He had that surgery done to his throat when he was eleven, or maybe even younger, Yixing recalls, and had been so scared he wouldn't be able to sing, he had stopped eating for a few days. Two pounds lighter and heavier by a ton with worry, the doctors had told him it's only temporary that he won't be able to use his voice and he had cried alone in his room after. He had cried when he won third place in Star Academy and also later when he got accepted in SM. Mainly, all were tears of joy, albeit mixed with some bitterness too. He could have been more careful with his throat, he could have performed better in the show, he could have not let his girlfriend go and still have her by his side if he hadn't chosen to become an idol instead. All the could-haves and what-ifs that used to keep him awake at night before. Now he has someone to love, but has lost all love for music in return. And music, in his case, is just about the same as his life. Maybe those are the side effects of being an entertainer?

It didn't happen all at once. There were the small things – Chanyeol acting like he and Baekhyun are close on stage, but merely speaking with him when the cameras are off. Sehun and Luhan's friendship crumbling down, half-ruined by rumors and their own insecurity as to what will happen if the company really comes to the conclusion they might like each other (such a retarded idea, Luhan had grumbled) and the decision to pretend they are not close anymore. Only later have they realized they have grown apart exactly because they wanted to save their friendship.

It was in the hours of waiting backstage with staff running around, not really caring about the artists' needs, but about the show. Freddy Mercury had once sung “show must go on” and as Yixing was the one to wipe Tao's sweat from his feverish forehead right before a live performance with no one to offer them a simple tablet of aspirin, he had found out how true that had been. That's what keeps the ridiculous theater running, as vicious and inhuman to the puppets in the show it is. If the strings break we'll just replace our shiny powdered toy with a new one, fresh from the oven, ready to bow and smile and spin the way you want it to. They are all the 'man who laughs' and the saddest thing is, they chose it themselves.

Days were shading off in months, the months blending into years and all of a sudden Yixing had become more of a Lay than he'd wanted to. The boy who had written “Because of you” for his fans he adored seemed so distant, like mirage of more pristine days where music was a symphony and not a cacophony. No difference appeared when he tried to compare himself before and now – he still had a strong affection towards his fans and still held onto his music sheets with the despair of a drowning man who takes the first painful gulps of oxygen, but the man he saw in the mirror was not the same. This man had to remind himself a lot of things because he couldn't love everybody by default (something his old self was used to). Because he couldn't let go of music, he had let go of himself and if Luhan were still awake, Yixing would tell him that. He didn't fall out of love on purpose. He was pushed out of it straight down a pair of stairs. He is so lost lately because he feels like he is still falling.

~

Packing is twice as better when you know you are going to visit your family and Yixing literally dances around in his room, humming to an old Chinese song from his hometown he is heading to. He wakes Luhan up eventually, the latter muttering something about overexcited s as he drags his blanket to the living room, but he couldn't care less today. Yixing thoroughly checks a couple of times every item he decides on getting with himself and it takes longer than usual, but he wants everything to be perfect, even his baggage for his family. He puts the presents he has bought on the top of the suitcase and takes a glance at his watch with a satisfied smile. Five twenty. He still has ten minutes left before the car comes for him so he decides to clean his backpack from the stuff he doesn't need. Sitting on his made up bed, he grabs the beige bag in his hands and s it. Receipts, half a pack of nacho chips (he can practically hear Kyungsoo nagging at him in the back of his mind for putting food in such an expensive bag), a shabby notebook that he pulls out and opens on a random page. His grandmother had bought it for him as a present when he got selected as an EXO member. To put your feelings in words, my kid, she had said, caressing his head softly. The notebook is nothing special, nor expensive, but it's one of Yixing's most treasured items. On the page he sees the date 10.11.12 and it's one he doesn't want to remember, although he is aware he will never forget it. Below the date there are song lyrics.

“I will love you in ink,

over the pulp of a paper,

scribbled down in a hurry

too floppy and barely readable.

I will love you in words

before I love you in action

and worship the shrift

of your name in my notebooks.”

The song is older than the date that is written, Yixing thinks, it's probably from his high school days and he hadn't thought of a title for it so he had put the date later. A masochistic way to remember the past. He throws the old notebook on his bed, taking a mental note to store it in his cupboard when he comes back. It's five twenty seven and he has to go, but then feels something weird in the backpack and takes out a little box wrapped in silver foil with a slight surprise. It takes him a blink or two to figure out why is it there, but when he does the curiosity takes over and he unwraps the foil carefully.

He awaits to see some kind of souvenir or a handmade bracelet and is startled when the pain comes, blinding and so severe that he screams, lungs betraying him halfway as he chokes on air. His fingers bleed, or what is left of them and he bends forward and throws up on the floor, his vomit mixing with what looks like rivers of dark red blood staining the carpet. His hands are numb and burning at the same time, the agony centralized in his right hand. He bites his lip hard but that doesn't stop the sounds of absolute terror that come out of his mouth. He doesn't hear the door burst open, nor Luhan's voice that calls him, no trace of sleep in it. He doesn't notice as the others barge in too and Kris calls for an ambulance after the initial shock. Yixing blacks out before their eyes and starts falling into his own stomach liquids before two hands catch him and Luhan tries to stabilize his friend's body, blood marking his clothes in the process.

Luhan is crying in the ambulance, staring at Yixing's paler than death face and he might or might not have almost hit Kris when he suggested he should be the one, as a leader, that should go in. Minseok had been the person to shut them all up and had pushed Luhan in the car without saying anything else. They will come with Kris' car, he calls after Luhan in vain cause the latter could not hear anything even if he wanted to. He concentrates on Yixing's slow but steady breathing, hands crossed in his lap so hard, his knuckles are white.

When they arrive at the hospital a few nurses have to hold Luhan so that he won't enter the emergency room, insisting he has to wait outside. A couple of Chinese curses shouted in their faces, the nurses let him be and he glues himself to the bench right in front of the operating room and clings onto Yixing's bracelet, a present from his mother, that the paramedics had asked him to take off. The others join him soon after and it's not only the four of EXO-M but their two managers and the boys from K too. Everybody asks Luhan questions he don't understand, that make his head pound even harder and it's a blessing when Kyungsoo, having seen his expression, demands all of them to be quiet.

Minutes pass slower than they are supposed to and Luhan is getting tinier and more alone with every tick of his wrist-watch. None of the others agrees to go home when their managers order them to and Luhan would be the first to get worked up if he wasn't about to collapse anytime soon. He lets Baekhyun and Jongdae handle the situation, both of them loud and persistent enough to have their managers disarmed – a sight not often to be seen.

“How is he, doctor?” Tao asks first in a very broken Korean and Luhan lifts his head up to blink the tears away and get a clear view of the mid-aged surgeon who has deep wrinkles around his eyes and on his forehead.

“The electrocardiogram is perfectly fine and we have taken blood to examine it but the results will come in a few days so you will have to wait for them. Severe blood loss, I am guessing hemophilia but we got him stabilized. He's going to have to take some rest. Other than that... listen, the boy hasn't woken up from the anesthesia yet but when he does, he is going to be in a major shock. People who lose part of their bodies are usually...”

“He's lost... what?”

Luhan doesn't even recognize the high-pitched voice that asks the question.

“I thought you have seen it,” the doctor's eyes soften in a trained way and that's probably the look he gives all his patients when he tells them that we're sorry, you have only six months left to live, but on the bright side your kidneys are perfectly fine, congratulations. “The boy lost two of the fingers on his right hand. A third one was damaged badly but we managed to save it. Was he, by any chance left-handed?”

Was. Like he's dead. Yixing is not left-handed. His hand is not hurt. And he won't be in shock because this, all of this, must be happening in Luhan's head and it's some sort of a sick nightmare he is going to wake up from any second now...

~

But he doesn't wake up. And neither does Yixing for two days straight. Luhan refuses to move an inch away from the hospital room so the other boys take turns to visit Yixing and bring Luhan some stuff as well. Sehun, Jongin, Minseok and Kris stay the longest. Their eyes are red, just like Luhan's except he hasn't been crying, not after the night it happened. He just hasn't been able to sleep, visions of Yixing haunting him the moment he closes his eyes.

“Look, hyung” Sehun starts in a hesitant manner the third morning, “you should go home and rest. I will be here, I promise.”

“You promise a lot of things, Sehun.”

“It's not the moment to discuss our problems, hyung. I still care. I still consider you my best friend. You and Jongin. I have never needed much anyway.”

“I am not going anywhere. I wasn't there when it happened, but I can at least be by his side when he wakes up.”

“You don't have to feel guilty. It's that crazy fan's fault that...”

“I have done nothing to feel guilty about,” Luhan cuts him off with a hiss. “That person lying there,” he points at Yixing with his head, “needs me the most now. I would be at fault if I left him all alone.”

“He won't be alone.”

“No, but he's lonely all the time.”

There is a very slight difference between both statements, but Luhan has faith Sehun will understand. The younger one obviously does and says nothing for which the Chinese boy is very grateful.

“Nice not fighting with you.”

“It is. Yixing is lucky.”

Luhan doesn't ask what Yixing is lucky about. He is afraid Yixing won't know too when he wakes up and that frightens him the most.

~

Yixing wakes up in the afternoon while Luhan is trying to solve the rubix' cube Sehun had brought for him when he came earlier. His vision is dizzy like he's watching through an old kaleidoscope and his whole body is overtaken by a numb pain he can't define. It all reminds him of the one time his friends at school made him try some weed with them and he had foolishly agreed, marking that as his worst mistake ever after the drug's effect had faded away. Except he is a hundred percent sure he is not high now and flash-bulb memories start popping in his head. A box. And then the pain. And then two hands embracing him. And after that the darkness. He'd scream if his throat wasn't dry and aching him.

Luhan raises his head at the choking noise, eyes full of false hope.

“Water,” Yixing pleads and it comes out like a sore whisper. Luhan's hands tremble slightly as he takes the glass on the nightstand and uplifts Yixing's head for him to drink. A few drops fall down Yixing's cheek and down his neck to wet the sheets, but he gulps the liquid down thirstily and when Luhan turns to put the glass back on it's place, it's empty.

Yixing raises his right hand by habit to move his fringe from his eyes and at the sight of it – covered with with bandage, deformed in the places his fingers used to be, he crumbles. Down, down, down where it's dark so that he can't see. His body tremors uncontrollably, a thin layer of sweat starting to form on his forehead. Luhan's voice sounds somewhere from afar, but Yixing's breathing is to heavy for him to hear anything all but the pumping of his heart.

The doctors come soon after and inject Novocain intravenous to calm him down. He won't sleep, they say, but he won't run a riot either and that's good enough for them.

“I told you to be careful,” the head doctor says with judgment dripping from his voice, probably having no idea how he makes Luhan loathe him even more with each word.

“He is a composer and he just lost his fingers, how did you expect him to react?”

It's almost a scream and Luhan wishes Sehun was there to stop him and handle the situation in his coldblooded way that always makes things better in the end, but Sehun had left long ago.

“Such behavior shall not be tolerated in my hospital, reckon yourself warned young man. We do you enough favors by letting you stay overnight. Just because you are some kind of an idol...”

Luhan has to harness all his will power to shut up and go back to his friend now that the nurses have cleared his way. Yixing groans with sightless eyes, staring right through Luhan. Trough because Luhan is sure Yixing doesn't see him at all except he then turns to meet Luhan's eyes and asks “Would you catch it for me, ge?”

“What? You want me to give you something.”

“Never mind. It's just a rock anyway.”

~

The worst day is the day Yixing's mother arrives at the hospital and her eyes are dry, but her cheeks are hollower than the last time Yixing saw her and her face speaks of sadness that words can never be enough to express. Luhan leaves them alone, taking a last look at the hospital bed before he closes the door only to see Yixing's mother taking him in her embrace as he weeps, head buried in her shoulder.

“My poor kid,” Yixing's mom says when they are alone, caressing his back, holding him tight enough to give him the comfort Yixing has longed for ever since he woke up. He couldn't have asked Luhan, nor could have explained properly how the sinking feeling only stops when he has arms wrapped around him like a hideout place nobody can harm him in.

“What am I going to do now, mom?”

“You have to heal first. We'll think about it later, hm?”

“I can't, mom. I failed them. It's my fault.”

Yixing tells her everything – how he took the present on a whim, how if he hadn't he'd still be an idol now. Somewhere between the guilt ripping holes in his skin whilst he is talking and the machine next to his bed counting out his heartbeats in an even rhythm, the tears finally stop and by the time he is finished, his brain has partly managed to grasp at the reality that he has no future more in the music field. It doesn't make it hurt any less, though.

“Yixing, darling, I have given birth to only one son in my life. He forgets a lot and hurts his body often. That same son who barely made it because of blood loss. I have known him for twenty three years and for what I can be sure about, he doesn't betray the people who have trust in him,” Yixing's mom lifts his head up to make him look her in the eyes and she wipes the drying tears from his cheeks. She smiles at him before pulling him close to her again, careful not to touch his hurt hand. “They will understand. But I hope you know I can't leave my kid here anymore, Yixing. I won't be able to live through the hardships that might follow if you stay in Korea.”

Over.

“I am sorry, mom.”

His dream.

“Don't be. I hate that girl. I know I shouldn't. But for the first time in my life, I really want to see somebody hurt, Yixing. For the first time I want to be the one to cause somebody pain.”

Shattered in pieces.

“I hate her too. I am afraid if I stay, I will start hating everybody. I need to go home.”

The first time such a firm decision had formed in his head, Yixing had waved it off, telling himself it will get better. Except it hadn't. Maybe it is time he just gives up. Maybe it's time for him to get some sleep too.