Baekhyun moved to Australia when he was 16, since his father travelled there a lot due to work. When his boss finally promoted him, they’d had to move. He, his mother, and his brother met his father at the airport in Adelaide, and it seemed like they would be a functional family, finally.

He wasn’t completely right, though. When he turned 20, he met Jongin; another boy coming from Korea. He met him in their first year; they had their English class together and sat together from the beginning. Baekhyun wasn’t exactly shy, but he wasn’t going to just talk to a pretty stranger sitting beside him; Jongin, on the other hand, just didn’t feel like making a new friend just yet, so he kept quiet. But then, Baekhyun hadn’t really known what to do, so he asked Jongin to sit with him for lunch, and so, they started talking.

Jongin thought Baekhyun had the exact amount of wild to balance out his own amount of cheeky. Baekhyun thought Jongin was nothing like he seemed to be, what with that mysterious look, anyone would think him to be a deep guy who would quote Aristotle and Nietzsche, but he’d turned out to be a very normal guy. They liked each other instantly, as if they’d known what they were getting themselves into. They were young and still silly, though.

Baekhyun’s room became their hideout of sorts, and they would spend most of their time locked in there, doing homework and talking about their hopes and dreams, their secrets and problems. It wasn’t difficult or surprising for them to feel infatuated with each other. Jongin had been the first person to really listen to Baekhyun’s fears and the only one to stay even after being let in in Baekhyun’s tormented thoughts.

He had been afraid at first, but learnt how to deal with Baekhyun without scaring him away. In exchange, Baekhyun had been the only person to not judge Jongin’s dreams, even if they weren’t all that much realistic.

They’d never been in love before, and, while Baekhyun had actually liked other people before, he’d never felt something as strange as what he felt for Jongin. They thought they were in love, they held hands in the hallways and they kissed until they were out of breath in each room of Baekhyun’s home. Until one day, Baekhyun’s mother came home from work a bit too early and found them kissing on the sofa. She had kept calm until Jongin left. She then proceeded to tell Baekhyun things he’d always wish he could forget, and, consequently, kicked him out.

Jongin and his mother had always had an incredibly close relationship; she knew Jongin’s preference even before he himself had come to terms with it, so, when Baekhyun knocked on their door a couple of hours after Jongin had come home with a blank stare on his face, she knew something had happened that involved the two of them.

They’d –mostly Baekhyun– explained what happened as they all drank tea. When he’d finished telling the side of the story that neither Jongin nor his mother had witnessed, silence set in the room. Baekhyun was too scared and Jongin was too stunned, both of them unable to break the silence, until Jongin’s mother turned around with a determined look on her face.

“You’re of age, right?” Baekhyun nodded. “Well, we’re going there, I’m having a chat with your mother and you’re getting your most important stuff,” she thought about it for a second, “and you’ll be staying here until you’ve saved enough money to rent, if you want to live on campus, is that okay?” He nodded once again, feeling so grateful he thought he’d break down in tears right then and there.

艱

He could hear footsteps downstairs, as well as plates being put in the sink, and water running. He could hear birds chirping outside, and cars speeding in a near distance. He could hear music playing, and it sounded nice, but his head wasn’t really enjoying it. It pounded and hurt and made him want to scream, but he was fairly sure that’d be something that would do more harm than it’d help.

Turning around felt like he might as well have been inside a washing machine. Flashbacks from the night before started flooding back to him, and for once he was grateful to at least remember something from it.

He was finally done with university, and it felt grand. The whole Theatre and English class of 2013 had decided to go out to celebrate and get incredibly pissed off their faces, which had felt like a great idea at the moment, except he was now hungover and wanted to kill everyone and go back to sleep.

He got up moments later, to find some kid –Ben, perhaps?– sprawled