Deer Luhan, With Love

36

Chapter 36 – In Which I Plague People With Cheesy English Songs

Deer Luhan,

I don’t know if it’s a cultural difference or something, but isn’t a normal reaction to finding out somebody’s being chased by the mafia “sh*t” rather than “so do you have a crush on Sehun?”

Leigh

I found myself with a lot of new clothes on Tuesday, and once we got back from the school (where I’d been pestered by hormonal teenage girls demanding to know if I was dating Tao because I was wearing a t-shirt he’d apparently worn at some televised event or other not long after EXO’s debut), Tao somehow persuaded Kris to go out shopping with him to replenish his wardrobe.

To be honest, though, Kris’ decision to take Tao shopping might have had more to do with the fact that he’d made the mistake of blurting out “Zoo Han strikes again!” as we’d piled into the minivan on leaving the school and the two-hour journey meant that I had plenty of time to use him as a punch bag.  He’d ended up hiding under a seat, practically crying with laughter and trying to protect himself with an emergency road kit.  Lay had taken it upon himself to explain that the colourful t-shirt had got Tao the nickname “peacock oppa”, though why Korean honorifics were cropping up in something related to China was beyond both of us.  Either way, Kris apparently deemed it best to get out of the dorm before he tempted fate and thought of a fifth animal to compare me to and lost his head, in both senses.  Tao had promised to ring us if they passed a store with phones so that the damaged ones could be replaced before Kris hustled him out the door.

The rest of us spent a lazy afternoon in the living room, Xiumin basking in the now clothes-free space while Lay and Chen had an intensive MarioKart battle and I surfed Youtube for decent videos.  Lay had shown me around the Great Firewall of China a few days before and Baekhyun had decided he wanted in on what he called my “awesome English teaching”, demanding more songs to learn in English because that was what he apparently found most fun.  Could have been because D.O. tried to put him through Monty Python’s Cheese Shop sketch and the names of all the cheeses had been a bit too much for him.

“Xiumin,” I called, frowning at the tabs I’d pulled up and flicking aimlessly between them, “which of these songs do you think Baekhyun will like most?”

“The best one,” he mumbled, fanning his arms around him like he was making a snow angel on the carpet, except without snow.

I pursed my lips.  For some reason – or perhaps to get back at Baekhyun for all the mindless teasing about Sehun – all I could think of were girl-power songs in some form, and none of them were recent.  I was heavily tempted by Britney Spear’s Stronger because I would have loved to see Baekhyun do the chair dance.  Oops was another good Britney option.  Then there were Sk8ter Boi by Avril Lavigne and Destiny’s Child’s Survivor, but they probably wouldn’t elicit the kinds of performances I was imagining with It’s Raining Men or The Potential Break-up Song.

I sighed.  It’s Raining Men would be a good one, but it was popular, and I was pretty sure that there were Korean covers of It’s Raining Men around.  What about P!nk’s So What?

“Hey, Xiu, do you know if Baekhyun likes P!nk?” I asked.

Xiumin raised his head to look at me.  “Who?”

So What it was, then.  I smiled at him.  “Thanks!”

“Wait, what have I done?”