SEOUL, SOTUH KOREA YEAR 2014

The minute Kris wakes up so many things happen that he just knows it is not going to be a good day.

A screeching noise in his ears is what wakes Kris up with a jerk and he hits is head on the bedside table making the table lamp tumble to the floor. He hears it knock against something and there is a tinkling of glass breaking. He curses and reaches out for his phone but then that screeching noise happens again and he fumbles and drops the phone. He cracks his eyes open and eyes the wall clock (which is on the ground next to his still-unpacked boxes) and it reads 6am.

6 freaking am!

 Kris mutters a few more indiscernible curses and he flops over and tries to go to sleep again. He had stayed up late last night unpacking and figuring things out in his new apartments, which was more of a match box than an apartment, but this was all he could find at such short notice.

He had been so desperate to get away from Beijing, so desperate to get away from seeing Yixing smiling adoringly at his new girlfriend every time he went to work that he had taken the first job offer that came his way. Even if it meant leaving behind his family and friends and everything that was familiar back in Canada and ending up in a matchbox in Seoul, South Korea as a English Literature professor in Seoul Dae.

He kicks over a couple of clothes strewn across his bed and tries to get more comfortable. It works for a few minutes but then that damned screeching is back. He doesn’t know if that noise, that abomination, can even be called a screeching. More like a banshee wailing? Or a cat being gutted slowly for a midnight sacrifice? Or some unearthly woman giving birth to an alien? Some kind of weird ritual in Seoul in the morning that he has never heard about? Damn Chanyeol, he did not warn him about things like this.

Kris feels like a zombie in rage when he drags himself out his warm bed over to the glass window. He pushes back the curtain and flings it open to poke his head outside. His room and the balcony of the apartment next to it is separated by barely a feet. Kris looks down, then across to the next balcony and even cranes his head around to see the apartment next to his but sometime between him getting out of bed and opening the window the source of the screeching noise has disappeared.

Which is all very great but the things is he is already fully awake and unable to fall back asleep.

So he throws a hateful look out of his window and kicks at some random books while he stumbles around looking for the box he packed his coffee maker in.

He had been right. Nothing does go the way he wants that day.

His carefully pressed and hung up suit had somehow found its way to the ground in the night and Kris has to go meet the dean and the head of the English department in rumpled clothes.

The ancient (old would not do him justice) taxi driver had trouble figuring out his accent and had taken him to KAIST before he managed to end up in Seoul National University. His stomach had rumbled embarrassingly in front of the dean and he had tripped on his way up a staircase, which half the student body had witnessed.

Trying to figure out convenient coffee spots and grocery stores had been the next hassle because Chanyeol (that betraying rat) had ditched him to go watch Jongin-someone-or-other at some dance showcase.

To add to it all on his way back home the subway had been packed and someone carrying a bulky violin case with a hello kitty sticker on it had bumped into him, making him spill coffee over his favourite shirt. 

All, he thinks as he stabs his key viciously at his door, all because of that stupid screeching at 6 in the morning.

The next day however Kris manages to have a perfect beauty sleep till about 8 in the morning before he has to stumble out of bed to deal with the rest of the world. Yixing had called him last night totally forgetting about the time difference, which did not surprise Kris at all. But it had been painful to listen to him happily rumble on about life back in Canada, life as Kris had known it, life as Kris had been part of, when Kris was thousands of miles away- No longer able to poke at Yixing’s dimple when he smiled, Kris thought, but also no longer able to see Yixing blush when his girlfriend made a surprise visit and hugged him from behind.

His second day at the university goes much better than the first. No tumbling down stairs, no rumbling stomachs, no rumpled suits. Kris concludes that all this good luck has to do with the lack of unearthly screeching noises in the morning.

He is swaying in the subway train back home and happily smiling to himself that the screechy-noise curse has gone away from his life when something heavy knocks against the back of his head and he is pushed forward till his head bangs against the pole he is holding on to.

“THE HELL-” he turns around to glare somebody to death but all he sees is a fluffy blonde head wrestling through the crowd dragging a heavy violin case. He remembers the Hello Kitty sticker on it very well from the day before, when the case had knocked against him just like today. He mutters darkly -his good mood instantly gone.

The next morning the screeching noises are back and Kris is not even surprised when he slips in the subway later that day and spills the contents of his briefcase across the floor of the carriage and gets his fingers trampled as he tries to pick them up.

Two weeks later when Chanyeol crashes his place with ramyeon and soju and a DVD he tells Chanyeol all about the screeching noises and violent violin cases that seem to hate him.

“Hyung….” Chanyeol says as he kicks the DVD player into submission. “I’m not even sure if we are still speaking the same language.”

“Chanyeol-ah, I swear, it’s the most inhuman noise you can ever hear in your life. And EVERYTHING goes wrong on the days I hear it. I think this place is cursed or something.”

Chanyeol kicks the DVD player one last time and it blazes in to life. “Kris…Hyung…seriously. Did you grow up in Canada or in some tribe in Africa? This is the heart of the city, there are no curses. No magic. Even if there were magic it would probably get scouted for an entertainment agency and debuted 3 years later with a fancy name and a pretty photobook – ‘cause that’s what Seoul is like. Now shut up so that we can get drunk.”

Kris pouts at him, which Chanyeol totally ignores as he downs his Soju and starts telling about this super hot dancer friend he has called Jong-something or the other. A few shots later Kris is laughing at Chanyeol trying to imitate Jong-somebody’s dance moves (and failing miserably at it) and he forgets all about the weird noises and the heart he left back at home with a boy who smiled with dimples – at least until he is woken up again the next day before the sun is even out by those very same noises.

A month in Seoul and Kris thinks he should have transferred to a university in Papua New Guinea or Fiji or even the Kalahari Desert because he thinks Seoul is slowly his soul out of him – using a fatal combination of subway accidents, hard violin cases, general bad luck, and noises that wake him up at 6 in the morning. When he tells this to Chanyeol he of course scoffs at him and accuses him of being paranoid and delusional.

At least he had been exempted from teaching duties so far. He only had had to mark some papers and attend faculty meetings and look as if he actually cared about campus student disciplinary issues.

But all that is to change today. It’s his first official day conducting class and he schools his face in to a death mask so as not to show just how nervous he is. He bets some of these students have already witnessed him bumbling about the school falling down staircases and spilling coffees and running around in rumpled suits so he thinks he is already at a disadvantage.

The night before he had gone to sleep dreading the moment he woke up and true to his fears he had woken up to the unholy noises outside his window again. He curses as he got out of bed because no matter what Chanyeol said he just knew that ‘screechy-noise’ days were ‘terrible bad luck days’. He walked to the subway as if he was terrified of what the next step will bring and Chanyeol who was walking with him that day laughed so hard about him being so chicken that he slipped and fell right on his face. This of course helped to make Kris’ mood much better.

“Ah, Kris! Good morning, Good morning, my good man! And how are you feeling about yourself this fine morning? Good, yes?” the dean who barely was tall enough to reach Kris’ chin thumped him on the back heartily. Kris is already tired of the word ‘good’ because nothing about his current life can really be called ‘good’.

“Uh-”

“Well, that’s wonderful! Very good then! Ready for your first day? Ready to wow them with your literally mumbo jumbo?”

“Uh, well-”

“Magnificient! Very good. Very good. ”

Kris thought that he might as well give up trying to talk – Dean Lee seemed to be perfectly happy continuing the conversation on his own.

“I heard they changed your classroom to the other side of the football grounds- budget cuts and what-not, you know. I’m sure you can get a student to show you the way? Ok good then! Good luck, my good man!”

“But sir- I- Class-what?” Kris gaped but Dean Lee just slapped his back jovially a few more times and walked away whistling.

Kris ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated and utterly lost, as he started trekking across the huge football grounds to the other side. Kris texts Chanyeol for moral support but gets no sympathy in return, so he decides not to get Chanyeol any Christmas presents for the next 5 years.

From : Kris

To : Chanlie

8.42am

‘It is real! The curse is real! It’s happening today too!’

From : Chanyeol the Awesome

To : Paranoid-Galaxy

8.45am

‘Stop being such a girl’

By the time he gets to the other side of the grounds he is sweaty and his hair is not so perfect anymore and he is already 5 minutes late for class. He just hates sweating so so much, he glares at a couple of students who scamper away when they see his murderous expression.

Kris remembers too late that he has no idea where the new literature classroom is and he could have used one of those students to find the way, but they are already long gone. He huffs his way down the corridor when he spots a fluffy blonde head turning around the corner.

“Hey!” he calls out! “Hey! Haksaeng!”

The student saunters away happily as if Kris is not shouting at him from barely 6 feet away. Kris feels his annoyance levels rise by scary amounts.

“Hey! Hey you! Haksaeng! Can’t you hear I’m calling you!”

The blonde head jumps a little and whirls around to face him. “Who? Haksaeng? Me?”

Kris blinks at him. And then he blinks some more.

The student blinks back, confused.

Kris tries really hard, but he thinks he forgot all his Korean, maybe all his English too, he might have a light grasp of some mandarin but he isn’t sure even that will make much sense right now because holy how can anybody’s hair be so shinny? Like molten gold, his brain supplies. And those eyes- wide and clear and bright enough to blind a man if he stared at them for too long.

“Um…” it takes Kris’ brain a few seconds to clear his mind and then a few more to remember his Korean. It also occurs to him that he is currently having highly inappropriate thoughts about a student who looks to be light years younger than him.

“Um, you are late for class.” What?! That was so not what he was supposed to say, Kris feels like he wants to bang his head against a wall.

For some reason the student is grinning at him as if he knows exactly what was going through Kris’ mind right then. “No, I’m not-sir.” His hesitance and his tone when he said the last word sounds to Kris like he is making fun of him- and enjoying it a lot.

Kris pulls himself up to his full height and pats down his hair while he tries to find his scattered confidence. He clears his throat a little.

“You must know where the new literature section is at. Show me to the lecture hall before you go back to your class without being even more late.” He commands.

The student raises his eyebrows at him. “Well, won’t I be even more late if I stick around showing you classrooms?”

Rude little devil child. But unfortunately rude little devil child was the only person around at the moment so he will have to do. Kris sighed, life was so hard.

“Just show me the damn classroom. Please.” he adds begrudgingly.

The student smils at him, smug and full of impish mirth, and Kris has to look away from the brightness of it. He feels a little unstable – like he might either want to hug that smile or wipe it off that face with his fist. And neither one of those were an acceptable option for a respectable lecturer, nope, not at all.  This is all probably side-effects of that screechy noise curse, he thinks as he follows the student up the staircase and down a wide corridor littered with colourful student notice boards.

“Here you go. The English lecture hall.” The twinkly-eyed student makes a wide sweeping gesture towards the door.

Kris nods. “OK. off to class you go then.”

The student did not move, staring at him with an arrogantly expectant look on his face.

Kris sighs. “Thank you.”

The student beams at him and then flounces away as if he had all the time in the world to get back to class. Kris huffs and turns sharply towards the classroom door but unfortunately he had forgotten just how close he was standing to it.

BAM.

There were stars and unicorns and angry birds floating in front of his eyes and damn his head hurt like a-

Kris is interrupted in his swearing by a sharp giggle followed by a ringing sound of laughter. He looked up to see the blonde student doubled over in laughter clutching in stomach and then looked to the side to see that his whole class had just seen him bang his head on the door through the glass windows. Kris groans as he tries to gather his wits and enter the classroom looking as dignified as possible. He wishes that the blow to his head had just killed him and saved him all this humiliation but then life never was that easy for him.

“Hey, Mr. Wu. How was class today?” Minseok, the algebra lecturer asks as Kris finally makes it back to the staff room in one piece.

Kris tried smiling pleasantly. Yixing has always warned him against it, saying that it made him look like a shark grinning just before gobbling up Nemo. “It was good. Half the class was asleep but then it did miracles for the noise levels.”

Minseok smiles in his ever-friendly way and walks away with his coffee mug to pull at Heechul, the professor in charge of the drama department that Kris had learned early on never to cross paths with. Kris watches them for a moment as Minseok pokes at heechul’s hair and gets beaten to the floor with a thick file folder in retaliation.  He longs for Canada and Yixing a little more -  same staff room, different country, and a tall man poking at a dimple and getting hit by thick music note files very much the same way.

But no, he was in Korea for a reason. Thinking about the past and the gone was definitely not part of it.

He places his brief case in his cubicle and picks up some fliers about the upcoming Literature Club meetings that he is supposed to put up. He is almost done pinning them up on the board just outside the staff room when a voice suddenly speaks up right next to him.

“Whatcha upto?”

Kris jumps a mile in the air and the last tack pin sinks into his thumb quite painfully. He curses as he drops the pin and his thumb to relieve the pain. He turns around with a glare. It only takes him a minute to place the blonde student from earlier that day who is smiling at him wide and bright, almost bouncing on heels with some sort of inexplicable cheerfulness. Kris groans inwardly. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a class to get to?” he asks his voice more hostile than what he had expected.

“Nope.” Comes the merry reply as Blondie (as Kris had now come to call the student) bounces on his heels again.

Kill me now, kill me please, he prays to the unknown screechy-noise curse that surely must be the cause of all this bad luck.

“Well, don’t you have friends to hang out with or something? Instead of hanging around the teachers’ lounge?”

“Hey! I have plenty of friends ok. I’m just in the process of making a new one!” his tone springs excitedly back and forth between a few high notes and the stupidly dazzling smile is displayed again.

Making a new friend? Surely, surely he cannot mean – Kris gapes at him. They had talked for barely five minutes and he was a professor for crying out loud! He thought students in Korea were supposed to be more respectful, all sonsaeng-nim this and sonsaeng-nim that and 90 degree bows. Really today was just too much, he couldn’t believe that Chanyeol still thinks his curse theory is ridiculous.

“So! Are you done with your lectures for the day? What are your plans for after school?” a head bobble here and wide grin there and Kris felt a really bad headache starting to pound behind his eyes. “Oh and how’s your forehead feeling?” Blondie seemed to have taken his shocked silence as an invitation to babble.

“Look here, haksaeng- this is a little too much. I am a professor here and this is all just plain disrespectful.” Kris tries to make his voice as stern as possible but Blondie just bobs his head up and down vigorously at his words reminding Kris strongly of bobble-headed pencil ends. He doesn’t seem at all fazed by Kris’ words.

“Seriously! I barely met you and you are not even in my class and you are the kind of student to get late to class which I really, really hate and my thumb hurts like hell and-” oh, my god, now he is the one who is babbling and he can’t stop! “and it’s not as if I haven’t had enough already, I mean, why won’t Chanyeol believe me about the curse?, it has to be real, just look at you-“ Kris gestures wildly at Blondie’s form and he merely tilts his head to the side watching Kris as if he is morbidly fascinated by Kris’ rant. “ you are the best proof that I am cursed because like what did I even do to deserve getting stalked by students. I mean wasn’t the fall in the train yesterday enough? Or spilling coffee on professor Heechul and nearly getting chopped to pieces? Or day before yesterday when that kid in the road called me harabeoji and wanted to know if I had trouble crossing the road? and then-”

Kris feels horrifically disconnected with his own self as he goes on and on and he feels like he is watching himself commit social suicide (in front of a student of all people!) from afar. He wants to stop, tries really hard to but it’s like his mouth just won’t stop.

“So then I wake up every damn morning at- ”

“Um...Excuse me?”

Kris’ voice stutters to an end and his dignity dies a burning, painful death as he realizes just what he had been doing. He whirls around to face whoever interrupted his rant to cover up for his embarrassment and sees another student behind shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. Kris thinks he recognizes him vaguely from his morning lecture.

“Um, yes? Kyungsoo, was it? What do you want?” he asks, his voice slightly rough with all the talking he did and stern trying to recover his poise.

“Um I wanted to talk to you professor….” his wide eyes shift away nervously from Kris’ face, maybe because he spotted that he was on the verge of exploding.

Kris doesn’t think he can deal with student issues and literary techniques before he goes to the tallest building in the school and tries to fling himself off it – if nothing else to erase the memory of baring his mind like a lunatic to a student who seemed to be stalking him.

“I am a bit busy right now and I think this is my lunch hour can you come back later?”

“Um, no.” the student twists on the balls of his feet apprehensively again. “Not you, Professor Wu. I wanted to talk to professor Lu.”

“Professor who?” Kris whirls around and only finds Blondie still grinning at him widely there. He looks back at Kyungsoo, confusedly.

“Professor Lu.” The student explains again patiently and points behind Kris.

Kris turns back to Blondie with a dawning sense of horror and notices for the first time that day that Blondie is dressed in a smart slacks-dress shirt with the arms folded up combination that a university student would never be caught dead in. holy mother of kimchi, did he by any chance-

“Yup, Professor Lu. That’s me.” Blondie points at himself and then cheerfully pats Kris’ shoulder, that wide, frog-like smile never leaving his face. “It seems I am needed elsewhere right now but I will be back soon and we can continue the talk about this um…fascinating curse that seems to be bothering you, alright?”

Kris watches dumbfounded as Blondie walks away with Kyungsoo after a final disgustingly cheery wave in his direction, talking in a soothing voice to the student.

“So…you finally met Luhan.”

Kris turns to find Minseok with his coffee mug and a highly amused expression leaning against the door frame of the staff room and behind him is Heechul and Jonghyun clutching each other and laughing at him like madmen.

He lets out a whine of despair and wishes that by some miracle a vehicle will come careening through the school corridor and run over him, relieving him from this life with instant death.

*haksaeng = student

*Sonsaeng-nim = teacher

*harabeoji = grandfather

A/N : Ok, I don’t know about you guys but I hate this fic already. I don’t know I just do. This idea, Kris and Luhan meeting each other in seven different lifetimes, sounded so nice in my head I just wish there was someone better to actually write that idea into a fic.   ◡︿◡ ✿


 

Also I’m sorry I put up the forward without actually starting to write this so the update is very late.  I also recently got a bad case of Super Junior feels (Kyuhyun and Heechul are ruining my life!) and I can’t seem to find my way around exo feels these days. Not to mention college is slowly out my soul!  I am truly sorry for making you guys wait and then giving you this.

Oh and Marya if you are around reading this I hope your hand is better now ^_^ <3