“Your mother did what?!” Luhan spat out his drink as he choked on it while laughing violently. The way Luhan laughs always amuses Yifan. He laughs as if nothing in the world worries him and that his jaw has unhinged from its joints. Even though the man is older than him by a few months, Luhan looks a lot younger than him - as if he just entered his first year in university yesterday.

Today, it was not time for Yifan to be amused by the way his best friend laughs. In fact, nothing could amuse him to pull out of the misery.

“Set up a blind date,” he replied gloomily, “I told my mother that I wanted to enjoy life as a normal person and she set me up with a date.”

Luhan laughed even more violently, tears his eyes, “This is hysterical. Let me just,” he fished for his phone from his back pocket and started typing, “Minseok needs to know this. Too bad he’s in Seoul right now.”

Yifan rolled his eyes. Minseok is Luhan’s best friend and Yifan’s friend from South Korea. The relationship between Yifan and Minseok is a little confusing. He considers Minseok as his casual friend but since Minseok gets tagged along so many times with Luhan during their hangouts, Minseok became his close friend by default. He was never bothered by Minseok’s presence since the guy is always relaxed and cool so he considered the guy as someone on a close friend level. Plus, Minseok being quiet earns an extra A+ from him. Yifan wants his friends to be someone who can keep secrets and not blab about how they are friends of his.

“What’s up people?” a raspy voice entered the room they were sitting in, “Sorry I’m late.” The eyes of two guys in the room landed onto the man who just entered. The entree was Huang Zitao, another close friend of theirs. Yifan’s friendship with Huang Zitao is lukewarm. They had a rough patch along their friendship timeline, which was resolved after a lot of sincere apologies from the other party, making Yifan felt like he was obliged to forgive the younger guy. Besides, Huang Zitao is proven to be a useful friend for him.

Zitao sauntered into the room and took his spot on a three seater sofa beside Luhan’s one seater. Yifan sat on a recliner near them, in a hopeless manner - his limbs sprawled along and his eyes casted downwards. “What’s happening to Yifan?” he asked Luhan, who was wiping his tears away with a tissue paper. Luhan held his hand up to the young to say he would explain later. Then, Zitao's phone rang, which he excused himself to answer it before he went out of their room.

“Sorry guys, I was held up in a meeting,” a soft voice appeared from the door before a figure entered the room. Yifan looked up from his chair. The guy entered was Zhang Yixing, another friend of theirs. Yixing - the calm one, the young producer, the talented dancer. “Luhan ge,” he greeted, “why are you in tears?” and he too laughed violently after Luhan explained what really happened. Both of them found it hysterical.

Several minutes later, both Luhan and Yixing finally calmed down - after laughing at each other laughing to a point that they couldn’t breath. Yifan was ready to hit their heads if they had not stopped by that point. “Thank god,” Zitao rolled his eyes while his facial expressions remained impassive; nobody knew when he had gotten back into the room. “I thought I had to dial a hospital and ask for a tranquilizer," he scorned.

“Oh, shut up,” Luhan snapped at the younger guy. "I thought we're getting an explanation," Zitao looked pointedly at Luhan. The latter cleared his throat to start speaking, “So, our Yifan-”

Yifan groaned, “Seriously, Luhan? Our Yifan?”

“Fine,” the older one responded, “Yi Fan here,” he pointed at Yifan, “has to go on a date set up by his mother.”

The one who choked on the drink this time was Zitao. He reached for a tissue paper and wiped down his shirt but the drink had slightly stained his pristine white shirt. “How come?”

“Well, I made a mistake of telling my mother that I want to enjoy the youth and that’s what she did,” Yifan explained as short as he could while he closed his eyes, “she thought I needed to date someone seriously to marry so she chose one.”

“It's not a bad idea though. Who’s the girl?” Luhan asked, “is that someone we know?”

Yifan shrugged, “I have her name - Zhou Bai Xue.”

“Zhou Bai Xue?” Luhan echoed, “I think I know that name. Do you have her social media?” Yifan clicked his tongue in annoyance, “Not really. My mother said she's famous but I didn’t bother searching up. I’m just going to show up and disappoint her. That is my mission. My mother will be thoroughly disappointed but who cares.”

Luhan continued, “Do you know how she looks?” Yifan was starting get irritated at Luhan’s constant question but he didn’t want to get into quarrel with his best friend. He reached for his mobile phone on the coffee table in the middle and started browsing through his pictures to find the picture of the girl that his mother sent a few days ago. “This one,” he threw the phone at Luhan, who caught it effortlessly and looked at it.

“I know her!” he exclaimed, “I was also set up with her once before!” Zitao went over to Luhan’s side to get a clear look at the girl, and Yixing was the one who joined next.

Yifan sat up on his recliner, alarmed, “Is she some kind of desperate girl who just wants to get married?” Luhan placed Yifan’s phone back on the table as he shook his head, “Quite the opposite. It’s her parents who want to get her to get married.”

“Your mother knows her family, doesn’t she?” Luhan continued, “her parents want her to marry the son of the family that they know and no one else.” Yifan sighed before he spoke, “My mother, Angela, my director, and her mother, are best friends since their university days. Apparently. So, hooray!” he spoke sarcastically, almost rolling his eyes again.

“What’s the deal with her?” Yifan asked again, curious about the girl he had never met before. His ultimate desire is to jeopardize this meeting with the girl so that she gets so disappointed with him. “Bai Xue is quite low profile, actually,” Luhan started. Zitao nodded and continued with Luhan’s statement, “Her parents are very rich, well duh, and she inherited her dad’s position at the company. A lot of people hate her, actually. Don’t know the reason why but a lot of people in her company hates her.”

“How do you know all this?”

“My family knows hers.”

“I know people.”

Both Luhan and Zitao answered at the same time respectively and looked at each other before they looked away, each chuckling. “Okay, you first,” Zitao motioned his hand towards Luhan. All eyes fell on Luhan, expecting him to continue.

Luhan cleared his throat, “Well, I just know Bai Xue as someone who keeps rejecting all the men.”

“Is she unpleasant?” Yixing interrupted.

“Not really,” Luhan continued to speak thoughtfully as he recalled his memory, “I went for a blind date with her at the restaurant that we were supposed to meet. Spoke quite little. Very composed. Very well-mannered.”

“Then why did you reject her?” Yifan questioned. The thought of Luhan turning down a marriage offer to such girl baffled him. Luhan laughed, “I was okay about it - I mean, what do I lose from marrying someone like her from such a family? Rich, well-mannered, polite, stable. It was her, who declined. Her word is law in her family so the marriage didn’t go through.”

“Did you keep in touch?” Zitao questioned further. Luhan shook his head, "Would you though? I mean, why would I? We really have nothing to say to each other.: The four guys sat silently in agreement as they didn’t know what to say.

Yifan broke the temporary silence, “Zitao, you said you know people. What do you know about her?” Zitao leaned back on his sofa and smiled, “Not much. She’s relatively unknown in social scene.”

Yixing let out an amused laughter, “Even for a party animal like you who goes everywhere?” Yifan chuckled as he questioned. Zitao is famed for being the party animal, who attends all the party that a person physically could but never got into trouble with his fans for it. Unlike Yifan, his studio lets him get away with it since the image seems to work well for him.

“Yeah,” Zitao answered earnestly, “I bumped into her a few times before at formal functions and she just stuck with the older crowd. Really old crowd," he frowned, "I don't even see her in casual parties - let alone clubs and bars.”

Yifan’s plan of digging up the dirt on the girl lacked success. He was hoping that a girl from such a rich family would turn out to be some kind of an air-head with strings of secret lovers hid behind her seemingly prefect composure or at least someone who has terrible personality; just so that he could find faults to decline the offer. From what he heard, he was definitely sure that he couldn’t pick out faults on her to whine to his mother.

“Yifan,” Luhan caught the attention of the taller male, “Relax. She will definitely turn you down. All you have to do is breathe. She'll hate you,” he reassured with a chuckle.

Yifan groaned and fell back onto his recliner once again.

[Author's monologue:] I need to clarify here so that it makes sense. The girl's name is Bai Xue. In Chinese characters, 白雪. Bai(白) means 'white' and Xue(雪) means 'snow' Basically, her name is 'White Snow' if you translate it literally. Snow White, if you want it to sound better.