****TODAY WILL BE A TRIPLE UPDATE DUE TO SOMEBODY'S BIRTHDAY (happy birthday, dear! Not gonna name in case you don't want it broadcasted) AND BECAUSE YOU GUYS ARE REALLY AWESOME AND THIS GOT RECOMMENDED AGAIN.****

Deer Luhan,

CHANGE THE LOCKS IN YOUR GODDAMN DORM AND TEACH TAO WHAT A LOCK IS AND WHAT IT MEANS.

Leigh

I should have known I was in for trouble after Tao walked in on me making that phonecall in the bathroom.  Kris trailed me the next morning when I went out into town to buy breakfast.  I didn’t actually realise he was sneaking after me until I got down to the foyer and caught sight of him in the window reflection.

At first, I was too dazed to really do much about it – it wasn’t even close to five in the morning, and the only reason I was up was because I was absolutely starving and Xiumin and Chen had wiped out the fridge the previous day.  But when I noticed that he was still following me three or four streets later and that seeing him in the foyer windows hadn’t been a coincidence or a hallucination, I came to a halt.

His footsteps stopped immediately, and my coffee-deprived brain gave me the urge to chuckle.  It was like something out of a bad spy movie.

“I know you’re there,” I told him without turning around.  “Why are you following me?”

He didn’t reply.

“Kris,” I said.

Still nothing.  I looked back over my shoulder.

At first, the street appeared empty.  Then I noticed a black converse shoe sticking out from behind a bin.  Somebody’s legs were a little too long to keep him hidden.

Biting back a smile, I tiptoed over to the bin.  There was no sound of movement, so he probably couldn’t see me coming.

Holding my breath, I came to a halt and counted slowly to three.  Then I jumped in front of him.

“Boo!”

He flailed with a startled shriek and ended up grabbing his beanie to keep it on his head.  I doubled over laughing: it was just so ungainly.

“You scared me,” he grumbled, getting to his feet.

“Why are you following me?” I asked him.  “It’s quarter to five in the morning.”

Kris folded his arms, defensive.  “Nobody goes out at quarter to five in the morning.”

I arched an eyebrow at him.  “Then what are you doing here?”

“Following you.”

“Why?”

Kris scratched his nose, not meeting my eyes.  “Because you’re out at five in the morning.”

I resisted the urge to snap at him.  This was going in circles, and I needed coffee if I was going to develop the patience to deal with it.

“Kris, why are you awake at five in the morning?”

“I don’t know, ge.”

I sighed.

“Well, Chen was telling Tao ghost stories last night,” Kris mumbled, this time scratching the back of his neck, “so I had to calm him down, but then he ended up retelling me the ones that scared him the most and I couldn’t sleep, so I ended up in the living room because Xiumin’s snores were freaking me out more than silence was.”

I arched my other eyebrow.  This was new.

“Tao scared you sh*tless with a ghost story?”

Kris sniffed.  “Chen scared Tao sh*tless who then proceded to disturb me.”

A chuckle escaped me.  “Whatever, Kris.  So you just decided to follow me out because you were too freaked out to stay alone?”

His gaze flashed up to meet mine.  “Hey, you and D.O. were discussing drugs yesterday evening.  I couldn’t just let you walk out on your own and do something stupid, could I?”

“Who does drugs at five in the morning?”

“Okay, maybe I was just a little bit put out by that horror story,” he admitted.

This time, I laughed loudly.  “I’m hungry, Kris.  Xiumin and Chen ate through the fridge.”

With brilliant timing, Kris’ stomach rumbled.  I was taken by surprise.  Never, in the month and a bit that I’d known him, had Kris ever let himself get to the stage of hunger in which his stomach started making public cries for attention.  I stared at him.

“And… well, I might just have been a bit too afraid to go out and get food for myself,” he mumbled.

I had to shove my fist into my mouth to keep quiet, but I wasn’t in time to prevent a loud snort.  Kris began to look defensive.

“The girl got ripped to pieces by a scaly Chihuahua with snake fangs on her way to the kebab van, okay?  The way Tao told it was ing terrifying!”

It was enough to bring tears of laughter to my eyes.  I took my fist out of my mouth and flashed him the diver’s OK symbol.

“All right, big boy.  We’ll go to the twenty-four hour convenience store.  That tame enough for you?”

He muttered under his breath, but quickly fell in step when I turned and started walking again.  Seeing the way he was rubbing his arms as if trying to hold himself together and looking around for tiny dogs, I couldn’t resist a little tease.

“And then we can drop by the kebab van on the way back, too.”

He stopped walking and scowled at me.  “ you.”

We spent over an hour at the convenience store.  It was in part because Kris fell asleep in the vegetable aisle, draped over the cabbages like he was trying to hug the box they were in, and it took me nearly twenty minutes to wake him up.

“Well,” I said as he paid and I finished packing everything into plastic bags.  “I think we have enough cabbages to see us through a zombie ap