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It had been one whole month. One entire month, give or take a few days, since Lu Han had decided to leave the group.
Sehun didn't blame him for leaving, nor did he judge him for the decision he had made. The path he had chosen was his own and he was the only one who could make the decision. Though, the maknae of the group would have been lying if he said it didn't hurt--would have been lying if he said he didn't want him to stay.
At least Lu Han had been straightforward about it--sat his group members in the lounge room of their dorm in China the night before their final show in Beijing and explained that he no longer had more to give for the group. He was exhausted, completely drained to the point where he had put his health on the line for his career. That wasn't the kind of artistic life he wanted to carry out. At the same time, he didn't feel supported. By the boys, he did. But not by the agency. He always felt himself not getting the opportunities he sought for in his career--the opportunities he needed in order to advance. It wasn't what he wanted in the end, though he knew he owed his current success to SM Entertainment and the group.
The group was his family, and they always would be. It was something he felt in his heart. He would no longer be with them, but he'd always support them in spirit.
Of the ten members that were left, Sehun, Minseok, and Yixing had been the closest to Lu Han. His absence affected them the most. But the most affected of the three was the youngest of them. He had been friends with Lu Han since their trainee days, before they debuted. From the very first moment that they met, they had always been close. Lu Han had been like an older brother to the group's maknae, someone he could trust, and he still was. Only now he wasn't allowed to speak to him in public anymore.
SM had used it as a punishment against Lu Han for leaving. If you won't stay, then you're our enemy. That was the way SM Entertainment worked. Choosing to leave meant that Lu Han had betrayed the agency--left his brothers behind. At least that was how SM Town saw it, and how they tried to get the other members to see it.
The other members complied, if only to save themselves the trouble of having negative consequences against them for disobeying.
One month after they had seen a second departure by one of their brothers, EXO-K was on a plane across the globe to a new country, which they had never visited before. Mexico. The land of tacos, big colorful hats, and mariachi music--as it was most stereotypically known by the rest of the world.
Music Bank's world tour had the Spanish speaking nation as one of their stops, and EXO had been invited to perform. It had been something planned--even before Yifan left the group--and it had been at first decided that the entire group would perform Growl together. Then the four vocalists would perform a cover of a popular Mexican song called Sabor A Mi--which roughly translated to The Taste of Me.
