The boy snuck downstairs in the middle of the night. It was warm, luckily, as he could only carry what he wanted in the backpack slung over his shoulder. He slipped into the study and found the lockbox that held the family’s emergency cash. A few jiggles with his pocket knife and it popped open. It wasn’t a lot of money but it was enough to get him where he wanted to go. He rolled the cash up and shoved it into his sock and put the knife back into his pocket. He didn’t even leave a note. The door opened silently behind him and he closed it softly as he walked away and never intended to look back.

Xu Minghao had spent the first sixteen years of his life under their control. He knew his parents loved him. They just didn’t know him. The more they wanted him to achieve the more he wanted to rebel. A life of studying and volunteering, going to church and family picnics, mixing with the right people wasn’t the life he ever wanted. They had already decided he would study at University, become a doctor like his father, they had already even arranged a marriage for him. All this before the age of seventeen. He was smart but had no aptitude or interest for medicine, science, or study at all. What he loved to do was sing and dance and clown.

His friends would speak of a different person to his parents. His parents only saw their neat and tidy Minghao, their son who worked hard on his art and his wushu, would study and become a doctor and marry a nice girl they had already selected. Their son who would only bring pride to his family and give them a beautiful grandchild, hopefully a boy, and take care of them in their old age. Minghao’s friends he had picked up along his secret travels through the underground culture of the city would speak of a wild boy who was the most naturally talented dancer on the scene. A loose cannon who wasn’t to be messed with. A martial arts expert and talented singer and rapper who made friends easily and enemies just as easily. The handsome and charismatic boy who all the girls fawned over but who never showed any interest in them back. Minghao lived for risky acrobatics and tricking, tagging his beautiful graffiti all over the almost abandoned railyards of the city, instigating fights with rival crews who wandered too close to their favourite hangouts. But above everything else Minghao lived for dance.

The older he got the easier it was to get out of the house. His parents believed every line he fed them. “I’m going to the library.” Or “I have astronomy club tonight.” He would call out as he headed out the door with his ever present backpack on his back. But instead of being filled with books it was stuffed with baggy shorts and cans