Love Again | Baekhyun

1 | Doorhead

Cho Sarang plugged in her earbuds and let the playlist drown everything out as she exited her apartment building into the early afternoon sun.

Ever since the pandemic hit at the beginning of the year, the world seemingly went into a pause. Work slowed down significantly, traffic decreased by a lot, and everyone stayed home more than they could honestly stand. It was even more nerve wrecking for a freelance worker like her—who never had stability in the first place—to face such a drastic change in situations.

But last night, her phone had buzzed to a blissful phone call from EXO's Chanyeol. They had worked together once before in the past, a year ago, producing and composing a demo that he had written. Unfortunately, the song that they worked on was shelved at the time. On the phone last night, Chanyeol had invited her to come rework their old project, seeing as his schedule had slowed down from EXO's latest tour and comeback promotions.

Winter was slowly coming to an end, but the cold breeze still bit her cheek under the pale February sunlight. Despite the chilly weather, Sarang had missed the casualty of running errands out in the streets so she chose to walk all the way to SM Entertainment's Communication Center building. After roughly thirty minutes of passing through big streets and shortcut alleyways, she was getting her temperature checked at the entrance, going up an elevator, and knocking on the studio door.

"Sarang-ah!" Chanyeol got to his feet once she entered the room, coming up to give her a quick side hug. She'd almost forgotten how tall he was, he towered like a giant next to her.

"Hi, pink hair." She teased after pulling her face mask down, earning a toothy grin from Chanyeol as he fixed the edges of his sideburns. "I saw your comeback, the whole demonic alter ego concept was interesting."

"I looked cool, right?" He beamed proudly as he sat back on his chair. "I think I'm the best looking one this time around."

"I don't know about that, Kai-ssi and Suho-ssi wore some pretty compelling outfits." As someone who had never really been into boy groups, she found their attires to be very striking. Not to mention in EXO's latest music video, 'Obsession', two of the members were clad in costumes that freely revealed their perfectly toned abdomen.

"Yah! Yah, you pervert." Chanyeol pointed an accusatory finger at her before he moved his hand to his stomach defensively, eyes fiery and challenging. "I have abs too you know, I'll strip right now if you don't believe me."

She quickly slapped his hand away from the hem of his shirt, "And I'm the pervert?"

Chanyeol curled up in his chair, wincing and holding his hand close to his own chest as if in severe pain, acting like she had shot him with a rifle. But when he started cackling, she laughed along. "You memorized our names though, good job." He quipped.

"I'm an EXO fan now, you know."

"Our fans are called EXO-L, seriously, at least learn that." He corrected while clicking his tongue in disapproval. She rolled her eyes, bickers with this one always seemed so endless. They hadn't spoken in awhile, but he made it so easy to pick up their friendship where they left off. Eventually, they settled down enough to start working, opening up the file of the demo song they had left undone last year.

Sarang wasn't much into kpop boy groups, but Chanyeol was as talented as they come. He was the kind of idol that insisted on being involved in behind the scenes work as much as on screen ones, with the whole jazz of producing and songwriting. After personally working with him, Sarang had dived straight into his group's impressive discography. Not just EXO as a whole, but also the subunits and several member's solo works