When Chanyeol was ten and was told to draw a picture of what he thought he would be like as an adult, he had drawn himself as a millionaire with five children and a sparkly car. Now as an adult he instead had a crammy room in a shabby building in a foreign country and the designated position of an errand boy on a slave ship.
He probably should have been glad not to be dead but it was still extremely unnerving because he was somewhat useless and had no idea when they would get rid of him. He was stuck in a place where barely anyone understood him, trying to do a job he didn't think suited him and that he obviously wasn't qualified for. Why Kris had chosen him to begin with he didn't get either. He did try to adapt but it was just hard to even understand how he had got into the whole thing.



Kris was definitely annoyed. It didn't take a genius to understand that him wildly pointing at the door couldn't mean anything good.
"He wants us to take a break," Xiumin said dryly, obviously paraphrasing again.

Chanyeol excluded were there two people who spoke Korean among the crew. One of them was Xiumin, the Korean. The other was Luhan, the Chinese. They were both very helpful and Chanyeol liked them both, but their translations usually were vastly different.
Luhan always conveyed messages as exactly as possible. Tao wanted Chanyeol to know when he ed up, Lay gave him a long-winded explanation as to why he couldn't heal motion sickness and some of Kris' commands barely ever made sense at first, mostly because Chanyeol had absolutely no idea how airships worked. He could even count the times he ever sat in a car on two hands, and everything above that level was simply too high. So when Luhan translated something, he mostly had to ask. Luhan always patiently explained things as best as he could but Chanyeol still felt like a complete idiot.

Right from the start Xiumin used a different approach. Most things Tao said became 'him having a bad day' and 'him being in a bad mood'. Short instructions given by Kris turned into lectures about the usage of the ship and Lay's diagnoses became, "Well, it's just a scratch. It won't kill you."
At first it bothered him. He didn't need anyone to mother him. But with every day passing by he noticed how much easier things were whenever it was Xiumin who stood between him and reality. What he didn't understand, Xiumin explained. What he didn't want to hear, Xiumin either censored or omitted.

So he actually was glad that the ending of a series of mishaps on that afternoon, when they were loading provisions on the ship, was Kris supposedly kindly allowing him and Xiumin to take a break.

It actually really was a lucky coincidence that his favourite translator's position on the ship was stupidly similar to his own one.
Xiumin's power was completely contradictory to the way he looked. At first Chanyeol had figured that he probably was more of thinker, kind of like the others. People like Kris and Luhan weren't that strong but obviously smart, Lay always just helped and Tao really knew how to use his power. He stopped Chanyeol from being smashed by a pile of rubble before and when Luhan cut his leg, he hindered the blood from gushing out. Tao probably was stronger than he let on but used his power as if it was not more than a simple extension of his self.

Chanyeol knew a few people who used ice. There had been a whole family of them in his neighbourhood, so he was used to people who cooled down water during hot summers and who made it snow in dull winters. During a wedding they provided ice sculptures and during the winter holidays an ice rink on the street. But Xiumin sometimes seemed unable to even to the most simple helpful tasks.
It had been less than three weeks since Chanyeol joined the crew but he already knew how scary Xiumin's power was. It was like a natural disaster. They day Luhan hurt himself, he froze the complete room over, accidentally hindering Lay from even reaching Luhan to help because his legs were stuck to the ground. And when they went to Kris' mechanical genius cousin's scrapyard because the machines aboard kept striking, Xiumin pierced the complete engine with a giant icicle as he was supposed to cool it down a little. It really was ironical how someone with such a strength seemed to be aboard for everything but his power.

Chanyeol figured that he himself probably was on the ship to balance out the damage done by Xiumin. That was maybe what the whole questioning around him not killing anyone before had been about. Kris maybe thought that Chanyeol was in control over his powers and Chanyeol himself certainly had always thought that he was but with every day passing by he wondered whether that really was the case. Just like that very day when they were sent away.

They didn't have a ramp to get the provisions aboard because Luhan usually just made them levitate inside. In most cases that seemed to work but that day Luhan hadn't felt so well, so Kris had decided to split the burden. Some things Luhan moved in, others they moved up a ramp built by Xiumin. The ramp then became the beginning of the whole trouble.
It was slippery but it worked fine at first. Kris flew and pulled things up. Tao stopped everyone who was about to fall. Chanyeol meanwhile had always had trouble with ice but tried to cope. At first his feet just sank in a little, causing the ramp to become slightly uneven but when he tried to push a heavy wooden box that wouldn't budge, the ramp just melted away.  Xiumin tried to help and as a result they had a door that was frozen over, a large puddle and the burning box that luckily only contained metal parts.
They were like idiot brothers and as a comedy act they surely would have made it big but Kris decided that he was done with anymore ice or fire accidents for the day.


"I guess we're really useless after all," he said and pulled off the dry gloves. Two fingers of the right one were almost burnt off completely and his skin underneath looked red and angry. Neither fire nor ice would have caused him blisters but he wasn't used to actual physical work. Back home he had always just done casual jobs.

"This time, yeah," Xiumin shrugged and put on the kettle to boil tea. They had gone to the small office of the storage building Kris was renting as a base. "Everyone has tasks they can do and tasks they can't do."

Chanyeol sighed and sat down. "Right now I can't really picture myself doing anyhing that would be helpful. I can only do tricks and stuff." He formed a fire ball and turned it into a fire star. The star then split up into many tiny stars and then dissolved into nothing but hot air, when Chanyeol saw Xiumin giving him a glimpse that seemed to be laced with pity. "I'm fun on parties," he said glumly and pulled a face.

"I bet," Xiumin snorted and turned his back to him because the flame under the kettle had gone out. Chanyeol watched him for a few seconds before he stood up and turned it back on himself.

"I think you might have to give up trying to cook things," he said and surpressed a laughter. The water started boiling almost instantly but before Xiumin had a chance to grab the kettle, Chanyeol just took it himself and poured the water into the teapot. "I mean, can you even remember drinking anything hot in your life?"

It was meant as a joke but Xiumin actually seemed offended when he didn't say anything at first and just got two cups.
"Tricks are good," Xiumin finally said as he poured the first cup. When he noticed that the steam almost disappeared immediately, he frowned and gestured Chanyeol to just pour his himself. "You have to be able to chat people up once we get on our next job. You're like the new trump card because you're a Special Citizen. Neither Luhan nor me can fake that."

"Right," Chanyeol said unhappily and followed Xiumin to the table to sit down. He didn't really want to think of that future work he would have to do. They had told him that most slaves did lead a better life than the people in the Special Districts would ever have. Kris supposedly made sure that his buyers were at least somewhat decent people. But still...

"And anyway," Xiumin said matter-of-factly. "They need people like us who can do the dirty work if there's a problem during a job. We're the wolves in a flock of sheep."

He looked at Xiumin who was calmy drinking his cold tea. Xiumin was like a bundle of controversies. He kept drinking tea and coffee and soups although he unwillingly cooled them all down instantly. He looked nice but was almost cruel sometimes. He admitted being born in Korea but always distanced himself from Special Citizens, as if one thing had nothing to do with the other. And Chanyeol felt as if he just understood the world outside his district less and less. If not for his power, he would have thought of Xiumin as a one of the normal people, simply because he couldn't really think of anything in between. They were both Korean and yet not the same.

"I got an idea," he said after an almost awkward moment of silence and stretched out his arm to touch Xiumin's cup. Xiumin moved back instinctively and eyed him suspiciously.
"Just hold on and I heat it up as you drink it."

Xiumin looked at his hands holding the cup and then back at Chanyeol, not very convinced.

"I mean, come on, I'm good at heating up things. And it's probably not going to work anyway."

Xiumin blinked and pressed his lips together but leaned forward anyway, holding the cup so that Chanyeol could touch it as he drank.
It was harder than expected. Heating up liquids was one of the few things Chanyeol really mastered because it was the one thing he had really needed in his daily life. His mother was better with open fire, so whenever their electricity had been cut off, it was him who had to heat the bathwater or the water they needed to cook food. But this was different because here there actually was resistance. Just when he thought the temperature was about right, it cooled off again, and Xiumin seemed to realize it as well. They struggled for a few seconds before Xiumin actually put the cup to his lips. He took a sip. And choked. The cup dropped to the table and cracked, revealing a large tea-coloured ice cube.

Chanyeol jumped up. "Oh , did I burn you?"

Xiumin had turned away and was holding his mouth but shook his head. "No. I mean, I don't know. I don't think so. It's just..." He looked at Chanyeol in what seemed to be utter shock. "Was that what hot tea tastes like?"

"I... I guess," Chanyeol slowly said. "Should I get Lay? Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Xiumin said and suddenly looked almost amused. "I was just surprised."

And Chanyeol genuinely didn't understand him. Xiumin was like a puzzle that just wouldn't make sense as a whole. There were parts he liked and parts that probably should have scared him more than they did. He was glad that he didn't just end up in a place where no one understood him or cared about what he did. But no matter how much he tried to make sense of this new life, it just confused him endlessly.