumin pointed the three of them out and Kris looked at Xiumin weirdly.

He didn’t think they should be introducing themselves so soon to a kid they just met, but that’s the main reason why Xiumin was so eager to do it in the first place. A lone child living by himself in a large house like this meant that he was probably alone just like them. And he wanted to change that.

“Nice of you to tell me you were Chinese.” Kris mumbled, still giving him his greetings as Suho continued to bother him on how to pronounce Yixing’s name.

“Nice name of your own, not very Chinese in the slightest.” Yixing said back, returning the greeting.

Kris rolled his eyes, but nonetheless explained that their names weren’t really their real names. Suho had excitedly told Yixing about how they came together and changed their names after they met one another, somehow fitting the speech in under five minutes from beginning to end. He left out anything that related to their own personal stories and just smiled at Yixing who took in the information slowly.

“Ah, I see. You, over there.” He pointed at Suho, who pointed unsurely at himself, “You can call me Lay if my name is too hard to pronounce.”

“What’s with the sudden name change?” Kris chortled, almost spitting if he weren’t covering his hand with his mouth.

“I could ask you the same thing Kris.”

Yixing’s replies were never full of malice, but they certainly shut Kris up from talking after he said something.

After the introductions and everything were done and finished, Yixing, or now known as Lay, gave them a tour of the house. He wasn’t much of a talker and only spoke when they asked him questions like where the bathroom was and why the house was so large. They didn’t understand why his mother would insist on such a large house when Lay’s parents were never home and frankly, he couldn’t answer that question himself either.

“Do you love your mom and dad?” Suho asked as they got comfortable in Lay’s room.

He was bouncing up and down on Lay’s bed and the latter just watched fascinated as if he’d never had the thought before with such a bouncy bed.

“I don’t know, probably.”

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