Deer Luhan,

Oh God.

Leigh

To say that everybody was surprised to return to the hotel and find what was essentially a control centre set up in the living room (Yi had rustled up a further nineteen computers, and I was pretty certain he was the one with the idea of the computer room hideout back in Baoding now) would have been a bit of an understatement.  Suho and Sehun appeared not to notice it – the former because the first thing he did was go to check on D.O. and the latter because he vanished into his room the instant he got back, but the others crowded round the electronic gadgets (because there was more than just computers) like they’d never seen them before.

Things were taken seriously as Yi explained what each thing was for and regretfully informed us all that little progress had been made towards finding out where the girls were today, but restraint went to hell when Baekhyun spotted the specs for the graphics cards on one of the computers and started referring to it as a Holy Grail for gaming.  Amused, Yi disconnected that computer and three others of the same model so that Baekhyun and the others could play.

“Don’t you need those?” Luhan asked as Baekhyun and Chanyeol excitedly set everything up, with the help of Yi’s assistant.

Yi shook his head.  “Not until after midnight.  They’re for streaming and processing the imaging we get from the drones when we send them out.  Hang on a second.”

A member of the riot squad from the passage outside had entered unannounced, clutching several clear, sealed plastic bags.

“All the phones from the dump, sir.”

“Her domain.”  Yi pointed to me and the policewoman placed the bags containing the phones on the ground beside me, giving me a polite nod before leaving.  I wrinkled my nose, trying to suppress a cough as I wondered what I was supposed to do with them.

“Could you match up the phones with their owners?” Yi suggested.  “Once they’re all accounted for, we can send them away for the forensics to deal with.”

I nodded, but then came up short, wondering how I was supposed to identify the phones when the sealed bags clearly meant I wasn’t supposed to touch them.

“What about the phones that were found in the hotel?” I asked.

“Oh, he dealt with them earlier.”  Yi jerked a thumb over his shoulder at his assistant.  “You said there were twenty-four located in or around the hotel, and we got all of them, so I’m assuming you have the remaining twenty-three there.”

I nodded again and set about counting them.  It had been a severe disappointment that tracking the phones hadn’t amounted to anything: after checking their positions every hour for most of the afternoon, Yi had eventually dispatched two from the squadron in the passageway to go and fetch them from their locations, because it was obvious the phones had been cast aside.

It was with considerable confusion that I totalled the phones at thirty-one not once, but a grand total of five times, and I didn’t know what to make of it.  At first, I assumed that a few other stray phones had made their ways into the bags, like the ancient Nokia brick, but said brick turned out to belong to one of the missing Japanese girls when I came up with the bright idea of ringing each of the phones to see whose was whose.  I found myself faced with eight very recent models of smartphone that apparently belonged to nobody, and I couldn’t for the life of me think why somebody would want to chuck out a Galaxy S4 when I knew for a fact that it was currently the best phone on the market.

It also didn’t help that I was in a total quandary as to whether my inability to think properly was genuinely due to the fact that I was confused by there being too many phones or due to the fact a certain somebody emerged from his self-imposed isolation just as I had been dialling through the second of the numbers and came to join me.

Scratch that.  Whether it was the phones or Sehun himself, confusion was definitely a factor from some point after I found myself turning to stare at him when he squatted down beside me, nudging my arm gently and pointing to the mess of plastic bags in front of me.

“Whatcha doin’?” he asked in English, his voice low and oddly timid.

Never before had I found myself this flustered by his presence.  Granted, I had long been aware that he was an exceptionally nice person and that he was also stunningly good looking, and also that I paid much more attention to what he was doing than I did any of the other EXO members, but it was the first time I had been quite so aware of the fact that my lips were tingling when I so much as looked at him, or the gentle, accidental brush of his fingers against my leg as he sat down cross-legged beside me, or the very, very tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth furthest from me, or the exact length of his eyelashes, or the soft sound of his breathing as he waited for me to reply.

And I swear it was the fact I was paying attention to his respiration cycle that made my face go almost puce.

“Ri—” I squawked.  God, I can’t even talk properly now.  I ducked my head with embarrassment.  “Ringing,” I mumbled, but my voice still cracked.

“Ringing?”  He sounded confused.

I waved my phone and the paper list at him.  “Ringing,” I repeated, sounding somewhat dumb.  Since when did I get tongue-tied around Sehun?

Since the swimming pool, some part of my mind responded mercilessly, and I just wanted to die.  It didn’t escape me that this was the most interaction I’d had with Sehun since that time.  Why was it that something as simple and scientific as… as… well, how could it make me so self-conscious around him?  It wasn’t fair!

“I’ll help,” he offered, apparently oblivious to my primate flight mode being activated as he pulled his phone out.

And cue twenty minutes of excruciating awkwardness.  It was even worse that Sehun seemed totally and utterly unfazed by our proximity while my nerves were a skittery Sumatran rhinoceros.  I would have bailed and ditched him if it wasn’t for the fact that I was the one supposed to be doing the phones in the first place and that I had nothing else to do if I left.  And also for the fact that Yi, Luhan, Kris and Suho appeared to be involved in a very serious discussion and kept glancing over at me.

Sehun focussed on the task at hand far better than I did, getting through five numbers for every one I did because my fingers were shaking too much for me to type properly, and wordlessly piling up the phones that responded for both of us.  Neither of us had spoken since he’d started to help me, and the silence continued as we both sat there, contemplating the eight smartphones left over.  At least, Sehun was contemplating them, because beyond wondering why three people had thrown away perfectly good Samsung Galaxy S4s, my thoughts drifted over to the conversation I’d had with Luhan that morning, and I found myself itching to know if Luhan had passed on my thanks to Sehun, and what Sehun thought of—

“This is Japanese,” Sehun said suddenly, and I jumped, only just noticing that he’d taken two of the phones out of their bags and attempted (