The moment he stepped onto the tarmac, Yixing found himself deposited into a whirl of confusion. The airport was huge, endless, and every face looked the same. It was like navigating through a maze of clones. He couldn’t even remember which face he was looking for, couldn’t be sure he’d be able to find it among all this mess.

“Zhang!”

Yixing looked around wildly.

“Zhang, over here!”

Yixing turned a full circle and finally located him: standing in the middle of the hall, holding a sign bearing Yixing’s name in shaky Chinese, was the Artistic Director of the Seattle Ballet.

“Ah!” He hurried over to bow and shake the Director’s hand. “Mr. Peterson. Hello.”

“Did you have a good flight?”

“Yes - very good.”

“Excellent!” Mr. Peterson picked up Yixing’s bag and gestured towards the exit. “Shall we?”

Shall we what? Yixing wondered, but it seemed he was meant to simply nod and follow Mr. Peterson out of the building into the cool American sunlight.

It was an instant shock, how different the light felt here. Far from the beautiful blue skies of Beijing, this was a sun forced to filter through ten layers of cloud before it reached the earth. His school teacher had been right, Yixing thought - the Americans really did live in miserable darkness.

He lifted his suitcase into the back of Mr. Peterson’s car and slid into the front seat. This car was fancy, he observed - almost frighteningly so. The dashboard looked like it was made of shining, polished wood, and Yixing folded his hands in his lap to resist the urge to reach out and touch it.

“Would you like to listen to the radio?”

Yixing stared at the dashboard. A radio in the car? Mr. Peterson must be even more important than Yixing had thought. “Thank you.”

Mr. Peterson turned a knob, and Yixing jumped as music began blaring from the speakers. What was this? This was not music, this was a cacophony of torture! Mr. Peterson did not seem to notice, just turned the volume down a notch and turned to look over his shoulder as he put the car into reverse.

“What… what is this?” Yixing asked, trying to keep the distaste from his voice.

“Hm?” Mr. Peterson glanced at him. “Oh, this is Blondie. Do you like it?”

Yixing shook his head. “No. Not at all.”

Mr. Peterson laughed. “I imagine you have very different music in China.”

Yixing nodded. This screaming would never make it onto a Chinese radio station. Yixing tried to imagine it playing between the news updates and dramas, the inspiring stories that portrayed the successes of the hardworking Chinese people. He couldn’t even conjure the juxtaposition in his mind.

They drove along highways and suburban streets. The whole way, Yixing searched the scenery for something, anything, that was even remotely familiar. He found nothing. The cars were different. The buildings were different. Even the trees were different.

What had he gotten himself into?

-

“And this is your room.”

Mr. Peterson pushed the door open and flicked the lights on. Yixing’s jaw dropped. The room was huge, presumably in order to accommodate the giant bed in the middle. It was almost intimidatingly large, at least thigh-high, but there didn’t appear to be any storage cupboards underneath it - it was all bed.

“This is… all for me?”

“Yes.” Mr. Peterson’s voice was as patient and reassuring as ever, but there seemed to be an undercurrent of amusement that Yixing couldn’t quite interpret. “Some of the desk drawers have files in them, but you are free to use the others, and of course the wardrobe is all empty for you to use.”

Yixing just nodded. He wasn’t sure whether it would be polite to tell Mr. Peterson that this room was more than half the size of his family’s house in Changsha, and that back home he would have shared a sleeping platform that size with three of his brothers.

“I’ll let you unpack, Zhang,” Mr. Peterson continued. “I’ll just be out in the kitchen, so when you’re hungry just come on out and I’ll have lunch ready for you. Oh, and your bathroom is just through that door if you need it.”

Mr. Peterson retreated and closed the door behind him with a soft click. Yixing stood and stared around the room. All of this space just for him. How was one person supposed to fill a room this large?

With a flicker of curiosity, he crossed the room. He thought he’d heard Mr. Peterson say, “your bathroom,” which he must have misunderstood. That would mean there was a whole bathroom all for him behind this door-

-- Oh my god.

Beyond the door was indeed a bathroom. Not just a toilet, or a sink, but a whole room with a bathtub and a chair that, upon inspection, contained a toilet within it. Ah. Yixing had heard about these American toilets. You were supposed to just sit on them rather than squatting normally. He was glad he’d been prepared before coming face-to-face with one, because looking at it now he thought he probably would have ended up hurting himself if he’d tried to balance on that narrow platform.

He turned away from the toilet and looked at the bath. The taps sticking out of the wall were all polished silver, not a trace of rust to be seen. The whole room looked too clean to be real, considering Mr. Peterson did not have a wife.

Yixing reached over and e of the taps until water began to gush from the spout. He observed it for a moment, then cautiously placed his hand under the stream. He wasn’t sure whether to expect it to hurt him - who knew what acid the Americans might have in their water? - but nothing happened, and after a moment the water began to warm, heating and heating until it almost burned Yixing’s hand. Hot water straight from the tap! He would never have thought to see such a thing in an ordinary house.

Yixing took off his clothes and climbed into the bath to scrub himself clean, then put the plug into the drain and sat watching the stream while the tub filled with water. When it was up to his armpits he turned off the tap, lay back, and closed his eyes.

For the first time since he had boarded the plane in Beijing, Yixing allowed some of the nervous worry to drip out of his body. He couldn’t spend his entire stay in America in a constant state of tension, and there was no better time to begin relaxing than right here in this enormous bathtub full of hot, soft water. His mama could have washed him and all his brothers at once in this tub, he thought absently.

Just like that, the enormity of his isolation tumbled down on him all at once. Yixing felt very, very alone.

-

The Seattle Ballet wasn’t all that different in size from Madame Mao’s Academy in Beijing - if anything, it was a touch smaller - but it felt overwhelming as Yixing wandered through the halls looking for an empty practice room. Whereas the Academy had been one large building, four storeys tall and nicely accessible by a grid of staircases and corridors, this was a giant, sprawling complex, comprising several two- and three-storey buildings connected by walkways and overbridges across the main road that ran between them.

He was sure by now he was into the more serious part of the building, the area where there were fewer summer students like himself and more contracted soloists, guest dancers, and the corps de ballet. Perhaps he shouldn’t be here, but no-one had turned him around yet so he thought he was probably safe to keep walking until it became clear he was in the wrong place.

Yixing glanced through the window in the door of one of the smaller studios and, judging it empty, turned the handle. Upon breaking the soundproof seal of the room, though, he realised it was not unoccupied at all - soft music was playing from the stereo in the corner, and a single dancer was spinning across the floor.

He should have immediately closed the door and moved on, carried on down the corridor and looked for another studio, but Yixing hesitated for a second, eyes on the dancer. How was he keeping his balance? He was moving with his eyes closed, turning in a slow circle, leg in attitude derrièreand head tilted to the side as if the line of his spine felt compelled to continue through his chin rather than his head.

What struck Yixing most of all, though, was not the dancer’s technique; it was the music to which he moved. This was not the classical orchestra of all the ballets Yixing had ever learnt. Nor was it the avant-garde, discordant soundtrack Mr. Peterson seemed to favour for his more modern pieces. This was a song that Yixing thought he could almost picture on the radio back home. A chorus of women with sharp, silvery voices warbled a sweet tune, raising the hairs on Yixing’s arms in harmonies that soared and settled along his skin.

Yixing could not pick any words out of the women’s unfamiliar, lyrical accents, but there was something about the music that ached through his bones.

As the song faded, Yixing realised he was still standing in the doorway, watching the dancer step and pivot and dip into a final arabesque, all with his eyes closed. He lifted his foot, about to step out and close the door softly behind him before the dancer could open his eyes and notice him.

“Do you need the room?”

Yixing froze. The dancer was turning to face him, pleasant and friendly, as if they had been in the middle of a conversation.

“Oh- no- no, I’m sorry, thank you, sorry-” mortified, Yixing bowed and began to back out of the room.

The dancer waved a hand. “Come on in.”

Yixing hesitated. He was torn between the urge to extract himself from this awkward situation and the instinct to obey as a basic point of courtesy.

It was only as he stepped forward into the room that he noticed. Perhaps he had been mesmerised by the fluidity of that dancing, or maybe it was the comforting familiarity of that face, but suddenly he realised that familiar was out of place here, and in that moment it popped into place - the dancer was Chinese too.

“What’s your name?” the dancer asked him.

“Zhang Yixing,” Yixing said. His heart bumped up into his throat, waiting for the dancer to smile, to recognise his accent, to greet him in his own language and welcome him to this pocket of familiarity in such a strange country.

“Baekhyun Byun,” the dancer said instead. “Nice to meet you.”

Yixing’s heart fell back into its usual place and beyond. That wasn’t a Chinese name.

“Nice to meet you,” he echoed.

“Are you one of the summer students?” Baekhyun asked.

Yixing nodded.

“Where are you from?”

“China.” Even in a foreign language, Yixing felt the pride on his tongue.

Baekhyun raised his eyebrows. “No way. That’s pretty cool, man.”

Yixing frowned at him. Why was Baekhyun saying no? What did cool mean in this situation? So many questions, and he didn’t have the words to articulate any of them in English.

“Do you need to put your music on?” Baekhyun jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the stereo in the corner.

“Oh- no.” Yixing shook his head. Music was for when he had the steps perfect, and he didn’t yet.

“Alright, cool.”

That word again. Yixing watched Baekhyun saunter over to the stereo and eject a cassette from it, then fold himself onto the floor and pull his feet towards him in a perfectly flat butterfly.

“You don’t mind if I watch, do you?”

Yixing blinked at him. He was used to being observed, certainly, but the casual way Baekhyun drew himself back against the mirror felt less like an evaluation and more like simple, easy-going curiosity. It seemed so out of line with everything Yixing knew about ballet. Nothing about this art was easy-going.

Baekhyun was smiling at him now, his hands looped over the barre above his head, the absolute picture of relaxation.

Okay, Yixing thought, if this not-Chinese man wanted to watch with such carelessness, then he could watch. Let him see what the hard work of Madame Mao and her Academy could achieve.

Yixing closed his eyes for a moment to bring himself into focus, then took up his preparatory position and began.

He had learnt these steps just yesterday, and they were not yet ingrained into his muscles - he tried to keep the concentration off his face, tried to keep his expression neutral as he thought through each spin, from sissonne to sauté arabesque to jeté entrelacé without breaking the line of his brow.

That fouetté could have been tighter, he thought as he finished, his spotting on the pirouette wasn’t quite precise enough, and he’d lost awareness of his foot for a moment halfway into the pas de chat - but other than that, it was workable.

“Wooh!”

Yixing jumped as Baekhyun smacked his hands together.

“Nice! That jeté, man, I am seriously digging your air. This the kinda they teach you in China?”

There were at least half a dozen words in there that Yixing didn’t catch, but the overall tone sounded positive.

“Yes,” he said. “I learned to dance in China.”

“Shiiit,” Baekhyun whistled. “I need to get myself on the next plane to Beijing. Assuming I can survive the communism and all that. Whaddaya think, Zhang, does this face look suitably Chinese? Could I pass for one of you?”

Yixing took a moment to pick the meaning out of that. Something about communism - praise, presumably - and a question.

“No,” he decided. “Too American. Too loud, not polite. Not Chinese.” Or rather, he wished he had the words to explain, not the kind of Chinese that represented the ideals of the people.

Baekhyun laughed, flopping forward over his feet and chuckling with his chest on his ankles. “Too loud, not polite,” he guffawed. “Sounds like me, yeah.”

“Where are you from?” Yixing asked, unable to contain his curiosity any longer.

“Right here!” Baekhyun declared, sitting up and resting back against the mirror again. “Seattle, born and raised. My mom’s Canadian, though, so I’m technically that too. Oh, or do you mean the family in general? Korea. Like. A hundred years ago.”

Korea. Yixing nodded. That was the answer he was looking for.

“So you’re over here for the summer, right?” Baekhyun continued. “Are you staying with a host family?”

“I stay with Mr. Peterson.”

“Wait, Mr. Peterson?” Baekhyun leaned forward. “As in Thomas Peterson, the Artistic Director? Woah.” He turned his head to look sideways at Yixing. “I thought you were a summer student!”

Yixing nodded. “Yes. Mr. Peterson invited me to study here for the summer.”

“Okay, okay.” Baekhyun scrambled to his feet, one hand out towards Yixing as if to stop him. “See, when I think of summer students, it’s the kids who apply and give references from their teachers and pay a whole lot of money to be here for three months. Not personally invited by Thomas and staying at his house. Geez Louise, you must be special.”

Yixing didn’t know how to respond to that. Yes, Mr. Peterson had selected him from among his classmates to join the Seattle Ballet for the summer programme, and his teachers had approved him to take up that invitation, but Yixing put that down more to their excellent teaching than to anything spectacular on his part.

“Show me that jeté again,” Baekhyun said. “I wanna see your head touch the ceiling.”

Yixing looked up at the high ceiling doubtfully. “I cannot jump this high.”

Baekhyun laughed. “Oh, you’re funny too. Special and funny. Come on, show me your dance again!”

-

“So I’m guessing if you’ve just arrived for the summer, you don’t have any friends in town, huh?”

Yixing shook his head as he pulled on the sweater Mr. Peterson had given him with SEATTLE BALLET printed across the front. It was an odd sort of sweater - it had a funny folded flap attached to it that Yixing wasn’t sure what to do with.

“You wanna come hang out with me and my friends?” Baekhyun offered. He zipped up his bag and straightened up holding a similar sweater, which he shrugged on and- ohh, the flap was a hood. Yixing reached behind himself and turned it the right way out, then pulled it up onto his head as he followed Baekhyun out of the practice room and down the hallway.

“There’s this in bakery at the Pike Place Market where we all hang out,” Baekhyun continued, chatting happily over his shoulder as Yixing scuttled down the corridor after him. How could someone with such short legs take such long strides? “Best sandwiches you’ll ever have, they’re fab.”

Yixing was beginning to think that perhaps he hadn’t studied his dictionary closely enough. Baekhyun used so many strange words, and Yixing was finding himself overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unfamiliar language.

By the time they stepped off the bus, he decided there was no point in giving himself a headache trying to decipher everything Baekhyun said. It was better to just let the words wash over him and take in what he could.

“Over there!” Baekhyun declared, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder and pointing down the road. “Just round the corner.”

Yixing followed him across the street and into the Market building. This looked familiar, he thought - the vegetable markets back home looked a bit like this.

“There he is!” A voice rose above the chatter. “Baek, y’dork, where have you been?”

Baekhyun parted the crowd and smacked his hand to the back of one of the boys sitting on the stools at the counter. Yixing’s heart rocketed up into his throat again - more familiar features, eyes and hair and noses - and he told himself to calm down. These boys were probably Korean, like Baekhyun.

“Take a chill pill, Sehun, I had to take the bus from the studio. Look, I made a friend!” He reached back and grabbed Yixing by the elbow. “This is Zhang Yixing. He’s a special summer student - Thomas’s personal guest, apparently.”

This was met with a chorus of oohs from several of the boys seated at the counter.

“Zhang, these are my buds. Sehun Oh,” he indicated the man upon whose shoulder his hand was presently resting, “Minseok Kim, the cute fella at the end, and his special friend Han Lu-”

“Nah, nah, listen to this,” the boy leaned back from the counter and extended his hand towards Yixing, “call me… Luhan.”

Baekhyun snorted. “Your mononym is stupid and so are you, Lu.”

“Hey, if it works for Cher-!”

“Cher is more famous than you will ever be-”

“Lu Han,” Yixing gasped, because that was a name that made sense to him. He stumbled forward to take the outstretched hand, bowing as he shook it. “Are you also here to spread the example of our beloved Chairman’s glorious communism?”

This was the phrase he had been taught for when people asked him why he was in America. To dance with the Seattle Ballet and spread the example of our beloved Chairman’s glorious communism.

Lu gave a nervous little laugh. “I’m from San Francisco, dude.”

Yixing frowned at him. He had a Chinese face and a Chinese name, but his accent was as American as the other summer students in Yixing’s class.

“Lu’s the same as me,” Baekhyun explained. “No-one in his family’s set foot in the motherland in over a century.”

“If you can even still call it that,” Lu snorted. “Last time anyone from my family lived in China was during the Qing dynasty.”

“Last time anyone from my family lived in Korea it was one country,” Baekhyun laughed.

“I’m J.D.,” the next boy cut over them. “J.D. Kim. Nice to meet you.”

“Nice to meet you,” Yixing responded.

“You’re from China?” J.D. asked.

Yixing nodded.

“So you speak Chinese!”

Yixing had thought J.D. had already been smiling, but apparently that was just his face, because now his lips curled up like a cat as he smacked the shoulder of the man beside him.

-- Hello. I’m Luo Zhixiang.

Yixing’s throat squeezed around his heart for the third time today.

-- Hello! Nice to meet you!

-- Nice to meet you. Welcome to America.

It was a strange accent, for sure, but the language was definitely his. Yixing clasped Zhixiang’s hand, unable to control the smile he could feel on his face.

-- Thank you. Are you from… Shanghai?

Zhixiang laughed.

-- No, I’m from Taipei.

Yixing’s blood froze in his veins. Zhixiang was still grinning at him, still shaking Yixing’s hand with both of his own, and Yixing’s skin was crawling away from his touch. Taipei. Taiwan. A traitor, an enemy, and Yixing was greeting him like an old friend.

-- It’s okay, comrade, Zhixiang reassured him. -- I have no interest in swaying you from the teachings of the beloved Chairman.

Yixing frowned. Zhixiang’s words sounded sincere, but that smile was still on his face, pleasant and mirthful and hiding any number of poisons.

-- I love Chairman Mao, was all he could think to say.

-- And so you should. Zhixiang squeezed his hand tighter and smiled more firmly.

“What do you think they’re talking about?”

Yixing tuned in on the whisper at his shoulder.

“I dunno. They’ve been shaking hands for like a minute.”

“Maybe this is just how they say hi there.”

-- I am pleased to meet you here in America as a friend, Zhixiang said.

Yixing heard what he didn’t say. He nodded, Zhixiang patted him on the shoulder, and they parted to turn back to the rest of the group. Yixing tried not to wipe his hand on the front of his sweater.

“You two okay there?” Baekhyun asked. He seemed amused, leaning an elbow on Sehun’s shoulder.

“Wow, I’m so excited to meet a friend who can speak Chinese!” Zhixiang said. “So where did you two meet? At the ballet?”

“Yeah,” Baekhyun said. “He walked into my practice room and showed me his jetés. I was hooked instantly.”

“Showed you his jetés, huh?” Zhixiang raised an eyebrow. “Sounds interesting.”

Yixing looked at Zhixiang. “Do you like ballet?”

“I like ballet dancers,” Zhixiang grinned.

“Ballet dancers work very hard,” Yixing agreed. Baekhyun was chortling into Sehun’s shoulder, his fist almost stuffed into his mouth and his face beginning to turn red. Perhaps Sehun had whispered a joke into his ear, Yixing thought.