Minho has always been exceptionally good at just about anything he tried to do, and more than half the things he didn’t even bothertrying for.

In first grade, when colouring in the lines and tracing numbers had become so much less than repetition for remembrance and when the lines for copying had turned into empty writing space for the crazy numbers running through his head; Minho’s teacher had sighed, with a strange half-happy half-sad smile, and spent less than half a day convincing the school principal to offer a placement test to the boy.

He enrolled in middle school when he was seven years old.

One would think it would have been hard to make friends, being so much younger than his classmates; but along with his natural ability for…everything, came natural charisma.

People were drawn to him like moths to a flame.

Friends, or rather acquaintances, were never in short supply and although he was a quiet child by nature, somehow he found within him the words to speak, the stories to tell, the laughter to share.

Minho excelled in sports above anything, even his academic score, which was nothing to scoff at.

He felt a little sick sometimes, watching other kids study so hard just to place mediocrely, when he could sleep through class and pass in the top five percent for the country.

When Minho began his first year of highschool, he had a full ride scholarship to the most prestigious school in the country, and the pick of seven different sports teams.

Minho’s soccer team won the national championship four years in a row.  He participated in the junior world games at the age of 14, and brought home three bronze medals and a silver.

But for all his worldly achievements, for all his friends, and clubs, he never once felt like he truly belonged where he was.

Minho was a late bloomer.

His father said he was just too distracted by school and sports to really pay attention to things like puberty and girls.

His brother said he was gay.

One of them was right.

In the summer of Minho’s thirteenth year, in-between Higschool graduation and getting ready for university life, his world changed forever.

Where once Minho had been able to run a mile in four minutes, he suddenly could do it in four seconds. Three if he really tried.

Once he had been complimented on his firm handshake, now doorknobs crumbled under his touch.

He ran.

He ran as far as he could, but it only took him a day to meet the ocean, and so he swam across that.

He was found by a Chinese fisherman the following day, perfectly healthy, soaked to the bone and asking for directions in heavily accented Cantonese.

It was there, on the shores of the Pacific Ocean that he met his first love.

The fisherman’s son; his eyes like obsidian and a smile like the sun glinting off the oceans waves; tongue slick like an oyster and skin tanned to a dark gold. 

It didn’t take long for the world to notice the world junior game’s youngest silver medalist was missing. And it took even less time for them to find him.

They found him with rolling cameras and prepped microphones, they found him on the dock with a broken boy in is arms and his soul pouring down his cheeks in crystalline drops, like sea water spray.

They found him with the proof of his power, his ultimate weakness; they found him with his heart dying in his arms.

The golden-tanned boy literally crushed by the one who’d only wanted to hold him in his arms.

The world exploded for Minho.  Press and cameras, lights and death threats, murder charges and a self-hatred so deep even the dead sea* could not boast such a well.

Minho wasn’t aware when it happened, too locked up in his own self anguish, but something, someone rescued him.

He walked into the courtroom like he owned the world-and perhaps he did- he dropped a sheaf of papers on the judges  desk, checked his watch and at promptly a-quarter-past two on Monday April second, both he and Minho vanished from the courtroom.

*Dead sea,   also called the Salt Sea, is a salt lake bordering Jordan to the east and Israel and the West Bank to the west. Its surface and shores are 423 metres (1,388 ft) below sea level,^[2] Earth's lowest elevation on land.