Chapter Twelve

    “Sehun, I-”

    “Please.  Please don’t say no.  Just, hear me out, okay?”  Maybe it was the underlying tone in Sehun’s plea, the younger normally so strong and nonplussed about everything, even around his friends.  Or maybe it was that he was pleading with Jongdae at all.

    He signed, standing up from the piano bench.  He closed the lid over the keys. “Sit down. Tell me what’s going on.”

    Sehun’s gaze slitted over the stiff-backed chairs in the corner of the room.  Something relented in his stance, the way he held his broad shoulders and cocked his head up high, despite the fact that he was already taller than Jongdae.  There was something different in the way he sat down on the edge of his seat, weary but resigned. He looked like a child so much in that moment that it made Jongdae pause in his movements.  He probably thought that Jongdae would say no the second he stepped inside, probably still thought he would say no.

    “What happened?” Jongdae sat down across from him, careful not to crowd.

    “It’s stupid.” Sehun muttered, his elbows positioned on his knees, his face resting against his palms, muted.

    “I won’t laugh.”

    “You probably should.”

    “I still won’t.” Jongdae settled against the back of his chair, eyes cast on the lethargic figure of his younger friend.  “I think you know that, or you wouldn’t have come here.”

    Sehun glanced up through the fringe of his bangs.  “You can’t tell Baekhyun hyung. And you definitely can’t tell Lu Han hyung.  Please.”

    Jongdae smiled calmly, patiently.  “I have no reason to.”

    Sehun nodded absently, likely having anticipated that answer even before the words left his mouth.  Jongdae wasn’t one of the gossips in their school. He was well-liked, amicable, but he had an unspoken personal policy of not becoming involved in matters he had no business in.  Sehun knew better than most that he could be trusted.

     “This have something to do with Lu Han?” Jongdae hazarded a guess.

    Again, Sehun nodded.  “I-” he frowned down at his hands as he brought them away from his face.  “I love him so much it hurts.”

    “Sehun, what happened?”

    Even as Jongdae watched, Sehun was squaring his shoulders again, his jaw.  He was loosening his tie and brushing his hair away from his eyes so he could look at Jongdae more fully.  He was becoming the Sehun that the rest of the school knew. Jongdae wished he wouldn’t. There was room for vulnerability between the two of them, in this empty room.  But it helped, he conceded, that everyone had a persona they wore in front of their pain and their fears. Jongdae could still see through his mask.

    “We slept together.  It was my fault, I admit it.  But he, Hyung didn’t want anything to do with me, not like that.  He wants to forget.” He ran nimble fingers through his hair, in frustration, Jongdae thought.  “He wants to just forget so he can be with that Xiumin guy and not feel guilty by knowing how I feel.”

    “Ah,” Jongdae said quietly.

    Sehun’s eyes narrowed at his friend.  “Ah? Ah? Good. Thank you.”

    Jongdae allowed himself a small smile at Sehun’s antics.  “It was just a comment. I understand why you suddenly asked me out now.”

    Sehun’s cheeks reddened, his face betraying the feeling of shame that had crept over him since first coming to find Jongdae.  He didn’t think about it as using Jongdae, not until now. They had been friends for a while, just like he’d been friends with Lu Han for a while, but there was never anything there romantically, on either side.  Sehun just came to him because he trusted him to help.

    “I’m sorry,” Sehun mumbled, still trying to keep up the facade.

    Jongdae waved it off.  “I said I understood. Don’t worry about it.”  

    As Sehun breathed out a sigh of relief, Jongdae inclined his head in his direction.  “But—and I want you to know this first—Lu Han is my friend too. I know him. What exactly do you think you’re going to get out of this?”

    Sehun stared at him, his eyebrows scrunched low, lips pressed together.  “What do you mean?”

    “Are you trying to hurt him?”

    Sehun scowled at the accusation.  “Of course not. I don’t want to hurt him.  He’s my best friend.”

    “Then what?”  Jongdae stared at him, pressed, unrelenting.  “Why do you want to do this?”

    “I just want him to notice!” Sehun shouted, standing from his chair abruptly, then, thinking better of it, sat back down.  “He gave me all of these reasons that we can’t be together. I just want him to see that it doesn’t matter when he feels like I do.”

    “And if you end up hurting him anyway?” Jongdae asked, his voice softening.  Sehun stared at him quietly for a moment.

    “I think he’s already hurting like this, Hyung.”  He shook his head. “What if we make it better together?”

    Jongdae evaluated him for a moment.  The mask had slipped away. Somewhere along their conversation, he had started seeing the bratty, endearing kid that had always worshipped Lu Han like he was a god on earth.  A kid that had known and seen too much by the time he was in high school with them, and had always tried to act more mature than the rest of them to make up for the fact that he was born later.  And Jongdae knew that he had done it to look better in Lu Han’s eyes, stronger, even if he hadn’t realized it himself.

    “Alright.  Okay, Sehun.”

    “Really?”

    Jongdae smiled slightly, and moved to make his way back to the piano.  “Yeah.”

    He hoped that he was making the right decision.

    The thing about growing up in the heart of Beijing, Zitao thought—and really, there were a lot of things to note—was that it was an entirely different world than what he knew here at Joowon Academy.  He’d never considered himself sheltered by any means. He’d seen too much in his sixteen years to think that he was naive in the ways that people worked, but coming to South Korea, coming to Joowon even, was like being a fish out of water.  There was so much to learn, and his family had already sacrificed so much to get him there, but the fact was, he wasn’t any more sure that he belonged here than he had in his home city.

    It came to him after the first few nights at the school, when he sat down to write an email back home to his mother.  The dorms were nice, he mentioned initially. They weren’t like what he was used to, and larger than he had imagined. The rooms were set up apartment style.  There was a small entryway with a closet and a bathroom with a stand up shower. The entryway opened up into a sitting area that consisted of a couch and an armchair (Yixing had set his laptop up on the coffee table as a substitute for a television and hadn’t moved it since), and from there, broke into two separate bedrooms on either side.  

    There were bunk beds in each, a desk, a dresser.  From what Zitao had heard, there had been another student from Japan living in their dorm until a few days before, but had moved across the hall with his friends when he heard the Chinese students were coming.  The whole block was reserved for international students, and Zitao assumed that the boy hadn’t wanted to share a room with a stranger any more than he did. In any case, Yixing and Minseok had taken the room on the left side, which left Zitao with his own on the right.  It was fine. It was good.

    Then he told her about the basketball team.  He could only picture how shocked she would be reading it, knowing how he had shied away from the team back at his old school.  Writing it, he thought she would be proud.

    And he told her about how much he missed Minghao, and about Baekhyun and Chanyeol, Junmyeon and Lu Han, even Mr. Kim and his teachers, who had been so open and encouraging to him.  He also told her how Yixing and Minseok—well, Xiumin, but Zitao had always been one to call him by his preferred birth name, even when they were in China—were settling in after waiting so long for the opportunity.  She had only known them for a few months, but they had been there for Zitao when he needed it the most. For that, he knew she considered herself indebted.

    He thought about the feeling he had been having, about belonging, and whether or not he should tell her that he wasn’t sleeping, but before he could talk himself out of it, Zitao sent the message as it was.  He couldn’t be the reason that she worried, not again.

    Just as he was closing out of the window, the outer door opened and shut.  Yixing appeared at his room a moment later.

    “Popcorn and the King’s Woman?” he questioned, a gentle smile on his face and a convenience store bag of what appeared to be sodas and snack foods in his hand.  He dangled it enticingly in front of his younger comrade.

    Zitao laughed.  “Sure. I’m starting to think you may be obsessed with Zhang Vin though.”  He pushed up from the wheeled chair, finding himself relaxing as the dialect of his homeland began to saturate his words once again.  It had been difficult to adjust without it, especially since he wasn’t as proficient in Korean yet as he might have hoped. Even with Baekhyun filling in his missing vocabulary with familiar Mandarin terms, he had missed this.

    “I’ve never denied it,” Yixing chirped, moving into the common area.  He set the bag down onto the table beside his laptop and began pulling the items out, pilling them into one large heap to share.

    “What are we talking about?” Minseok said, coming out of his and Yixing’s room with a towel wrapped around his neck.  His hair was in the process of drying, and his clothes, a simple sweatshirt and pair of joggers, looked to be clean. Yixing must have picked him up from the soccer team’s off-season conditioning.  Minseok seemed happier when he was active, but it may have been Lu Han’s influence too, at least in part. Zitao chose not to question it.

     “Zhang Vin.”  Yixing popped the tab on his can of Cola, absently sipping at it while he waited for the next episode of his drama to que up.

    “Oh, your crush.”  Minseok swiped one of the packages of dried cuttlefish from the pile and sunk down into the armchair.

    “See?” he said, feeling satisfied that his point had been proven.

    Yixing shrugged.  “Never denied it. Oh!  Here we go. I have high expectations for this one, guys.  They better not drag out the confession though. I don’t think I can handle much more of it.”  Zitao and Minseok shared a smile over Yixing’s head as he settled back into the couch.

    Zitao stayed quiet as they watched.  Well, sort of watched. He was attentive enough throughout the recap.  He ate his portion of the snacks, maybe less, and kept his eyes on the screen, but he wasn’t invested in the drama like the other two.  Instead, he found his mind wandering back to the email, the feeling he’d been having. He didn’t notice that the episode had ended until he felt a hesitant touch to his shoulder.  

    “Tao?”  Minseok leaned over the side of the couch, staring down at him with thinly veiled concern.  He kept one hand on Zitao’s shoulder, while the other worked to keep himself balanced. Yixing still sat beside him.

    “What’s going on?  We lost you there.”

    He shifted under their scrutiny, attempting to smile, but he knew that it probably didn’t measure up.  “Yeah, I-” he paused. “I guess I just have a lot on my mind.”

    Yixing tilted his head sympathetically.  “Want to tell us about it?”

    He shook his head.  “It’s not really something to talk about, I guess.”  It wasn’t, and maybe his real problem was that he thought it could only be talked about if it was something he could see or touch.  He didn’t want to talk about a feeling.

    Minseok and Yixing stayed silent for a moment.  He thought that they might drop it, but then Minseok was tightening his hand and Yixing was laying his on Zitao’s thigh.

    “Is this about what happened in Beijing?” Yixing questioned knowingly.

    “It’s not not about that.  It’s hard to explain, I think.”  Zitao sighed.

    Minseok moved around the couch, and even though there wasn’t very much room, they both moved aside to let him sit down.  Zitao ended up sandwiched between the both of them, probably by design.

    “You know,” Minseok said softly, placatingly, “things won’t be like that here.  You have a lot of people protecting you. Us, Mr. Kim, the staff.” He chuckled, ruffling Zitao’s hair.  “In fact, I think you have the entire student council and school basketball team at your beck and call right about now.”

    He laughed, nodding his head.  “Seems that way.” He looked down at his lap, his smile fading.  “I know that it wouldn’t happen again here. I know that, but it’s just … really hard to forget.  I’m trying to.”

    Yixing shook his head.  “I don’t think that you should forget.”

    Zitao stared at him in confusion, his eyebrows pinched together.  Yixing clasped at his knee again.

    “I mean, it’s part of what made you, right?  Good and bad, experiences make us who we are.  It’s why you’re here now.” Minseok hummed in agreement next to him.  Yixing had always been the more tactful of the two, the more diplomatic when it came to his relationships.  But he didn’t mince his words, either. He was positive, but he only ever said what he meant, especially to those closest to him.

    “You don’t need to forget it, Tao.  You just need to learn how to accept that it’s happened and that nothing will change that, but it won’t happen again.  And you’re not alone in that.” He moved his hand from Zitao’s leg to take his hand instead with the graceful ease of someone who so intimately knew what other people were experiencing and how to make it better for them.  Zitao held on gratefully, as if it was a lifeline.

    “Is there something else that’s bothering you?” Minseok asked, soothing a hand over his back.  He wasn’t an overly affectionate person by nature. He only ever did so for Zitao’s benefit.

    He kept his head down, his face shrouded by his almost too long black hair.  He didn’t want anyone to see his eyes, because he knew that it would give him away.  But Minseok’s hand against his back felt comforting, like when he’d had a rough day at home and Minghao would sit with him on his porch, silently rubbing the stress away.  Yixing’s hand was soft and warm, like his mother’s. It all felt right.

    “I wonder, sometimes—not, not always or anything—where I’m supposed to be.  Where I belong, you know.”

    The soothing motion on his back continued.

    “Tao,” Yixing said rather sagely.  “I think you’ll find in time that this is exactly where you belong.  You’ll see.”

    He looked up at that, glancing between the two people who knew him best in this country, who had taken care of him and made him feel safe when so few people had done so before.  Maybe, maybe he could trust them again. Maybe then he could belong somewhere.

    “Thank you,” he whispered, but he knew they could feel the weight of his words.  “Thank you.”

    Yixing squeezed his hand.  Minseok smiled at him. “Any time, kid.  It’s what we’re here for.”

    Zitao promised himself then, surrounded by the comfort of friends with the hope of a new life to live, that if nothing else, he would try to belong here, where he knew he was wanted.

    Baekhyun had never been in this part of the city before.  He’d really never had a reason to, he supposed, and wouldn’t now even, if it wasn’t for Chanyeol.  It took him thirty minutes by car, and was pretty far away from both the school and his parents’ company buildings.  But the neighborhood was quiet in a way that Baekhyun’s, for all its glamour and allure, wasn’t. Traffic was sparse here, the people civil.  He thought about how books always called towns sleepy, and how he’d never really understood that before.  This was about as close as you could come though, around the city.  

    It was closer to the mountains than the skyline, and the houses, small but well maintained, stood in defined blocks instead of long, uniform rows.  There were trees by the sidewalks and short walls around the courtyards, and for every five houses, there was a restaurant or a hair salon or a billiards hall.  Nothing looked new. Nothing looked expensive, and Baekhyun felt out of place in his car and freshly dry cleaned peacoat. But he felt out of place in the way that he could probably blend in quite nicely if it weren’t for those things.

    He parked on the street by the restaurant Chanyeol had given him directions to.  It was a simple, squat building with an overhanging roof and promotional posters for rice porridge in the front windows.  There was a bell above the door that jingled when Baekhyun walked in.

    “Hello,” an elderly woman behind the counter greeted.  She was small, her spine curved with age and her hands weathered and frail.  Her eyes, though, were sharp, and spoke of a strength that her body didn’t. She picked up a menu before asking.  “Table or carry out?”

    He shook his head politely.  “Actually, Chanyeol asked me to meet him here first?”  He didn’t mean to phrase it as a question, but that’s how it sounded anyway.  

    Her eyes flashed with recognition.  “You must be Byun Baekhyun.”

    He bowed slightly.  “It’s nice to meet you, ma’am.”

    “Please.”  She shook off the gesture with a laugh.  “No need. I’m Chan-ie’s grandmother.” She smiled sweetly.  “I’ll go get him, huh?”

    Baekhyun didn’t say anything as she left in the direction of what he assumed was the kitchen, not that he was sure he could have.  He stood in the doorway instead, avoiding looking at the customers that were scattered around. When Chanyeol came out, it was with an apron tied around his middle and his grandmother hot on his heels.

    “Baek!  I’m glad you came.”  His voice seemed loud enough to shake the restaurant, his booming tone kind, amicable.  His hair was neater than it normally was, and he wore a fashionable, knitted sweater with black pants.  It was all Baekhyun could do to not stare.

    “Of course,” he smiled.  “I told you I would.”

    “Yeah, I, uh, just thought.  Yeah. Never mind. Let me just clean up real quick and we can go, if that’s okay?”  He glanced back at his grandmother, who had been watching him blunder through his words fondly.

    “Oh, go.  You’re teenagers.  Go have fun while you still can.”

    Chanyeol laughed.  “Alright. I’ll be quick.”

    “Don’t worry about it.  Take your time,” he said.  Chanyeol flashed him a quick smile as he retreated hastily back to the kitchen.

    His grandmother sighed.  “Lord help that boy,” she muttered.  Baekhyun couldn’t help but find it entertaining, how she said it as if he was already a lost cause.  She turned to him.

    “I think you’ll do that kid some good, Baekhyun.  He could use a little refining.” Her expression was serious, but Baekhyun could tell from the underlying tone of her words that she didn’t mean anything by it.  And if he really thought about it, the way he spoke, the sometimes awkward gangliness of his movements and gestures, it was more of a charm to Baekhyun, rather than a quirk.

    Baekhyun grinned lightly, because he knew he should.  It didn’t feel so fake this time. “I’m not sure I’m the person he should be spending time with, if that’s the case.”

    His grandmother’s eyes twinkled, the creases around pressed in amusement.  “I don’t think that’s true. But have a good time anyways. It’s been years since he brought someone new home.”

    Chanyeol stopped the conversation short when he came back out.  He looked so nice that Baekhyun wondered why he didn’t stand out in the same way that he had.  Chanyeol looked like an expensive man. He held himself as one, but he looked comfortable in a way that Baekhyun couldn’t, as he smiled at customers, as he dropped a kiss onto his grandmother’s cheek.  He couldn’t help but think Chanyeol looked really cool. It wasn’t even a new side to him that Baekhyun was seeing. Chanyeol was just always cool.

    They took Baekhyun’s car to his house, even though it was only a ten minute walk.  He didn’t want to leave it across town for the afternoon, and he knew that it would be easier than walking back to the restaurant later that night when he needed to go home.  They pulled up to a nice, moderately sized home with a large yard and a cobblestone walk. When Chanyeol led him through the house, it was obvious how much time the family spent there.  Family portraits and pictures of Chanyeol and his little sister dominated most of the wallspace of the entryway. Hand-knitted afghans hung from backs of the couch and armchairs in the living room, and stacks of family-friendly movies sat next to the TV.  It was clear that they spent a lot of time together in here specifically, and it stood as a stark contrast to his family. He wasn’t sure when the last time was that he saw one of his parents in their living room, rather than an office or sitting room. He couldn’t even remember the last time they were all there together.

    “Sorry,” Chanyeol rubbed sheepishly at the back of his neck.  “It’s not much.” He picked up one of the blankets on the couch and folded it, giving his hands something to do as he avoided Baekhyun’s eyes.

    “What are you talking about?  I like it here.” He peeled off his coat, before Chanyeol offered to take it and hang it up.  Baekhyun followed him to a closet by the kitchen where he stored it. “It’s nice.”

    “It could fit inside your house, Baekhyun, three times.”  He laughed like he genuinely found that funny. Maybe he did, even if he was embarrassed about it.

    Baekhyun smiled gently.  “My parents’ house, not mine.”  

    Chanyeol stared down at him curiously.  “Isn’t it the same thing?”

    It wasn’t.  He shrugged.

    Chanyeol let it go.  He took him down the hallway that held all of the bedrooms in the house.  His was the first, and it wasn’t big but it was very him. There were basketball trophies on shelves above the dresser and posters of athletes and American bands that Baekhyun didn’t recognize on the walls.  It was also a little messy, though there seemed to have been a valiant effort to clean things up.

    “Sorry,” he muttered, grabbing an empty soda can he must have missed and tossing it into the bin under the desk.

    “You don’t need to apologize, Chanyeol.  If you recall, the last time you were at my house, I locked you in my closet.”

     Chanyeol grinned wryly.  “Which was like, annoyingly clean.  Who even has a clean closet?”

    Someone that has a Hyunsook, he wanted to say.  She acted like the closet was the main focal point of any room, and was the first place she started if she decided she needed something to do.  Baekhyun had mostly kept it tidied up just because he felt bad about her doing it for him. He shrugged again. “Guess you caught it on a good day.”

    Chanyeol snorted, and Baekhyun knew that it was because he was comparing the images in his head.  Byun Baekhyun, the uptight class president. Byun Baekhyun, the teenage boy who could have a messy closet and be perfectly okay with it.  The thought was funny to him, too. When did he become separate people, even in his own mind?

    “Baekhyun?”  Chanyeol asked him once he was settled on the bed with his textbooks, because they had agreed beforehand that they could study together.  And honestly, they were both okay with it.  It beat studying alone any day. Chanyeol sat at his desk, with his school materials decisively more spread out around him in a decisively less organized manner.

    “Hmmm?” Baekhyun glanced up from his language book, where he had been flipping through the pages idly.

    Chanyeol tapped the tip of his pen against the face of his notebook, steadfastly ignoring eye contact.  Baekhyun sat up a little straighter. “Is it alright that you’re here? I mean, with your family?”

    He paused.  He wasn’t even sure what he really expected.  Up until now, whenever they talked, Chanyeol had mostly respected the boundary between what was public knowledge about Baekhyun’s family and what he just happened to know by being around at the right moments.  And maybe that wasn’t fair. Lu Han knew those things. Chanyeol had to know that he was open about them with Lu Han, while he expertly avoided the topic with him. But Baekhyun didn’t think he took offense at it, and so far, Chanyeol didn’t push him.

    If he was asking now, Baekhyun knew that it was because he was concerned enough to override their mutual silence on the issue.  So Baekhyun did his best to give him his most convincing unperturbed expression. “Probably.”

    “Probably?” Chanyeol questioned.  He set the pen down, turning fully in his chair to meet Baekhyun head on.  The set of his broad shoulders, the intensity of his expression—his concern, Baekhyun recognized—left him feeling small.  But not in the bad way that being in Yejun’s presence or his father’s or any other physically and mentally imposing man did.  He felt small in the way that he didn’t always have to be independent and resolve things on his own, even if a part of him was shouting at him that it was wrong, that he could only ever count on himself for protection and care.  Sometimes he couldn’t decide, or didn’t want to, anyway.

    “They weren’t home when I left,” he replied evenly.  “So, yeah. Probably.”

    Chanyeol frowned, but some of the tension seemed to leave his shoulders.  “Will you be in trouble when you get back?”

    Baekhyun hesitated this time, because he wasn’t sure how the truth would come off, but knew he didn’t want to lie, either.  “I doubt they’ll be there when I do. Even if they are, they probably haven’t noticed that I’m not there.” It was Baekhyun’s turn to avoid eye contact.  He started flipping through his textbook again, and this time, he was sure even Chanyeol knew that he couldn’t care less about it. It was just a distraction.  “Don’t worry about it, Chanyeol.”

    Chanyeol wanted to say something more.  He knew he did.  But in the end, he only turned back around to his desk.  “Okay.”

    He sounded resigned.

    The tense atmosphere didn’t completely go away after that, though it did dissipate after a while.  They ended up watching a movie on Chanyeol’s bed, even though it was an online movie and the screen of his laptop didn’t really feel large enough for the gravity of the plot, but they were close.  They sat together in comfortable silence with the occasional comment thrown in here and there, and it felt nice that Chanyeol didn’t seem to expect something more of him. When his grandmother came home with Minyeon, the four of them ate dinner at the kitchen table.  They watched the last of the atmosphere dissolve with his grandmother’s witty banter and his little sister’s innocent proclamations of Baekhyun’s attractiveness. By the end of the meal, they were both smiling and joking around like they always did, like they didn’t know what Baekhyun would be going home to later that night.

    When he did go home, all of the lights were on.  He toed off his shoes in the foyer where the voices of strangers drifted in and out of the parlor like the melody of a song.  His parents hadn’t noticed he was gone. They had been too busy entertaining company.

    It had been a risk, leaving the house without telling anyone, even more of a risk to leave the house with the intent of seeing Chanyeol.  Even if his family had never liked Lu Han—at least his father and brother had never liked him, very obviously—they had begrudgingly admitted that it wasn’t a bad idea to know him.  He didn’t come from an important family.  He had a single mother who worked hard and no father, but he was on the student council and was one of the academy’s best students.  If he did go to medical school like he planned, he could quickly become someone important. But they would never view Chanyeol that way.  He was a student on athletic scholarship. He wasn’t at the top of his class, didn’t come from a wealthy or influential background, and wasn’t likely to take on that sort of position even after he finished school.  And part of Baekhyun, a larger part than he would care to admit, was afraid that they would be able to tell that he was something more to Baekhyun than just a classmate or friend. That same part of him couldn’t handle what his family might say, or do, if they knew that was the case.

    He found Hyunsook in the kitchen with Victoria and quietly told them both good night, ignoring their offers for food.  The soup that Chanyeol’s grandmother had brought back from the restaurant churned densely in the pit of his stomach the closer he was to the parlor and the laughing and the talking.  He went to his bedroom, changed into sleep clothes early, and if he cried in bed later that night, remembering the way Chanyeol had made him feel like a part of his family, a part of something bigger, he promised himself that it wasn’t for what he’d lost, but for what he’d never had.