Lu Han is in the middle of his fourth frantic sweep of the living room when he’s interrupted by the single most frustrating question of his existence.

“Well, where did you last see it?”

It has been exactly thirty minutes since he first glanced down at his left hand and realized that something was terribly off, and after turning Yixing’s bachelor pad inside out three times over, he thinks he might throw up if he comes up empty-handed again.

Crawling back out from under the couch, Lu Han sits back on his haunches and gives Yixing the most incredulous look. His eyes are already bleary from the dust bunnies and his throat is hoarse from panicked half-yelling and not far behind is that awful, sinking feeling of dread in the pit of his stomach.

“I don’t know, Xing, maybe on my ing finger?” Lu Han flails his arms exasperatedly. He thinks he could strangle someone and break down in tears all at the same time. “Could you stop standing around and asking stupid questions, and just help me look? It has to be somewhere around here...”

“Sheesh, no need to be so hostile...” Yixing makes a face, but he plops down on the floor beside his friend nonetheless. “I know you’re upset that you lost it, but—”

“I didn’t lose it,” Lu Han cuts him off. “It’s not lost. I know it’s here, somewhere—I just have to find it.”

Though Yixing prides himself in being something of a smartass, he doesn’t have the heart to argue over semantics this time around. Lu Han doesn’t even seem to believe his own words, as he just kneels there and continues to stare forlorn holes into the carpet.

Yixing sighs and places a hand on his friend’s shoulder, and he tries not to take it too personally when he gets shrugged off.

“Han, we’ve already checked everywhere in my apartment. You obviously didn’t lose it—I mean, misplace it—here. Just do what they do in the movies and retrace your steps, starting from this morning. After all, how far could a little engagement ring have gotten?”

Lu Han is known among their friends as the role model. The perfect one. The manly one.

The one who, despite all of his masculine pride, clings to Kim Minseok like no other, needy to the point where Yixing and the others have to beg Minseok to please control his lovesick boyfriend in public.

Lu Han has always been a little too eager around the love of his life (and really, who can blame him), so people are always surprised to learn that it was Minseok who had gotten down on one knee, as cliché as he’d ever admit to be, with a little velvet box in hand and a lifelong question in mind.

(I know I always preach about taking things slowly, but I’m in love with you, Han. Let me be a hypocrite just this once)

Minseok later confessed that the entire time he had been one nervous word away from throwing up all over his dress shoes, which Lu Han had found hard to believe because Kim Minseok is everything that he is not: pragmatic, well-spoken, and, above all—cool under pressure.

“Christ, why is this store so ing cluttered? Maybe if they took some time to organize all this crap, they’d see a customer or two,” Lu Han curses as he rummages through the inventory of his local convenience store. It had been his first stop of the day, to grab a quick bite to eat after his attempt at a breakfast in bed had left their kitchen a veritable mess (which Minseok had tried not to freak out over until after he’d enjoyed Lu Han’s burnt toast).

“Sir, you either need to buy something or you need to get out. I already told you that I didn’t see any kind of ring lying ar—”

“Of course you didn’t see it. You’re too busy giggling at that stupid comic of yours,” Lu Han snaps. “Don’t think I can’t see you reading it behind the register. What the hell are you still looking at? Get back to work.”

On any other occasion the girl would have mouthed back, or muttered under her breath at the very least; but being scolded by Lu Han, the banker with the golden hair and the kind smile, leaves her at a complete loss for words. She flips her comic book shut and promptly glues her eyes to the register.

Somewhere in the back of the snacks aisle is the last place Lu Han would expect his most prized possession to be, but Yixing has told him to be thorough and he isn’t exactly in a position to argue. At this rate he’ll never make it back on time for his anniversary date, but that’s the furthest thing from his mind right now because he won’t even have any relationship to celebrate if he comes out of this without the ring fitted back onto his finger.

“Sir, if you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the police.” The girl finally speaks up again, and this time she’s had enough. There is a landline in one of her hands and a cellphone in the other as she video-records Lu Han’s belligerence for evidence.

There is no doubt that Lu Han’s reputation in this store is ruined beyond repair. The cashier looks this close to hurling a blunt object at his head, the manager could show up at any moment and wrestle him to the ground, and, if he’s really lucky, the police might just stop by and book him at the station for petty crime. It feels wrong to be so defiant but his engagement is on the line here, and he only pauses for a second to flip the girl (and her cellphone camera) off before diving into the next shelf of assorted candies.

***

Yixing ushers Lu Han out of the store not two minutes later, because the search had been looking bleak and an ugly throwdown was about to break out between his best friend and the comic book girl at the register.

Lu Han walks out into the afternoon and reality hits him like a freight train. His ring could be anywhere in the city by now, lying at the bottom of a sewer or tucked into the display case of a pawn shop or sitting in some dirty thief’s pocket—

“Okay, so that was a bust...but at least we can cross one spot off our list now,” says Yixing. “Where did you go after you got breakfast this morning?”

Hardly a moment passes and Lu Han’s heart has already dropped down to his stomach. “The subway...” he mutters. “I took the subway to work, damn it. If I really lost it in there, then it’s long gone by now.”

“Hey, hey, it doesn’t hurt to try, right?” is Yixing’s typical response, and it’s far too optimistic given the situation that they’re in. There’s this little voice growing louder in the back of Lu Han’s head and it’s telling him that this is a lost cause, but he silences it and lies to himself long enough to last the fifteen-minute walk to the subway station.

***

It turns out that the voices in Lu Han’s head were right all along. After buying two tickets, he and Yixing had scoured the subway’s disgusting tiles and the restrooms and even the stuffy eastbound tram that Lu Han had taken to work that morning. And nothing.

“Just my luck. If only I’d stayed home today,” Lu Han mutters. He must look like a crazy person, pacing around a moving train while arguing with himself, but he pays no mind to the stares that are boring into his skull from every direction. “If only I’d ing stayed home, then none of this would have happened.”

Like any good fiancé, he had planned on calling in sick and spending his anniversary with his partner. But Minseok the big-shot newspaper editor just had to ruin those plans, spouting something about being a model employee and making a pretty knot out of Lu Han’s blue tie to get him to go to work that morning.

And now here Lu Han is, a desperate mess still dressed in his pretty blue tie, regretting every single second leading up to this moment.

“It’s okay, Han. This is good. Now we know that you probably didn’t lose it on the subway,” Yixing chimes in. “You went to work after this, right? Then we might as well make use of our tickets and ride this line all the way to the bank.”

Yixing wobbles a little on his feet when the tram shudders, while Lu Han just hangs onto the overhead handles with his eyes screwed shut.

***

“Three weeks into your engagement and you’ve already managed to lose the ring? That must qualify for some kind of world record.” Sehun looks on with a bored face as his coworker pulls apart his cubicle, piece by piece and file by file. There are papers—uncashed checks and business cards and confidential documents—flying everywhere, and Lu Han’s once-tidy desk now looks more like a warzone. Lu Han doesn’t even consider how tedious the cleanup will be because his mind is somewhere else entirely. He spends so much time at his exhausting day job that if his ring is anywhere, it’s here. It has to be here.

But he’s been at it for thirty minutes now and he’s running out of places to look.

“Sehun, you’re not helping.” Yixing looks up from the waste bin to tut at him. “Have some sympathy, would you?”

Meanwhile, things are still being tossed out of the way haphazardly and Sehun dodges a flying stapler before sticking his tongue out at Yixing. “What? I’m just trying to lighten up the atmosphere. Lu Han here looks like someone’s just run over his dog. If he keeps frowning like that, those ugly wrinkles will become permanent and then his boyfriend will really dump him. By the way, Lu Han, do you have those reports that Mr. Wu asked you to draft up?”

“Sehun. You either help me look for my ring, or you get lost. My work hours are over,” Lu Han growls. He’s knuckle-deep in his potted plant, digging through the loose pebbles in what may be the lowest point in his life.

The plant had been a housewarming gift from Minseok from when they’d first moved in together—a lucky bamboo that he’d joked would somehow find a way to die under Lu Han’s supervision. Lu Han is notoriously forgetful and terrible at multitasking, hence a desktop that’s loaded with sticky note reminders for even the most munda