A stomping foot landed, destroying the sandcastles before his eyes. Gawking, Yixing watched as the other children made fun of him while jumping on the creations he had devoted so much time at. The need to curse wasn’t missing, but the exact words were still unknown to him in this new language. All he could do was squeeze his tiny hand into a fist. If he were to raise it, his mom would be disappointed in him. But the more time he found himself into these situations, the more Yixing drifted apart from the resolution to never disappoint his mom, he feared one day he would. It was poisonous, and what more was that nobody else seemed to find it outrageous, their pitiful looks didn’t help at all.

“Look, rabbit boy is about to cry!”

“Hahaha.”

“Do you want your mommy to come to defend you?”

“He looks so dumb! Real dumb!” 

They continued as one of them pulled on the rabbit ear.

“ Hey, big head are you listening?”

One of the aggressors took his headband, the one with the long floppy bunny ears that his grandmother had gifted him. Yixing loved wearing the headband because it was the last thing he had gotten from her. She knew how much he had loved rabbits, she used to call him Xìng-tùtù.  But the ears would always end up with the footprints of others on them. He wished he could raise his hand to take them back, but all he did was to lower his head and looked at the sand. If he were to unrestraint the flow in his eyes, he didn’t want them to see him.

Yixing tried to go to his happy place, cancel the noise and wait for it all to be over. He put his hands on his ears and so he did. Minutes or hours could have passed, and Yixing wouldn’t know. In his imagination he was surrounded by clouds and rabbits, eating his grandmother’s food.

He landed back on earth when he felt someone put the headband back on his head, carefully, as if trying not to hurt him, and making sure to run their fingers through his hair. The floppy rabbit ears covered his own.

“Much better!” the voice of a boy said, “It looks cute.”

Yixing looked over his fringe. A boy, clad in a rabbit one-piece, squatted next to him was smiling radiantly at him. The boy’s rabbit ears stood up high unlike his. He ran his thumb through Yixing’s cheekbones, brushing away the dampness.

Nervously, Yixing looked around the yard but saw none of the usual mean kids.

“Don’t worry, I took care of them!” the boy said, holding up a water gun. “Lemon juice will teach them a lesson.”

He had saved him; the boy had driven away his attackers. And he wasn’t mocking him for crying, for the rabbit ears, for his big head, for anything.

“I’m Junmyeon! You’re Yicksing, right?” the boy, Junmyeon, asked. He was grinning even wider now, his two cheeks almost resembling peaches.

Perhaps there wasn’t anything to fear at this time.

“Actually it’s Yì-Yìxìng,” he whispered.

Junmyeon blushed a bit, the color of his cheeks certainly looked like a peach now. “Sorry, Yixìng,” he said almost correctly this time. He took his hand. “Come on, let’s rebuild your city!”

I miss sulay ㅠㅠ