Deer Luhan, With Love

37

Chapter 37 – In Which D.O. Does Not DO Drugs

Deer Luhan,

I know that life in the EXO-M dorm is a little mad, but shouldn’t you rein Tao and Chen in a little more?  Tao doesn’t seem to have a problem basically breaking and entering and as for Chen, I wouldn’t totally put it past him to be up for a criminal career at some point.  In a jokey way, of course.  He’s far too sweet to be a criminal.  But it doesn’t really help matters that one of the first things he taught me – however useful – would be the kind of thing that really comes into its own when you’re trying to steal things.

Leigh

“The heck is up with these two poems?” Sehun demanded, frustrated.  His English accent was near perfect, and I had to surpress my urge to lick my lips as I propped Luhan’s phone up against the bathroom mirror and grinned at him.  Lay had borrowed Luhan’s laptop to answer fan messages as his computer had been bluescreening.  Seeing Sehun’s face on such a small screen made him feel kind of like a doll.  His voice does not remind you of melting chocolate, Leigh.  It does not make you want to listen to him speak all day.

“Sehun, if you can master those two poems, you’ve mastered most of the horridness of the English language.”

He backed down a little.  “Okay, okay, Why English Is So Hard isn’t too bad,” he said, still somewhat petulant.  “I think I’ve got all my irregular plurals down to… down to pat?”  He looked a little uncertain, so I gave him a thumbs up.

“Ten out of ten.  You’ve been brushing up your idioms.”

“And you’re brushing up your teeth,” he told me.  I took the toothbrush out of my mouth.

“To brush up is to improve or polish something or to smarten yourself up.  You brush your teeth rather than brushing them up.”  It was a little hard to remain dignified with toothpaste threatening to spill out of my mouth.

He wrinkled his nose at me.

“But that Chaos poem—”

“The Chaos, Sehun, its title has a definite article.  Did you know it was written by somebody whose first language wasn’t English?”

His jaw dropped.  “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.”

“But it’s horrible!”

“Dearest creature in creation—” I heard D.O. droning in the background.

“Give it up!” Sehun yelled at him in English, and I heard Kai grumbling something similar in Korean.

“Ooh, you’ve finally learnt the last half of the last line!”

I laughed at them and ended up choking on the toothpaste.

“I’ll be honest,” I told them, spitting some of the toothpaste out into the sink, “a lot of English people struggle with that poem.  It’s got over eight hundred of the English language’s worst irregularities and only a tiny percentage of the country – if that – actually knows how to pronounce all the words in it.”

D.O.’s and Kai’s heads popped up beside Sehun’s.  D.O. was grinning.

“Let’s face it – English is a crazy language,” he quoted.

Sehun shoved at him.

“It’s a f*cking b*tch,” Kai corrected, towelling his hair dry.

D.O. stared at him, eyes wider than usual.  “Whoa.  Language around the ladies, dear.”