Deer Luhan, With Love

22

Chapter 22 – In Which I Get Busted... Again

Deer Luhan,

Be glad I was the one who encountered Xiumin with the knife and not you.  Be very glad.

Leigh

I ended up talking to Lay until the early hours of the morning.  He wanted to know everything about everything – why I’d dyed my hair pink in the first place, who my K-pop obsessed friend was, where I lived, where in the world I’d travelled to, whether I was enjoying myself, what I thought of EXO – and eventually succumbed to eating a packet of Lay’s potato chips.  For some reason, he thought my English accent was dead cute and wanted me to teach it to him.

“Oh yeah,” he’d added as an afterthought after announcing that he was going to bed.  “I nearly forgot: want any help with Chinese?”

“I could kiss him,” I said as he left.

“Don’t even think about it,” D.O. and Sehun responded together.  I jumped.  I hadn’t realised that either of them was still awake.

I heard D.O. roll over to take immediate advantage of Sehun’s reply.

“What, Sehun, are you jealous?”

“D.O., it kind of sounds like you are,” I pointed out, slipping off the bed.  “I need coffee.  I have to stay awake.  Lay won’t be able to cover everything for me, and I’ve lost my voice enough times to need to be convincing if they decide to send me to the doctor.”

“See you,” the other two said in unison.

“Come back when you’re sane,” Sehun mumbled.

“Which would be never,” D.O. quipped.

“Yah, hyung.  Don’t be mean.”

D.O. gave a low wolf whistle, and I slipped out of the room.

Chanyeol and Chen had fallen asleep with Kai on the sofa, all curled up against each other with three Game Over messages flashing on the TV screen.  The sight was actually extremely sweet, and I nearly cooed over them as I passed by on my way to the kitchen.

It wasn’t a total surprise that the kitchen light was on – somebody always forgot to turn it off – but it was a bit of a shock to find somebody in there at three in the morning.

Scratch that.  It was a lot of a shock, and to make matters stupendously awkward, that somebody just had to be Xiumin when I desperately needed coffee.  There was a tense pause as we both stared at each other and I tried my best to avoid glancing at Xiumin’s precious coffee machine and giving away my intentions.

We both decided simultaneously that the other person was a threat: I reached behind me for the door handle, and Xiumin snatched a chopping knife – which somebody had obviously forgotten to clean and put away – up from the table.  I froze.

It was so silent that the ticking of the kitchen clock was like ice cracking, and my heart began to pound in my throat.  My chest compressor was made of tough material, but contrary to Taemin’s belief, it wasn’t bulletproof and definitely wouldn’t be able to turn a knife thrust with any degree of force.  That said, I hadn’t been aware that Luhan had made Xiumin angry enough to kill.

Seventy-three seconds passed without either of us moving.  Xiumin was the first to do something.

“Where’s Luhan?” he demanded.  I blinked rapidly at him.  With his hair sticking up on end and his dark-circled, slightly wild eyes, not to mention the knife, he didn’t look totally sane.  I wasn’t sure if it was a better option to admit I wasn’t Luhan – chances were he’d stab his group mate just as much as he’d go psycho on a perceived stalking fan girl.