Deer Luhan,

Be glad I was the one who encountered Xiumin with the knife and not you.  Be very glad.

Leigh

I ended up talking to Lay until the early hours of the morning.  He wanted to know everything about everything – why I’d dyed my hair pink in the first place, who my K-pop obsessed friend was, where I lived, where in the world I’d travelled to, whether I was enjoying myself, what I thought of EXO – and eventually succumbed to eating a packet of Lay’s potato chips.  For some reason, he thought my English accent was dead cute and wanted me to teach it to him.

“Oh yeah,” he’d added as an afterthought after announcing that he was going to bed.  “I nearly forgot: want any help with Chinese?”

“I could kiss him,” I said as he left.

“Don’t even think about it,” D.O. and Sehun responded together.  I jumped.  I hadn’t realised that either of them was still awake.

I heard D.O. roll over to take immediate advantage of Sehun’s reply.

“What, Sehun, are you jealous?”

“D.O., it kind of sounds like you are,” I pointed out, slipping off the bed.  “I need coffee.  I have to stay awake.  Lay won’t be able to cover everything for me, and I’ve lost my voice enough times to need to be convincing if they decide to send me to the doctor.”

“See you,” the other two said in unison.

“Come back when you’re sane,” Sehun mumbled.

“Which would be never,” D.O. quipped.

“Yah, hyung.  Don’t be mean.”

D.O. gave a low wolf whistle, and I slipped out of the room.

Chanyeol and Chen had fallen asleep with Kai on the sofa, all curled up against each other with three Game Over messages flashing on the TV screen.  The sight was actually extremely sweet, and I nearly cooed over them as I passed by on my way to the kitchen.

It wasn’t a total surprise that the kitchen light was on – somebody always forgot to turn it off – but it was a bit of a shock to find somebody in there at three in the morning.

Scratch that.  It was a lot of a shock, and to make matters stupendously awkward, that somebody just had to be Xiumin when I desperately needed coffee.  There was a tense pause as we both stared at each other and I tried my best to avoid glancing at Xiumin’s precious coffee machine and giving away my intentions.

We both decided simultaneously that the other person was a threat: I reached behind me for the door handle, and Xiumin snatched a chopping knife – which somebody had obviously forgotten to clean and put away – up from the table.  I froze.

It was so silent that the ticking of the kitchen clock was like ice cracking, and my heart began to pound in my throat.  My chest compressor was made of tough material, but contrary to Taemin’s belief, it wasn’t bulletproof and definitely wouldn’t be able to turn a knife with any degree of force.  That said, I hadn’t been aware that Luhan had made Xiumin angry enough to kill.

Seventy-three seconds passed without either of us moving.  Xiumin was the first to do something.

“Where’s Luhan?” he demanded.  I blinked rapidly at him.  With his hair sticking up on end and his dark-circled, slightly wild eyes, not to mention the knife, he didn’t look totally sane.  I wasn’t sure if it was a better option to admit I wasn’t Luhan – chances were he’d stab his group mate just as much as he’d go psycho on a perceived stalking fan girl.

I raised my hands slowly.  “Er… hyung… could you put down the knife?”

He jerked it up into a protective position.  “Where’s Luhan?”  He was swaying on his feet from tiredness, and I had to admit it didn’t really make me feel any safer.

“Hyung,” I tried again, “are you sleepwalking?  You look like you’re awake, but….”  I gestured to the knife.

He didn’t get the message.  Or, at least, that was what I initially thought.  From what came out of his mouth next, I clearly hadn’t been the one to get the message from the get go.

“Who are you?” he demanded, the knife trembling in his hands, “what have you done to Luhan, and why is there a girl in the dorm?”

Game over.  He was totally lucid.  Craptastic.  I twisted the door handle, preparing to bolt.

“How did you know?” I squeaked.  My panic must have been extremely obvious, because he calmed down.  His eyes scanned me as though checking for cameras and hidden recording equipment, and then he put the knife down and pointed to the coffee machine, where I’d left my two signed TVXQ albums earlier that day.

My two signed TVXQ albums.  I clapped my free hand over my mouth.  Changmin had written me a long message on the inside cover of one of them, congratulating me on the fabulous job I’d so far been doing as Luhan and giving a few words of encouragement for the final stretch.  Yunho had left a much shorter but similarly charming note in the other exhorting me not to get killed by the mafia and saying that he was going to be having words with Luhan when he got back.

Xiumin took a step towards me and I slid down the door, dazed and appalled.  How many of the others had seen the albums?  Who’d read them?

“Sorry,” I heard Xiumin saying through the ringing in my ears.  “I think I overreacted a bit – you startled me.  But really, just what is going on?  How long have you been filling in for Luhan?  Whose idea was it?”

I looked up to see him crouching in front of me, and I let out a whimper of terror.  He reached out towards me and I shrank back into the door.  He sighed.

“Leigh – your name is Leigh, right?” he asked.  He must have remembered that from the albums.  “Look, I’m not going to hurt you, but I need some answers.  Why do the TVXQ sunbaes know about this when the rest of us don’t?”

It was the most he’d spoken to me since I’d arrived, and his voice was much softer than I’d expected.  I managed to get myself to meet his gaze.  He smiled at me.

It was enough to ease the panic ripping through me, and I shakily propped myself up.

“K’s aware of it,” I said in little more than a whisper.  “And Lay.  It was Luhan’s idea.  We’re supposed to be swapping back in about nine days’ time.”

Xiumin put his hands on my shoulders.  I flinched, but at least there wasn’t a knife anywhere near me.

“And how long have you been here?”

“Since everybody came back from tour.”

Xiumin swore under his breath.  “He really did run away in London.  He promised me he wouldn’t do that.  If I hadn’t been too angry to speak to him, I might have noticed sooner—”

My curiosity got the better of me.  “What did you fall out about?”

He shook his head briefly.  “That’s between me and Luhan.  But I can say that I’m even angrier with him now.”

“It must have been pretty bad,” I murmured.  “The others said that you’re usually the most easy-going out of everybody.”

“It was bad, but it’s still none of your business.  But Luhan….”  H