Lunch came, and everyone immediately rushed around the school, some eating in the cafeteria, some eating outside, and some going off to clubs or sports activities.

"C'mon, Tao!" Xiumin said cheerfully, clapping his best friend on the back. "I heard they're serving pasta at the caf today!"

Chen chuckled. "Pasta -- the one food our school can cook right."

"The one food our school can cook DELICIOUSLY!" Xiumin corrected him. 

Tao smiled fondly at his friends, but before he could follow them, he felt something gripping his arm tightly. He turned around and jumped in shock when he saw Ming.

"C'mon, panda!" She snapped, dragging him away with surprising strength for such a skinny girl. "We have our mission to do, remember?"

"N-no, but ... lunch ... pasta ..." Tao was dragged away before he could say anything else.

" ... and then he said -- Tao?" Xiumin turned around and frowned when he couldn't find his friend. "Tao? Huang Zhi Tao!"

Chen scratched the back of his head, frowning thoughtfully. "Um, maybe he went back to get something ..."

"He's freaking 180 cm tall, Chen!" Xiumin said, beginning to panic. "How can he suddenly disappear so easily like that? TAO!!!"

Chen shook his shoulder. "C'mon, let's just meet up with Luhan," he said coaxingly. "Maybe he knows where Tao went."

"D-do we have to?" Tao whimpered as he meekly followed behind Ming down the halls. People gave them weird looks as they passed. "I-I mean, there's plenty of time later, r-right? Lunch time is when we're supposed to eat ..."

Truthfully, he only just remembered the real reason why Ming had invaded into his life. He almost forgot about the crazy mission that scary man with the scars ordered him to do in order to keep his mouth shut.

Why, oh why did it have to be ME? He inwardly cried to himself.

 "Oh, hush your whining, panda-boy. We have a long road ahead of us if we want to find Liu Fang's brat and bring him hostage," Ming said with a self-righteous air to her voice.

Tao slumped his shoulders and sighed as he followed her around. He didn't want to have ANYTHING to do with this Liu Fang guy and his kid, whether it was his school or not.

"It's such a pain in the . Why can't we just kill the kid and be done with it? Capturing is boring."

Tao tripped, stumbled, choked, and started coughing all at once.

Ming stopped and turned to stare at him with a raised eyebrow. "What's your problem?"

"Y-you ... do you even have a heart?" Tao gasped weakly, tears in his eyes once more. He wasn't sure if it was from fear and disgust or from the fact he almost swallowed his tongue.

Ming gave him a weird look. "Of course I do. All humans have one."

Tao stared at her before slapping a hand over his face with a groan. "That's not what I meant, but ... oh, whatever ..."

"Whatever. Exactly." Ming turned and looked down the hallways. "Hey, is there a place we can go for privacy? A rooftop or something?"

Tao hesitated and bit his lip. "Um, I don't think we're allowed up there, though ..."

"I don't care. How do we get there?"

Of course you don't care, Tao thought miserably. You don't care about anything or anyone.

"F-fine, I'll show you ..." He mumbled. "I-I think they're near the emergency stairs ..."

He found the door, but to his relief, it was locked. "T-there, see, we can't do it anymore, let's just go back and e-eat --"

Ming kicked the door so hard it broke the lock and burst open. She started to walk through it, before turning to Tao, who was standing there frozen. "Well? Aren't you coming?"

"Y-y-you just broke the door!" Tao said, sounding horrified. "That's VANDALISM!!!"

Ming rolled her eyes. "Oh, honestly ... come on, scaredy-panda." She grabbed him by the collar and yanked him onto the roof.

"N-no, M-Ming xiaojie we're n-not supposed to be here, and if we're c-caught we'll get in trouble a-and -- WHOAAAAAAA!!!"

Tao straightened up and stared. The roof opened up a huge view for him, a place so high and free. He could see past the houses to the city, with the skycraper buildings and the honking cars. It was completely different from keeping his head down at school. Here, he felt like he could finally SEE. It was like being truly alive.

Tao walked right up to the edge of the roof. There were no bars or walls to hold him back. If he took one wrong step, he'd fall. Luckily for his Wushu training, he kept perfectly balanced at the edge.

Ming walked up to stand beside him. She took a deep breath and spread her arms wide. "Isn't this great?" Tao didn't answer, but then again, he didn't have to.

Ming snorted a bit. "Honestly, you teens spend so much time burying your head down into your books or your laptops, you never spend enough time looking up at the sky."

"I can't believe I've been missing a view like this for my past seventeen years," Tao whispered in awe.

Ming nodded in agreement. "I don't understand how you can live your life, cooped up in this tiny, crowded, polluted city. You have not lived until you see Egypt's pyramids, or swim with dolphins in the bahamas, or climb up to the top of a mountain and watch the stars in the sky."

"I can see why you chose this life," Tao said quietly.

Ming shrugged and turned away, a strange emotion in her eyes that Tao didn't understand. "I never chose this life ... but it has it's perks."

She walked away from the edge and sat down on the rooftop, pulling out her ultra-thin laptop. "Well, panda-boy? Let's get started."

"S-started? What are we doing?" Tao scrambled over to sit next to her. He did, however, make sure there was plenty of space in-between. He didn't want to be too near a girl who could shoot a gun.

"We're running background checks on all the students in the school."

Tao nearly choked. "W-WHAT? There's probably, like, two thousand students here! Maybe more!"

"So it's a good thing I have a computer, right?" Ming typed in her super-long password and started typing in keys so fast her fingers almost became a blur. Tao stared at the screen and dropped his jaw when the window started to show all the different students of SM High and their records.

"H-how did you do that? That's illegal!"

"So is hacking into the school system to trick it into thinking there's a new student, but you're not complaining about that."

"I WAS complaining!"

"So you have a problem with this, panda-boy? You have any safe, law-abiding ideas to catch a dangerous criminal's son? Huh?"

Tao blushed and looked down. "N-no." Darn it! All I do is complain about Ming xiaojie's plans, yet I have nothing to contribute myself. Wait ... why do I even want to contribute? I never agreed to do this kind of dangerous thing! Oh, no wait ... I did. He smacked his face with his palm.

The bell suddenly began to ring. Ming scowled and slammed her laptop closed. "Damn, it wasn't finished loading yet!"

Tao sighed sadly and rubbed his stomach. "I didn't get to eat lunch ..."

"It's okay, everyone should skip meals once in a while," Ming said wisely. "That way, when you face hard times, it isn't as painful."

Tao winced. I don't even want to imagine it.

Ming sighed and stood up. "Well, back to this school thing. It's so boring just sitting there for hours, how can you stand it?"

Tao shrugged. "You get used to it after a while, Ming xiaojie."

"Stop with the stupid 'xiaojie' thing!" Ming snapped at him. "I HATE HONOURIFICS!!! DAMMIT, I HATE THEM!!! THEY MAKE MY EYEBALLS TWITCH!!!"

Tao flinched, tears welling up in his eyes. "S-s-s-s-sorry ..."

"Daaaaarn IT!!! Why are you crying?" Ming gritted her teeth and stomped over to him. She used the sleeve of her uniform to rub hard at his eyes. "O-ow! Ow ow ow ouch! Ow -- you're rubbing my eyelids off!" Tao yelped and wriggled away.

"You are such a weird kid," Ming said firmly. "I've never seen such a crybaby before in my life. You're gonna call me 'Ming' from now on, y'hear? Ming! And nothing else!"

Then she walked away.

Tao stood there dumbly for a few seconds, before remembering that if he was late for class he'd get detention.

He ran the rest of the way back.