When he was a child, Yi Xing had loved the feeling of spinning around and around until he was dizzy. He’d become a whirling, giggling mess – an out-of-breath dynamo, eyes crossed and a huge smile on his face. His mother had never liked his fondness for the game. She worried about him; she thought he would bump into something, cut open his skin and bleed a dangerous amount.

Her fears were justified, perhaps. But it didn’t stop him. And so there was nothing left for her to do but heave a sigh as he fell to the floor, eye-line wavering and thin chest shaking with laughter. She didn’t bother to ask him why he liked the game so much. He was a child; she assumed it was something nonsensical about wanting to fly that made him love the game so much.

It wasn’t. But she never asked, so Yi Xing never felt obligated to tell her. He had his reasons, and they had more to do with the feeling of spinning out of reality than they did with mundane dreams of flying.

Dancing was the same. When he danced, he could forget the boring nothingness of a reality he had never felt fully connected to; Yi Xing lived in his own head, unfocused and unaware of the things that spun around him. Dancing was all about the control he had over his own body, the way he made a carefully staged choreography look fluid and natural. It had nothing to do with the bills he had to pay, the food he had to eat.

It was just about breathing and movement and music. He felt the same when he strummed his guitar, plucking the strings in an order that just so happened to create a beautiful melody. When his fingers cascaded across the piano keys, there was the similar, wonderful feeling of immersion in the music.

Singing, however, was different. Singing was personal; too exposed, too raw for him to try it in public, and so he kept that particular talent quiet. Nobody needed to know that he could sing.