It's Sunday morning and Huang Zitao doesn't have to go anywhere today.
His alarm clock reads 9:57am, but even though he's awake, he makes no move to get out of bed. The sunlight streaming through the parted curtains just felt far too pleasant on his skin.
He rolls onto his stomach and stretches, his back arching, toes curling and his fingers splaying as he reaches for a pillow to pull under his chin.
Tao nuzzles his face into the softness, closing his still tired eyes, wondering why he is lying alone in his king sized bed—as he often does on the weekend mornings.
He throws out his arm again, groping the crisp white sheets just in case he's missed the warm body of another somewhere in the bed. But when he can't find someone, he let his hand flop to the mattress and lie there.
Tao doesn't know how long he stays under the glare of the sun, but he's snapped out of his daze and turns when his phone gives a buzz from the bedside table.

Stop wallowing. We r still going to the market later?

Zitao wonders—with a roll of his eyes—how his best friend, Zhang Yixing, always seems to know exactly what he is doing.

Shut up. Yep.

Tao rolls himself lazily across the bed, sliding his legs over the edge and forcing himself up into a sitting position just as his phone vibrates again with the notification for a new text comes through.

C u :)

Getting up off the bed, Tao walks across the room, not at all worried about people seeing his full- body from the twenty-sixth floor of the apartment complex he lives in.

Even if the window was roof to floor.

Tao likes to sleep . There is something so inexplicably comfortable about feeling scratchy new sheets against his pale skin, a breeze between his legs and the smell of his laundry detergent lingering on him even long after he gets up.

He also likes to take long, scalding hot showers that tinge his body pink and fogs up all the mirrors in the bathroom.

So that's exactly what he does.

He ends up taking a twenty-five minute shower and scrubs his hair until he can blow bubbles with the shampoo left on his fingers.

Of course blowing shampoo bubbles is another stupid, but fairly entertaining, thing Tao finds enjoyment in.


~

“And the princess emerges from his tower.” Yixing slapps Tao’s shoulder and flashes the younger boy a dimpled smile.

Tao rolls and narrows his eyes, “I need to restock the cupboards. It gets a little depressing when all you’re eating is ty Chinese takeout.”

“It’s a wonder you don’t get fat.” Yixing grins.

“I’d never get fat.” The raven-haired boy insists, “Then I’d be ugly and pimply and die alone.”

“Minseok eats whatever he wants and he doesn’t get fat.” Yixing points out, Tao threading his left arm through the loop of the elder’s right as they walk side by side.

“That’s because he does yoga.” Tao says with a snort, “You should know that. Your boyfriend takes classes with him.”

“The only thing I know is that Joonmyun looks good in yoga pants.”

“Gross.”

Yixing is a senior in high school—about to graduate and then probably elope to marry Joonmyun (his South Korean boyfriend of three years) in some exotic country—while Tao is turning seventeen and still waiting for his voice to sound like an actual man instead of a prepubescent teenage boy.
Yixing and Tao had met on the first day of the school year, the latter being totally and utterly and completely lost on his way to a biology class and stressing so much he was on the brink of bursting into tears when the elder had found him and personally escorted him to the right room.

Needless to say, they had been friends ever since.
 

~
 

“So have you heard from them lately?”

Tao didn’t have to ask to know who they were. Yixing is talking about his parents, more specifically the parents who still lived in his hometown, Qingdao, in China.

On his sixteenth birthday Tao didn’t receive the laptop he had been asking for, the new mobile phone or even that Gucci leopard print backpack that really wasn’t that expensive, no. Instead his father had placed an airline ticket and a high school acceptance letter from Seoul academy on the table and told him opportunity knocks only once, Zitao.
So on top of the beautifully polished, white tiled, brand new apartment, Tao is sent a generous monthly allowance for whatever things he needs (which usually include several different designer shirts and shoes) and rare letters from his parents asking questions he is sure are rhetorical.

“Nope.” Is the answer Tao gives.

Yixing bites down on his lower lip, toying with the dead skin, “What did you say you’d been living on for the past few nights? ty Chinese, wasn’t it?”

"Hey," The younger boy counters, "It’s only been just recently. Sometimes Mrs. Jang from next door cooks kimchi soup for me."

"That's still not a stable diet, and you know it. Beisdes, didn't you tell me she was some sort of witch?"

"No. I didn't say that." Tao pauses when they reach the market to pick out a bag of hard candies, "I said that she thinks she's some kind of witch."

"Oh." Yixing rolls his eyes, "Forgive me for my misunderstanding. But you never know, Tao. She could be cursing the food and you're like dying but don't know it yet."

Zitao sends his friend one of those looks and goes about buying his sugary snack, "Where you come up with these impossible theories, I have no idea."

"Joonmyun says my theories are plausible. He thinks I have a creative mind." Yixing laughs, "But you know, he's way too nice to tell me if I'm being completely stupid anyway. That's why I have you.”

“Oh my god, Yixing.”

“ off, at least I have someone.” The elder boy teases him.

"Right, right. When's the wedding, again?" Tao rolls his eyes, wrinkling his nose, "It's been long enough."

"Ah, one year and seven months to be exact. Longest relationship I have ever had."

Zitao pops an orange candy into his mouth and exhales deeply through his nose, thinking just how lucky his best friend is and how extremely unlucky he is.

~

Zitao trudges on home, clutching plastic shopping bags from the market tightly in both hands as he stumbles down the road toward his apartment building.
As he gets closer, he notices some sort of loud, crazy commotion going on outside and he sees what looks like several police cars and ambulance outside the building, lights flashing and reflecting off the windows.

"What the hell...?" Tao wonders out loud as he walks past the cars and the crowd of onlookers to the elevator, painfully raising an arm under the weight of his bags to flash his apartment card over the sensor and then press his floor number.
He waits impatiently, feeling as if his limbs might finally drop off, but then gasps in shock to see his floor packed full of men and women dressed in police uniforms and a few in paramedic gear, standing around and inside Mrs. Jang's apartment—the one opposite to his.

On each floor of Zitao's building, there are two apartments, giving luxurious comfort and more space to the people living there, since it is one of the upper class city condo buildings.
Mrs. Jang has been Tao's neighbour since he had moved in, but she told him once that she has been living in that apartment for four or five years.

Tao hopes that nothing bad has happened to her.

He nudges as carefully as he can past the police, muttering apologies in his best Korean when he feels his bags make contact with some part of an unfortunate human's body, finally reaching his door when one of the officers turn to look at him.

“Who are you?” The policeman asks, “Do you live here?”

Tao nods slowly, key in the lock, "What happened?"

"How long have you and the lady that lived here been neighbours?"

"Is she okay? What happened?" The young boy repeats, not exactly understanding everything the man asks.

The policeman gives a heavy sigh, “Well not exactly, she’s passed away.”

“Passed away?” Tao blinks, repeating the words but not understanding, "What does that mean?"

"Unfortunately she has died. Seems that she was cooking, some kind of soup of something, and it exploded. She was killed by the blast.”

Explosion?

Tao’s head hurts more than his arms.

“Oh. Well thank you.” Tao didn’t know if that was an appropriate response, but his limited Korean restricts him from saying anything that sounds remotely sympathetic or generally emotional unless he has Yixing or his two classmate best friends.

He dips his head politely to the policeman and almost throws himself inside the front door of his apartment, dropping his bags and quickly locking it behind him.

He heads into the kitchen, stops and then turns, dragging his dumped shopping bags as he makes his way back.
After he packs everything away he presses his back up against the fridge as he tries to make sense of what has just happened.

Mrs. Jang has died. Died making soup.

Soup.

Tao slides his arms from his grey cardigan and hangs it on the back of one of the chairs at the dining table, deciding that he will never attempt to make soup again.

Ever.