Early morning coffee right at the break of daylight, when pale sun rays shone through the small windows of his small apartment that happened to face a park rather than a grey stone wall like so many of the other homes in the building, was possibly the best time of the day for the young male teacher. There was something in the crisp, clean feeling of the time before the streets became alive with noise and all there was in the world was the bitter burn of his coffee and the straight lines of his newspaper. Somewhere in the back of his mind, little tiny thoughts told him that the day would never have another moment like this. The coffee he would take to work wouldn’t be as rich nor as warm as it was in this moment. The solitude would be lost in the waves of students filtering in and out of the hallways and classrooms as he would smile at them warmly and prepare them for another lesson in Chinese. The words coming out of his mouth would be rounder and softer than those on the paper in front of him with their jagged print stamped out with black ink. No. This was his only moment of solstice.

It was the only time of the day where he wasn’t all that different from the rest of the world around him and it was just himself and no one else. Maybe, he mused to himself as he folded his paper and tucked it into his bag, he could consider his differences a blessing rather than something that made him a social outcast. As he tugged on his wool coat and did up the thick black buttons, he thought that maybe it was a good thing he wasn’t subjected to the natural hierarchy of everyday life. But as soon as he stepped out of the door, the mental pep talk he gave himself every morning was washed away as he became another statistic in the grand picture of life. A part of the small twelve percent of the world’s population that went unlabeled in life. Sometimes being the minority really did .

Standing on the outside looking in had always been Luhan’s life as he made his way through the early morning crowds, easily blending in with the rest of the ‘normal’ people. In large groups he appeared just like everyone else, making his way through life with a potential partner by his side, but he wasn’t. As he sat on the subway, his gaze drifted idly over the people in the same car as him, taking in the different auras that mingled together. It was easier here to tell who fell into what category, how the young woman in her business suit with the wireless earpiece for her cellphone may have looked and carried herself like an alpha, but only gave off waves of a beta and the quiet boy who probably just started giving off his own presence in his middle school years was a budding omega. Everyone fit in their role in society, but Luhan did not.

Most people might have fancied the idea of being something that they weren’t, perhaps an omega that desired to be an alpha or a beta that wished to be an alpha’s omega, but none of them actually lived with no label, no aura. Luhan supposed the idea could have been appealing to most, but when it came down to it, most of his life, he was looked over because he didn’t fall into a set category. He drifted through life mostly alone and stared into the faces of children who could only wait to get out of his classroom for lunch. The connections he made with people didn’t go further than acquaintance most of the time and the few handful of friends that he did have were mature enough to leave the topic of non-status alone, though it brought questions at the start of every year from his students.

Luhan tried to explain to them that when the change naturally occurred for for most people in secondary school, it had never happened for him. He had all the working parts that everyone else did, but something had stunted his body’s ability to produce a hormone that would set him apart from others. It was a rare case and sometimes if the person was lucky they would finally find out what they were, but it was usually in their early twenties. The Chinese male was already pushing into his late twenties and he still didn’t know what exactly he was, not in accordance to his world and he had given up hope that he would ever find out. It was known that most nons never found a partner and a part of him had resigned himself to that fate.

When the train came to a halt at his stop, the young teacher gathered up his belongings and stepped off onto the platform, leaving the cloud of dark thoughts behind him. It did no good carrying around negative energy when he had a full day ahead of him and there was so much more he could be doing with his life. Besides, who needed a partner to fulfill them anyway? Certainly not him and he would be just fine in his twelve percent category. There was nothing he could do to change it and he always believed that the Fates would change his life if they decided it was time for him to take a different path than the one he was on.

The sidewalk to the school slapped in the middle of the concrete jungle was relatively busy with morning commuters, business men, and high school students hurrying to morning detentions. The waves of grey and white wouldn’t pick up for another fifteen or twenty minutes and for that Luhan was thankful. It was hard enough to start his morning submerged in self doubt without having the youthful surrounding him with their strong new found auras. By the time classes started, he would be over it, but when the sky was still grey and he could see how his breath clung to the air, he could honestly bury himself alive.

Once inside the school, the morning routine started up all over again. The same familiar nodding toward co-workers with a carefully crafted smile, making sure he complimented the omega secretary at her desk as he clocked in before slipping out into the mostly empty hallways to make his way to his room. He taught all levels, mostly the younger years that thought taking another Asiatic language would be the best route to fill their classes, but they all too quickly found out that it wasn’t as easy as it seemed. But he helped them stumble through with a gentle, guiding hand as he smiled as caringly as he could and each year some, just some would find his native tongue beautiful and want more. Those were the students he secretly cherished. They were usually in later grades and filled his afternoons after taxing mornings and he trusted them to work and learn and have fun without taking advantage of him. It was a beautiful relationship that he had with his last two classes of the day and it warmed him a little to think about it.

It was during his musings after he had let himself into his classroom, shuffling around with papers and writing on the board for his first two full classes of first years, that he heard the light knock on his door. Luhan almost didn’t acknowledge it, too engrossed in writing out everything he needed for the lecture, but he spared a glance before he stopped what he was doing completely and set the pages down on his desk, waving his fellow teacher into the room.

The timid but somehow confident smile did nothing to soothe away those dark thoughts from earlier in the day, it only served to bring them back full force, but he found himself returning it with a tiny quirk of his lips without much thought. It was hard to resist the face of the man you dedicated two years of your life to, but perhaps he was smiling because that familiar ache in his chest was lessening everyday. Kim Minseok always had a way of calming, it was one of the many reasons he taught Psychology as an additional course for the students in their last year of high school.

“Have you checked your e-mail yet?” There was no need for good mornings or standard social greetings, they both knew each other well enough. Minseok could probably tell by the slight dimness in Luhan’s eyes that he was having one of those mornings where he hated himself for being nothing just like Luhan knew by the slight wrinkling on Minseok’s collar that he had ironed his shirt that morning rather than the night before, maybe it had been a date night with Yixing. Luhan didn’t really know for certain.

With a swift shake of his head, the linguistic teacher picked his papers back up to finish writing out the homework on the board with his chalk. “I haven’t had a chance to. Is there a staff meeting or an assembly of some sort?” Usually that was the only case that he needed to check his e-mail in the morning. Minseok knew he would check it at some point before the student’s showed up, so there had to be a reason why he wanted to create small talk.

“There’s a staff meeting at four…” The words hung in the air as the Korean man walked in further, leaning himself back onto one of the student’s desks, his rear end half resting on the ledge. “But we’re also doing a drill on Friday. We won’t know when, but it’s a lock down.”

That was interesting, they hardly did lock downs, maybe once a year. Seeing as it was halfway through the year, Luhan supposed it was time for one, just in case. Most students knew what they needed to do, it wasn’t like they were negligent to protocol, but he had heard horror stories of new teachers who slipped up. Luckily it was only ever during drills and not an actual life threatening situation, but it still meant they needed to do it to make sure everyone was up to snuff. “Alright. Is there anything else?” There had to be or else Minseok wouldn’t have come in here, he wouldn’t have asked, he wouldn’t have bothered. He would have just said good morning on his way to the literature hall and be done with it, but here he was.

The pause that stood between them grew as the chalk scraped across the board, Hangul and Chinese characters mixed together in hopes that maybe, just maybe, the class would be able to translate some of the simpler words. It was a calming few seconds of bliss where the white stained his fingertips and all he could hear was his own breathing before the words he might have guessed to come spilled into his brain and sloshed around like brandy. “We need to know if you’re coming or not… You know you don’t have to, but we need a definite yes or no.”

There was a definite clench in his stomach and there was no stopping the swirling storm of raging emotions that washed over him in one fell swoop. Of course Minseok wanted to talk about the wedding, that might be one of the only reasons he ever talked to Luhan anymore. It was as if his life was jumbling up all at once to produce this one spectacularly ty day in the midst of his otherwise dull and meaningless life.

“I’ll come.”

It might have been the rigidness of his back or the tight tone of his voice, but Minseok knew when to stop pushing, when to let it go and walk away to let Luhan do what he did best, self-cope. Once the sound of footsteps disappeared completely, the teacher lowered his trembling fingers to hopefully get a grip on himself once more. He was working on it, he really was, he was learning to move on from the only little burst of warmth his life had ever had. It was painful and a process, but after a year and a half, he was doing it.

With sheer will power and practiced patience, he shoved the thoughts back into their little corner, locking them away tight, he finished his work on the board and turned back to his desk. Luhan could hear the students out in the hallways, the noise slowly rising as he briefly rubbed at his temples trying to gather himself back together. It was going to be a long, strenuous day and he briefly wondered if he should change his lesson plans from starting on a project to simple vocabulary cards. Both seemed like a daunting task where there would be too many hands in the air and choruses of groans and echoes of his surname.

Before he could change his mind however, the younger students started to file into his classroom, starting on the morning activity of translating two sentences, one from Korean to Chinese and the other Chinese to Korean. Each sentence dealt with the topic of household objects and rooms that they were currently working on in class and Luhan hoped beyond hope that they would at least attempt to do it properly. As each person came in, he checked them off his roster, letting the class fall into the lull of its normal routine. The familiar pattern of it all put him more at ease, letting his muscles relax as he organized his desk a bit more, letting his clenching abdomen ease up. It was going to be a long, long day.

--

Lunch might have been the only time that Luhan actually bothered to socialize with his coworkers and fellow educators during the school day. It wasn’t as if he felt the need to be alone, but it always felt that he was too focused on the children and their education to try and reach out to them when he had a job to do. Usually it came off as indifferent and distant, but beneath it, he honestly was a pleasant person to work with and talk to. He actually had a handful of people that he could share his lunch period with and hold a decent conversation with them.

One of these people happened to be Kim Jongdae, a physical education teacher that swore he only took the job because it was the best to watch students labor through the health portion of the class before torturing them with fitness exams. Luhan was certain that somewhere along the way, some gym teacher had wronged the man and this was the repercussions for it. However, the stories that came from both the teacher and the students alike were worth listening to just to have a proper laugh during his otherwise bleak life. Jongdae had a type of lazy energy that could last hours, hyperactive but not to strenuous extents. Whenever he talked there was a liveliness to it that lit up his eyes and sent his hands into a flurry of motions that made Luhan laugh uncontrollably.

There were very few occasions when the p.e. coach had nothing to say and one of those moments came when a science teacher wandered through their lounge. It was known through half of the students and nearly the full staff that Jongdae had the hots for the only man brave enough to teach chemistry in a partially functioning lab to high school students. He always said that there was something about the wildness in Park Chanyeol’s eyes that got to him. Luhan could never find it, they always looked a bit tired or were completely hidden behind a fringe of hair. But their energy levels seemed to match perfectly, even if their interactions were sparse.

Luhan watched on in amusement as Jongdae froze for a moment as the gangly creature all but galloped in to refill his mug that was stamped with some scientific symbol that represented caffeine. He had heard the explanation of it more than once from his friend because the humor in it was so delightful. The thought alone almost made the Chinese man want to gag on his salad drenched in dressing, but he refrained from doing so. Only holding his tongue for the moment so he could bite back something horribly witty about the love stricken expression on the coach’s face.

The opportunity was lost however when Chanyeol stopped at their table after grabbing a pack of crackers and flopped himself right into place, folding his legs and arms into awkward angles to accommodate his slouched posture. “If I get asked one more time if you can get high off acid rain, I might stab myself in the foot with a broken beaker. They’re not even trying to grasp the seriousness behind the experiment, all they’re concerned about is if they can get high or if it's going to burn a hole through the wall.”

The irritable tone made Luhan’s lips quirk as he shook his head slightly, secretly glad he never went into the field of science like the beta next to him did. “You should just get them to write a report on the effects of it and maybe, just maybe some will actually read some of it before copy and pasting from Wikipedia.”

Jongdae had finally come back to reality enough to snort in humor at the bad try at a joke as he sat a bit straighter. It was obvious he was trying too hard not to look over too much at the scientist next to them, there was a strained, pinched look about his eyes. But when he spoke he sounded as natural as could be, “At least they would be smart enough to do that, once I was handed a photocopy of their textbook as a report. Like I wouldn’t notice…”

“I’m shocked you did… aren’t you normally too busy trying to ignore your class completely or kill them with horror stories.” Minseok’s voice cut through as he sat down with a neatly packed lunch that had become a staple part of their routines since the start of the new year. There was always more than enough to go around and Luhan no longer hesitated to mooch a bit of Yixing’s cooking from the containers. It was absolutely divine half of the time and it always made lunch go by quicker when he had something delicious to eat.