Key’s POV

We all stood in silence for a moment as we heard Minji stomp to her room, then slam the door shut. I let out a sigh and rubbed my face as the others looked at each other in concern.

“Should I…?” Minho began, motioning towards Minji’s bedroom. But I shook my head, knowing she needed some time alone to blow off steam.

“What are we going to do?” Jonghyun asked, running his hands through his hair in a distressed manner as he sank into a chair next to Onew. “Minji misses Taemin, and Taemin misses Minji.”

Minho looked up sharply. “He does? How do you know?”

Jonghyun sighed. “You know how the kid is; whenever things get rough, he puts on a brave face and acts like it’s no big deal. But Minji breaking up with him really did shake him up. I don’t think Tae even realizes it, but whenever Min walks by he stares after her with this pining expression. And every time someone calls or texts him he grabs his phone really eagerly, but then always puts it back down in this disappointed way—and I know he was hoping it was her.” We all absorbed this information in silence.

I slammed my fist into the counter, making Onew jump and drop his chicken. “That’s it,” I said in determination. “We’ve got to do something. Now that we know Taemin feels guilty, we’ve got to make him apologize to Minji.”

“But how?” Minho asked. We all pondered this in silence, except for Onew, who went back to his chicken.

“Maybe we could…make him jealous,” Jonghyun suggested. “Like, one of us could pretend to go on a date with Minji, and then the others can all bring Taemin and ‘coincidentally’ they would run into each other…”

“No good,” Onew said suddenly, making everyone jump. “Taemin knows that we’re all too close to Minji to date her. Especially Minho, seeing as he’s her brother.” No one could argue with that.

 “Could we send Minji on some blind dates, and then tell Taemin about them to make him uneasy?” Minho suggested, folding a napkin around in his hand. “If he knew that other guys were going out with her, it might pressure him into finally apologizing.”

“Hmm,” I said thoughtfully. “That’s not a bad idea…does anyone know any guys who’d want to go on a blind date with Minji?”

“As a matter of fact, yes.” Jonghyun gave us a devious smile as he pulled out his phone. “I know just the people.”

                                                       ⇔                                                                     

Sehun’s POV

“And a five, six, seven, eight!”

The beat dropped, and we all started simultaneously moving to the music in our choreographed formation. Lay and Kai were at the front of the room, guiding us through the dance. It was all going well…until Baekhyun stepped on Chanyeol’s foot.

“Oh my God!” Chanyeol exclaimed, immediately dropping the dance and turning to face Baekhyun with a scowl. “That’s like, the fiftieth time you’ve done that!”

“My bad,” Baekhyun said, trying not to laugh. At the front of the room, Kai sighed and switched the music off.

“Guys, could we focus here? This is the reason why our dance group is such a failure—because we can’t focus.” He ran a stressed hand through his hair, and I gave him a sympathetic look. Poor Kai. This “dance group”, EXO, was supposed to be performing in the school’s end of the year showcase—but so far all we’d managed to do was get through about half of the choreography Lay had taught us.

Just then my phone went off in my pocket, playing Girl’s Generation’s “The Boys”. Everyone turned to stare at me, and I pulled my phone out with a defensive “What?” before answering it.

“Hello?”

“Hey Sehun, it’s me, Jonghyun.”

“Oh hey Jonghyun!” I said, not sure why the fourth-year was calling me. I knew him because he and another fourth-year, Onew, were part of the student government and were in charge of the showcase that EXO was supposed to be performing in. “What’s up?”

“Well, here’s the thing…” Jonghyun explained to me about Choi Minji, Minho’s little sister, and her breakup with Lee Taemin—Kai’s cousin. “They both still like each other, though, and we’re thinking if we managed to make Taemin jealous enough to apologize to Minji, they’d get back together,” Jonghyun continued, as I listened raptly. Kai motioned for me to wrap it up, but I waved him off. “I see,” I said. “So you need a way to make Taemin jealous?”

“Right,” Jonghyun affirmed. Kai froze at the sound of his cousin’s name, then began gesticulating wildly again in an attempt to ask me what was going on. I turned my back on him and continued, “So, what’s your plan?”

“I need you and the other eleven guys in EXO to each go on a blind date with Minji,” Jonghyun said. “Though, obviously, it’s not really a ‘blind’ date, since you guys know who you’ll be meeting. But we need you to do this because when Taemin finds out about it, he’ll go ballistic, and it’ll be good for Minji—she needs to keep her mind off of Taemin, at least some of the time, if she’s going to stop hurting enough to take him back when he apologizes.” Jonghyun broke off, and there was a pause. “So, what do you think? Are you up for it?”

I scratched my chin thoughtfully. “Minho’s little sister, you said?” Choi Minji was in my year, but I didn’t know her very well. What I did know was that she was pretty cute, and I—along with the eleven other guys in EXO—was bored as hell.

“Yeah, okay,” I said slowly, a smile tugging at my lips. “That sounds like fun.”

“Cool,” Jonghyun said, sounding slightly relieved. “Can you ask the others and get back to me?”

“Oh, they already know,” I said. I’d put the phone on speaker awhile ago, when Jonghyun had started explaining what he wanted us to do. All the guys were currently sitting in a circle on the floor, surrounding my phone and listening with rapt attention. I raised my eyebrows at Kai, who nodded quickly, followed by Chanyeol, Suho, and everyone else. “Yeah, we’re all up for it,” I told Jonghyun through the phone. “Just give us the details and we’ll be ready to go.”

“Awesome, thanks Sehun,” Jonghyun said gratefully. “I’ll let you know when we’ve worked out a schedule and stuff. Bye!”

“See ya,” I said, ending the call. I glanced around the circle at the rest of the guys, who all eagerly burst into conversation.

“So…uh, what did I just agree to?” Suho.

“Who cares? You’re going on a date with a pretty girl, the details don’t matter.” Baekhyun.

“Who said she was pretty?” Kris.

“Hey, she’s Choi Minho’s little sister, and that dude is prettier than half the female population of our school,” Tao pointed out.

“Plus, I know her. She’s in my government class,” Kai spoke up, and everyone turned to him. “I just…I feel a little weird, going on a date with my cousin’s ex-girlfriend and all…” he continued hesitantly, scratching the back of his head.

“Oh, don’t sweat it Kai,” Luhan piped up. “I mean, didn’t Jonghyun-hyung already say that this was all to get her and Taemin back together?”

“Yeah,” Lay agreed, and everyone turned to look at him, surprised. Lay didn’t generally contribute much to the conversation, but when he did, it was usually something worth listening to. Lay stared us all down, his voice serious. “Don’t you all go trying to make this date into something it’s not. Jonghyun specifically asked us to do this because he trusts us. Minji’s obviously really important to him, or else he wouldn’t be doing this whole blind date thing. Minji just got out of a breakup, and if what Jonghyun says is true, then she’s still in love with Taemin. So don’t go trying to make a move on her, and mess up her heart even more.”

There was a slightly stunned silence following Lay’s lengthy speech. Then Chanyeol spoke up. “That’s right,” he agreed, a little shakily. “We’ll have to remember not to get caught up in the date—even if it’s the first one I’ve been on in ages…” He trailed off, his eyes going a little dreamy, and Kai cleared his throat.

“So…shall we get back to dancing?” he said. And we did.

A/N:  Yayyy they've finally formulated the Twelve-Blind-Dates-In-One-Week plan! SHINee are geniuses (<< is this even a word?? idk)