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The first time Lee had seen Shen, dressed well and proudly for his first day of school, he thought that he was a stupid show off. He wore a ridiculous navy blue, accented with creams, and an overly large, gaudy necklace around his neck, made of fine thread and carrying a ridiculous number of circular, colourful rocks on it.

He had brought it in, as per suggestion of his mother, as a talking point to make new friends.

Lee thought that it looked stupid, and said as such, when Shen tried to talk to him.

Shen left him alone and Lee thought that everything would be well with the world. He was alone all the time outside and at home. He hated people and saw no reason to accept them now, just because they were his own age.

He was happy eating his lunch, hidden behind some bushes, all alone, gazing upwards at the clouds and making shapes out of them, imagining himself a story for him to tell, and experience alone. And besides, whenever he tried to play that game with anybody, they always told him that he was wrong, and that the shapes that he saw didn't exist.

He didn't need Shen and apparently, Shen did not need him. He was rich and popular, his rock necklace valuable in the eyes of the other children in the class. Lee was not thinking about Shen, and did not care for all the connections that he had made with the others. He did not care for the adventures they apparently went on, during the lunch breaks. Lee was happy to return back to the school, early to keep improving on his reading and writing skills. He was happy to trace characters into the dirt of the forest with his sticks. He was happy to request access to additional reading material from his teachers.

Lee did not need Shen and Shen did not need Lee.

All that really mattered was that Shen received his high marks from the school, to avoid more pain from his mother. He was there to give him a reason to be away from that house, and to be able to spend time away from his mother with a reason, that even she, could not refute. He needed those grades to be able to keep going to school. He needed to be good to prove that he was worth the education that he was receiving. If he wanted to keep going, he needed to keep being good.

He needed to be good.

He needed to be good at this.

He needed to practice.

He had more important things to worry about than what his classmates thought of him.

He only needed to worry about what his teacher thought of him, and he thought that Lee was a diligent student who could become a scholar in the making, as long as he continued with the same drive.

His mother had teased him about the statement made, stabbing his cheeks with her sharp nails, her fingers wrapping around his arms and torso, as he tried to escape from her, pressing down on his soft ribs, not properly formed quite yet, whispering how he would never leave her, how he would eventually stumble and fail at something, how he just wasn't suited to the life of a scholar, and how, one day, he would simply give up all this fancy and become a farmer, just like most of the other men in the village. And he'd still be staying with her

Lee kept his tears from pouring down his face at her words, and ran under the covers of his sleeping cloths, still in the same room of the shack they lived in. He clamped his hands over his mouth until he cried himself to sleep, trying to keep silent and stop his sobs from erupting out.

Eventually, after the annual exams had ended, Lee was relieved to see that he had gotten the best marks in the class, even if he hadn't achieved full marks for his couple of spelling mistakes.

Shen had gotten a score which placed him within the top five, and the best one of his large group of friends, a score that apparently his family were not proud of. The next day, he had come to school early and had sought Lee out for help. He pouted and looked away as he explained how his parents were making him to study with Lee to at least get himself a mark over 90%, and not the 78% that he had gotten.

His pocket money was apparently being lessened until he showed improvement on his inadequate test scores.

Lee hated him for it. He hated the fact that the boy in front of him had the gall to complain about something so silly, and then act so stupidly sad over it, as if that meant anything.

Lee did not say anything to Shen about his feelings, and just nodded at him, and asked which questions he got wrong on the test.

Since then, on every morning before school, Lee and Shen would practice their writing together, and sometimes the readings, if Shen was able to find them in his family's collection of books.

His rich family had a library, while Lee lived in a shack.

Eventually, Shen's scores started improving, and he was able to receive his regular amount of pocket money once more. He was ecstatic the day it happened, and bought Lee a small gift, a small bracelet, carved with wooden flowers with shiny red stones dotting a few of those centres.

Lee had looked at it with shock, when he first saw it, almost about to give it back to Shen, expecting that he was just holding it for a short while to marvel at Shen's wealth, just like the rest of his friends. Shen had panicked slightly, and pushed it back into his chest, the wood digging into his skin, and he rushed out a," thank you for tutoring me!" before running off.

Lee had sat there, in the clearing for a little longer, not quite sure what he was supposed to do with the bracelet. He supposed that he could wear it, but if he did, then he would attract attention that he didn't want. He decided to stuff it into the folds of his clothes, to deal with later.

Considering that there was absolutely no chance that he could show his mother, Lee decided that he'd need to find a place to hide it. He knew that the big, twisty tree a little ways into the forest, right behind the bigger houses, had a small hole in the back of it, and that some of the older children wrote letters to hide in the hole, when they wanted to communicate secretly.

He only knew that too because Shen had told him about his brother who had been climbing out of the window to place a letter in there, in the middle of one of his lessons with their father on the family accounts.

Lee wondered if there was any other tree just like it, before deciding that there wasn't enough time for him to find one, and get to school on time. So he carried the bracelet home at the end of the day, and managed to keep hiding it, withdrawing inwards into his blanket even earlier than usual, falling asleep to the soothing weight of the gift that he had been given.

He had wrapped the bracelet within a collection of leaves and buried it into the ground, in the same little clearing, near the school where he had first received the gift from Shen. The bracelet was his and his alone, and he would be the only one who knew where it was, underground and under a particularly dark and gleaming bush.

It was his to enjoy now and his alone. Nobody else's. And nobody would find where it was hidden.

It was at that moment that Shen barrelled into the clearing.

"Why weren't you wearing my bracelet at school?" he cried out, panting slightly with exhaustion.

His face was all red, and he looked as if he had run all the way here from his home.

Lee stood up and turned around to Shen, wiping the dirt off his hands, onto his clothes, and replied," I had it in my clothes because I didn't want it to get dirty."

He put his hands behind his back to stop Shen from seeing them, and blinked once at him.

"So why aren't you wearing it now," he asked, huffing and folding his arms over his chest.

"I left it at home to stop it from getting dirty," Lee replied again, his face furrowing a little more and sweating slightly.

"Why? Just clean it if it gets dirty," Shen countered, doggedly determined to make Lee wear that special treasure.

"My mum told me that bracelets are special and you should never get them dirty," Lee replied, flinching internally at what he had said.

It was a useful line that he heard somebody else say, but it didn't really stop much of the pain. He was here, explicitly, to get away from his mother.