Christmas in Seoul

IV. Home for the Holidays (ft. 2PM's Nichkhun)

Chloe sat there watching the others, lost in her thoughts. It had been a year since she'd seen him last, when they had both promised to wait for each other. Seeing all her friends breaking off into couples, it was hard not to think about him. This was a holiday you were meant to spend with your loved ones, and her most loved one was in another country.

She sighed. It's not fair.

"Hey Chloe, you okay?" Katya asked the usually bubbly girl.

"I'm fine." She tried smiling, but she could tell there was a sadness behind her smile that shone through. "It's just..."

"Nichkhun?" Katya nodded sympathetically. They all knew how hard this past year had been on the rapper.

"I miss him. Especially now, with Baek and Amy, Olive and Minhyuk, and Alice and..." she trailed off, belatedly remembering that Katya too had liked Kai and this would surely be a sore subject with her from now on. "I'm sorry."

Katya shrugged, doing her best to look nonchalant about it. "It's fine. He made his decision. I'll have to live with it."

"Aw honey, we'll just be miserable together." Chloe hugged the visual, sighing internally as her thoughts turned once more to Nichkhun.

"Yo Chloe!" A sudden call from MAO's rapper, Mas, brought her back to the party. "You ready to rap?"

"Huh?" It took her a second to get what Mas was talking about. “Rap?”

“Yeah, we decided that all of us were going to perform something, remember?”

“Oh yeah.” Maybe this will help take my mind off him for a minute.

Performing was Chloe’s escape: hand her a mic and a decent beat and everything else in the world ceased to exist - both to her and to her audience. She lived to rap and rapped to live. Nothing could compare to the feeling she got when spitting rhymes at a crowd.

“You okay with doing ‘Guilty’?” Mas asked, suggesting a song that many of their sunbaes had performed on radio shows over the years.

“Hah, we’ve already done that,” Chen said in a sing song voice, trying to imply that there was no way the girls could rap the song better than his members had.

“We know.” Chloe grinned at him, a competitive glint in her eye that only ever appeared when rapping was involved. “We’re gonna perform it so much better than them, they’ll regret ever daring to try it.”

“You know this song was meant to be performed by guys, right?” Kai asked them from his spot on the loveseat, where he was cuddling with Alice. “There’s no way you’ll do better than they did.”

“Oh puh-lease,” Chloe retorted, sticking her hand up to silence him. “That is so sexist. This song can be applied the other way round too.”

“Yeah,” Mas nodded in agreement. “I think one of you should facetime Kris or Chanyeol. They should be watching while we blow their performance out of the water.”

Dissing and overconfidence came with being a rapper. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Luhan took out his phone and contacted the EXO-M leader. “Duizhang, Chloe has something to say to you.”

Swagmaster Chloe was in the house. Facing the phone, she rapped in English, “Your performance of Guilty your fans loved was just wack, so sit back, relax and have a listen to our track. Our style’s so phat, you won’t be able to kick with it, we’ll hook you up with a sick beat, just submit yourself to it.”

Kris’ cool guy facade was in place. His only reaction to the diss was a raised eyebrow. The other EXO members on the other hand (Luhan, Kai, Baekhyun and Chen in Alium’s apartment and Chanyeol, Xiumin, Kyungsoo and Tao behind Kris) only looked on with blank faces, their English not fluent enough to understand most of Chloe’s words.