***Note***

I was originally going to post this chapter today, and then all the stuff came out with Kris this morning.  Whatever Kris' reasons for wanting to leave, I respect his desicions and I just hope that it can be solved quickly and painlessly for all involved, but given SM's track record and all the stuff going on with social media at the moment, it's already getting messy and I'm sensing another JYJ/TVXQ.  Obviously, the resolution I'd like most would be for him to continue in EXO, but I somehow doubt that will happen.  Still, there are fun memories.  I might be able to listen to EXO's songs again at some point in the future.

Also, I wish people wouldn't start hating on the other members for their reactions.  Maybe they were forced.  Maybe they genuinely didn't know, in which case what they've said and done is UNDERSTANDABLE.  They're human too, and they're hurt too.  All we can really take away from this is that there are circumstances surrounding Kris that he wasn't happy about, so he's taking a legal route to solve them, and the other EXO members are hurt.  And they'll be hurt whether or not their accounts are being manipulated and whether or not they were forced to say things and whether or not they already knew and whether or not they agree with what Kris is doing and whether or not they've spoken out.  Sehun's and Chanyeol's instagrams were ambiguous at best – I don't know why they're getting hate.

Actually, I was considering stopping writing this fanfic full stop, but I already have twenty-eight chapters of it written and I think it'll be under sixty in total.  Considering I was on the brink of leaving the K-pop world anyway before this happened, I think I'll finish off the fic as an expiation of all the confusion I'm feeling right now and then see where things stand.

And on second thoughts, if you take the chapter title out of its humorous context (i.e. Deer Luhan), it feels somewhat appropriate to today.  I just hope that this has the capacity to make somebody cheer up and smile, even though it may not be the best time to post anything.

Over and out.

Deer Luhan,

I think you’re going to have to do a lot to repair your manly image when you return.  I just can’t pull macho stuff when I’m sick.  Sorry….

Leigh

Mono or not, when I woke up the next morning, I was feeling absolutely grim.  I must have looked absolutely grim, too, because when I staggered out of the room to give the manager the English version of Memory Lane, he stared at me in Lay’s JPG mode for so long I almost thought he’d turned to stone, and I very nearly felt my head for Medusa’s snake hair.

“You need to go back to bed,” were the only words that made it out of his mouth as he took the sheets of paper off me.

D.O. popped up beside me, holding me steady as the room spun and I threatened to pitch nose first onto the ground.

“Sehun’s not feeling too great either,” he said.  “He’s slept most of it off and thinks the fever should be gone by midday, so he’ll be along to the company then.”

The manager just nodded, and D.O. turned his attentions back to me.

“Come on, hyung.  You ought never to have got up in the first place.”

“I seriously regret it,” I croaked at him.  My voice was thick and cracked, totally unrecognisable either as not Luhan’s or mine.  “I feel like a cat is clawing its way out of my throat and I’m sure you could fry an egg on my forehead.”

D.O. took me into the bathroom and began hunting around in a cupboard for medical supplies.  I sat down on the toilet seat in a bid to calm my spinning head.  It didn’t really work.

“Say ah,” D.O. instructed, shoving a load of bottles and boxes into my arms.  I opened my mouth, not even attempting to speak, and he shone a torch inside with one hand while he used the other to hold a thermometer he’d stuck in my ear.

“Wow,” he said.  “I actually think you don’t have what Sehun has.”  The thermometer beeped and he removed it from my ear to check it.  He winced.

“Get some of this inside you and then go straight back to bed.”  He held up one of the many bottles I was balancing on my lap.  He began packing away all the stuff I didn’t need.

“What exactly is wrong with Sehun?” I managed to rasp out.

“Mild illness and temperature brought on by sheer exhaustion,” D.O. told me.  “You, on the other hand, are legitimately ill.  As in, if you’re still like this on the sixteenth, you won’t be able to fly back home and there will be a shedload of awkward explaining to do.”

“But the sixteenth is only four—” I coughed “—days away.”

“Exactly.”  D.O. took the bottle out of my hands, shook it, opened it, and then tilted my head back so that he could pour some of the bottle’s contents down my throat.  “I think it’s easiest if Baekhyun, Chen and I sing Luhan’s song, you know.  It’ll save him getting worked up about learning the English lyrics in half a day and trying to perfect the choreography.  I’m actually surprised your vocal chords are functioning at the moment.  I don’t think anybody’s going to be expecting ‘Luhan’ to be on form for about a week now, so it’ll make the transition back to the real Luhan easier.”

“Why?” I asked him, pushing the bottle away.  “What’s happened to my vocal chords?”

“Trust me: you don’t want to know.  I’d describe what your throat currently looks like, but it’s gross and you need to sleep.  Preferably without nightmares.”

I nodded.  Sleep sounded good.

“And no hanky-panky in the sickroom with Sehun.  We need him well for the seventeenth, and I don’t want the germs spreading to my side of the room.”

I was feeling too horrendous to even respond appropriately to that, so I just let D.O. help me to my feet and back to my room.

Sehun was sitting up in his bed, talking quietly to Kai, who had apparently broken down in muffled hysterics when Sehun woke up and freaked out.  I’d actually been unconscious at the time.  The maknae was holding a bowl of soup in both hands and sipping from it every now and again.  D.O. pushed me down onto the bed before I got a chance to do or say anything, but I didn’t really mind.  The bed was comfortable, and it meant I didn’t have to stand.

“Leigh might be contagious, so watch out,” D.O. said.  Sehun and Kai stopped talking and looked up.

“We’re going to have to disinfect before Luhan gets back,” Sehun sighed.  “I’m pretty sure he doesn’t yet know Leigh’s using his bed, so he’s going to go ape.”

“It’s totally his fault,” Kai argued.

There was a pause.

“True,” D.O. and Sehun chorused together.

“Hang on a second,” Sehun went on, pointing first at me and then at D.O.  “If Leigh’s contagious and I’m just exhausted, that means we don’t have the same thing, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” D.O. admitted.

Sehun smiled tiredly.  “Then the pair of you can stop teasing me about last night.”

“D*mn,” muttered Kai.

“Dream on,” D.O. told Sehun.  “I’m never going to l