Deer Luhan,

Sehun has just told me that part of your name means “deer”, which I find amusingly appropriate, all things considered.  I wasn’t far wrong in labelling you “Deer Guy” before I learnt your name.  It also opens the door to an atrocious pun on the word “dear” in English whenever I write you one of these notes, so look forward to it.

Leigh

I’m still not totally sure how I ended up at the airport.  I vaguely remember waking up in a room that I didn’t recognise because somebody was pounding on the door, and when I went to open it – still dressed in the baggy hoodie and sweatpants I’d been wearing the day before and the Deer Guy’s coat – I was almost bowled over by a thin-faced, blond-haired Korean about my own age who appeared agitated about something.

“God, you’re not even dressed for the airport,” he groaned in Korean as he pushed past me and grabbed a suitcase that I hadn’t noticed before.  “Never mind.  Here’s your passport.”

He shoved something at me as I blinked owlishly, still trying to process what he’d said.  My brain never worked without at least two cups of coffee in the morning, and even then, it was usually midday before I was coherent.  Let’s just say I was adapting to university life well.

The rest is kind of hazy, perhaps courtesy of a brewing headache that didn’t just stem from a lack of caffeine, but I just about remember being pushed out of the door into a passageway that looked like decorating it had costed more than the money I could have gotten from selling Deer Guy’s phone and demanding (in slightly muddled Korean) where we were going.

“Home,” said the blond-haired guy.  “Come on.  We’ll be late.”

The sensible part of my brain wondered how he knew my mum was going to freak out if I got back home quite this late, and the stupid part of it, which, as we all know, is asive, latched onto the word “home” and I trailed meekly after him.  There were other people with suitcases and a mini-bus and traffic and what have you, and the next thing I remember with any degree of clarity (read: virtually none) is finding myself being dragged through Heathrow Airport by my new friend as he hurried to keep up with the rest of the group.

“W-w-wait,” I said, trying to tug on his arm, but he didn’t respond.  Then it finally twigged that everything he’d said to me had been in Korean rather than English, so I filled my lungs and bellowed, “yah!”

He spun around, but continued to drag me along.  “What?” he demanded, surly.

“This isn’t home.  What are we doing at the airport?”

He gaped at me, but still managed to keep us both moving.  “Hyung, exactly how hard did you hit your head last night?”

I frowned, confused.  Had he just called me hyung?

“But I’m not—”

“Our manager said you might be concussed, but boy—”  He glanced ahead, suddenly spotting how far behind the others we were, and broke into a run, dragging me along with him.  I attempted to dig my heels in.

“What are you doing?  Where are we going?  This is child trafficking—”

He cast a disturbed look over his shoulder at me.

“Let go of me!” I demanded immediately.

“Hyung, please!”  He sounded pissed.  “Don’t make a scene!”

I was about to point out that making a scene while being abducted is necessary or nobody knows to help when a wall of sound hit me and his hand was nearly torn off my wrist by a stampede of what I later came to identify as rabid fans (mostly female).  It was enough to instil panic into my caffeine-deprived mind and I clung to the guy with a whimper as he was the only vaguely familiar thing around and he seemed to know what he was doing.  This elicited squeals of excitement from the wild fans, which probably broke legal decibel levels when he placed a protective arm around my shoulders and ushered me through the throng.  The noise did nothing for my headache and I buried my head on his shoulder in a failed attempt to mute the pain.

We were through security and heading towards a gate by the time the first stab of coherence lanced through my throbbing head.  The blond-haired guy still had his arm around my shoulders and was fending off questions that other people were asking with terse “yeses” and “nos” and “he’s still concussed”.

“Okay,” I said when his glare had got them all to back off and we were left alone standing between the seats and the toilets, “just what the is going on?”  I was vaguely aware of some kind of announcement for plane boarding going on in the background.

He stared at me like I’d lost my mind.  To be fair, he probably had a point with that.

“Hyung,” he began warily, “have you got selective amnesia or something?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I snapped at him.  “Who are you and why am I in an airport?”

For a moment, he seemed to be considering the best kind of answer.  Then he held up an index finger in front of my nose.

“Follow my finger with your eyes, hyung,” he ordered, moving it from side to side.  I batted his hand out of the way with an impatient “I’m not your hyung”, but the damage was already done.

“Wow,” he said.  “You really must have bashed your head.  What’s two plus two?”

“Gwiyomi,” I responded without thinking.  “But that’s not the point.  The point is that—”

“Yah!  Oh Sehun, Luhan hyung!  Get on the plane!”

“Explain later,” the blond-haired guy told me, grabbing my wrist lead-male-from-a-K-drama style and dragging me towards the desks.

“Hey!”  I dug my heels in again, but he was too strong.  “Wait, no, stop!  Listen to me!  I’m not who you think I am – I’M NOT GETTING ON THE GODDAMN PLANE!” I shrieked as he plucked the passport he’d given me earlier out of one of the pockets of my – Deer Guy’s – coat and handed it to the lady with the scanner.  There were four consecutive beeps and two passports and boarding passes landed back in the guy’s hand.

“Sorry,” he said in English to the woman at the desk