Yibo was in his room being his bored self. The homework due on Friday was finished an hour ago so now he didn't know what to do. He wasn't up to talk to Sungjoo about his new crush, his heart had been distracted doing homework but the more he wondered what he could do, the more he thought about Sungjoo. Leading to an endless spiral of hurt.

Yibo was laying on his bed, facing the ceiling just wondering why. He wondered why he had moved here. Why Sungjoo came up to him day after day when he first moved. He wondered why he had to have the house right next to Sungjoo's, why he silently fell for him, and why he is unable to get up.

'Why am I like this?' He questioned covering his eyes with his arm. He knew he needed a distraction, he couldn't bear thinking about the other more than he already had. He checked his phone battery, '87%. Good enough' he sat upright slowly, avoiding a head rush.

Every step he took down the stairs felt like the loudest thing he could ever do, as if he were afraid Sungjoo would magically hear him from next door and come busting into the room complaining about how 'You lied to me' and 'If you didn't want to hang out with me you could have just said so.'

Sungjoo was a basic person, easy to figure out, and Yibo did not want to deal with a complaining Sungjoo after hearing about the other's crush.

He saw his mother typing something on her laptop, she looked up for a while with eyes holding a question.

"Dance." He said simply. She nodded and returned her attention back to the laptop screen. Yibo checked to make sure he had his phone and earbuds before grabbing his key on the way out.

He was just walking down to the dance studio not too far from his col de sac. All he had to do was cross the road, walk down the left side, turn left towards the school and some point after, he would be able to see it. If he got lost he would just call his mom to give him directions or look them up on his phone. He was almost positive he wouldn't need to do that, though, he saw it every day on the way to school.

The first step out the door he remembered his house was on the inner part of the col de sac, which meant he would have to pass in front of Sungjoo's window. That means there's a chance he could be seen. His eyes trailed towards the back of his house, if he jumped the fence, the sidewalk there would be a safer route.

"Oh, Yibo. Did you change your mind?" the sound of typing filled his ears again and he smiled sheepishly.

"I told Sungjoo I won't be able to do anything today because of homework..." He rubbed the back of his neck, he was picking up Sungjoo's habits. His mother turned to look at him, he could have sworn that raised brow was wondering about said homework.

"It was easier than I thought it would be, I finished earlier than I thought I would..." He answered honestly, "and I don't want to disturb Sungjoo because he barely does his homework in the first place." he dropped his arm once he noticed what he was doing. His mother looked at him a while longer, her fingers typing the whole time, it freaked him out just a tad bit.

He held his breath and hoped that his mother wouldn't try to convince him to hang out with Sungjoo.

'Let him do his homework, let him, let him, let him...' Yibo willed.

"Don't forget to lock that door" her response sounded more like a sigh but Yibo took the chance, bolting towards his backyard before his mother could change her mind.

Still on the paranoid side, Yibo carefully slid the glass door open, watching it as if it would shatter any second. He crept over to the wooden fence, it was up to his neck and the paint had been chipped over the years.

Taking a deep breath, he felt the top part of the wood, experimentally applying pressure to check for possible splinters. His jaw tightened as his feet repeatedly left the ground in a hop. Once he had enough momentum he locked his arms and swung is leg over the fence at the same time. He hissed when he felt a scratch on his calf. When is feet connected to the floor again he crouched down to inspect his leg. There wasn't much, it wasn't even bleeding.

He dusted himself off and looked around to find where he was. Sungjoo's house was still in front of him so he went straight. If he weren't crouching right now, he had a good chance of getting caught. Cars passed on the road next to him so he kept his face turned towards the fence, which probably wasn't helping the sketchy image.

When he reached the end of the fence, he checked to make sure he couldn't be seen by Sungjoo's window. 'Coast clear' he told himself. He stood up properly and stretched before finally crossing the road towards his school. He checked his phone battery again and saw it went down 2%. Still good enough, pulling his earbuds around as well, he scrolled through his SoundCloud playlists, wondering which one he should listen to.

Going with his 'Favorite' playlist, he let his phone sleep and he kept his hands in his pockets along with his phone and keys. He wondered if the dance studio would let him in, what if they didn't? He figured he would just go to the park farther down the road if that happened.

The trip was silent, despite the music coming from his earbuds, Yibo wasn't used to it. He was waiting for Sungjoo to come sprinting behind him to tell a story. He wasn't used to being on his own. It had happened a lot when he was little but when he came to Seoul, Sungjoo wanted to go everywhere with him, he wouldn't leave Yibo alone.

He even remembered the time Sungjoo wanted to go to the bathroom with him because 'He didn't want him to be lonely' of course, he got mad and his mother had to break up the fight. It was the only time Yibo was ever really mad at the elder. And after that happened, Sungjoo had stayed away from him for a week.

Yibo didn't pay any mind to it at that time, but his mother had forced him to go apologize. He wished he didn't, maybe if his mother didn't tell him to go apologize, Sungjoo would still be ignoring him and he would have never fallen for him.

'If only' Yibo sighed, reaching the dance studio and pulling out his earbuds.

"Hello, you look new." A man with tan skin said behind the counter. Yibo looked at him and immediately saw the size of his arms. Feeling slightly intimidated, he nodded and inched towards the counter while fiddling with his earbuds. "You here to dance right? Or are you here to pick someone up?" the man checked something on the computer screen in front of him before looking at Yibo again. "Children's class doesn't end for another 20 minutes, you can stay, though." The man was getting more confused as silence passed.

"Uh..." Yibo finally managed to bring out, "Do you have an empty studio I can just dance in? I'm not here to take a class..." He looked away shyly and the man behind the counter smiled at him gently, a complete contrast from his arms.

"Of course! Just," He pulled out a clipboard, "make sure you fill out this form. You put your name here, email, and phone number."

Yibo pulled one of the fancy flower pens out of the vase and began to fill it out, breathing a bit faster than usual because of his nervousness. After he put in all the necessary information he set the pen back into the vase and waited for the man, Wenhan, to give him further instructions.

"Okay..." Wenhan squinted at the name, "Yibo, you can go to the left and look for an empty room there, I think there's only one other person that asked to use a practice room so you should be able to find one easily." Wenhan gave another small smile and Yibo was calm enough to return it before walking down the hall.

Yibo peeked around the corner at first, as if he were a little kid afraid a monster would pop out, an empty hallway greeted him and he sighed in relief. He made his way down the empty hall and the tint in the window informed him it was a one-way mirror.

He peered into the window of Room 7 and saw the boy Wenhan was probably talking about. He wasn't doing much at the moment, just sitting and scrolling through his phone. He was probably looking for a song to dance to. Yibo wanted to catch a glimpse of what he dances like, but he was paying to be there and he wasn't going to waste his time. Checking Room 9, he saw the purple walls occupying no shadow, and there was no reflection in the one wall mirror, so he was good.

He wondered if he would be able to hear the music from the other room, he faintly remembered the speakers next to the boy in Room 7. If the sound came through the walls, he would just turn up the volume on his earbuds.

As he was scrolling through his dance playlist, he was trying to decide whether he would just groove or try to come up with an actual choreography. As he clicked on his favorite song, he shrugged to himself and began stretching. He wasn't doing any complicated stretches, just the simple leg, bicep, triceps, neck, and back stretches.

He set his phone in his pocket and zipped it up for safety. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to get the rhythm of the song even though he's heard it 1000 times before.

"Usher baby~ Yeah man." The music came through his earbuds and he began to dance, forgetting all about Sungjoo.

-

Surprisingly, as they walked to school the next day, Sungjoo didn't say anything about Yixuan, he was complaining about how bored he was the day before because of Yibo staying in his house to do homework.

"All the people on League were annoying! Telling me that I needed to shut up about everything and that me, I was annoying." Sungjoo crossed his arms at the emphasized words and Yibo couldn't help but laugh a little.

"Well..." Yibo started teasingly, earning a gasp and a punch to the shoulder from Sungjoo. "Ow, I wasn't going to say anything." He tried to hold his laugh in while rubbing his arm.

"Yeah right!" Sungjoo shoved him a little closer to the street in mock anger, "You better make it up to me." he threatened

"What did I do?" Yibo rose his voice in defense.

"You left me! To do homework!"

"Oh, okay, I'll just not do my homework and fail high school so I can hang out with you" Yibo rolled his eyes knowing how Sungjoo would answer.

"Exactly! That sounds perfect to me!" Sungjoo slung his arm around Yibo's shoulders before he spotted a certain senior in front of them. He immediately bolted towards the other, leaving Yibo in the dust.

"I was joking..." He trailed off before turning his head and body in another direction. He didn't want to stay around to watch so he left for his first period, there was no harm in being a little early.

-

When lunch came around, Yibo was waiting for Sungjoo to come out of the line like the does every day. Today he was taking unusually long but Yibo just figured there were too many people causing traffic.

A few moments later he felt a vibration coming from somewhere on his body. He patted around for a moment before his hand rested on his phone, he wondered why his mother was calling him during school. He looked around one more time before picking up his backpack and heading towards the bathroom. He wasn't going to have a conversation with his mom over the phone with a lot of background noise, and he surely wasn't going to leave his backpack all alone if he didn't even know when Sungjoo would come back.

When he reached the bathroom it was too late to answer the call so he redialed as fast as he could. "Hello?" He said as he moved further into the bathroom but close enough to the exit so that he was able to see the table he just left.

"Hi, sweety" his mother's voice came from the other line. Yibo smiled because he could hear one on his mother's face.

"What are you calling for?"

"Nothing big, but remember when I was on the computer yesterday?" Yibo nodded even though his mother couldn't see it, "Well, I was actually searching up dance schools for you to go to." His eyes widened at his mother's words and he quickly raised the call volume to make sure he wasn't hearing things. "There's one that would be happy to take you, but it's a high school program, so that means you'll be leaving sometime this year to go study."

Yibo kept silent on his line and thought over it, he would have to leave the neighborhood to go to a dance academy, he would have to leave Sungjoo. Speaking of the devil, the curly haired boy popped into Yibo's line of vision, pulling something, someone, along with him. Yibo grit his teeth and watched them from the bathroom. Some of the students that entered gave him looks but he paid them no mind.

Sungjoo quickly brought Yixuan to the table and sat him down, he placed his bag down at the usual spot and Yixuan put his bag where Yibo would usually sit.

'If he notices, I'll stay, if he doesn't...' Yibo's thoughts were cut short when his mother's voice rang through his phone.

"Sorry, I'm just thinking about it..." he kept watching the two, he was waiting for Sungjoo to say something about his absence, to look around, to look for him, but none of it came. Sungjoo acted with Yixuan the same way he acted with everyone else. He watched Sungjoo laugh and listen to Yixuan as he spoke.

"Take your time honey, you can tell me when you get home if you figure out by then." Yibo looked at them for a few more moments before sighing.

"I'll go, when do I leave?" He asked, picking his bag up again to head towards the library.

"Well, the latest you could leave is sometime during November." His mother answered. Yibo nodded again. "Oh, and Sungjoo can't come with you." She added. Yibo couldn't help but smile bitterly.

"That's fine."