Idol(s): Lu Han of EXO / EXO-M

Genre: Fluff, Romance

Inspiration: My friend brought up the Chinese myth regarding the red string of fate and it gave me this idea for a one shot.

Synopsis: Xiao Rou believes she's tied to Lu Han, but Lu Han refuses to believe in red strings of fate.

Individual Story Link: Unfated

Note: This story may contain some Korean terms. If so, their definitions are provided (to the best of my knowledge) when they first appear. You can hover over the hyperlink for a definition if you’re on a desktop computer or click on the link to be directed to a Glossary of Korean Terms if you’re on other devices.

~//~

There exists a Chinese legend which states that two people destined for each other are linked by an invisible red string, and regardless of the circumstances by which it happens, they will undoubtedly meet and fall in love with one another. This connection is said to be created by the gods, and therefore not only invincible, but absolute.

Xiao Rou was a very superstitious girl and a believer in this concept of fate; that in this world, there exists one and only one soul mate for each person. In her case, she believed her destined love to be Lu Han, her boyfriend of two years.

For months now, Xiao Rou had been hinting to Lu Han of marriage. When an invitation to her friend's wedding arrived, she would sigh, "She's so lucky to be tying the knot after only dating him for eight months." When a celebrity wedding was being covered on TV, she would gush, "Don't they just make the perfect couple? I totally thought they had chemistry after that drama they did together." When flipping through a bridal magazine, she’d comment, "Isn't this the most gorgeous dress ever? Any girl would look like a princess wearing it on their wedding day."

Lu Han wasn't oblivious to Xiao Rou's signs, but he had reasons of his own for not taking the bait and proposing. Therefore, he would respond to her remarks with passive concurrence: "Yes, she's lucky", "Yes, they make a nice couple", and "Yes, that's a nice dress".

However, Xiao Rou could only take what she assumed to be indifference for so long before she decided to finally confront Lu Han on the matter directly.

One Saturday afternoon, Xiao Rou and Lu Han were at his parent's bookshop where he performed a magic show for the kids once a month. Xiao Rou acted as his assistant, passing him the objects he needed, being his volunteer for the disappearing act, and hyping the crowd.

At the performance's conclusion, one particularly eager child who aspired to become a magician one day came up to Lu Han to ask how he had done all those tricks.

"A magician never reveals his secrets," Lu Han predictably answered.

But upon seeing the child's disappointment, he proceeded to show him a simple card trick with which he could amaze his friends.

Xiao Rou watched with a fond smile from the sidelines as she cleaned up while Lu Han taught the young boy with patience and encouragement, thinking to herself how he would make a great father one day. Of course that would only come after marriage.

"Keep practicing, kid. You'll get it soon," Lu Han cheered when the child's parents came to pick him up. He returned to helping Xiao Rou clean up. When they finished putting away all of the fold-up chairs in the back storage room, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and remarked, "We don't get paid enough for this."

"We don't get paid at all," Xiao Rou blankly answered.

Lu Han chuckled, "You're right." He gazed at her with an adoring smile, "Thank you for doing this."

Xiao Rou shrugged. "I like seeing the kids smile and I never get tired of watching you do magic. Besides, I don't do much anyways."

Lu Han slung an arm around her shoulder. "But you provide the eye candy."

She gave him a weird side-glance. "For the kids?" she asked incredulously.

"No, for me," he replied with a wink and then kissed her temple. "Come on, I'll walk you home."

It was quiet between them as the two walked hand in hand from the bookshop to Xiao Rou's place, during which she contemplated how to bring up the subject of marriage. But every approach that came to mind sounded like she was giving him an ultimatum, she was desperate, or she didn't believe Lu Han loved her.

"We're here," Lu Han said once they arrived in front of Xiao Rou's apartment complex.

Xiao Rou snapped out of her daze and glanced up at the familiar building. "Oh, yeah, we are."

Lu Han giggled, "You sound out of it, something on your mind?"

Xiao Rou her lips; it was now or never. "Lu Han, what do you think of marriage?"

"Hmm," Lu Han pretended to think, "I've never done it before, but my parents still seem to be happy after twenty-five years of it."

"I'm serious," Xiao Rou whined. She took a deep breath and decided to just be straightforward, "We've been dating for two years now, but you've never once entertained the idea of marriage between us. Have you not thought about a future with me?"

Lu Han sighed, "Of course I've thought about it, but we're still young. We have so many years ahead of us to think about our future."

His answer didn't comfort Xiao Rou in the least and she made it known. "I guess you're leaving your options open in case someone better comes along," she said cynically.

"What is this really about?" Lu Han demanded, his own irritation starting to build.

"I went to a matchmaker and asked her about our compatibility. She said that our horoscopes match extremely well and that the red string surely ends and begins with us."

Lu Han rolled his eyes and grumbled, "Not this again." He stared directly into Xiao Rou's eyes and stated, "You know I don't believe in things like strings of destiny."

"But you're a magician, you do magic, how can you not believe in fate?"

"I'm an illusionist," he firmly corrected. "None of it is real; it's all a trick, done by drawing people's attention elsewhere while I switch out a card or pull something out from my sleeve. It's the same with the idea of fate; it's an illusion that only happens in the fictitious world of movies and books."

Xiao Rou's bottom lip started to quiver while moisture built up in her eyes, "So basically you think I'm a fool for believing that we're soul mates."

Lu Han exhaled in frustration, "That's not it."

"No, I think that's exactly it," Xiao Rou interrupted with tears streaming down her cheeks. "I get it now why you've never brought up marriage with me." She turned around and quickly walked towards her apartment.

"Xiao Rou!" Lu Han called as he ran after her. But she had already disappeared inside the secure, passcode-protected building.

***

A week passed and Xiao Rou never heard from Lu Han. She might have been the one to walk away, but she had hoped he would still have tried to call or wait for her outside her building to talk. He did neither and it broke her heart that Lu Han didn't think they were worth a second chance. She thought about calling him first, spending countless hours in front of her phone with her finger hovering over his name in her contacts, but never found the courage to actually press it; part of it also had to do with pride. He had made a fool out of her for thinking the two of them were destined for each other when he obviously didn't feel as strongly about her.

She finally decided to accept that things with Lu Han were over for good and that it was time to start the painful process of getting over him.

Xiao Rou pulled out an empty box and started filling it with all the items that reminded her of Lu Han: pictures with him, his sweatshirt he had leant her, and presents from birthdays and anniversaries. She came upon a book she had bought from his parents' bookshop, where she first met him. She opened the book to a page in the middle where a rose had been pressed flat into the paper.

***

Xiao Rou walked through the aisles of books in the shop she had happened into by chance. She heard a chorus of gasps and followed the sound. In the corner of the bookshop, a very attractive young man with light brown hair and clear, baby-like skin stood in the middle of a group of seated children.

"Does everyone see this coin?" he asked the kids. They all nodded. "Keep your eyes on it," he said as his hand moved in a graceful manner around the coin that he held between his thumb and forefinger and then suddenly, disappeared.

All around him the children and even the adults who watched from a distance gasped and broke into applause. Xiao Rou watched in amazement as he continued with more tricks, making more items disappear and then reappear, performing card tricks, and reversing the law of physics by ripping a piece of paper and then magically producing it whole again.

"I need a volunteer for my last trick," Lu Han said to the small crowd while holding up a candlestick. All the children raised their hands, but his eyes landed on Xiao Rou standing in the back. He approached her and smiled, making her heart pulse rapidly. "What's your name?"

"Xiao Rou."

"Xiao Rou, that's a pretty name," Lu Han said as he pulled out a lighter and lit the candle. "This is a very special candle." He blew on it, but the flame continued to burn, "Because it will only blow out for a certain kind of person."

"Who?" one of the kids asked.

Lu Han smiled and answered, "A beautiful girl." He held the candle up to Xiao Rou. "Will you do the honor?"

Xiao Rou nervously glanced between Lu Han and the burning candle, afraid that she wouldn't be able to blow it out, that either the trick would fail, or it wouldn't work because she wasn't beautiful enough. She tentatively leaned forward and, after filling her lungs with air, blew hard on the fire. The flame traveled down the length of the candle, seeming to dissolve it completely, until it ended at the base of Lu Han's hand where magically, the bud of a rose appeared. He pulled it out and held it by the stem out to Xiao Rou.

"And sometimes, when the girl is particularly beautiful, it will turn into a rose."

The spectators clapped loudly as Xiao Rou took the rose from Lu Han with a shy smile.

***

Xiao Rou brushed her fingers along the dried up, brittle petals. She began to wonder whether like the magic that produced this flower, what she thought she had with  Lu Han was just an illusion, a trick of the mind created from her fantasies of fate and destiny.

She heard the doorbell ring and closed the book before heading to the front door to peek through the eyehole. It was Lu Han.

"Xiao Rou, open the door, I need to talk to you."

She slowly did, but not enough to let him in. "How did you get in to the building?"

"I followed in behind someone. Can I come in?"

"If this won't take long, you can just say it out here," she quietly replied.

Lu Han placed his hand on the knob. "This won't take long, but I'd rather not do it out here," he said and then forced his way in.

Xiao Rou closed the door and turned to him with her arms crossed. "Fine, go ahead."

Lu Han ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breath. "First of all, I'm sorry that things ended the way they did a week ago, but you owe me an apology too."

Xiao Rou pursed her lips and narrowed her eyes. From her point of view, she had done nothing wrong.

"You didn't give me a chance to explain how I feel," Lu Han continued. "You had your say, but you left before I could have mine."

"If all you’re going to do is repeat how you don't believe in fate, then I don't want to hear it." Xiao Rou stated. She disappeared into her room and returned with the box she had been packing in her arms. "I already got it, we're over," she said and placed the box at Lu Han's feet.

He stared at the box of items and then looked up at her incredulously. "What do you mean we're over? When did we decide this?"

Xiao Rou went to the door and opened it for him to leave, “When you made it clear that our relationship wasn't going any further."

Lu Han closed his eyes and tilt his head towards the ceiling as he exhaled. Once he was calm, he reopened his eyes and approached Xiao Rou. He tugged her hand away from the door handle, shut the door close, then turned to her and placed his hands on her shoulders. "I never said that we weren't going anywhere. All I said is that we have time before we make any big commitments."

Xiao Rou scoffed and pushed his hands off her shoulders, "I didn't realize that being with me was such a difficult commitment to make."

Lu Han groaned loudly and roughly ruffled the back of his hair in aggravation. "This isn't going the way I planned," he muttered. He bit his bottom lip and turned to Xiao Rou again. "Xiao Rou, I'm going to explain this the way I know best." He pulled out a red handkerchief from his pocket and made a fist which he stuffed the handkerchief into, leaving only one corner exposed. "Pull it," he told her.

Xiao Rou gave him an unamused frown, "I'm not in the mood for magic tricks right now."

Lu Han nudged his fist towards her again, "Please, just do it," Xiao Rou sighed and started tugging at the red handkerchief which Lu Han let loose his grip on slowly as he spoke, "Your belief in this red string of fate is that two people who ultimately end up together do so because it’s predetermined by some omniscient forces."

The handkerchief was reaching its end and Lu Han opened his fist to show that the other end had somehow been tied around his little finger. He held the tied finger up, "Basically, that means that we're bonded together without a choice. But I don't want to feel like I'm shackled to you or tied down to you like a slave."

Xiao Rou nibbled her bottom lip, trying to bite back a sob. Was this how he felt about being married to her? Like he was being imprisoned?

"And I don't want you to feel that way either," Lu Han added, gazing intently back.

He flicked his hand once and the handkerchief was untied from his finger so that it no longer connected Lu Han to Xiao Rou, who still held on to the other end. The literal disconnect only emphasized the pain she was feeling from their emotional disconnect.

Lu Han, however, wasn't done. He snatched the handkerchief from Xiao Rou and again stuffed it into his fist. When he opened it, the red cloth was gone. "That's why I don't want to think that we're soul mates who are fated to be together because of some silly red string."

Xiao Rou looked away. She was a terrible wreck inside and it took everything in her to hold her emotions in until Lu Han left.

Still, Lu Han wasn't done. He cupped her chin with his thumb and forefinger and made her look at him. "What I do want to believe though, is that the person I end up with is a result of my own choices," Lu Han took both her hands in his, "that there isn’t a piece of string telling me this is who you have to be with or some clairvoyant who claims that two people are a good match or not based on their birthdays."

Lu Han knelt down on knee and released her right hand to reach into his pocket for a small, velvet box. He flipped it open to reveal a silver ring, simple in design but beautiful nonetheless with its single, modestly sized diamond set between the space of the curled metal whose ends spiraled off. "I contemplated doing some kind of magic trick when I actually proposed to you, but I didn't want you to think any of this was an illusion." He smiled and took a deep breath, "Xiao Rou, I love you, I truly do, and I can't imagine a life without you. Will you marry me?"

Xiao Rou couldn't speak; her voice failed to come out because of the lump in . But she nodded as silent, happy tears streamed down her face.

Lu Han smiled and slid the ring on her left ring finger.

"If you were going to propose to me, why did you say all that stuff about us being too young and having years to think about marriage?" she cried. "Do you have any idea what I went through after we fought and you didn't call me once?"

Lu Han chuckled as he stood up to wipe her tears. He pulled her into his chest for a tight embrace. "I was trying to surprise you. You think I didn't get all your hints from the past few months? I've been saving up for a ring this whole time."

Xiao Rou sniffled and pulled back to gaze up at him, "Really?"

"Really. That's why I didn't call you for the past week either; I was trying to get enough money for us to start a life together and propose to you as soon as possible."

Xiao Rou guiltily hung her head, "Now I feel bad; I thought you were being insensitive and that you didn't care for me like I care for you."

"Okay, that is where I do think you're a fool," Lu Han jokingly chided her.

Xiao Rou softly smiled as she gazed at her new fiancé. She pressed her palms against Lu Han's cheeks and lifted herself up by standing on her toes to meet his lips. Lu Han willing accepted the kiss, deepening it as he pulled her closer to him.

When they pulled away, Xiao Rou said, "So I guess we're un-fated to be together."

Lu Han laughed and nodded in concurrence, "Yes, we're unfated."

Xiao Rou smiled, "I think I like the sound of that."

~//~

January 19, 2014, 1:18 PM