Deer Luhan, With Love

71

Chapter 71 – In Which We Get Thrown A Curveball

Deer Luhan,

You have a rather dramatic sense of timing and I love you for it.

Leigh

As predicted, the girls were long gone from the building the phones’ locations had traced to and Yi didn’t find much to help with furthering the investigation beyond solid proof that they had been there.  Once he returned to control the Stalker, I retreated to a corner with the recovered phones and the list of names and numbers and idly wondered why eight of the thirteen foreign fans had actually opted for buying whole new phones rather than just Chinese sims.  It didn’t particularly make sense to me that they wanted new sims, anyway, until I caught sight of the smashed phone again.  Of course, if you had a nice phone and you were travelling in a foreign country and didn’t want it stolen, you disguised the fact you had it with an old phone.  And most of them came with sim cards inside, even if you didn’t want to use that sim.  What should have been their escape plan had backfired miserably, but I had to hand it to the Japanese girl for at least trying.

The boys tumbled back in at dinnertime, tired and irritable.  Luhan went to bed immediately.  The others stayed up long enough to eat, but retreated soon afterwards, leaving me feeling a little put out.  Since it was my last night with them, I wanted to stay up and chat, or at least play a game of some sort.

“We ought really to have thrown you a leaving party,” said Xiumin regretfully as he sat down on the sofa beside me and handed me a cup of coffee.  He was the only one still up, and largely because he’d seen how glum I was looking and wasn’t yet quite too tired to do anything about it.  “It’s all a bit sudden.”

I took a gulp of the nectar-like liquid and sighed as the bitterness hit my tastebuds.  “I would have liked just a few more days.  Or a bit more warning.”

He put an arm around my shoulders.  “Shame Luhan isn’t trying to organise it this time, or we’d be able to guarantee you’d still be here next week.”

I managed a wan smile in response.

“How’s D.O.?” he asked, taking a sip of his own coffee.

“Not great.  His fever won’t go down, but in his words, ‘it’s just flu’ and he’s hoping to sleep it off.”

Xiumin shot me a sideways glance.  “You should probably sleep too, you know; you aren’t looking so great yourself.”

“Geez, thanks, Xiumin,” I said sarcastically.  “Way to make a girl feel good about herself.”

“You’re tired, upset and stressed,” he pointed out.  “There would be something wrong with you if you looked like you were about to waltz off to a ball.”

I coughed.

“And you really don’t want to catch D.O.’s flu,” he added.  “You should finished your coffee and then go to bed.”  There was a pause.  “I shouldn’t have given you coffee.  You might not sleep.”

This time, my smile came more easily.  “I’m going to miss you.”

“Are you actually going to miss me, or are you just going to miss the coffee?” he demanded, grinning.  I took the opportunity to wrinkle my nose.

“Just the coffee,” I told him, and he smacked me lightly on the shoulder, jostling me as I grinned into my coffee mug.

“That bracelet’s pretty,” he said suddenly, catching at my wrist.