chapter one

   There are a few things that a normal family has to be: loving, warm, and understanding.

   There’s only one thing that a rich family has to be: grand.

   All throughout Luhan’s life, his family (which consisted of him and his father) had tried to stand out from the crowd. Instead of trying to create a normal family, his father wanted to be a rich one. The dazzling lights and scampering maids were proof of his father’s success, a success which echoed throughout the velvet-covered walls of their mansion.

   “Young master, your father has requested for your presence downstairs,” The door pops open to reveal the butler’s head.

   “Tell him I’m coming downstairs,” he replies, raising his voice to be heard better.

   His name was Luhan. Everyone knew that, but aside from his late mother, no one has ever bothered calling him by his name. He’s always been young master to their hundred and one servants, and my son to his father. He didn’t have playmates or friends who would call him casually. His father said they were insignificant, and befriending boys his age doesn’t have any benefit, so why do that?

   The boy named Luhan observes his reflection in the mirror.

   This was all wrong, he thinks while making his way downstairs. He’s seen in a television show once that twelve-year-old boys like him should be scraping their knees in basketball courts. They shouldn’t be stuffed in tuxedos and forced to attend fancy balls held by their uptight fathers.

   “Ah, yes, yes. Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve gathered you here today, not only to strengthen our bonds, but to announce a very important event of my life,” By the time Luhan was in the hall of their mansion, his father was already onstage, with a blinding smile on his face. Luhan listens; his father never shared his plans with him. “Without further ado, I’d like you to meet Oh Hye Mi, my future bride to be.”

   Luhan catches his father’s eyes and he automatically gives Luhan that shut up, kid look. He’s the only person who looked at Luhan like that; as if everything Luhan did was wrong and nothing he could ever say or do could please his father. Maybe all fathers in the world give their sons that look. To discipline them, maybe, and to make them feel loved. Twelve-year old Luhan felt disciplined enough.

   But he never felt loved.

   The rest of his father’s explanation drowns in the crowd’s applause. Luhan doesn’t want to hear anymore. He turns around to run as far as his legs would take him. He just wanted to be gone.

∞

   Unlike in dreams, real life nightmares don’t just end in a snap.

   After the initial scare of his father’s wedding announcement, it was followed by a surprise visit from the Korean woman his father never told him about.

   It’s a sunny day: hired men are fixing their already-immaculate garden for his father’s wedding and there isn’t a single cloud in the sky. In short, it’s the perfect day for Luhan to lock himself in his room. Young Luhan is in love with the way the sun lights up his room, and coats the mahogany tables and chairs a beautiful shade of yellow. He’s already halfway through his tattered copy of Le petite prince, which was his father’s gift for his twelfth birthday, when the doors of his room burst open.

    He stares in surprise.

   “I’m Oh Sehun, I’m ten and your father is going to marry my umma,” The intruder said before Luhan could ask a question. “Now, I don’t like you, but I like my umma and I don’t want her to worry, so can we be friends?”

   Luhan scrutinizes the little boy who’s going to be his little brother sometime in the future. Luhan studies him from head to toe: Oh Sehun’s light hair is a bird’s nest, there are smudges on his face and wrinkles on his cotton shirt, his shoes are battered with dried mud on its sides. He was what Luhan’s father would call poor.

    Poor and divorced: Luhan wonders why his father would marry this boy’s mom. “I guess we can be, just don’t annoy me.”

   “Can I call you hyung then?” Sehun’s skin is ashen and his bones are poking through his skin. He looks like someone who hasn’t eaten for days, or maybe even more.

   “You can do whatever you want, just don’t bother me when I’m reading,” Luhan diverts his attention back to the book.

   “Oh, what are you reading? Can you read it to me? I don’t know how to read, so can you do it for me? I’ve always wanted to read a book. They sound like magic,” Luhan drops the book in his hands because Oh Sehun’s face is suddenly a few inches from his, peeking out from his book. After he’s heard Sehun’s reply, his opinion of the younger boy downgraded from poor to very unfortunate.

   Luhan shoots him with the frostiest glare he could muster. “Fine, but shut up, okay?”

   It doesn’t seem to faze Oh Sehun who scooched and made himself comfortable beside Luhan. Their shoulders are touching and for the first time, Luhan stopped thinking about transmitted germs and itchy skin. Instead, he savors the feeling of having someone beside him, someone he could somehow, in some way, start to protect.

   Luhan picks up his book and goes back to where he left off. “But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...."

∞

   It’s weird how much four years can change everything.

   In four years, his world has shifted upside-down, or rather, downside-up. According to Luhan, there was only two basis for things that happened; a little time-frame if you must—before Sehun and after Sehun.  Before Sehun, his days were sacrificed to routine matters. After Sehun, every morning felt like an adventure—and it was.

   Both gasping for air, Luhan and Sehun lie on Luhan’s king-sized bed with their heads inches apart from each other. Three rounds of basketball in the courtyards stole the breath from their lungs, painted their cheeks red, and covered their bodies in sweat. 

   “Your stamina is out of this world,” Luhan says, knocking his head against Sehun’s playfully.

   “My stamina is normal for a fourteen year old boy who wants to survive school,” Sehun props himself on his elbows to look at Luhan better. “Hey hyung, why don’t you ask father if you can start going to school? Aren’t you tired of seeing your private tutors face again and again? I mean, you’re sixteen already and people always say that high school is the best part of anyone’s life. If you’re feeling uncertain, maybe mom could help you out.”

   Throughout the years they’ve lived together under one roof, Luhan concluded that Mrs. Oh is a far cry from the stereotypical stepmother image portrayed in television dramas. She was the kind of person who always thought of others above herself, causing everyone she meet to automatically like her.

    “Thanks, but no thanks. I think I can deal with father alone.”

   When he set foot in his father’s office, Luhan had the nagging feeling that would go down from here. The years only added to his father’s wealth and ego. It also caused his meanness to balloon to the point where everyone around him could sense it. God knows what his mother and Sehun’s mom had seen in him.   

   “Well, what are you here for?” His father had always been a straight-to-the-point kind of person. Mr. Xi makes a show of rolling his sleeves up to study his watch, as if he has something better to do with his time than listen to his introverted son and his ninety-nine problems (and money ain’t one, like what). “Is there anything you want? A new book perhaps? What’s the title and author’s name? This is so tiring, I should get you a credit card. You’re too old for this. Which book do you want? Is it a book?”

   Luhan shakes his head.

   “Then what do you want, boy?” His father inquires. The sound of his voice seemed to make the room rattle. “You have a mouth, don’t you? Then speak, and tell me what you want. You’re wasting my time.”

   Luhan holds his father’s gaze, swallowing his fear. “I want to stop being tutored. I want to go to school.”

   As his father’s face changed, and he stood up to lock the door behind Luhan, Luhan wishes that he could take back what he said. He never should have gone against his father’s wishes. He should h