Deer Luhan, With Love

6

Chapter 6 – In Which Sehun and D.O. Learn my Name

Deer Luhan,

Rather you than me when it comes to fame.  I’m beginning to appreciate the type of fan that airhostess was more and more: I don’t know if it’s the mob’s reaction to hype, a good marketing strategy or actually you lot yourselves, but the number of obsessive fans you guys have is very disturbing, and my best friend is a self-professed one of those.  For your sake, I’m glad she’s never been to Korea.  You’d hate Britain if she had.

Leigh

I made the mistake of logging into social media the next evening.  Abbie pounced on me via skype when I was trying to figure my way around the Chinese of Luhan’s laptop (courtesy of Sehun’s knowledge of Luhan’s computer passwords) while attempting to get a call through to my dad, who was usually more reasonable than my mum when it came to me and misdemeanours.  Apparently Facebook had given away my location as Seoul when I updated my status, but to be fair, my mum probably had as well.

“Oh my God!” she squealed as I overshot the “reject call” button, still unused to the high-sensitivity mouse pad setting Luhan used, and accidentally accepted it with video.  “I hear you’re in Korea!”

I glanced nervously over at Sehun, trying to gauge whether or not I could use him as an ally to shut the call down as soon as possible, but he was busy with his own laptop and a set of books.

“Yeah,” I said reluctantly.

“I’m so jealous!”

I smiled tightly.  This conversation was already going downhill.

“How long are you planning to stay?  Have you met any celebrities yet?  Wait, while you’re there, you absolutely have to audition for one of the companies – I can’t wait until I can say my best friend is a K-pop idol—”

“Abbie….”  I sighed.  We’d had this discussion so many times before, and K-pop was about the only thing that we ever disagreed over.  She was dead annoying when it came to anything to do with Korea.  Thankfully, I’d known her for years before she became obsessed, so on the occasions I could derail her from her Korea-focussed view of everything, she was still a whale of fun to hang out with.  “Look, for the last time, I’m not interested in becoming a K-pop star.  I like England.  I grew up there.  I don’t want to live abroad, and in any case, I can’t sing.”

“You can’t sing well,” she corrected.  “You almost have a tenor range.  Who cares?  There are plenty of alto K-pop stars out there, like—”

I held up a hand to stop her before she could start, and then suddenly realised that at the moment, I was fulfilling all her wildest dreams at the same time as embodying everything I’d told her I wouldn’t do, because right now, as far as the world was concerned, I was a K-pop star – a male, Chinese K-pop star called Luhan.

I didn’t even need instinct to tell me that it would not be a good idea to tell Abbie that.

“Anyway,” said Abbie, clearly disappointed that I wasn’t taking her up on her suggestion to become a celebrity, but not totally put off, “since you’re in Korea, I was wondering if you could at least get hold of some K-pop merc for me and some CDs – like, it would be awesome if you could get them signed and stuff as well, and if you could get some photos with some of the singers—”

“Abbie, being in the same country as them doesn’t mean I’m going to bump into them on the streets.”

“Same city,” she pouted, “and you might, if you hang out in the right areas.”