apocryphal has made a trailer for DLWL!

(Also, it would be appreciated if you could all read the a/n at the end.)

I'm surprised so many of you thought that the epilogue would be a wedding scene or something.  You should know DLWL better than that by now...

I figured something was up when I had not two people but three coming to watch me graduate with my Master’s degree.  My mum and dad were there, of course – Railing having been left at home because he had gone from being an excitable little husky to an excitable big husky, and with them was a tall man with closely cropped hair who I hadn’t seen for about four years.

Or rather, who I hadn’t seen in the flesh, because I’d seen him plenty of times on computer and TV screens and we still more or less kept in touch.  I was so surprised that I stopped dead on stage and stared, wondering if my eyes were deceiving me, and almost forgot to take my degree certificate from the university’s Vice Chancellor.

I didn’t get a chance to speak to him until the celebrations started afterwards and I was able to fight my way towards my parents through the stampede, though there was nearly a moment where I almost did a Simba and clung to the one tree in the private garden everybody had been herded into.  Thankfully, having such a tall companion made it easier to spot them.  It was sort of like having a lighthouse to help you navigate.

“What are you doing here?” I demanded Kris as I came up alongside him and stole his glass of champagne.

He let me have it.  “Well, I feel loved.  I came all the way across from China to watch you graduate and this is the welcome I get?”

“You were in Paris on a fashion shoot,” I corrected him, finishing the champagne in my hand and stealing the second flute from his.  He let me have that one, too.  “And according to the internet, you have somewhere in the region of seven million followers at least on social media.  I’d say that’s very loved.”

He sniffed and stole his champagne back.  “It’s different when you know somebody personally.  Where’s Sehun?”

“Er....”  I looked awkwardly at my feet as my parents’ heads snapped towards me.  They clearly wanted to know the same thing – after all, Sehun had promised after being unable to come to my BA graduation that he’d come to the next one.  It was just unfortunate that EXO had happened to be on tour that time round, and while he and one of the managers had been prepared to say that he was on sick leave for a few days to get him over to the UK (the rest of EXO had been perfectly happy with this too), he’d unfortunately been caught in disguise at the airport by three fans who could have outdone DoNotReply when it came to stalking.  He and the manager had decided it was best not to incur the wrath of the immutable Fan Goddess and providence had struck in the form of the mega-celebrity IU returning from a tour in Japan at that moment.  There had apparently been a video from back in debut days where Sehun had confessed to liking women older than him, and after Sehun and the manager had approached IU and asked her if she could possibly do them a favour and let them ride back to Seoul in the car waiting for her, a gigantic scandal had erupted.  I’m still not sure how Sehun convinced IU to play along, but bizarrely everybody bought into the idea that they were dating.  While some fans were against any idols dating at all and practically advocating the use of chastity belts on all celebrities, most fans liked it better than the idea of Sehun potentially dating a foreigner.  Even though it had never been confirmed, it had sort of become general knowledge for some smarter and more involved fans.

“He said he’d come when I get my doctorate,” I told them.  Kris looked scandalised and my mother horrified at the idea of yet more debt and time spent at university, but a thoughtful expression passed across my dad’s face.

“Oh, good idea,” he said.

My parents left me and Kris to catch up while they went to embarrass some of my friends.  For several moments, there was an awkward silence.  I broke it in possibly the worst way.

“You never did end up telling me why you quit EXO.”

Kris shuddered.  “Oh God.  That.”  Closing his eyes, he grimaced.  “Well, following the success of Wolf and Growl, the company decided that for the next full album after Overdose, we should play it safe and stick to a Wolf and Growl concept again.  I wouldn’t have minded if it was actually a decent concept, but Wolf was already pretty dire, and they decided that this time round they wanted the title tracks to mirror that and they commissioned Bear and Grunt.  No way in hell was I sticking around for those.”

“Luhan sent me the demos for those,” I admitted.  “They sounded absolutely atrocious.”

“Yeah, that was why he jumped ship.”  Kris sniffed and looked around.  “The others all started threatening to pull the plug one by one after that, so the company changed the concept to Exodus as a kind of taking-the-piss and I think Tao took it seriously, the little goofball.”

I had to suppress a laugh.

“This is weird,” said Kris, changing the subject as he began looking around him.  “Luhan definitely said that Sehun would be here.”

I narrowed my eyes at him.  I hadn’t seen Luhan in a while either – that had become harder after he and Tao and Kris had left EXO, though I did try to pop across to China to visit him whenever I was in the Far East.

“What are you planning?” I demanded.

“Oh, nothing, nothing.”  He waved an airy hand.

“You know, Kris, you might be an actor, but you can’t lie to me.  I’ve taken two degrees in bullsh*t, so I think I’m the master on that front now.”

He looked down at me for a moment or two, clearly contemplating whether or not it was worth telling me.

“I have no idea what they’re planning,” he admitted.  “But it’s been a while since I last came to London, so care to accompany me sightseeing?  I’ve been told I need to go to various different places, and I have another two days free, so....”  He shrugged.

I groaned.  This happened every time one of the EXO boys had a friend who came over to the UK.  Last time, Kai had sent Ravi across with a couple of boys from a band called VIXX.  N had just wanted to party, but Ravi wasn’t too fond of alcohol and had insisted on going to the Last Night of the Proms.  And let me tell you, being a Prommer standing at the front with some crazy Korean guy pulling out all his dance moves for a song called Voodoo Doll while everybody’s blasting out Jerusalem is... not an experience I’d recommend.  By any standards.  I’m still not sure how Ravi managed to keep such a straight face.  I think Hyuk managed it because I hadn’t seen anything other than a straight face from him for the entire trip.  The time before that, Donghae had wanted to get into Buckingham Palace and it had taken quite a lot to prevent him from picking a fight with one of the guards.  (In Donghae’s defence, he’d been drunk, but the guard really hadn’t been impressed with him insisting that he was a celebrity, so he should be allowed in anyway.)  Amber had been great fun and very low maintenance, which had been a huge relief, especially after Minho had asked me to look after Key’s friend Woohyun and conveniently forgot to tell me that Woohyun’s entire band was coming across on vacation with him.  Chasing the Infinite boys around London had been an absolute nightmare.  It was only later that I found out that their penchant for escaping and running around cities was the result of a TV show.

“Okay,” I said.  “So where do you want to go?”

“The Eiffel Tower.”

“That’s in Paris.”

He flashed two tickets at me with a grin.  I caught sight of the eurostar logo on them and nearly cried.

“No.”

At eight-thirty the next morning, we were sitting in a coffee shop near the base of the Eiffel Tower munching on croissants, and Kris looked significantly more awake than I did.  He was scrolling through the newsfeed on his phone, happily commenting on how surreal it was to get out of China and suddenly find yourself with a couple of thousand more Instagram followers, or another eight hundred and fifty-seven notifications on Facebook (though he still preferred Weibo), when his phone screamed “Kakao!” at him, making a couple of nearby pigeons take off in fright, and he looked up and beamed at me.

“Luhan says they’ve found Sehun.”

“Great,” I said, not entirely sure why this was so important.  “Did you tell my parents you were abducting me?”

Kris had stolen my phone, so I’d had no way of informing them myself.

“No, they already knew,” he said, going back to his notifications.  I slumped back in my chair.

“Is this another thing that you guys have plotted with my dad?”

Kris put down his phone and looked at me.  “Hey, what’s with the accusations of plotting?  I had nothing to do with this!”

“Then what are you doing here?”

That one stumped him for a moment, and then he gave me a gummy grin.  “Sightseeing.”

“Kris, I’m sure you’ve been up the Eiffel Tower plenty of times before.”

“Not with you, I haven’t.”

I glared up at him from my chair but gave in.

At quarter to nine, we were in the queue, and by ten, we were up on the third floor looking out over Paris.  Kris remarked on how windy it was, and even though I’d been to the Eiffel Tower before, I couldn’t help thinking how different the experience was to Namsan Tower.  For a start, there were families on the Eiffel Tower, and people who were clearly friends, whereas going to Namsan Tower without a date really makes you feel like the most enormous third wheel.  Though I guess that that one time I went with Sehun had kind of been a date.

The second big difference was that it was possible to walk up and down it (though Kris and I had opted for the lift up), and the third was that the view wasn’t obstructed in any way by thick glass that showed up your reflection whenever you tried to take a photo.  But it did mean, as Kris said, that it was very, very windy.  It also meant that the selfie Kris leant over the balustrade to take of us ended up being very, very ugly, and I regretted my decision to finally grow my hair out because it got all over my face, including some strands in my mouth.

Laughing, Kris sent the photo to somebody and then tucked his phone into his pocket.  I was too tired to steal it off him to delete the picture, but then again, the damage was already done.

I thought the trip was, too, when we finally made it off the Eiffel Tower, because all we really did after that until evening was wander around the streets of Paris and eat crêpes, but as the sun was setting, I found myself on a bridge over the Seine river staring at a padlock clipping a small spongebag on the railings.  It was a very familiar padlock, and I was also pretty sure that France had, in recent years, been pretty keen on clamping down on the Love Locks, because there wasn’t another padlock in sight.

I narrowed my eyes at the lone padlock and the spongebag.

“Kris,” I said suspiciously.  “Why is Railing’s lucky collar padlock on a bridge in France?”

He shrugged.  I pursed my lips.  Kris had been with me the entire day.  The municipal government in Paris was actually stricter about padlocks than it was about graffiti, or so Jason had told me.  That meant that somebody else had probably been in Paris to set this up, especially since Railing had still had the padlock this morning when I left the house.  With a sigh, I gave in and pulled out a hairpin to undo the lock and get it off the fence.  It belonged to Railing anyway; I was going to need to take it home.

I ended up reading the message Sehun had written on it back however long ago it had been and then tucked the padlock into my pocket.  Time to see what was in the spongebag, since it was so evidently intended for me.

It contained three slips of paper.  The first was a boarding pass for a very early morning flight the next day back ho—

To Vienna.  My jaw dropped in horror and I whirled around.

“Kris!  Just what the hell is goi—?”

He’d vanished, and I was alone on the bridge, without my phone, and without money.  And my passport, I now saw, was lying at my feet.  With a yell of frustration, I picked it up and popped it into the spongebag, since it was now all the luggage I had.

“Kris, you b*stard!” I shouted loudly.  There was no response.  Aggravated, I returned to the other two items in the spongebag.

The second biggest piece of paper was a ticket to a Viennese opera for the following evening.  Great.  So now I was supposed to get my arse over to Vienna for no apparent reason and just... go to the opera.  Because why not? I asked myself sarcastically.  Just what I always wanted to do with my life.

The third piece of paper looked like it had been printed out and guillotined.  Fitting, since it was France.  It contained a rhyming couplet.

What would one not give for thee,

Sweetest beauty, lovely Leigh?

I just blinked at it, not sure how to respond, and turned it over.

I was faced with another rhyming couplet.

Paris, as Leigh now discovers,

Is the city of young lovers.

Somebody had drawn a little winky emoticon after it.  I scoffed and shoved the paper back into the spongebag.  There was only one person I knew who was cheesy enough to do this, and Luhan was going to be giving me answers in Vienna tomorrow.

That was what I had thought, at any rate.  Instead, I was greeted by Chanyeol when I arrived at the airport, and the very first thing he did was treat me to Viennese cake.  Every time I tried to speak, he would shovel more into my mouth, insisting that it was a delicacy.  I’d heard something about delicious chocolate cakes being part of the Austrian national cuisine, so I didn’t complain too much about that, but it didn’t stop me from trying to voice my questions once I’d finished eating the thing.

“Why are you here?” I asked.  “Where’s Luhan?”

Chanyeol beamed at me.  “No clue.”

“And what’s Luhan planning?  What’s he doing to Sehun?”

Chanyeol just shrugged.  “I dunno.  I was just handed a plane ticket and told to take you round Vienna.”

At that, I perked up a bit.  It was the first time I’d been to Austria, and as far as I knew, wandering around Vienna with only a young guy my age wouldn’t be misconstrued for us dating the same way it would in Paris.  And Vienna apparently had interesting things to see, too.  My mum had said something about palaces, at any rate.

“So what are we starting with?” I asked him, hoping that he’d at least had the sense to look the place up first.

“Shopping.”

“Sounds great!” I enthused, until the words registered.  “Wait, what?  Why?”

I had a suitcase with me on the train over to Venice, solely for stashing in the luxurious white ball gown that Chanyeol had bought for me.  There had been a mandatory selfie in it in front of the opera house – taken by Chanyeol, of course.  I still wasn’t sure why he had insisted on white, or a ball gown (though, granted, I didn’t feel that overdressed going to the opera with him that night, considering what everybody else was wearing), and the poem I’d discovered on the nightstand in the hotel room (Chanyeol had vanished by the time I went to demand if he’d put it there) was four lines this time instead of two sets of rhyming couplets.

Home to opera, Strauss and Sissi,

Fair Vienna, my Queen, stage of love.

In the opera house of this wondrous city.

Fly the songs of amour, my dove.

I was dead certain that Sehun hadn’t written it.

Out on the platform, I was almost bowled over by Chen.

“The ambulances are speedboats!” he yelled in very excited Korean, and I forgot about the weirdness of why I was even in Italy because Venice with Chen was obviously going to be a rave.

It was a very sedate rave, though, serenaded by a gondolier on a gondola, with Chen murmuring in my ear every few seconds that he wanted to sing.  Eventually, he worked up the courage to ask the gondolier if he could sing a duet with him.  The man happily obliged and Chen plucked out an old Italian song I hadn’t even known he knew, beaming at me as he sang it.

He snapped a selfie of us with the gondolier, too, who looked a bit confused that Chen hadn’t kissed me.

The poem I found in the hostel that night confused me.

Lovely Leigh,

Everything a man could want

In human form

Get in there!

Hallelujah.

The change of tone was just...

Weird.

I went to ask Chen about it, but just as with Kris and Chanyeol, he’d vanished.  On his bed was a train ticket to Florence.

The culprit himself greeted me in a fit of giggles as I exited Florence station in a very grumpy mood.

“What are you trying to do?” I grouched to Luhan, refusing to play ball as he pushed me around, trying to get me in the perfect position to take a nice selfie over the river Arno.

Luhan almost dissolved in another fit of giggles.  “Get a good photo of you, obviously.”

I stuffed my hands rebelliously into my pockets and scowled.  A young Italian couple walked by, hand in hand, and pointed at us.

“If the wind changes, you’re going to be stuck looking ugly,” Luhan cooed, prodding at my cheek.

“I don’t care,” I said crossly as another young couple walked past and pointed at us.  “I want to know why I was uprooted from my graduation celebrations to be sent cavorting across Europe.”

Luhan ignored me.  “Say cheese!”

I looked away, out across the stunning view over the river.  It wa