Deer Luhan, With Love

49

Chapter 49 – In Which I Briefly Meet Luhan’s Dad

Deer Luhan,

Your dad and my dad would probably get on like a house on fire if they spoke the same language.

Leigh

Light exploded into my vision and I let out a silent scream, throwing a hand up in front of my eyes and trying to scramble further back into the closet, but it was too shallow.

“Found her!”

Hands reached for me.  I batted them blindly away as I began to hyperventilate again.

“Jesus.  Oh, sh*t, sh*t, sh*t….”

The man who had found me backed off because of my viciously flailing hands, but then he was back again, climbing into the closet beside me.  I kicked out at him, but he pulled me into a tight embrace.

“I’m safe.  I’m safe, don’t kill me.”

The shriek I let out this time actually had some volume to it and I struggled in the guy’s arms.

“Oh God, oh God….”  One of the arms vanished from around me and I curled up into a ball, trying to push away the other as I broke down in hysterical tears.

The second arm reached around me again and something slipped into my ear.

Tranquiliser was the only thing that made sense to my brain at the time and I desperately tried to pull it out, but the guy was too quick and grabbed my wrists.

“Listen.  Oh, God, I’m so crap at calming people down….”  Another earphone went into my other ear.  “F*ck, is there a paper bag – oi!  Get me a paper bag!”

I gradually became aware of a familiar piece playing in my ears, and my rapid heartbeat matched the pace of the agitated strings.

Moments later, something tickled against the lower portion of my face.

“Here,” said the voice of the man who’d found me.  “This should help.”

“Oh my God, what the f*ck happened to her?  Is she—?”

“I don’t know.  I honestly don’t— hey, breathe into this, come on.”  He used a gentle hand to turn my head back towards the paper bag, which I’d been trying to avoid.

But I can’t breathe.  The voices sounded familiar.  And the one of the man who’d found me was singing softly along to the male vocal part in Sonera as he hugged me tightly and the song began to wash over me and finally bring me back to some semblance of rationality.

I must have stopped struggling and started to calm down, because Chen took the paper bag away and stroked my hair.

“Cry,” he told me.  “Cry it out.”

“What happened to her?” Xiumin repeated.  “Is she hurt?”

I felt Chen shrug helplessly against me.  “She locked herself into the closet.  I can’t tell you anything more than that.”  He patted my back as I sobbed against his shoulder.  My heartbeat was beginning to return to normal, moving away from the frenetic pace of the strings to the much more languid one of the vocals.

The tears were releasing all the adrenaline and tension, though, and my body began to quiver as Chen just held me close.

“It must have been bad,” Xiumin murmured.  “I don’t think she’s ever done this before.”