Deer Luhan, With Love

73

Chapter 73 – In Which DoNotReply Is A Dumbass Heroine

Deer Luhan,

I want a bath so I can sit in it and then yell “eureka!” and everybody can acclaim me a genius.

Leigh

Apparently the evening could get worse.

We all sat around playing a game of Irish Snap because nobody was entirely sure what to do and the mood had been totally killed.  The Silent Mode was kind of useful because everybody was brooding and whacking the pile seemed to be a good way of getting out tension.

The lunges for the pile got noticeably more ferocious when the one remaining policeman mentioned that a riot had broken out in downtown Changsha.

By one minute to ten, he had vanished down to the hotel lobby to speak to the security team as the riots had spread like wildfire, and nobody had spoken a word for over an hour.  It kind of reminded me of the London riots just a few years previously which had spread to other areas of the country.

As if to crown the cake, Kai rang at quarter past ten.

“D.O. wants to say goodbye,” he announced when Kris passed me the phone.

“What?” I demanded in alarm.  “Is he dying?”

“We don’t know,” Kai said, and from what I could make out, he was only half joking.  “He hasn’t been seen yet.  The emergency room is in complete chaos.  From what we can make out from our escort, there’s a gunman on the loose somewhere in the north of the city and they keep bringing in victims.  They obviously have to be seen to first if they’re still alive.”

I heard Suho saying something about riots in the background.

“They probably know that already, hyung.  Anyway, we were hoping to be back before you left, but that’s obviously not going to happen so… yeah, love you lots.  Not as much as Sehun does, though.  Ow, Suho!  I don’t want to be an inpatient too!  Have a safe flight!  Here’s D.O.”

I managed to say goodbye to him without choking up and had a quick conversation with D.O., who was regretful he couldn’t say goodbye to me in person and made me promise to keep in touch.  I told him to get well soon.  My conversation with Suho was equally short because he had absolutely no idea what to say.  Being the last member to find out I wasn’t Luhan, he was the one who knew me the least well.  But it didn’t stop him from wishing me a safe return home, along with “you might want to be careful about the route you take across the city – people are going wild in the streets.”

“You should probably ring Luhan too at some point,” Xiumin mentioned.  “He’s practically adopted you and neither of you have said a proper goodbye.”

For some reason, this triggered the playful spark in the others again.

“Leigh’s leaving!” Chen wailed, launching himself at me and clinging on like a limpet while Chanyeol pretended to call Luhan.

“Oh, LuLu oppa!” he crooned.  “Your darling dongsaeng is going now!  Wish me a safe flight, Luhan oppa!  I’ll never forget you!”

Baekhyun smacked him on the back of the head.  “Don’t do that.  You make her sound like a crazy fan and she’s not.”

And at the words crazy fan, it suddenly clicked.  I stopped trying to fling Chen off with a gasp of surprise.

“What is it?” he asked, loosening his grip.