Deer Luhan, With Love

72

Chapter 72 – In Which “Catastrophe” Is an Understatement

Deer Luhan,

You know that quote “they said ‘smile! Things could be worse!’ So I smiled and they were”?  I think that’s applicable here.

Leigh

The immediate aftermath of Luhan’s announcement was total chaos.  He was clearly in shock and very, very worried, and Sehun ended up trying to explain what little he’d understood of the phonecall to Yi in limited Chinese.  It didn’t help that the manager barged in just a couple of moments after that and Yi had to fling me behind the sofa, Kris, Tao, Xiumin and Lay quickly going to stand over me so that the manager wouldn’t notice there was an extra person if he came too far into the room.  Then there was the inevitable pandemonium when Suho tried to hustle the manager out as soon as possible while he was trying to make sure that everybody was ready to leave within the next fifteen minutes, and then, once he had finally been locked out of the door, D.O. collapsed against the sofa and asked in a weak voice if somebody minded carrying him back to bed, because his chest hurt so much when he tried to breathe that he didn’t think he could walk there by himself.

While Kai busied himself with that, the rest of us were silent.  The only exceptions were Yi and Luhan, the latter of whom had regained enough of his senses to be able to explain his mother’s predicament himself.  I peeked out around Tao’s legs so I could concentrate on their conversation.

Yi was talking distances and transport.  Luhan seemed on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“I can’t go,” he kept saying.  “I can’t.  What if they suddenly decide they want me somewhere here and there’s only a half hour deadline or something?”

After watching their bickering for a couple of minutes or so, I wriggled out from behind the boys’ legs and approached Yi and Luhan, dusting myself off.

“—Not to mention the meetings – the press are going to be there; I can’t suddenly vanish—”

“Xiao Lu.”  I rested a hand on his shoulder and he jumped.  “Go.  It’s your mother.”

“But—”

I ignored him and turned to Yi.  “How long are you likely to be away?”

Yi did the mental calculations quickly.  “She’s in the process of being cornered rather than having been captured, so provided the situation’s still the same and we can just swoop in and out, I’d say we’ll be back by mid-morning tomorrow.”

“And nothing’s planned until tomorrow afternoon, right?”  I turned back to Luhan for confirmation.  Biting his bottom lip, he nodded.

“Then it’s fine,” I said.  “Go ahead, LuLu.  I’ll handle things here for today.  What’s a doppelganger for, after all?”

“Really?”  His voice cracked.  I nodded.

He swept me into a bone-crushing hug and started sobbing on my shoulder.  I didn’t know how to respond beyond patting him awkwardly on the back.  Just a foot away, I could see Yi mentally counting the seconds before he pulled Luhan off me.  Such a people person, that guy.  I don’t know how he does it.

“Okay, okay,” he said.  “We don’t have time.  Leigh, go with them, but I want the police escort that stays here to split half-half between accompanying you and making sure your ill friend is safe, and if anything at all happens you are to ring immediately, okay?  Come on, Mr Lu, we have a helicopter to catch.  It’ll take more than a few hours for us to get halfway across the country.”