Deer Luhan,

This week, I’ve discovered why I’d never, ever want to be a celebrity.  It’s fine when things are going well, except perhaps a few over-zealous fans who try to steal your underwear, but when things go wrong… you need mental health like a brick wall or a bulldozer of an immunity system.  It’s horrible.  I hope you’re not going to get any of this thrown at you when you come back.

Leigh

“Let me get this straight,” Baekhyun said around a mouthful of hospital food.  “You ended up in Korea posing as Luhan because the manager thought you were concussed and drunk and you didn’t have enough coffee to tell something was wrong before you got on the plane?”

I went tomato red.  “Yeah, pretty much.”

Baekhyun laughed for a second, but then winced with pain and contented himself with a smirk.

“For starters, why did nobody think it was a good idea to take you to hospital, and doesn’t that mean you’re worryingly addicted to caffeine?”

I just grimaced.  Baekhyun lifted up his bowl of soup with his left hand and slurped down the entire thing in one shot.

“I think that’s one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard,” he told me.  “Who else knows you’re a girl?”

“Pretty much all of K now,” I told him.  While it had taken our manager under a full hour and hundreds of angsty calls to cancel all our upcoming activities until after Christmas, it had taken Baekhyun a full day and several angsty calls to Luhan before he’d come round to the whole idea of it being more than mine and Luhan’s life’s worth to rat me out.  From his body posture – he’d cramped himself over on the other side of the bed and had still been pretty pissed off with me over getting shot when Chanyeol had finally allowed me into the room that morning – he was still uncomfortable being near me, but he was at least making an effort to be nice.

“So how did everybody find out?” he asked me.

“Well, it was Luhan’s idea,” I began, ticking them all off on my fingers.  “I told Sehun myself and it wasn’t until we were in international airspace that he believed me.  You heard me discussing it with Luhan; Chanyeol has brains; D.O. overheard Sehun flipping his sh*t at Luhan and may or may not have seen me in pyjamas; and Kai kind of accidentally felt me up.”

Baekhyun choked on his water.  I almost reached across and patted him on the back, but he coughed it out.

“Kai kind of accidentally felt you up,” he echoed.  “Wow.”

“Wait!”  I waved my hands frantically.  “That makes it sound worse than it actually was!”

He leant back against the raised mattress and looked over at me.  “So what actually happened with Kai?”

“I tripped when he was re-teaching me all the dances and he caught me around the chest.  His hands were here and he seemed kind of surprised….”  I gestured.

Baekhyun raised an eyebrow.  “You mean he full out d you, not ‘kind of’ felt you up.”

“It’s not—!  But… oh God.  He didn’t mean it!”

“Kai’s a straight guy,” Baekhyun told me, struggling to speak around his laughter.  “Are you sure?”

“Kai’s not erted,” I eventually managed, but that only made him laugh harder.  “Okay, I know that sounds ridiculous coming from me, but he’s really not.  And stop laughing – it’s going to hurt you.”

He managed to get himself back under control, but he was still wincing with pain.

“I’m still quite surprised none of us just… well, noticed,” he said eventually.

“Oh, me too,” I agreed.  “But I have kind of been trying to make sure that you wouldn’t, and since Sehun, D.O. and Kai have been helping, it’s been easier.  Not to mention that everybody actually believed I was concussed and forgot a year’s worth of stuff.”

“It is a bit implausible, isn’t it?”  Baekhyun jabbed a chopstick in the direction of my head.  “But you did have a head wound that kept opening up and bleeding.”

“My mum threw a plate at me,” I explained.

He set the chopstick down.

“A plate?” he repeated.

“Yeah.  She wasn’t thrilled I’d dyed my hair pink.”

“Luhan was.  Sehun still is.  That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah, of all the rotten luck, I look like Luhan in the first place and then I get the same hair— wait.  What do you mean, Sehun’s still thrilled?”

“Well, he likes you, doesn’t he?” Baekhyun said, looking a little puzzled.  “Isn’t that what all this HunHan is Ree Lee real thing is about?  He’s been super-overprotective recently.”

“Oh, that?  No, that’s just D.O. and Kai being tools because Sehun and Luhan are terrified of my mum’s retribution if I don’t return home in one piece, and everybody’s been copying them because they think it’s funny.”

“It is funny,” Baekhyun agreed.  “We used to tease Luhan and Sehun before, but it only went so far because they were both straight.  But now there’s a girl who looks like Sehun’s best friend when Sehun’s often shipped with his best friend living in the same room as him.  I mean, who wouldn’t take advantage of that?”  He grinned at me.  It was the same kind of grin as D.O.’s sugar-salt one.  “Still doesn’t explain why he’s being quite so possessive.”

I tried not to let myself be rankled.  “Luhan’s his best friend.  I’m posing as Luhan.  Sehun feels responsible because his best friend got me abducted.  If I vanish, Luhan might get killed.  Sehun doesn’t want his best friend killed.  Therefore, Sehun has to look after me.  If Sehun doesn’t look after me, people discover I’m not Luhan, therefore Luhan gets killed.  Also, I’m younger than Sehun, and D.O. says he’s a sincere guy who would naturally look after somebody in this situation.  Q.E.D.  Kapeesh.  Boom.  Explanation.  Comprendo?”

“You’re younger than Sehun?” Baekhyun asked in surprise.  “I thought you’d have Luhan’s baby face too.  Why are you using banmal with me?  You’re, like, the ultimate maknae right now.”

“Yes, but as far as almost the entire world is concerned, I’m Luhan and I’m therefore your hyung.”

Baekhyun looked scandalised.  “That is so mucked up on so many levels.”

“If it helps, just consider it permanent yaja time.  With a gender switch.”

This made Baekhyun groan.  He closed his eyes and tilted his head back.  “Oh, God.  Next time Tao demands yaja time, it’s going to get so meta.”

“Me doing a cross-dressing stage with Kai would have been even more meta,” I argued.

“No it wouldn’t,” said Baekhyun, opening his eyes again.  “Because, for you, that wouldn’t have been cross-dressing.  But inverting ages, would you have been operating on Luhan’s age or your own age?  See, you could have chosen to sit through the abuse and get us back later, but then we’d never listen to you because we know you’re actually younger, or you could have chosen to give the abuse, but as Luhan you’re second eldest and EXO-M doesn’t know you’re not actually Luhan, so they would have given you even more abuse, and then you’d have to get them back later as the second-eldest when you’re actually the youngest of all of us.  That’s meta.  And speaking of EXO-M, what are you going to do when you fly back to China after Christmas?  Can you even speak Chinese?”

“你可以跟我一起洗澡吗? (nǐ kě yǐ gēn wǒ yī qǐ xǐ zǎo ma?),” I asked.  “First phrase I learnt.  D.O. told me to run if Tao ever says it to me.”

Baekhyun’s expression, which had been confused when I first said the phrase, turned amused.

“‘Will you shower with me?’ was the first phrase you learnt?”

“Sehun said it was essential,” I muttered.  Baekhyun was grinning widely again.  This was not going to end well.

“Uh huh,” he said, nodding.  “So Sehun thought it was essential to teach you how to ask people to shower with you.”

I dropped my head into my hands.  “You’re making it sound so erted.”

“It is erted.  Did Sehun agree?”

“That it’s erted?”

“No, to shower with you, of course.”

“Baekhyun!”

“Sehun’s kind of shy when it comes to girls,” he continued mercilessly.  “He probably taught you that so you could ask him so he could agree because he’s too awkward to ask you himself.”

I gritted my teeth and raised my head to glare at him.  “Baekhyun.  I’m only going to say this once, so please listen.  Sehun is not erted like that.  Sehun also does not have a crush on me.  HunHan isn’t real, and pseudo HunHan also is not real.  Can you give me a break?  And give Sehun a break, too.  I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

Baekhyun gave me killer puppy eyes.  “You’re such a killjoy.”  He pouted.  “I’d be doing this to D.O. too if he was in Sehun’s situation.”

Thankfully, at that moment, the door opened.  Unthankfully, the person who came through already knew that I was a girl.

“Make sure you disguise yourself well before you leave the building,” Chanyeol told me as he slumped into the nearest available chair.  “Baekhyun’s fans have gone rabid.”

I groaned.

“Shouldn’t have let me get shot,” Baekhyun said glibly.

“You did come too far down the stage,” Chanyeol admonished him.  “It’s not fair to Leigh to blame this all on her.”

“I don’t.  I blame it on Luhan.”

Chanyeol just shook his head and turned back to me.  “What’s the whole binary joke around your name?  Kai’s refusing to explain it.”

Trying to hold back a grimace, I told him about my dad and the way my name was stylised in Hangeul.

“Your dad and Chen should seriously get together,” Chanyeol concluded.  “Chen should learn from the best.”

“Chen’s already a pretty good troll,” Baekhyun objected.

“Yes, but how many other people do you know who’ve managed to call their kid Five, Really and a double identical name in one fell swoop?  That takes skill.”

Baekhyun considered.  “True.  By the way, where are the others?”

“Home.  Talking to police.  Going through videos from security at the venue.  It’s a bit hard getting out.  The fans have practically put the dorm on lockdown.  I had to dress up as a girl and shimmy down the drainpipes to escape.”

Baekhyun and I both laughed, though Baekhyun cut short with a gasp of pain.

Chanyeol started forwards in concern.  “What’s wrong?”

Baekhyun looked up at us.  “I have to put up with you two for the rest of today.”

“Laughing hurts his injuries,” I corrected.  “