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555 – X0X0

‘If that’s not the most suspicious ad I’ve ever seen…’

Hyoyeon jumped guiltily as the voice boomed near her ear and she looked to find Luhan staring between her and the ad suspiciously, ‘Hyo… what are you doing?’

She tried to turn him around and push him hastily out of the way of the bulletin board, ‘Nothing. I was just looking at…’

And then of course she got distracted by the feel of his hard biceps and quickly retracted her hands... Hyoyeon, you fool.

Luhan, easy-going fellow that he was, allowed her to shepherd him further down the hallway. Halfway up, she realised that they were heading the wrong direction to their next class.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?!’ she demanded.

‘You were having too much fun trying to get me to forget about that ad,’ he shrugged, before turning back to the way they’d just come.

Two more different people, you couldn’t have found.

They may have been both final year students at K-University, both studying dance, good looks, likeable and with unnatural blonde hair… but that was where the similarities ended.

Luhan was the cool, level-headed type and Hyoyeon was impulsive and always acted before she thought.

Luhan was relatively quiet and valued his personal time, whereas Hyoyeon couldn’t stand being alone.

He liked to sit somewhere and ponder a puzzle until he stubbornly solved it, she would give up if she couldn’t do it after a few attempts.

Even their blood types were opposites—he the blood type O and eternal giver, she the blood type AB the ultimate taker.

Yet… they were friends?

And they understood each other?

It didn’t make sense and yet in some bizarre way it did.

‘Look, if you’re going to go do something stupid like apply for that ad…’

THINK AGAIN, Hyoyeon finished gloomily.

‘… then at least let me go with you,’ Luhan finished.

Hyoyeon looked at him in shocked, possibly for the first time her eyes wider than his Bambi eyes, ‘What did you just say?’

He shrugged as though it was just common sense, ‘I don’t want you doing anything stupid on your own. If anything I’m just saving myself the travel time of having to save you… again.’

Ignoring his side comment she jumped up and down in the corridor, drawing attention to herself but not caring, ‘You’re really the best!’

‘Yeah, yeah…’

‘It’s time travel.’

‘Time travel?’ Hyoyeon looked at Luhan and they shared a mental conversation that went something like this:

I told you it was a bogus ad!

I know you’re right… I hate when you’re right.

Make your excuses and let’s go.

You make it…

‘Hear me out for a little,’ the woman, who introduced herself as Yewon interrupted, pushing her glasses up the bridge of her nose.

‘I found a way to hypnotise people and by focusing all their thoughts into a particular picture, they are able to return to the time the picture was taken.’

She reached forward for the first item in Hyoyeon’s box of pictures, ‘so here—you would be able to return to this moment.’

Hyoyeon looked at the picture and looked to Luhan. It was their second year of high school while she was an exchange student in his school. In the picture was the two of them, plus their other friends Kris, Chen, Lay, Xiumin and Tao.

She’d had a crush on almost all the guys in their group at one point in time, but in that particular picture her eyes were only for Kris.

‘What do I do when I get there?’

‘I'm not sure actually... it looks like you already have a boyfriend.’

'He's not my boyfriend--'

'I'm not her boyfriend--'

Yewon looked between the two of them and blinked at their outright denials, 'Okay.... well, you go there and do something to fix something you regret.'

‘Something I regret?’ Hyoyeon repeated.

‘I don’t actually know as I’ve only been to my memories once,’ Yewon admitted, ‘but from what I observed, you won't be able to return to present time unless you accomplish the goal that you set out to do.'

‘What if you couldn't do what you wanted to? What if it was impossible?’

‘I don’t know that either,’ she admitted again, ‘hence… why I’m doing this experiment.’

Luhan and Hyoyeon looked at each other—but while Luhan’s expression was “HELL NO”, Hyoyeon’s was “LET’S DO THIS!”.

‘You could get stuck there!’

‘Then I’ll just live life all over again…’ Hyoyeon shrugged.

‘You could come back here and have changed something so drastically—haven’t you seen those Butterfly Effect movies?’

That gave Hyoyeon food for thought. Those movies had freaked her out a little bit, and the thought of life being so different when she came back…

‘This is a love hypnotism.’

‘What??’ both looked at Yewon.

‘That’s why it had to be pictures of your past loves,’ she tried to explain, ‘the only things that will change are your relationships with the people in those pictures.  I can’t explain why or how… and it goes against the butterfly effect principle… but it just does.’

‘Let’s try it once,’ Hyoyeon pleaded with Luhan.

‘No.’

‘Please?’

‘No.’

‘Pleeeeeease? You’ll be here anyway to save me.’

‘I don’t know if I like that you trust me that much.’

‘I trust that you’ll always be here for me,’ she said sincerely, ‘please Luhan.’

Looking between Hyoyeon and Yewon who was seriously anticipating his answer, he sighed, ‘Fine.’

‘So which picture do you want to start with?’

‘This one will be fine.’

The day before the high school festival…

[Author's Note:] So instead of having no back story and just separate one shots. I decided to link them. They'll still be stand alone stories... I think. The first one up with be about Hyoyeon and Kris back in their high school days. Please look forward to it! xKei