“Wanna help wrap the gifts?” Luhan asked his mother.

Christmas had always been a special season for Luhan. He loved to decorate the house, to choose gifts, to prepare the Christmas dinner with his mother and Zhoumi, her husband, and of course, to welcome his relatives on this magical night. This year, however, he couldn’t help but to feel a little uneasy. It would be the first Christmas in thirteen years that he would spend in the presence of his father and brother.

Lan, Luhan's mother, smiled at him, putting down the bags full of chocolates on the kitchen countertop.

“Later, we have to fix dinner first. Zhoumi will be here any minute,” she stated, ruffling his soft hair like he was still six years old.

Sometimes Luhan thought his family was a bit unusual. It wasn’t the fact that his parents were divorced, that was really no big deal. His father, however - he felt like he didn’t really know him.

His father had moved to Europe when Luhan was only eight, taking his younger brother, Sehun, with him. After that, father and son had only met once, two years later, when the former had managed to get the time and the money to pay a little visit. In the years that followed, the young boy had suffered from some abandonment issues. Why did his father choose his brother to travel with him, instead of Luhan himself? Well, Luhan knew he wasn’t Lan and mr.Oh's biological son; they had adopted him when he was still 4 years old, as after giving birth to Sehun she was not able to get pregnant anymore. Could it be because of that?

Now at twenty four, the boy of course understood his parents’ decision. An eight-year-old child is still too dependent for someone who intends to establish a life in a whole new country. Sehun, on the other hand, was already twenty by then, and very capable of taking care of himself. Luhan still felt a little bit of healthy jealousy towards his brother, though. Living in Europe sounded like adventure to someone who, like him, had never left the small town where he was born.

His father had not come to visit him in a while because of financial issues which he never seemed to overcome and which Luhan never understood completely. However, some months ago, mr. Oh had won the first prize of some sort of European lottery and, unbelievably, became a billionaire overnight. Feeling no less than happy for her ex-husband, Lan had invited him and the son that she had not seen for years to spend Christmas with them, now that they could easily afford the trip.

Luhan sighed while separating the bags with gifts from the ones with groceries and proceeded to pack up the latter in the kitchen cabinets. While he saw his father through a webcam twice a week and, from time to time, his brother would also exchange a few words with him, he still felt like they were only distant relatives. In terms of space and emotional binding, they actually were.

“Don’t make such a face, darling. I’m a little anxious too, but there is no reason to be so glum,” his mom said, as if she could read his mind, while tying her long black hair behind her head.

In that simple and familiar moment, the phone rang and disrupted the peace. Lan walked to the living room to answer the call while Luhan kept packing up the groceries. He dropped everything when, moments later, he heard a muffled interjection, and ran to his mother immediately. When the boy saw her with her hand covering , her bloodshot eyes spilling tears over her cheeks, he knew that something really, really bad was happening. His mother was so not the type of person to cry over nothing.

This was the Christmas when Luhan started disliking Christmas.

“Luhan… sweetheart…” Lan sobbed, grabbing her son’s arm with a trembling hand “Your father…”

~