It starts with a smile.

Just a simple upward curve of a mouth, no flash of teeth, soft and shy and half-way hesitant.

Yixing is sitting in his favorite café, just around the corner from the apartment he shares with his parents, the lines of adolescence still just barely visible in his face, a straw clenched between his teeth.

It’s the last week before his final year of high school starts, and Yixing is enjoying every last minute of it, usually curled up in his favorite corner of the small coffee and tea shop when he’s not with friends, reading a book or listening to music and planning out dance choreographies in his head, a cup of tea lying cold and forgotten by his elbow.

Today is like any other day, comfortable, familiar, normalcy clinging to the drops of condensation inching down his cup, settling into the line of his shoulders, the air outside hot and muggy, Yixing’s shirt sticking to his back with perspiration.

And in the space between one sip of bubble tea and the next, Yixing’s life shifts.

The change comes in the form of a boy, the bell above the front door tinkling as he walks in, and Yixing glances up.

The newcomer looks young, his hair an unnatural shade of pink, eyes huge in his small face as he blinks around.

And for some reason, Yixing doesn’t look back down, doesn’t dismiss him as easily as the rest of the customers that are always entering the store, doesn’t stop paying attention.

He watches as the boy heads for the counter at the front, his words too soft to drift back over to Yixing, watches him wait for his order, shifting lightly from foot to foot, never turning around to take in the café, fiddling with a set of bracelets around his wrist.

There’s something about the boy that keeps Yixing engaged, keeps his eyes locked on the press of his shoulder blades through his t-shirt, on the dark hair that Yixing can see under the dye job at the nape of the boy’s neck, on the fragile arms that reach out to take his drink from the girl behind the counter, the delicateness of them seeming to match the fragileness of Yixing’s inexperienced heart.

And then the boy finally turns around, large eyes catching Yixing’s almost immediately, and Yixing offers a smile.

But it’s not his smile that makes the difference.

It’s the smile that graces the new boy’s face a millisecond after, just a simple upward curve of a mouth, no flash of teeth, soft and shy and half-way hesitant.

Chanyeol can’t really remember how it started.

Can’t really remember when he started.

All he knows is that he can’t stop.

            Not even when his parents threaten to kick him out of the house, not even when he wakes up the next morning and can’t remember anything from the night before, not even when he wants to.

            And not even when his younger sister watches with tears in her eyes as he leaves one late summer day, his suitcase clutched in one hand and a duffel bag slung over the other shoulder, directions to a friend’s house crumpled inside his pocket.

            He’s still trapped even if he’s leaving.

Kai is clenching his nails into his palms so tightly he’s sure he’s going to draw blood.

            But he can’t unfurl himself from his rigid posture, back stick straight in the chair he’s occupying, fists in his lap, feet planted firmly to the floor.

            His father is saying something, something about a new deal that just went through, about how he wants Kai to take over this small section of the company so that he can begin to learn how to manage things, so that he can better prepare for his future.

            And Kai finally snaps, finally lets go of the structure he’s been clinging to his whole life, because it is his future, his and no one else’s.

            “Father, stop,” Kai says, meeting his father’s surprised eyes across the huge, mahogany desk Kai always fears sitting behind.

His mother glances over at her son, wariness dancing across her eyes because she already knows what this is about.

They’ve all talked about it before.

Or maybe talked isn’t the right word.

They