HONG KONG _ It was Eddie Ho's worst nightmare: calling one of the boys' parents to say that they'd been arrested.
Ho, 31, had managed Boyz Reborn, a teenage boy band in Hong Kong, since the boys were elementary school kids during his social worker days at a community center in a suburban public housing estate.
They'd grown up together, the nine members flipping their hair, strumming guitars and belting out songs about the trials of growing up. Schools and local TV stations gushed over how cute and socially conscious they were.
That was before their songs took a political turn, shifting from grades and girls to tear gas, freedom of thought and self-determination.
Born in a post-handover Hong Kong that officially belonged to China but had not yet been integrated into the mainland system, the boys are part of a generation that has taken a frontline role in Hong Kong's six-month protests.
They chose their band name based on a saying common among their peers: "This city is dying."
Now their lead singer, Ben Chan, 19, was pressed under the weight of several police officers, grinding his bleeding nose into the ground.
It was Oct. 6, two days after Hong Kong's government announced a ban on masks in public gatherings. Police had pounced on Chan in an alley, arresting him for illegal assembly, mask-wearing and possession of an offensive weapon _ a laser pen in Chan's bag _ at a protest.
He is one of more than 4,000 people arrested in Hong Kong's protests so far, about a third of whom were born after 1997.
Ho was in another part of the city, accompanying injured protesters to a hospital, when he heard about the arrest. He shuddered as he dialed the number for Chan's parents.
"Eddie, why didn't you stop my son?" Chan's mother cried as she heard the news.
Chan's father was quiet, then sarcastic. "You guys have got the team to manage this, right? I don't have to do anything, right?" he scoffed.
For the first time, Ho didn't know what to say.
