Sweet words slither across his skin and he welcomes them with the familiarity of an old friend. They caress and embrace him with a reckless abandon and Minseok drowns in them.


All too soon though, the poison sneaks back in and spreads through his mind. He feels paralyzed, helpless as it digs ever deeper and he can do nothing cry out in pain as it unsheathes its sharp claws to pierce where it hurts.


No, no, no, he whispers to himself, repeating like a mantra when mocking laughs, wide gestures, and side glances bubble up and slap him across the face.


Fat.


A three letter word that binds Minseok with a deep rooted fear.


Fat.


What people use to describe a person of Minseok's size.


Fat.


The word creeps into his mind and release powerful toxins into his self esteem.


Fat.


It makes Minseok want to claw out his eyes and all the offending cellulite from his body until he's offered up, nothing more than skin and bones, crying, "IS THIS ENOUGH FOR YOU?"


Every time a morsel of food passes through his lips, Minseok feels as though he's swallowing the word fat. He's disgusted by the feeling and he feels the urge to choke the word, feeling, and disgust out of his system.


He loathes the feeling of being full. He loathes the look of people when they judge his portly body. He loathes the way his skin hangs off his bones, bulging with fat and self-hatred. Most of all, he loathes himself.


In sharp contrast, he gets too many odd looks if he pleads that he's not hungry and skips dinner. Too many questions get asked and too many lies slip out his mouth, rehearsed and loaded with irony that no one but himself picks up.


And so he plays the game. He sits at the dinner table, merrily shoving down food like everyone else expects him to. He jokes with Sehun, flirts subtly with Luhan, and teases Wufan. Minseok pushes, pushes the food down his throat where he sees it in his head as dissolving and traveling to the rest of his body and leaving behind the disgusting fat.


He excuses himself away from the dinner table at an appropriate time, using the eldest card. Minseok cleans after himself and does his assigned chore of cleaning the kitchen after the disasters of dinner preparation.


Jolly laughter and bright remarks float into the kitchen where Minseok is dying in a puddle - no, an ocean of hatred. He imagines skinny elbows bumping into skinny rib cages. V-lines ending in sharp chins define handsome, if tired, features. Different, different from his own saggy elbows and pillowy ribs. His oval face with fluffy cheeks that sit on top of passable looks.


He passes back through the living room with an easy eye smile lighting up his face with a tender expression on his face. Minseok exchanges a word or two with the manager and makes a beeline for the restroom.


It's an ordered routine for him now. He has his clean clothes laid out and his toothbrush loaded with minty, strong toothpaste. Minseok judges that he had about 15-20 minutes before dinner is up and he has to go back to pretending that he's ok.


Minseok cranks on the shower, the water sounding like bullets against the white of the tiled floor. The room quickly steams up and he feels sweat beginning to form. Good.


Striping methodically, he bares himself except his briefs and folds his old laundry neatly. He stares at the slowly fogging mirror, watching as his ugly body is covered by the condensation. Revulsion floods his body and he's trembling, unable to hold all of his demons inside. Minseok is falling apart from the inside.


Fat.


The word whispers around in his mind and he instantly recoils. All doubt is erased from Minseok's mind and he is no longer shaking, a twisted sort of determination steeling his limbs.


He crawls to the toilet and hangs his head over the rim. For a moment, Minseok waits for the familiar feeling that he had now learned to embrace.


Nausea surges through him and his stomach clenches. He swallows and opens his mouth. It's a routine for him now; one that makes him detest himself more and one that makes him feel lighter and more accepted.


A tear etches its path down his face unnoticed as he opens his mouth and brings a slightly trembling finger to his lips. He ignors the small shaking and just shoves something down that makes him feel liberated. He touches the back of his throat, waiting for his gag reflex to kick in. It's used to this, the prodding. It's not long before he gags over the edge of the white bowl, his body bowing over.


No one outside hears, joking over dinner as Minseok becomes consumed by monsters. All too soon, his stomach is empty and he's dry heaving. He slumps over, exhausted.


Time.


Minseok remembers. He weakly grabs the toothbrush bringing under the shower head and quickly getting rid of the taste of bile and disgust from his mouth. If only he could do that inside his body, he thinks bitterly, the cool mint contrasting and brushing away the acrid after effects.


He flushes away the evidence and he slowly stands up. Minseok timidly taps the corner of the electric scale and two 0s pop up on the display screen, blinking. He waits for the 0s to steady, bitterly pondering if he could someday reach that pretty, perfect number. Knowing it's impossible and entertaining it is two entirely different things.


He swipes away the thought and steps on the scale, his bravo falling away as the numbers fly, switching every second. His stomach clenches emptily and he feels a hairline fracture crack.


Too much. Too much. Minseok's always weighed too much. He had been near obese as a child and shed a lot of weight for their debut, but since Luhan had had tenderly nicknamed him steamed bun, he felt himself start to edge towards the point of no return.


Lost in his thoughts, the numbers continue to calculate him.


Lee Soo Man suggested that he lose a bit more weight for their first comeback and he leaps closer to that edge.


More, more, more. He finds the result of his diet far more pleasing than he had ever expected. The hollow feeling in his stomach had told him that he was pretty inside. The calculating of calories soon became an automatic thought and Minseok became obsessed with counting. The pleasing way water slipped down his throat into his calling stomach and quieted the growls and the shrieks of the demons inside him.


Purging. It was such an ugly word to describe the beautifying process. It cleansed Minseok. It made him more beautiful, more thin, more pure.


Soon, the numbers of the scale dropped, dropped, dropped and now he was dancing on the edge, one stumble could tip him straight into the void of insanity.


Some small voice in his head had originally protested that it wasn't healthy, but he had shut it up with the sharp tang of bile. It drowned along with the rest of his sanity.


At last the numbers stopped moving and the heartless black numbers displayed his worth.


44 kgs.


Something in Minseok splintered at the sight of the 4s and he suddenly cracked. This was the stumble. He was falling, spiraling into insanity.


A broken sob escapes past Minseok's damaged throat, his quickly deteriorating vocal cords. A howl tips out and he collapses to the cold floor, the weight on his shoulders increasing exponentially and he finds himself too weak to stand.


"Minseok? Minseok! Are you ok?" A panicked voice sounds from outside the door and he wants to shout back 'everything's fine! Just dropped the shampoo bottle on my toe!' But he can't get anything out but another sob.


Luhan bursts into the restroom at the silence and his eyes take in the discriminating scene. Minseok wants to scream that it wasn't what he thought it was, even though it was everything and more of what he was thinking.


Minseok thinks he hears Luhan shriek his name and he feels the vibration of the floor as members sprint to the bathroom at Luhan's shout.


Luhan's eyes spot the black numbers and he freezes. Minseok flinches at the alarm and something else at the look in the pink haired male.


Sobs continue to racked his tired body and moves his mouth in a useless attempt to cover himself.


More shocked eyes witness the ruined vocalist and by now the numbers on the scale have thankfully disappeared.


No. This wasn't how they were supposed to look at Minseok's weight loss. He wanted approval for reaching a weight that society approved of. He wanted acceptance as a new person. He didn't want this angry swirl of emotions.


"What the hell, Minseok!" Luhan shouts and Minseok finds himself too bone weary to flinch anymore at the disgust on everyone's faces as the freeze at the door. "What the actual do you think you're doing?" he hisses and the eldest casually notes that his face is gradually turning more and more red. He wills his body to move forward and clamp the raging Chinese's mouth shut with his hand before more of Minseok's dirty secrets spill out, but his body won't listen.


He cringes as Luhan spits out the taboo word. "Why the do you only weigh 44kgs?! Are you ing purging?!"


Minseok can't look up at anyone's eyes because he knows what he's going to find there. The same things that he's found in his own eyes. Disgust. Horror. Shock.


He knows that they're staring at his jutting hipbones, the protruding rib cage, and his spiny backbone all too prominent and he hears a few shocked gasps.


"Hyung!" Tao gasps, his eyes wide and Minseok can't look at the younger one. He just stares at his own wrists and cruelly thinks, this is your own fault, Minseok.


Small sniffles are still coming out of Minseok and he decides that he's had enough. He gathers whatever energy he can summon up and curls up into the fetal position. He wishes the world away and wishes and wishes, but wishes don't come to those covered in sins.


He feels gentle arms wrap around him and he stifles a sob. They're too gentle for someone so broken. Minseok knows he's broken. Broken in the inside, too splintered apart to be put back together.


Kind, comforting words are whispered in his ear as he feels himself being picked up the floor. He's limp, too fatigued to make his limbs obey. It matters not.


The shower is turned off, a pair of strong arms cradle him as though he were a fine piece of porcelain, fragile. Perhaps he was. Minseok closes his eyes, too cowardly to face the consequences of his actions. All he wants now is to sleep away into a black void and never wake up.


He feels himself being moved and placed on a soft cushion. The eldest's body is surrounded by the plush mattress and there are kind hands that dress him with utmost delicacy. He wants to sob and scream that he's not the fragile, but he wonders if that's really the truth.


There are a pair of hands his hair, trembling in their ministrations, another sadly tracing his pale wrists, and another still, wiping away the tears that still come.


Minseok finally speaks since his sins have come forth to the light and he whispers, "I'm sorry."


An ear is placed next to his mouth and a voice asks, "Huh?" Minseok knows it's the Chinese dancer.


He whispers it again and again, his voice unsteady and unsure. He murmurs the apology over and over, occasionally pausing for a hiccup that shakes his entire body.


Minseok thinks all of Exo and their managers are crammed into a small bedroom and dares not think of their reactions. Another voice hushes his spilled apologies and says it's ok.


He nearly wails that its not ok, but its just comes out as a feeble shake of his head. It seems to get the message across and a firmer, deeper voice, tinged with a mixed Chinese English accent says, "No. We're sorry, Minseok. We should've been watching over you. We were so blind. We shouldn't have let you get so far-" his voice cracks and Wufan doesn't continue anymore.


The room falls silent as he hears Junmyeon whisper, "Let's let him sleep for now. We can deal with," he hesitates, "this later."


Feet shuffle out of the room, heavy with Minseok's shame but he turns his face into the pillow. Soft hands turn his face back, but Minseok keeps his eyes stubbornly shut. He can't deal with anything yet. He feels cold. He always feels cold.


He hears an apology mumbled into the skin of his neck and Minseok's falling apart faster than ever. He'd bet the next 2 kilos that it's Luhan.


Sure enough, Luhan clutches Minseok with a contrasting grip. One that's tight enough to keep Minseok from slipping between his arms and one that tender that holds him with a newfound delicacy.


Minseok's quickly being devoured by the creatures that haunt his nightmares but he hears begs that come out of Luhan to stop. He hears but he knows inside that he can't. He was almost to his goal.


He remembers being 70kgs. It was a good start, but not enough.


He remembers 65 kgs. It means that he's getting purer.


He remembers 60 kgs. The almost proud feeling that left him europhic and so, so clean inside.


He remembers 55 kgs and that's the last he remembers. He doesn't know how he's gotten down to 44, but he knows that unlike everyone else, the numbers don't lie to him.


He feels unblemished. 

A/N: This is something I've been wanting to write for awhile. It's quite a serious topic, but it cannot be avoided. To anyone who may or maynot be struggling with who they are or their body image: Remember. You are beautiful the way you are. Let yourself not be measured in worth by how you look, but by what lies inside.