Hell and Back (EXO x Reader)

Date Night (Trials 25-26)

Word count: 1533

Chapter warnings: None

[Please do not replicate any of the behaviors read in this book.]

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"Limited power is Sehun," she said looking up. "We only have a few more people left to go. Maybe I should-"

"Xiumin, you're up." Suho cut her off. As she stared at him, he looked at her strangely. "What are you waiting for? Hit his name." Shaking her head slightly in astonishment, she did as he asked. She felt like this would backfire later, but... there wasn't much she could do.

"Slash someone's tires." She said.

"That's not too bad."Xiumin said, sighing. "At least I don't have to drive off a cliff or something. Do you still have that knife, Y/N?" She nodded, pulling out of her pocket with slight irritation. She knew that it wasn't Xiumin's fault that Suho was gatekeeping the challenges from her, but she couldn't help but take it out on everyone just a little. Taking it gently from her hand with a grateful nod, he flipped out the sturdiest knife in the bunch.

Kneeling down next to the car that they'd just crashed, he felt around for the softest spot. Limber fingers eventually settling on a particularly squishy area on the inner ring, he drew back the blade, puncturing the tire. With a hiss of air, it began leaking, causing the circle to slowly melt. Looking up to her expectantly, she checked the status of the trial. After a moment, she shook her head.

"Nothing."

"Maybe you have to do all four?" Kai suggested. "It did say tires."

"Oh, good point." Xiumin said, lifting himself up off the ground to repeat the process for the adjacent tire. It only took him a minute to get the rest of the tires, the car sinking one millimeter at a time. Looking over it, slight guilt in his eyes, he glanced over to her again. As she lifted the phone, she saw a bit of italicized text appear... never good.

"It... It says you need to slash the tires of someone's real car."

"How does it know this stuff?" Sehun groaned, complaining. "Like, a tire's a tire!"

"Well, we should probably just do what it says." Chanyeol sighed. "Wouldn't want to deal with 'failure', now would we?" He joked. Despite the nature of his jest, it did bring back the memory of Luhan. She hoped he was doing okay... there was no rule against texting him, right? Maybe she should just-

"Y/N! Are you coming?" Kai called, catching her attention. They were leaving to find another car for Xiumin.

"Yeah, sorry!" She ran over, jumping into the car.

"Should we just go back near the rooms?" Kyungsoo asked. "It's getting kind of late anyway, and as soon as we're done with this, we're a quarter of the way through, so maybe it's best if-"

"No." Suho said. "We keep going. We should finish the personal trials before we go to bed."

"Um, Suho," Chen reached to put a hand on his shoulder. "I know you're freaked out, but everyone's tired, including you. Maybe you just need-"

"I'm not freaked out, and I'm not tired!" He said shortly, trying not to raise his voice. Calming his tone, he grit his teeth, "I just want to make progress on this. The more we do now, the less we do later. So we're finishing the personal trials tonight. After this we just have Tao, Sehun, Chanyeol, and Kris."

"And me." Y/N said, reminding him once again that he was leaving her out.

"...Yeah." He said, almost as if he was trying not to think about it. Did he have some sort of plan? "Anyway, we also shouldn't be slashing tires so close to where some of us live. Then we're suspicious. Just pick some random car."