Kris felt tight in his own skin. The illness that had kept him out of school for the last three days of the week that the snowstorm had already cut in half was finally out of his system, and he could think clearly for the first time. Being sick, apparently, stripped him of reservations. He had spent five days in Umma’s bed, not managing to get up and go down the hall to his own room until Sunday afternoon, and when he had awoken Sunday night his fever was gone and he was hungry.

In those five days, Kris knew he had willingly curled up with Lay, Umma, and Tao more times than he could count, constantly in a state of anxiety about being left alone whenever they were gone, but once there was someone for him to physically touch or lean on, he settled. He was pretty sure there was at least one point when it had been Luhan smooshed into his side, singing a Mandarin lullaby while Minseok tried to get him to drink water, but he might have imagined that. He’d heard Lay comment on his shaking a few times, but he didn’t really remember that part.

He definitely remembered kissing Tao.

It was just on the cheek, and it didn’t have to mean anything more than he wanted it to, but it meant a lot, anyway. It meant too much. It meant attachment, it meant emotion, it meant vulnerability. It meant Kris had slipped, and no amount of blaming it on medications was going to change it because Kris knew better. He knew he wanted to do it, and he knew he wanted to do it again. And that scared him.

Kris hadn’t really spent much time talking to any of his friends - and, they were definitely considered friends at this point. Even Suho had stopped by with some honey tea and he and Kris barely spoke. He wasn’t avoiding them, either, he just didn’t have a whole lot to say. He guessed maybe a thank you or two would have been in order, for how much everyone had done to try to take care of him while he was sick, but that in and of itself brought on a whole other round of issues. They had taken care of him.

Kris, in his fifteen years, had never had even a single person put in that kind of effort to make sure he was going to be alright. He’d gotten pneumonia so bad he’d barely been able to breath when he was nine and his foster family had dumped him at the hospital and didn’t come back at all - he’d been placed in a new home entirely. What was he going to do when he was an adult and didn’t have this kind of luxury anymore? What was going to happen to him when he didn’t have anyone anymore?

All at once, Kris remembered why it was so bad to make friends in his situation, why so many people pressing in so close was supposed to feel like suffocation, and not home. Kids like Kris didn’t have a home. Not everyone got to be like Lay. He’d really only been with Umma and Lay for two and a half months. It felt like a lifetime, but his time felt like it was running out, too. This was usually well past the time they got sick of his behavior, his attitude, and requested he be placed somewhere else, but Kris really, really didn’t want to leave.

He didn’t notice until too late that his hands were numb. His eyes were wide, and his spiderweb fractures were squeezing his chest tight - too tight, he couldn’t really breath. For a fleeting moment, he was aware that he was having a panic attack in the middle of trigonometry. That moment passed quickly, and he felt his body more or less lurch forward. It took him a moment to realize it was because someone was grabbing him, trying to get him to focus, to calm down. There was no calming down from these fits, though. Not when they were in full swing like this.

There were dark eyes peering into his a moment later, and he vaguely recognized Tao before he vanished from sight and Lay appeared instead, looking sort of frantic. Lay and Tao managed to haul Kris up out of his seat and out to the hall where he all but collapsed against the wall just in time for Luhan to come running, Xiumin hot on his heels. Kris slumped sideways into Tao, still trying to catch his breath, and he found that he could kind-of hear again, enough to catch Lay hurriedly telling one of the elder two that this usually only happened at home, when he was in his room, and it was too much, so he tuned out again, holding onto Tao’s wrist and finding that this whole situation made him feel worse, because this was exactly what he was worked up about in the first place.

By the time Kris had managed to really, genuinely calm down and slump bodily into Tao, his eyes closed and his hand on his chest where it hurt the most from all the heaving, Umma was already walking into the school and hurrying down the hall where they were still gathered. She looked between them all before gently kissing Lay’s head and telling him it was okay, he could go back to class now. She shooed Tao away too, but looked at Xiumin and Luhan with a very serious expression before sending them off. Kris didn’t know what to make of it - he was still too raw from the attack, too vulnerable from his emotions trying to split him open in the middle of his math class, that he couldn’t even begin to guess what all of that had been about. He just stood up when Umma told him to and followed her silently to the car.

“Do you want to talk about it?” She finally asked once the car was started, and Kris swallowed, not sure it was a good idea to keep on clinging like he had been. Umma seemed...agitated, almost, and he didn’t want to bother her with his issues.

“I’ll be alright.” He said softly, glancing up at her, and she smiled softly.

“You told me the same thing the day I picked you up from the airport.” Umma said, and Kris tensed slightly. “Then you went home and slept for twelve hours.”

The laugh that escaped Kris’ lips was completely unexpected, and he clapped a hand over his mouth as if to prevent it from making a repeat appearance. Umma chuckled softly, shaking her head and reaching over to fluff his hair.

“Maybe we sent you back to school too quickly, hmm?” Umma said, and Kris shrugged a little, his expression melting back into the same somber face he’d been making since Umma picked him up. Umma didn’t seem to approve of that at all. “You can go take a nap when we get home, if you want, but I want to know about this later, okay? And not just what Yixing and Luhan are telling me, either. I want to know YiFan’s side, too.”

“Why do you keep calling me that?” Kris asked softly, remembering that she had said it in the hospital too. She smiled secretively.

“Maybe I’ll tell you, when you tell me why you had a panic attack in school. I know trigonometry is terrifying, but the numbers won’t actually eat you.” She teased, and Kris frowned.

“Trigonometry is more about..shapes...than numbers.” Kris mumbled, and Umma laughed.

“Technicalities.” She said, parking the car and smiling at him. “Go inside. I’ll make tea and you can take a nap, and then we’ll talk.”

Kris ended up falling asleep on the couch, his tea only half finished but held tightly in his hands. Umma pried it away gently and draped a blanket over him, petting his hair for a moment before sitting in the chair, a notebook in her hands as she made a list.

When Kris woke up, he didn’t show that he was awake. Instead, he stayed curled up, resting and thinking about what Umma wanted to know, versus what he was comfortable telling her. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

“One hundred and seventy four.” He said softly, and Umma blinked, looking over at where Kris was starting to sit up.

“One hundred and seventy four?” She echoed, and Kris nodded.

“Foster homes. Not counting this one, not counting my birth parents.” He said, then ran his fingers through his hair and refused to make eye contact. “One hundred and seventy four families that didn’t want me around anymore.”

“That...that can’t be right.” Umma said, and Kris nodded.

“It is. I’ll be sixteen next month, so I’m at about one hundred and ninety one months alive right now. If you round it up to three months living here, and it was six months at the last place, that still leaves us with one hundred and eighty two months. I was in each foster home for an average of a month - some of them much less, some of them a little longer. The point is, they usually don’t send foster kids overseas, especially not between four countries.” Kris said. “I’ve lived in Mainland China, Japan, Canada, and now Korea. And everywhere I’ve lived, I’ve been thrown out of.”

“Why?” Umma asked, the heartbreak audible in her voice, and Kris cringed a bit.

“When I was younger, I was too needy, too emotional, too clingy.” Kris said, then sighed. “When I got older, I was too distant, too cold, too unwilling to attach. There’s no middle ground, it seems.”

“Baby..” Umma whispered, moving to the couch and wrapping Kris up in her arms. Kris leaned into her quietly, closing his eyes for a moment and wishing he could stay like that forever.

“When I was nine, I almost died. I got pneumonia so bad I had to be hospitalized for two weeks.” Kris said. “No one came to see me at the hospital. No one waited to make sure I survived. They just tossed me on to the next one.”

“Where is all of this coming from?” Umma asked softly, and Kris looked at her, almost surprised she hadn’t figured it out yet.

“You didn’t do that.” He said softly, then looked away again. “You could have. It would have been easy. I would have woken up in a new home, you wouldn’t have had to deal with the stress. It would have been fine. But you didn’t.”

“Because you’re my son.” Umma said, her tone firm, and Kris opened his mouth to say something before stopping himself. Umma waited for the foster to be forced in between, but when Kris opened his mouth again to speak, she wasn’t prepared.

“Thank you for loving me, Umma.” He whispered, and her heart shattered.