Deer Luhan, With Love

27

Chapter 27 – In Which Kris Makes an Interesting Discovery

Deer Luhan,

I think this has to have been my most nerve-wracking New Year’s Day ever.  Traumatised terror from beginning to end.  It was like being on an emotional rollercoaster.

Leigh

Xiumin found me wrapped in my duvet in a shivering heap in the practice room the next morning.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.  “Have you slept?”

I shook my head: I’d been there the entire night.  Even an emergency call to Luhan hadn’t calmed me down enough to go back to bed.

He sat down beside me and tried to unwrap the duvet.  I clung onto it with a whimper.

“Leigh,” he said, “what’s wrong?  Come on, tell me.”

“I… I-I…” I stuttered, and then buried my head in the duvet.  “Xiumin, I think Chen knows!  What do I do?”

“W-what?”  He tugged on the duvet again.  “Wait, Leigh, sit up and tell me.  What happened?”

Gulping, I lifted my head, but I avoided meeting his eye.

“I was putting him to bed because he wasn’t in a fit condition to do it himself and he was refusing to get undressed so I got annoyed and told him to strip because we were both men and he challenged me and I thought he was just saying that because he was drunk but he actually meant it and he saw!” I forced out in one breath.

Xiumin looked alarmed.  I buried my head back in the duvet with a squeak.

“He actually forced to you strip?!”

I tilted my head from one side to the other.  “He got my shirt off and he….”  I started crying.

Apparently, stopping there didn’t give off the best of impressions, because Xiumin swore – and Xiumin virtually never swore – and got to his feet.

I lifted my head agan.  “W-where are you going?”

“To beat him up,” he said.  “What the hell did he do to you?”

Realisation hit me and I uncurled, letting the duvet drop.  “He was too drunk to actually do anything bad!” I exclaimed quickly, and it came out as a croak.  “He just saw the chest compressor, opened it, closed it again, said I was a girl and passed out.”

Xiumin paused and then sat back down again.  “You’re sure?”

Sniffing, I rubbed my nose and nodded.  “I’m sure.  I was sober by then.”

Xiumin tapped his chin.  “You know, if he was really that drunk, it’s possible he might not remember anything.”

As luck would have it, the door to the practice room opened at that moment and Chen came in.  Clapping my hand over my mouth, I shot to my feet.  Xiumin got up more slowly, looking from me to Chen, and Chen tilted his head quizzically to one side, hair mussed up at the back and sticking on end.

“Xiumin hyung,” he croaked out in Korean, sounding a lot worse than he looked, “is it okay if I speak to Luhan privately for a—”

I made my escape too quickly for either of them to catch me, slamming the door shut and sprinting out of the studio.  From the look on Chen’s face, I’d been unlucky and he had remembered.  Xiumin could deal with that, because I sure as hell wasn’t in a state to explain myself yet again.