It was a bitter winter evening when I met him. My mum was drunk, again and had thrown up in her bed so I stayed at home for a while until she was clean and had fell asleep. I had to run to the practice hall twenty minutes late. I burst through the practice room door drowned in cold sweat. The other EXO trainees where already in the middle of the hall practicing  the dance to our debut song 'MAMA' with their bangs plastered to their foreheads with sweat.

Suho hurried over to the faulty, second-hand speaker in the corner of the room and roughly slammed his fingers against the phone screen to switch off the music. "Baekhyun, why are you so late!? It's too close to début to be pratting around!" He seemed mad. I wanted to apologise but the words wouldn't come out and clogged up my throat. I knew it wasn't a good time to explain my mother's situation so I just bowed my head in silence

Suho sighed. I could tell he felt bad for yelling at me. "Let's not do it again, Baekhyun," he approached me, put his hands on my shoulders and bent his knees slightly so he could look me in the eyes. He gave me a sweet smile and I felt comfortable once again.  "Take off your scarf and coat so we can practice with you." Suho smiled and patted my head as he straightened up and strolled over to the speaker, ready to turn the music back on.

Once I had thrown my bag and coat into the corner of the room between the other member's stuff I ran to the centre of the dance floor where everyone was waiting in position. The opening chime of 'MAMA' suddenly filled the room and Suho ran into his place as if the speaker was about to explode.

"Careless, careless,

Shoot anonymous, anonymous.

Heartless, mindless,

No-one, who care about me?"

We started dancing flawlessly. Each member focused on themselves in the mirror as we glided along to the music. I stared into my own eyes in deep concentration. Despite the heavy lyrics of our song I felt beautifully peaceful. A hard weight floated from my shoulders when I was with EXO. I felt like I was finally part of a family.

Hours had passed and darkness was creeping through the practice room windows and our originally strong movements were becoming lazy and awkward. Suho called "break" as he rushed to the speaker to stop the music from repeating.

Everyone slumped to the floor and began rummaging through their bags pulling out water bottles and towels. I sat next to the youngest, Sehun, who was laying exhausted among his bags with his head resting on his friend Luhan's lap.

"Tired?" I asked in a useless attempt to start conversation.

"Very," he replied as he closed his eyes. I took his hint and shut my mouth so wouldn't bother him further. I had joined EXO later than most members along with a particularly smiley member called Chen. He seemed to click with Xiumin pretty quickly whereas I was finding it a bit more difficult to become close with any of the 11 members.

As I sat in silence next to Sehun and Luhan I glanced around the room in hopes of spotting someone who looked like they would want to chat. Everybody seemed to be either sleeping, chugging down their water or chatting to someone else. But that's when I spotted Chanyeol. I hadn't paid much attention to him before and we weren't very close but seeing as debut was dawning upon us all I took this opportunity to get to know him. He was sitting on the opposite corner of the room to me with his water bottle and a slip of paper. As I approached him I notice he was reading over his lyrics to 'MAMA'. I sprung at the easy conversation starter.

"Still haven't learnt your lyrics?" I asked. He seemed startled as he suddenly looked up with wide eyes and awkwardly pushed himself onto his feet. As he stood up in front of me he seemed to grow like a giant.

"Err, I've learnt them, um, I was just making sure I couldn't make a mistake" He smiled awkwardly. I could see right up his nose from where I stood.

"You're tall." I exclaimed blatantly.

"Yeah," he smiled as he ruffled the back of his hair in embarrassment.

"But it's ok." I smiled. "I like it." Was I being too upfront? I didn't want to scare him away.

"Thanks," he smiled wider. His hair was dark, chestnut-brown and his ears stuck out which gave him an elf-ish impression. He was cute despite being what felt like 9 feet tall.

For the rest of the break we chatted happily. Within only a few minutes it felt like I was talking with an old friend. Chanyeol made me smile and that was important to me.

My dad left when I was young and needed him the most. He was so self-absorbed that he didn't seem to think twice about his growing son and sensitive wife. It broke my mum's heart and now all my mum knew to do without him was to drink until she forgot her name. This left me always feeling alone and burdened. My mum was nowhere near fit to work so I had to find some means of making money for her. Her drinking habit also meant I couldn't go out with my friends as I had to keep her safe from hurting herself. Eventually, everyone I loved seemed to have drifted downstream. For a long time I felt like I would never smile again. That's why I auditioned for SM Entertainment once I had finished school. I was desperate for friends and something to take my mind off mum for as long as possible. As selfish as it seemed; I hated caring for her.

Anyway, I didn't tell him much about myself. He seemed happy enough to ramble on about anything he could think of. He told me that he played guitar, piano, and drums. He also told me about how in middle school he was the school's heart-throb and that whilst he played football the girls would get so distracted watching him that his teacher told him not to play near the girl's side of the court. I laughed. He told me with such a proud glow in his eyes.

"Don't let it get to your head," I joked. Chanyeol giggled as he looked at the floor with embarrassment whilst nodding his head.

Break was over and Suho called us over for vocal practice. He started the backing track to our début song and we all started strongly. I kept catching Chanyeol's dark eyes as we sang. Everytime he grinned back at me I felt a happy explosion of butterflies in my stomach.

From then on I knew we were going to become the best of friends.