A/N: These are all attempts at writing a sequel for my story CONTROL.

This was supposed to be a possible introduction with the very creative title "ctrl+n" about Xiumin's paranoia.

It was always the same setting. They walked along that dirty road, but although they were in a strange place, no one took the little girl's hand. They were too afraid to touch her.

"Look, Sohee, you're special, so you have to go to a place where everyone is like you. You  can make many new friends there. It will be so much fun," her mother said but avoided her gaze. She lied.

"But I want to be with you," the little girl whined. She grabbed the hem of her mother's skirt, only to be pushed away.

Her mother woke up for a second. "Sohee, I'm so sorry," she muttered apologetically and touched the girl's cheek. It was cold.

"Get away from her," her father said harshly and pulled his wife away. He looked at the little girl. "You don't belong with us."

The scenes that followed were always different. Sometimes the girl was brought to the slave ship and into a country full of people who didn't understand her. Sometimes her parents changed her mind, sometimes she entered the gates to a place full of friends who were like her. They lived in a garden with snow flowers and everyone was happy.

This time the girl changed. Her legs grew longer and her hair shorter. The little girl now was someone else and looked up at her father.

"Why?" she asked. "Why don't I belong with you?"

Her father smiled. "Because you're a monster like them." He nodded towards the creatures around them on the street, ugly things with crooked bodies who stared at them like wild animals. "Why would we give a damn about you, Sohee? You're not even human. You deceived us, so you should be thankful that we're not killing you. Monsters don't deserve happiness, but we won't dirty our hands on you," her father said.

"I see," the girl laughed. "You're right. I guess I'm a monster."

The world around her stood still as frost crawled over everything but the other monsters around her. Her mother's mouth opened in shock, her father raised his hand to stop her, but they had no chance. Because they were human, because they had allowed a monster into their house.

Because they deserved it, they broke into a thousand pieces.
And the girl woke up.

My original plan was to write several unrelated chapters that introduce various aspects of the universe I created, and this was supposed to be one of them. The character of the younger brother was also going to be important in another sequel.

Park Chanyeol had always been a hypocrite in a way. It was maybe because they had never been close friends, that it had seemed so obvious to someone like Sehun, who always just stood on the sidelines of Chanyeol's life. But most things Chanyeol did and said always left room for a different interpretation, as if he was too afraid to give a fixed opinion he couldn't back out of.

Everyone told them that there was a certain danger in boarding the ship of Chinese merchants who 'wanted to help them', but Sehun was fed up with his life in the district. He was fed up with the fixed social rules and the dirt and the walls around them. Everything seemed better than that, but he probably just was too naive to really imagine what 'everything' meant in the hands of people who would sell him as a slave. He thought he was prepared, but when he was taken out right after entering the ship and when he woke up in a gigantic hall filled with the noises of a thousand voices, he knew he made a mistake. He had ended up on a slave market. Because the fare had been cheap. Because he blindly trusted the slimy smiles, the empty promises and all the broken words in his language. Because he was an idiot.   

People stared at him and touched him and waved money at him. All he could to was to try and act as dignified as possible, but his situation seemed hopeless no matter how he looked at it. No one spoke to him in a language he understood, no one treated him like more than a thing, as if his whole existence had ended with that one decision.
And then he heard the voices behind him, voices he could give meaning to.

"No, I told you, there's no other choice," someone said in Korean somewhere behind Sehun and he turned around. "Stop seeing this as a charity organisation. That boy tried to kill the buyer, the buyer doesn't want him and this is the only way for us to get rid of him. Unless you want to kill him that is." Sehun couldn't make out where the voice had come from before he was forcefully turned back by one of the Chinese merchants who had promised him freedom.

"That's not what I meant," someone else meekly said in a deep voice that seemed oddly familiar to Sehun. "It's just, I mean, can't we at least try harder to find a good new buyer? You can't really expect a boy to be all happy when he finds out that he's going to be sold to some old guy. I mean, can you really blame him? He thought that this was his ticket to freedom after all. We could at least make sure that he's going to be in somewhat good hands. Isn't that what Kris always promises? We can't just-."

"Chanyeol," that other person interrupted him harshly and Sehun got himself free enough to take a  proper look at the persons arguing behind him. He knew that Chanyeol wasn't dead, he had supposedly visited his family a while ago after all, but it was a completely different issue to see him alive and well on a slave market, especially because he appeared to be free to stand outside the marked spaces.
"Listen," the shorter guy next to Chanyeol said. "I get it, you want to help him. But you can't.  You can't stop and help everyone on the way, not if you want to survive yourself."
Chanyeol still look somewhat sceptical and the short guy sighed. "Look, this is where I got sold. And I'm fine, right?" Chanyeol slowly nodded and the guy continued, "So maybe this is that boy's chance to make the best of his life, too."
The guy took Chanyeol's hand and looked at him pleadingly.

"Right," Chanyeol said. He pulled a face, but left it at that, pulled along by that short guy.
And Sehun had to laugh bitterly. It was always the same, even now that they weren't even home any longer.

Most people in District 3 were somehow related to one another, so it didn't really mean much for Sehun and Chanyeol to be distant cousins. Chanyeol's father's power was, like Sehun's, wind and he was rather skilled, so Sehun looked up to him, but that was about the only connection between him and Chanyeol's family. Sometimes they met during large famly get-togethers, but they never really talked. Chanyeol was a little older than him anyway and as children an age difference of two years meant a lot. So for the longest time Sehun only saw Chanyeol as that distant relative whose power was fire and who had a habit of talking too loudly.

Things changed when one of Sehun's friends got close to Chanyeol. They were the same age but unlike him, that friend got accepted by Chanyeol as something like a younger brother and they spent quite a lot of time together. It was maybe because they both seemed to like the district and life inside of it, as if there was a new adventure waiting for them every day.
Sehun was fifteen at that time and although he and Chanyeol still weren't friends, he learned to know how fickle a person he really was.

"I mean, you like him, right?" Sehun said one day in school when he was frankly too annoyed to listen to another story of what his friend and Chanyeol had done. "So why don't you tell him and leave me alone?"
He didn't think that his words alone caused the whole issue, but if he had kept quiet, things maybe wouldn't have escalated as quickly. What Sehun knew was that his friend was a bit of an introvert and that he probably needed some assistance if he ever wanted to be honest about whatever feelings he had. He thought that he did both him and Chanyeol a service if he got them together as fast as possible, but what he had no idea of was that Chanyeol apparently either was extremely dense or that he purposely ignored other people's wants and needs.

"He wants us to stay the way we are," his friend said a few days later when Sehun asked him if he was all right. His eyes looked sunken and his face was twitching. "He wants us to be friends. I had no idea that he..."
That he was a hypocrite who ignored unwritten laws. Sure, no one could be forced to like someone else. There still was something like the freedom of choice. But that friend wouldn't have misunderstood him, had he been clear about having no interest in other males right from the start.  Had he not acted like he was no different from everyone else, that friend wouldn't have freaked out, leaving behind everything. His family, his friends, his beloved home.

Chanyeol liked to act as though he was special, and yet he never became tough enough to actually become a husband and father, if that really was what he wanted. It was even more frustrating in retrospect, because he obviously not only left behind the district, but also backed out of his previous words.

Chanyeol was a hypocrite who acted as if he thought that slaves had to be saved, but who easily agreed when someone else stated their opinion on the same issue. Before he told his brother that he didn't want to be with him because he couldn't be in a relationship with a male, and now he linked arms with some guy, who turned out to be into the whole slave trade.
They acted as if they were the only people in the hall, as if they weren't surrounded by misery. Chanyeol pulled the guy away as he was always run over by a group of bulky guys in chains and as a trail of ice formed around him. Sehun watched as Chanyeol had his arm around the guy who elbowed him away and it was just ridiculous in a way.

Sehun's life was over. That in itself already was bad enough, but the appearance of Chanyeol just seemed to make it worse, like a bad omen.

Okay, so this grew kinda silly and pointless, so I abandoned it. The main reason why I gave up the idea of writing a sequel after this was that I actually feel really awkward about writing Xiumin as female. In the original story it was only okayish, because all the characters whose POV I used didn't know about her actual gender.

- cocoons and dresses  -

"I mean, I'm not telling you to wear a dress or anything," Chanyeol meekly said and watched her put on yet another layer. She already wore three or four shirts underneath and they were gradually expanding in size. The inner layers were quite petite and at first it had surprised him how thin she really was, because he had only known her fully dressed.
She had good reasons to wear that many clothes, he knew that. Because she wanted to look less feminine. Because it made everything easier. Because it made her feel a little less cold. But still, he sometimes wished she could just be who she was, especially now. "But you know, it's not just anyone you're going to meet. They're my family and I mean..." He frankly wanted to impress them because he had found a girl, a strong and kind girl, although he was still as weak as before. And he was honestly proud of himself. Like his father he didn't have to fight others to win her over. If anything, he had to fight her.

"You said everyone likes females with powers, no matter what they look like," she said as she buttoned up a formless cardigan. It was like watching a caterpillar that built a cocoon around itself, and it was funny if he thought back to those times when he believed she herself was the cocoon.

"Right," he sighed and knew that there was no use arguing. They were going to get inside District 3 with the help of one of Kris' relatives who, as both Kris and Tao admitted, wasn't completely trustworthy. It was safer for her to keep her disguise.
But that obviously wasn't the only reason. It did make sense but sometimes he just wished she was less stuck up about some things. Even inside the district she would keep acting like a boy, because she still kept that assumption that Special Citizens would hate females. He couldn't even argue, because she just twisted around every word he said. Everything was proof against Special Citizens in her eyes, whether it was her being smuggled out as a child (probably for her own good), him admitting that he was happier outside (because of her) or the fact that his sister married someone he didn't really approve of (because he wanted her to leave the district).
Ultimately it was all to change her views that he wanted them all to meet to begin with. He wanted her to see what an average family was like, the kind of family she could have been part of, had things turned out a little differently.

- heirs and choices -

"Do you think we should prepare something for her?" her mother asked as she wiped the table to put her mother-in-law's nicest flower bin on it and Park Yura just smiled helplessly. Everyone was already preparing for the day, just as if the president himself was going to visit their house.
It had been about two weeks since a boy had come from the market to bring them the letter a Chinese merchant had given him. It was addressed to her grandmother, who had immediately called them all to tell them that Chanyeol was coming home soon to pay them a proper visit. It was odd to think that they, too, now had a relative outside, who still thought of his family. Most people who left were never to be heard of again. The difference maybe was that her brother didn't leave because he wanted to, but because he was brought away.

"We don't even know if he's really bringing someone," Yura said and shook her head in mock exasperation. The letter didn't say a word about her brother coming with someone else, it simply read that he had 'a surprise waiting for them'.
In a way it was Yura's fault because she had mentioned her suspicion that he might have met someone because she, like her mother, had a habit of jumping to conclusions.

"She's probably Chinese, don't you think?" her mother asked absent-mindedly and inspected the flower arrangement from a few steps away to make sure that it couldn't catch fire. "Do you think she understands us? I wonder how Chanyeol talks to her." She nodded at the flowers and frowned. "I hope he didn't just look for a pretty girl he can't talk to. Young people think that physical attraction is everything but that's just no basis for a relationship."

She gave Yura a worried looked and Yura snorted, "Do you really think of your son as that superficial?" Her mother still didn't look fully convinced, maybe because she viewed most males as animals, and Yura left the room with a laugh. It was funny how she never really trusted her son and her husband, although they both were almost too nice around females. Yura sometimes wished that her husband treated her half as nicely as her father treated her mother.

Inside the kitchen she heard her grandmother and her cousin's party preparations and she went to the bedroom to see whether Kangho was all right. It had been almost three months now since she gave birth and the whole event had somehow already lost its novelty.
Her in-laws were of course still thrilled about their little heir, but her own family was different.

She could have left. She could have become normal, but when they all thought that Chanyeol was gone forever, that idea just suddenly seemed horribly selfish. It felt like her duty to try and fill the void he left behind, so she married and got pregnant. They congratulated her of course, but her mother in particular never really recovered, just as if her old fire had turned into nothing but a tiny glimmer. Yura would have called her child Chanyeol and had hoped that it would inherit her mother's powers. She didn't mean to replace her brother, she just wanted to show her mother that life could still go on.
And then the real Chanyeol came back, and she suddenly felt like she wasn't really part of the family any longer, just as if she lost that right when she married. Chanyeol, the son, was the only one who mattered, even more if he was able to marry himself.

Yura didn't hate him for it, that wasn't it. He was her brother and he meant more to her than her husband ever could. When she realized that he was alive, that he was breathing, that he didn't die after being so foolish to try and take revenge for her, she felt as though her heart was finally whole again.
But she hated the idea of him bringing someone home. She always loved him, but she never believed that he would be able to build a family. No matter how much their mother doted on him, no matter how great his powers were, Yura thought that in the end she was the only one who ever had any options. Without powers she could leave anytime and as a female she could easily find a husband. But things had changed. Now she was stuck, and it was Chanyeol who had the choice to be free.

She wanted to be happy for him, but the closer his return came, the more she realized what it would mean for him to come with a girl.

It was selfish and she felt disgusted by herself, but when the person next to her brother's side was a boy who caused the floor around him to be covered in a thin layer of frost, and when her mother instinctively got closer to her and little Kangho to shield them from the cold, Yura felt weirdly satisfied.

- open doors and closed minds -

He probably should have prepared his family. When he wrote the letter he tried to be as vague as possible, simply because he couldn't know who else would read it. Whether it would reach his family at all already was questionable enough, because it would travel with other slave traders. He didn't write his name and barely mentioned Xiumin at all. Maybe he should have written something a little more descriptive. 'Nothing is the way it seems' for example, or 'Don't be alarmed! That person who might freeze the complete room isn't dangerous at all. She's just nervous.'
Or maybe he should have been faster with his explanation. Had he burst into the door saying, "Be nice to her and everything will be fine", things might have turned out a little differently.

But the whole start already was shaky. As they walked to his grandparents' house, Xiumin already froze the street around her and all her moments looked stiff and mechanical.
"I don't think this is a good idea," she kept muttering when people were staring at her. Even inside the district, a place full of people with powers, she seemed a  little odd.  "You should go by yourself," she said and stopped in her tracks at some point. "I could just wait for you around the market." He was frankly a little afraid of her lashing out at him when he urged her to come along, but he was sure that everything would be fine once they reached the house.

Only that the warm welcome he anticipated didn't happen. Xiumin looked sick and his mother, his grandmother and his sister seemed unsure what to do as they stood in the door. They were halfway inside and he got as far as "this is Xiumin", when his grandmother already loudly mumbled, "I should have known it. His father brings home a girl who burns my kitchen, and now he brings a Chinese snowman who breaks even more of my furniture."
And he knew then that he had already lost, even before Xiumin had balled her hands into fists. He knew split seconds before she hurriedly took a few steps back to make sure that the icicles wouldn't reach inside, that this was it, he had ruined his chances. He couldn't even grab her hand to hold her back before she forced them apart and ran away, leaving him behind a wall of ice that blocked the entrance.

- mothers and sons -

"Oh, mother, please, that is really not how you should welcome a guest," Lee Junghwa sighed and inspected the door after making sure that her daughter and her grandson were safe. The ice was rather thick, but she didn't really see the problem. Both she and Chanyeol could just melt any ice, but her mother-in-law had to go overboard whenever she met someone knew.

Her mother-in-law of course scoffed. "My offspring is made of fools who are much too attracted to hazardous powers," she said and angrily put her hands on her hips, as she usually did whenever she wanted to prove a point. "Sungchan brought you, Yura brought that husband who almost cracked the whole wall, and Chanyeol now brings a boy from China who is even worse than he himself. Rather than to go abroad, he could have taken a boy from the Kang family. They have more than enough sons who actually understand our language."

"Mother, that boy obviously understood you clearly, or else we wouldn't have this problem," Junghwa said as she put her bare hands on the ice to melt it. She turned around to her son, who looked very much lost. "Oh, dear, I'm so sorry. We must have made a horrible first impression. Don't worry, I'm sure we will find him and everything will be fine. We are still waiting for everyone to come and-."

"I'm not welcoming any more disasters into my house," her mother-in-law interrupted her harshly.

"Mother!" she gasped. "You can't just call someone you don't even know a disaster. You should be thankful that Chanyeol had the courage to bring someone all the way into the district, and I'm personally going to welcome that boy, whether he is from China or wherever and whether his power is ice or not, because I am not afraid of everyone stronger than myself."

She was halfway through the door, when Chanyeol softly pulled her away with a humourless smile. "This is all my fault," he said. "She can't help it, so I should have warned you."

"She?" Junghwa asked in confusion and watched her son who walked through the ice as if it was nothing. He already was stronger than she remembered him to be. Maybe he was already used to ice, just the way his father easily got used to fire.

"She's a girl," he said. "And she's Korean."

"Oh," Junghwa said and even her mother-in-law was speechless for a few seconds before she muttered, "Ice women make horrible mothers."

- -

When did she start becoming so pathetic? All this time she had thought of herself as someone who was willing to make decisions and to face difficult situations, but Chanyeol constantly forced her into moments that made her feel helpless and weak. She was pushed into the limelight and none of the things she was good at were of any use. Practicality, immediate readiness to get her hands dirty, physical endurance, none of those things mattered if faced with people who didn't have to like her, the fighter, but her as the female who dared to claim their son.
Not just the old lady's words put her off, she was used to people thinking of her as a dangerous Chinese guy after all. It wasn't just that, it was the fact that they were all so... so...
Beautiful.
And it made her even more pathetic to feel bothered by their looks, but she wouldn't be able to fit in. Her appearance never really mattered much to her, most of her life she thought of herself as a tool after all, and she didn't actually want to change because she had long stopped to think of feminity as part of her.
But how could she possibly be enough for them who lived in a world where each gender had certain roles to fulfill? Women were defined by the fact that they could give birth, nothing else, and she already failed when it was about the most elementary issues.

As she hurried along the streets, her pace gradually slowed down, and at some point she had to admit that she was very much lost. She stood inside a labyrinth of anonymous houses, and no one took any notice of her because she had calmed down enough to seem relatively normal inside that enclosure for people with powers. The market probably was the place she had to look for to find the ship that had brought them, but she couldn't even imagine the rough direction and if she was to ask anyone, she would have easily been discovered as an outsider. Maybe she just had to keep walking, not even District 3 could be so big, she wouldn't be able to find what was supposed to be the most crowded area.
She really shouldn't have come.