<< Rewind:5 <<

“Whoa,” said Taemin slowly.  “She looks exactly like Luhan.”

Changmin raised an eyebrow.  “That’s the point.”

“Like, she could actually pretend to be Luhan and nobody would notice the difference,” Taemin continued.  Kyuhyun winced.

“Taemin, we’ve already been through all this—”

“I mean, I probably met her while she was pretending to be Luhan.”

“You did,” Changmin told him.

“Wow.”  Taemin along Leigh’s nose in the photo.  “She’s pretty,” he said in English.  “Or wait, is she manly?”

Kyuhyun, Krystal and Changmin all snorted with laughter.

Taemin looked up.  “Is she an avatar for his feelings for Luhan?  The fans are quite big on the whole HunHan thing and everybody knows they’re pretty much detectives.”

Changmin facepalmed.  “Sehun is one hundred percent straight.”  He pursed his lips.  “I think.”

Taemin squinted back at Leigh’s photo, but was unable to say anything before Krystal snatched it away.

“This is amazing,” she said.  “The fans actually might not kill her because she looks so like Luhan.”

“But I don’t get why you need us,” said Seohyun.  “What exactly are we supposed to be doing?”

“We are here as the maknae support team,” said Changmin, “because Leigh’s an awesome person and my friend and she’s totally smitten by Sehun and we need to set them up.”

“By ing them,” Kyuhyun added.

Krystal looked from one to the other.  “Okay.  You two are supposed to be two of the most intelligent people in the agency, and right now you sound like idiots.”

“Yeah,” said Seohyun.  “I don’t think ing them is going to get them back together.”

“It’ll increase the ,” Taemin said mildly, taking the photo back from Krystal.

Seohyun shoved him towards Kyuhyun and Changmin.  “Go join them.  You’re obvious just as insane.”

“Yeah,” agreed Krystal.  “This is supposed to be the Association of Evil Maknaes, not the Association of Idiot Maknaes.  You boys can go start yourself a new club and we’ll start our own one of the Association of… Ultra Cool Maknaes.”

Everybody in the room snorted.

“Not cool, Krystal,” said Seohyun.  “That’s so lame I think I’ll join the Idiots.”

“They think that intentionally splitting up two people who are on opposite sides of the world is going to somehow get them back together,” Krystal argued.  “That’s so flawed I don’t know where to begin.  Like, splitting people up by default isn’t going to get them back together, and what’s the point in splitting people up when they’re already doing so perfectly at keeping apart that they’ve managed to eliminate all forms of communication?”

“It’ll work,” Taemin said vapidly.  “Separating true love will only bring people closer together.  It’s like an elastic band.  If you stretch it far enough—”

“—It’ll snap,” Krystal interrupted with unparalleled bluntness.

“Oh yeah.”  Taemin turned and looked up at Changmin.  “Wait, what are we planning?  We don’t want Sehun to snap.  He’s already pretty depressing and I think he might just go insane if he snaps.”

“We’re going to make Sehun’s life hell for not making a move when he could have done for months,” said Kyuhyun, “and then we’re going to ship him over to the UK for Leigh’s birthday.  Chen’s talking to EXO at the moment.  They’re probably planning something excrutiating for him there, too.”

“Their comeback’s in April,” Seohyun pointed out.

Changmin looked at Kyuhyun.  “Didn’t Tao say that their comeback would be involved in it?”

“I think Seohyun’s point is that there’s no way we’re going to be able to get Sehun over to the UK in April,” Krystal pointed out.

“It’s fine,” Taemin assured her.  “All we need to do is convince Sehun to elope.”

Everybody stared at him.  Then Kyuhyun waved his hands frantically.

“No, no, no, you’ve got it wrong.  The dude has a couple of million fans – if he elopes it’ll cause an… absolute….”  His eyes widened.

“…Scandal,” Changmin breathed, eyes shining.  “ yes, you genius.”

“It will cause a lynch mob,” said Krystal flatly, “and Leigh will probably be killed.  And Luhan, too.”

“Not to mention the company will be on him before he’s out of the country.  And he won’t even leave the country if he doesn’t know he’s going,” added Seohyun.

“No, no, no,” Changmin said hastily.  “All we need to do is create a scandal so massive that nobody can stop him.”

Krystal raised a neatly plucked eyebrow.  “And how exactly do you propose we do that?”

“It’s simple.  We turn SM Entertainment into Scandalous Mysterious Elopements.”

Seohyun’s eyebrow rose.  “I still don’t see how this works.”

“Simple.  We keep Leigh in Sehun’s mind by teasing him senseless about dating, Luhan, and ideal types until April, and then at a given date, the entire agency jumps ship and we all go off to different corners of the world.”  Changmin grinned.  “I shotgun Vegas.  It’ll be all over the media if I go there with a girl—”

“And then nobody will know where to concentrate their forces, so there’ll be time to get EXO to the UK,” Kyuhyun finished up smuggling.  “And I shotgun going to London for anti-manager protection for EXO.  I never got on with their managers.  They keep stealing my video games.”

“I’m going with you,” Taemin said immediately.  “And Minho’s coming too, because otherwise he’ll kick my .”

Krystal’s other eyebrow rose.  “And you actually think this will work?”

“Yup!”  Kyuhyun beamed at her.  Krystal and Seohyun exchanged glances.

“You’re all absolutely nuts.”

Chen and Tao were adopted as honorary maknaes for the event – Tao because he was a part-time maknae anyway and a very good friend of Sehun’s, and Chen because he was already sort of involved anyway.  Their job was to enlist the rest of their group minus Sehun as accomplices, just as the other maknaes were to solicit their own groups.  The result was absolute havoc on any event Sehun appeared at.  Luhan also thought it was funny to parade around in a wig on occasion, which raised a lot of eyebrows and gained Sehun a lot of elbows in the ribs from his group mates.

“Can you stop with all the dating things?” he yelled, finally snapping one evening and throwing a pillow at D.O. and Baekhyun, who were clinging to each other as they ‘practiced’ their English by singing an absolutely dirgeful version of Lonely without taking their eyes off Sehun.

“Whoa,” said Kris, staring at the pillow.  “Chill.  They’re just warming their voices up.”

“At three in the ing morning!”

“You could just… go to bed, you know,” Kris pointed out.  “And dream of—”

“Love-Leigh Luhan-like girls called Leigh!” Suho chipped in in English.

Baekhyun and D.O. broke apart, both looking disgusted.

“Oh my God, please tell me that’s not his new tongue twister for the week,” Baekhyun grumbled.  The goofy grin on Kris’s face clearly said it was.  D.O. picked up the pillow and threw it at him.

“The pun is not funny, and I’m saying that as an OhReeLee stan.”

Kris started laughing.  “It’s incredibly punny.  You just don’t appreciate it.”

“I’m glad I don’t appreciate it.”

“I hate you all,” Sehun declared, curling up on the sofa and jamming his headphones over his ears.

There was a hairy moment when they thought they had been caught two days later when Sehun walked into the practice room while D.O. was distributing the lyrics for the rewritten Overdose.  He and Kris were in the middle of translating the verses into Korean so that everybody would understand exactly what they were singing, and Chanyeol and Suho had curled up in absolute hysterics when Sehun suddenly popped up between Xiumin and Luhan.

“What are you all doing without me?” he demanded, a little peeved.  “You’ve all just been deserting me for the past few days.”

Everybody froze with their versions of the lyrics in their hands.  Sehun made to pluck Xiumin’s from him, but Xiumin reacted more quickly, folding the paper up and then tearing it into neat rectangles.

“It’s a new kind of edible paper and Suho and Chanyeol think it’s genius.  Wanna try?”

Sehun actually swallowed a mouthful before spitting it