Deer Luhan,

I really miss you all.

Leigh

I made an interesting discovery that weekend when I went to wear one of my favourite hoodies of Luhan’s that hadn’t yet made it out of the wardrobe.  It was the one Luhan had been wearing on my final day in Changsha, and it had a memory stick in the pocket.

I had absolutely no idea whether or not it or the hoodie had been left intentionally, but the first thing I did was plug it into my computer.

It was relatively little used.  There were only three folders.  The first was absolutely stuffed full of photos from around December onwards, and from the lack of Chen in them, it looked like he’d been the one behind the camera.

For quite some time, as I scrolled through, I found myself wondering what Chen’s memory stick was doing in Luhan’s pocket when they’d been in different parts of the country that day, but then I clicked on the second folder.

It had a number of mp3 files, all unnamed, so I just randomly started clicking on the tracks.

The first one was a demo for Thunder, a track title I recognised from the Overdose highlights medley on Youtube.  I raised my eyebrows.  The next couple were full songs from their predebut teasers that hadn’t made it into albums.  A number after that were Chinese ones Luhan and I both liked, along with a couple of songs I knew were favourites of Chen’s, and the penultimate one was a studio recording of the English version of Stay.

It took an awful lot not to start tearing up at that.  All four vocalists had got together for it, and it sounded absolutely beautiful.  The painful nostalgia hit me in full force, and it was like they were singing those words to me, about how much they missed me and wanted another few moments with me.  Heaven only knows that was exactly how I felt too.

The final track was a soft remix of Stay that I knew Chanyeol had to have done.  After all, he’d been talking about it at the time I was translating it.  It worked surprisingly well with the techno flourishes.  I downloaded everything to iTunes immediately and started syncing my iPod.

The third folder only had a video in it, and once I clicked on that, I understood that leaving the memory stick had been completely intentional.  Luhan must have been in a rush, though, because I would have expected him to leave it in a more obvious place.  Then again, it would have been disastrous if Abbie found it.

“Yo, yo!”  Kris’ face appeared on screen first, and he grinned.  “Luhan’s totally freaking out.  Did you fall out of bed or something?”

He paused as if waiting for a response, then waved a dismissive hand.  “You’ll live.  You always do.  Get well soon, yeah?  If you don’t come back—”

Lay popped his head into the screen.  “You have a penchant for trouble, you do,” he said in Mandarin.

“ off, Lay, I’m talking to her.”

“You’re talking at a camera, dipsh*t.”

“I’m still talking to Leigh!  It’s your turn later!  Now go away!”  He shoved Lay off the screen.  “I’ve forgotten what I was going to say.  Anyway, stay awesome!  We’ll see you again soon, right?”

Chanyeol was next.  “Leigh!”  He waved at the screen, fluttering his fingers.  “I’m going to miss you.  We’re going to have to put up with D.O.’s cooking now—”

Somebody threw a chocolate bar at him – probably D.O. – but Chanyeol saw it coming and quickly moved to catch it in his mouth.

“Anyway, Sehun will cry if you don’t keep in contact.”

“We need to watch Game of Thrones together!” Baekhyun cried, bounding into the screen.  “We still haven’t done that!”

“Hey, don’t bring up a show where almost everybody dies when you’re speaking to a dying person,” Chanyeol told him reproachfully.

“Chanyeol will also cry if you don’t keep in contact,” Baekhyun said with a sunny grin.  “You’ll ring when you wake up, right?”

He and Chanyeol both waved.

“D*mn it,” I whispered, swallowing as the camera transitioned to Lay.  I felt even more rotten for not being able to find my phone or Kyuhyun’s stupid computer game.  It was like I was letting them down by not being able to contact them.

“I can’t believe you and Sehun haven’t hooked up yet,” Lay told the camera, seeming a little dazed.  “Kai keeps saying it has something to do with padlocks.  Anyway, we all love you and we hope you get well soon.  We’re in the waiting room at the airport right now.  Luhan’s going absolutely frantic trying to get everything sorted for you.  He just kind of snapped when they said they were going to have to operate again.  There was a lot of ugly crying.”

“Hey!” yelled Luhan’s voice from somewhere in the background.  Lay turned to yell back at him.

“Hurry up!  Our flight’s in twenty minutes, you know!”  He turned back to the screen, smiling, and waved.  “Bye!”

The camera turned around and Suho was pointing it at himself.

“The others are in the bathroom right now, so I’m going next,” he said, wandering away from the others.  Now that the camera was held high and no longer focussed closely on faces, the rows of chairs and long spaces made it clear that they were indeed in an airport.  “It’s a pity I never got to know you as well as the others did, because you seem like a lovely person.  Anyway, I hope you recover quickly and do well at university.  Come and visit us again soon!  There’s always a place for you with us.”  He shook his head.  “I can’t believe it took me so long to realise you weren’t Luhan.”

I chuckled and found myself choking on tears.  Xiumin popped up as I was wiping them away.

“Hello, my little coffee monster!” he greeted me, reaching out as though to pinch my cheeks.  “You’re doing okay, right?  You’d better be doing okay.”  His smile faded and turned serious.  “Get well soon.  And please don’t do anything else stupid to yourself.  Nearly dying from falling out of bed isn’t cool.”  He blew a kiss at the camera before glancing sideways and then pointing, hissing, “Suho, it’s the manager, the manager.”

“Oh.”  The image shook and then went black, presumably as Suho hid the camera.  The screen remained blank for another minute and a half, just with Korean audio as Suho talked to the manager about the flight, before there was an audible sigh of relief and colour reappeared.

D.O. plucked his earphones out of his ears, looking a little bewildered as Suho zoomed in on his face.

“Say something,” Suho prompted.

“Wh