yixing/wufan: schoolboys
schoolboys
yixing x wufan (exo-m)
1485 words
A simple love can be the hardest to find.
Yixing’s first love is a boy named Wufan. They are in seventh grade, at the beginning stages of puberty, and while everybody did their best to find friends and learn the maze that was high school, Yixing had his gaze inexplicably fixed on his prince. Yixing keeps quiet about it though, while the rushing montage of their first year of high school passes by. He joins the basketball team on a whim, and also to watch Wufan excel. He joins the music club too, and starts saving up for his own guitar. He makes friends, but mostly he feels that the year rushes past without anything really happening. Like a mellow dream where nothing particularly good nor bad happens. Muted.
He writes a song at the end of the year for the school’s annual talent show. It’s a love song, because all the songs worth listening to on the radio are love songs. He’s a pretty bad guitar player, and he only knows so many chords. But perched up on stage with an aged microphone and borrowed guitar, he doesn’t feel so bad. It’s almost like confessing the sum of all his teenage angst and puppy love in one go, to the person he wants to direct it at.
But of course, as Yixing spots Wufan amongst their group of boys and almost stutters, he remembers that Wufan has no idea that this song is about him.
And it’s probably better that way.
Yixing tries to like other girls in the middle of eighth grade, because his endless pining for Wufan is getting ridiculous. Wufan makes for a fantastic musical muse though, winning Yixing high composition assignment grades in music and a recommendation for the school musical. But still, no adolescent boy is willingly publicly homosexual, so the odds are stacked against Yixing and man of his dreams, Wufan. Wufan is too tall anyway, and Yixing suspects that if they ever hugged, he would feel dwarfed and slightly emasculated.
Yixing spends a lot of his time in science class listing all these reasons why he should give up pining for his star-crossed hypothetical lover. And in spite of all these hours spend writing cryptic advantages/disadvantages notes to himself, he still feels irrationally happier when Wufan greets him in the morning or passes him the ball in a basketball game. And especially when they walk to the bus stop after school together.
And so eighth grade becomes another year lacking romantic achievements.
The beginning of next year, Yixing finds himself on a friend’s apartment rooftop. They are streaming the New Years Eve television coverage and the fireworks are going off on the laptop screen. Wufan is there, looking thoroughly perfect and tired. Yixing sits next to Luhan in a futile attempt to not think about how romantic this moment could be. All the boys there laugh and talk and watch their breaths condense in air. It is a wonderful moment, and Yixing can’t help but think how perfect it would be - a moment of friendship and brotherly bonds - and yet it is so ruined for him, because the love of his life is so close yet so far away.
Luhan asks if there’s something up with Yixing after he misses the cue to laugh at one of the jokes someone has just made.
“Oh, nothing’s wrong man. Just tired.”
They all laugh and clap him on the back. They call him a sleepyhead and an airhead. He laughs it off and the banter carries on into the night.
Ninth grade begins.
Fifteen is the age a lot of boys start caving to romance novel cliches and hide texts from their friends. Wufan was one of the first to start skipping lunchtime soccer and basketball for a mysterious somebody. Yixing followed suit after for the occasional lunchtime, but not for anybody, and rather for the quiet of one of the music rooms and the company of a non-judgemental guitar. Heartache is an incredible inspiration.
Some of the girls from music class seem to take particular interest in Yixing. It’s a strange situation, where they spend free periods going over baroque compositions and listening to composition samples, and all Yixing can think about is how he hopes he isn’t leading anybody on. Wufan asks him about it too - if there’s anybody that he’s interested.
Yixing smiles, and laughs it off rather dismissively, “there’s someone, but I don’t think it’s going to work out.”
Wufan pays out the conventional response, good wishes, and you never know, something could happen.
“I don’t think so, but thanks.”
The year ends with a continuation of an absence of romantic fulfilment, and Yixing is starting to think that the concept of love that he spends so much time writing songs on, is never really going to come into full fruition. He feels that he has already made peace with that, but it is only now that he consciously acknowledges. And it is crushing.
But heartbreak can only last so long.
Tenth grade begins, and Yixing is determined to start anew. He gains nothing from pining for a painfully heterosexual Wufan. in fact, he wonders if it would help at all to confess to some of this close friends about the truth of why he exhibits no interest in the female population of their school. But as Yixing thinks about this potentially life-changing decision on the bus to school, he realises that perhaps it would do more harm than good, and he resigns to keeping it a well-guarded secret. He is capable of being the musically-talented friend with an enthusiasm for basketball, and a pathetic inability to remember to hand in school assignments on time. He keeps to that role, and is comfortable in it. Everything is simpler this way.
The whole year passes as if filtered with golden light. Warm, and all encompassing. Blissful. Blissfully simple. Yixing finds himself and their circle of friends on the football field one spring day after school hours. Luhan is half way through his latest novel, and Wufan has his eyes closed and notebook across his eyes. The grass tickles Yixing’s neck and ankles, and the light breeze carries a distinct sour smell of pollution with the gritty smell of mulch from the school flowerbeds behind them. He wonders how long they will stay friends. He imagines this kind of routine repeating in their next two years as senior high school students. And then - when they graduate and clutch certificates and each other in tight embraces - what happens after? Will they separate, and where will they go?
“Yixing you look like you’re about to cry,” Luhan bluntly states.
Yixing laughs about it and says that Luhan is baseless and he’s definitely not crying. But it probably would bring tears to his eyes if he were to find that the future of their friendship was not as bright as he hoped.
Eleventh grade is so full of energy. It is so unprecedented. With looming university entrance exams in two years, the boys are filled with an unspoken need or urge to make the most of everything. More pranks are pulled than ever before, more beakers and test tubes smashed in chemistry class, more records beaten on the athletics track and swimming pool. Yixing composes more than ever before, and admittedly goes to karaoke with the others a lot more than ever before. Luhan jokes that it must be impacting on Yixing’s delicate and mature musical sensibilities, but even Yixing admits that there is something mysteriously alluring about S.H.E. songs.
The year stops being clouded in a fog of neutrality. Vibrance and sparkle is everywhere, and Yixing comes to love everybody he surrounds himself with so much more. Love, he finds, is not in one person, and is not reserved for the impossibility of Wufan. Love, Yixing feels, as he balances on a stool onstage at the annual talent show for the fifth time, is for everybody in his life.
It is this beautiful understanding and appreciation for the utter simplicity of love that allows Yixing to write his best ever composition which his music teacher claims has a real chance of winning him a scholarship into Beijing.
In December, Yixing asks the others where they’re going to go after school. After high school. After everything.
Wufan shrugs and says he’s not sure. Luhan says something to do with the arts and teaching.
Twelfth grade is the last. The last year of this part of his life. Yixing has never felt so nervous for a first day back to school. He has finally learnt how to tie a tie (full Windsor), and feels a mature confidence in his comfort of actually tucking his shirt in his pants.
These days are ending soon.
But as is the case for all endings - they too, are beginnings.