hello hello hello! i'm back es haha i am alive anyways sorry for the really long wait... i had to go something called my froshie year so ha gotta get them asian grades ;-; enjoy this kinda short chap, and there's one coming up real soon! keep commenting and upvoting please! i love yall mwa mwa

LESSON HIGHLIGHTS

How to Give Yourself a Heart Attack
An Integrated Lesson on Xiao Wo Tou
Lu Han: (Assistant) Pastry Guy

Chef Roland Bertrand is naturally a happy, open man, born in Brittany and raised in Paris before he decided that manning a Michelin-rated restaurant and teaching in the famed Le Cordon Bleu weren’t fulfilling enough—he decided to move to South Korea, where he is now the head of the faculty of the prestigious St. Pierre Culinary School. Bertrand was an easygoing man, and he found that the kitchen was much too competitive, and that Le Cordon Bleu was much too somber. Moving to Seoul was, in his opinion, a wise decision.

He whistled a slightly off-key Champs-Elyseés as he strolled leisurely to his office, a hand on his belly, the other swinging his keys on a lanyard like a cowboy lasso. He lived alone, in the residential quarters provided for the staff if they so wanted to stay in campus, but he wasn’t necessarily lonely. All his family was back in France, French litigators, the lot of them, a snobbish clan if you’re not a lawyer yourself, and Bertrand didn’t care much for them. He was alone, and he was happy.

Chef Bertrand was well satisfied with life, with not many regrets in the 67 years he had lived and is still living. He was never interested in anything else but making and eating good food and teaching the youth the value of them, so that left little room for a love life (which he never really had any success in, unfortunately) or such matters.

The hallways were unnaturally silent to his ears, and his heart, already weak from years of a steady diet of butter, cream, and wine, pumped heavily and painfully against his tightening chest. He wanted to shrug it off to paranoia, a bizarre by-product of old age, much like senility, perhaps. Bertrand, bathed in the popsicle yellows and oranges of the breaking dawn, knew that to fear in such a beautiful time of the day was silly, but to him, in this hushed hallway, it might just as well be at the devil’s hour.

The swinging door to his office was silent as well, well-oiled and without a hint of creaking, his dress shoes click-clacking against the tile. Even the bright fluorescent lighting didn’t make him feel at ease at all. It felt like an interrogation room’s lights, stark and unforgiving.

Oh, you silly old coot, you’re 65 years out of the nursery, he thought to himself, hoping a faux irritation would mask his fear. He was only vaguely aware that he had stopped whistling. Now is not the time for irrational anxieties. What are you afraid of now, Roland, ghosts? The boogeyman?

I fear something worse.

Bertrand’s face, usually ruddy with wine and good cheer, was pasty, looking like dough that had risen and was punched in. His thick fingers, thick like sausages, found stray curls of his bushy white beard and nervously tugged at them. Oh, let the dawn come. He felt watched—no, hunted.

A pert knock, one-two, on the glass window of Bertrand’s office door, the sharp sound knocking the breath out of his lungs as his heart palpitated dangerously.

“Wh-who’s there?” stammered Bertrand shakily, breathlessly, clutching the armrests of his swivel chair. His double chin wavered. The flabs on his forearms bulged and jiggled. He was trembling, and quite badly.

The door swung open noiselessly, and at slowly, Bertrand relaxed. It was just one of the students.

“Chef? Pardon?”

The student, good-looking in a wine-colored sweater and dark trousers, entered the office, mild concern on his familiar face. He had a duffel bag in one hand, a white flower peeking out from the open zipper. Bertrand couldn’t quite remember who the young man is—curses of old age—but the name was on the tip of his tongue. He never fully forgets a name, but they often slip from his mind from time to time.

“Ah, ma fils,” Bertrand sighed in relief, his voice booming louder than necessary. “Tu es en avance!” Ah, my boy. You’re early!

The young man laughed good-naturedly. “Yes, I’m afraid so, Chef. I just came by to see you before I leave for home.”

“I didn’t know I meant that much to you young people,” Bertrand lightly teased. “You wouldn’t get extra credit for visiting me in the wee hours of the morning, though.” The student smiled, his features lighting up as he did so. He pushed back his black hair from his forehead. He looked extremely awake at five in the morning.

“Oh, Chef, you were one of my favorite teachers,” he said softly, genuinely. “You had more experience than any of the other instructors, and you taught me almost everything I know.”

Roland Bertrand wanted to feel pleased, flattered, but instead he felt that creeping fear again. Why is he talking about me in past tense?

The student reached behind his waist, smoothly and easily, as if he were just pulling down the hem of his sweater, but Bertrand already sensed what he was going to do, already starting to rise from his chair, his eyes bulging, but the young man’s hand was too fast as it whipped back up, back at him, double-tap bang-bang!

Foom! A muffled, heavy sound, as Chef Bertrand slumped back down on his swivel chair, his weight and the force of the bullets making the chair roll back a few feet, squeaking in effort. The shots had been quiet, like punches through a pillow, through the silencer.

“It’s too bad,” the young man said, but Chef Roland Bertrand was dead before his bottom hit the upholstered seat of his swivel chair. The young man placed his gun in his duffel bag, trading it for the magnolia, stepping over to the still-warm body of Bertrand carefully and inserted the stem of the flower into the gaping wound on Bertrand’s doughy forehead. The man, though old, probably still had a good twenty years ahead of him, but no matter.

Tu es en avance, the young man thought.

Sehun’s bike stood in the midst of Jaguars and Corvettes in the parking of St. Pierre’s, a plain old Kawasaki motorbike painted a flat black. It could’ve been a bike owned by some college kid in downtown Incheon or by a goth punk in Stockholm, Sweden. In the dark corner of the lot, the Kawasaki blended well in the shadows made by the bright morning sunshine, which made Luhan wonder a bit if Sehun bought this bike secondhand from a kkangpae drug dealer.

 “Y-you’re sure this is safe?” The thing looked lightweight, and there were some wires sticking out, so Luhan was having some major doubts if Sehun’s bike could survive a twenty-mile trip to and from campus with two guys on it.

Sehun shrugged. “It didn’t blow up when I last rode it.” He didn’t sound like he was kidding.

Swallowing a mouthful of saliva, Luhan handed over his bag—Sehun had told him they weren’t going to come back to Pierre’s until Sunday evening, so Luhan had overpacked, of course—which Sehun placed inside the small compartment right under the seat of the bike. Sehun, looking cool as always in his blue jeans and tight black shirt, looked like Daryl Dixon right before he graduated to a Harley.

“Hey, we don’t have all day, little man,” Sehun said, cocking his head to the side in a gesture of Come on.

“Don’t call me ‘little man,’” Luhan snapped back a little too crankily, but trudged on over to the bike anyway, carefully mounting the Kawasaki as if it were a sleeping dragon he was trying to ride.

“Sure, little man,” Sehun drawled back, his hands on the handles. I think that meant that the argument’s over, Luhan thought to himself, and that he’s decided he can call me whatever the he wants. The little nickname sent shivers of pleasure through Luhan, a little fluttery heartbeat, whether he liked it or not—‘jag-nam.’ Apparently Sehun had also decided that jageun namja was too long to say, so he shortened it. Typical Korean, Luhan snorted.

Sehun handed Luhan a helmet, and it was until Sehun kicked the bike to life that Luhan realized that there was only one helmet (which thankfully went to Luhan, but if the driver got hit by a flying rock and passed out or something, God help them both), and that there were absolutely no seatbelts nor any safety apparatus on the Kawasaki at all.

“Wh-A-are you sure you don’t want to walk to the café or something?” Luhan nervously stammered. “This thing looks like a Saw trap,” he told Sehun truthfully.

“Walking takes too long,” Sehun replied, taking Luhan’s hands and casually wrapped them around his stomach, apparently not hearing Luhan’s shocked and breathless little squeal against the roaring motor. “I want to get there in, hmn, fifteen minutes.”

“Fifteen minutes?” Luhan yelped. He heard Sehun chuckle a bit as he replied, “Mm-hmm, fifteen minutes. I think you’d better hold on tight if you want to make it there.”

Without warning, the bike roared at full volume as Sehun rumbled through the gate before taking off at what felt like 90 miles per hour, and Luhan, manliness be damned, shrieked in terror and clamped himself onto Sehun’s back like some kind of deranged spider monkey, his fingers digging into the fabric of Sehun’s shirt and holding on for dear life, thinking Oh god oh god Jesus I’m gonna die I’m gonna die oh God oh God this is the end I’m gonna die—

Luhan had buried his face in the cloth of Sehun’s back, gritting his teeth so hard he felt a migraine coming, squeezing his arms around Sehun because the guy literally was his lifeline—if he let go, he’d be leaving his on Ggondae Avenue while the rest of him’s dragged along to that damn café.

Just before he felt like he was going to throw up or pass out (whichever one comes first), he vaguely felt Sehun’s body pressing back against him, felt Sehun’s hand gently taking his and pressing it on the handle, his right hand firmly between the metal and Sehun’s touch. It felt like his hand was being roasted with a live wire, but it did cause him to slowly open his eyes, the eyeshield open like a window.

Through the slight stuffiness of the helmet—which was about two sizes too big on him—he smelled the rushing wind and hot tar, smelled Sehun in the material of the helmet. His heart pounded against his ribs as pure adrenaline coursed through him, saw the rush of candy colors of the cars that barely had the chance to honk at them.

For the next couple miles, Luhan tried to correct the lean of the bike by angling his body, but then he got the feel of it and just held on, the last few degrees being on faith. It was like riding a  thin metal rollercoaster on LSD, a gigantic version of a trust fall. Luhan felt his weight becoming one with Sehun’s as they sped through the traffic, smoke and metal and Sehun filling Luhan’s head and lungs.

Sehun had considerably slowed down when La Cocotte was within visible distance, so much so that Luhan could extend his leg out and drag his foot along the coarse gravel without burning off the rubber on the bottom of his loafers with the friction from Sehun’s insane—damn, Luhan wouldn’t even call it riding a bike. It was more like trying to imitate a full-on NASA rocket launch with a chunk of rubber, steel, and plastic combined and high on nitro.

“Do you want to go inside or would you rather we hang out like this all day?” Sehun asked in a voice just low enough for Luhan to hear, his voice not without a hint of amusement, turning his head back to Luhan, his dark hair tousled just right by the wind.

Oh Lord Jesus, don’t this guy look good, shojo sighed dreamily. Damn right he does, Luhan thought back absently, still breathing heavily from the bike ride. He didn’t quite get what the heck Sehun was talking about until Sehun asked, his lips curving up in humor, “Hey, my mother would think I’m bringing home a son-in-law if we keep this up.”

Luhan apparently understood the meaning of what Sehun had just said, because he instantly became aware of how, um, romantic they look—the riding-into-the-sunset kind of romantic—and jumped down from the bike (and halfway fell flat on his face, but shh) like he realized he was cuddling a moldy teddy bear. Shojo mentally whacked him over the head for that analogy.

“Wh-It’s—Son-in—I—“ Luhan spluttered, his face all splotchy red as he tried to look at anywhere but Sehun’s face. He hastily pulled off Sehun’s helmet from his head and clutched, biting his lips, not knowing what to do. His heart was racing, steadily and quickly drumming kung-kung-kung-kung. Luhan still smelled Sehun on his hair, but he found that he actually…

He actually liked it.

Luhan grew aware of Sehun’s gaze on his face, and slowly, hesitantly, Luhan raised his eyes to check if it wasn’t just wishful thinking or anything. Sure enough, Sehun was looking at him, his face at once pensive and unreadable. Suddenly, Sehun smiled, kicking the little metal thing at the bottom of the bike down to park it. Bikes just weren’t Luhan’s specialty.

“Come on, jag-nam,” Sehun said, dismounting the bike smoothly and reaching over to push back the hair on Luhan’s face. Luhan smacked his hand away irritably, but Sehun just laughed ruffled Luhan’s hair some more, as if it needed some extra help with making it look like a rat’s nest.

La Cocotte is as glamorous as the time Luhan first visited it, with its chic mismatched furniture and its varnished furniture and its pretty pastries, the strong smell of coffee and baking dough greeting Luhan. It was apparently a slow day, with one man exiting the café with a cup in hand and no customers dining in situ. Everything else, though, was the same, although instead of Sehun and his crisp barista uniform, there was, to Luhan’s surprise, Do Kyunsgoo at the counter, talking to a small, delicate woman with her red silk-clad back to them.

“Ma, I’m back,” Sehun said, taking Luhan’s and his bag to one of the unoccupied tables, as if he just ran out to the store to buy milk or something. “I brought a friend.”

Sehun’s mother—the one he referred to as Miss Jade last night, and that time here with Eunice—turned her head to look at Luhan. Her eyes, lined stylishly with glittery green eyeliner, widened almost imperceptibly as soon as her gaze hit Luhan’s face, but passed easily, and Luhan almost thought he was imagining things.

Her faced shifted into a look of bored condescension, pursing her lips as her eyes ran down from Luhan’s face down to his shoes, then back up. She looked like a haute couture designer trying to hide her disgust about why Luhan wore that top with those shoes. Luhan squirmed under her stare for what felt like three years, until Miss Jade turned her disgusted look at her son.

“Honey, I thought you were brought up better than that,” she said, raising an eyebrow and putting a hand on her hip. Luhan could not even begin to comprehend how so much like shojo-manga she acts and sounds like. “I mean, I think we’ve already established the fact that if you wanted to take somebody home to me, you better pull him up in a proper car, not your little death machine.”

“Mama,” Sehun said in a chiding tone, albeit laughing lightly and gesturing toward Luhan, who was half-hiding himself behind Sehun. “Luhan, Miss Jade. Mama, this is Luhan, who I’m not dating, if that makes you feel any better.”

Luhan cleared his throat and lifted a hand, smiling nervously. Miss Jade stared at him for a moment longer, her face deep in thought, before she finally sighed, rolling her eyes as she smiled at Luhan, a real, genuine, motherly smile of welcome—as she did so, Miss Jade, who looked nothing like Sehun at first glance, looked just like a carbon copy of her son. The same crinkling crescent eyes, dark and kind, the cheekbones that stand out, the teeth. It made Luhan smile back, a real, albeit a little flustered, smile.

“Alright, sweetie, you’ll have to excuse my turd of a son,” she said, shaking her head as if Sehun just committed a family disgrace. She turned to Sehun, snapping, “You! Look at you! Yidafadwo! Shemma bende ren? Go to the back room and change into your uniform—Kyung, sweetie, watch that he doesn’t wear those horrid denims, won’t you? Thanks, hon—make yourself useful and cook something for your Luhan here!” Sehun never seemed to take Miss Jade’s words to heart as he laughed, although he did obey, as he walked off deeper intp the café with Do Kyunsgoo.

Meanwhile, Luhan just stared at Miss Jade with this confused and startled look on his face. It was like meeting a celebrity you didn’t know about—not that she wasn’t famous, but because you were living under a rock; that wasn’t necessarily what’s bothering Luhan, though. Miss Jade raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow at him, the hands on her hips noisy with the jangle of gold and lacquer bracelets on her wrists and arms.

“You’re… You’re Chinese, Miss Jade?” Everything all over the place, she had said in Mandarin, perhaps referring to Sehun’s clothes. What kind of fool are you?

Miss Jade just shrugged, smiling deviously. “Well, I take it that you’re Chinese, too, hm? Ah, hold on—“ she raised a finger, painted the dark green of good old jade—“From the Southeast. Somewhere… oh, Shanghai?”

“How did you know?” Luhan asked, bewildered. He’d moved from Shanghai to Seoul when he was, what, twelve? He didn’t have an accent, did he? And besides, he never said anything in Chinese to her, so how…

“Oh, your name,” she said, waving a hand as if to dissipate the issue. “Sit down, for the love of God, hon.” She went to the counter, swinging a door open near the back and stuck her head inside, yelling, “Go make tea and five!”

A quick, almost subservient reply of Yes, Miss Jade! coming from Do Kyungsoo, most probably, and hearty laughter, quite likely from Sehun. Five dishes just to accompany tea, for Christ’s sake. Luhan knew it was traditional Chinese extravagance, but still.

So that explains the Mudan thing, Luhan thought, frowning contemplatively. Maybe Miss Jade, being Chinese, taught him Mandarin. Rational Luhan spoke up, arguing, Even if she did teach him Chinese, he spoke like a native, Lu. You can’t learn that when eight-plus hours of your day’s spent somewhere you’re barraged by Korean and English everywhere, with Korean friends, Korean and English music, Hangul newspapers and books and media. The environment just doesn’t support that kind of natural accent.

As much as Luhan hated it, Rational Luhan made sense. That left him no explanation with the nightmare event, though.

“Oh, don’t worry about it too much, he likes you, too.”

“What?”

“You looked really deep in thought.”

“Wh-What?” Luhan stammered, flushing. So that’s where Sehun gets it from, he thought vaguely. “N-no—I-I wasn’t thinking about that at all!” Miss Jade just laughed, real Sehun-like, flicking her long, undone hair over her shoulder like a shawl, interwoven with bright red and black through the thick gold. She was pretty in a strong, fiery way—lihai, Lao-lao would’ve put it. There’s no real word for it in any other language—the closest Luhan could describe it was too good for anybody, wild. Like the main female villain in a makjang rolled into a rave party-goer lit on fire.

“Oh, you know, my son,” Miss Jade gushed over in Chinese, like she was sharing a secret to a close girl friend. “You should really get to work with his dressing habits. You’ve a much better style, but ah! Hwai dungsyi,” she said, reproachingly. You bad little thing! “Your shoes look like hooves.”

Luhan just stared at her. Nobody’s ever criticized his shoes before. Ever. He didn’t know how to react.

“But fashion aside, he’d make a good husband, don’t worry,” she said breezily, jumping from one topic to the next without any thought, leaving Luhan to sudden panic and bewilderment, “The man spends and cares too little on clothes—wa-ay too little, I’ll admit—so that means more money goes to you, and there’s going to be no other women—or men, for that matter—because one, he looks shabby and—“

“We’re out of oolong!” Kyungsoo’s voice, muffled by the walls and the clanging of pans, rang out of the kitchen like a voice from a megaphone.

“Haven’t I taught you to use your brain!” Miss Jade yelled back, reverting to Korean with little thought, at such a loud volume that Luhan winced. Jesus, she could’ve been heard all the way to Busan. Forget the quiet, sophisticated Starbucks-y air that Luhan felt the first time he was here—it was turning more like one of those rowdy American chopsuey houses.

“So,” she said, shifting back into the gracious host and gushy mother-in-law-to-be. “Why’d you come, if you’re not dating Sehun yet?”

Luhan’s brow furrowed in frustration, turning a slight pink. Yet, she said. “I-I don’t swing that way, Miss Jade, if you catch my drift.” He cleared his throat awkwardly, eager to change the subject. “I need a part-time job, ma’am.

“Oh, that turd brought hired help, that’s why you’re here? He thinks I need another—another scullion?” she demanded. Luhan almost cowered back, because she looked like a dragoness about to blow. She suddenly relaxed, almost deflated, as she leaned back and rolled her eyes. Jeez, Luhan thought. It’s like trying to defuse a time bomb.

“You are too good to be an errand boy. Sehun can do that for me,” she said, smiling. She winked at Luhan. “You look too rich to need the money, but Sehun must have his reasons. But you have talent in the kitchen, yes, I see it—a little seedling, but it’s in there, all right, and if we don’t nurture that, it might just go kaput. Oh! Maybe that’s also one of the real reasons why he brought you here,” Miss Jade laughed, delighted. “Sehun’s a tricky one—he got that from me.”

“So you’re saying that he demanded payment for French tutoring so he could tutor me some more in cooking?” Luhan blurted out incredulously. What?

“Hmn, so now he’s a French tutor,” she mused. Luhan was about to ask what she meant when Sehun arrived, his hair slicked back with water, a tray with a porcelain teapot, tea cups, the works, on one hand, the other with a tray of two platters of fragrant, steaming food. Chinese food.

“Chinese food in a French café,” Luhan murmured. Damn, just when you thought you’ve seen everything. Sehun set the trays down in front of them, the aroma intensifying at a closer proximity, making Luhan’s mouth water. A long breath escaped him before he could help himself—hot damn, the food just looked too good, smelled too good.

Like somebody I know, shojo-manga—who sort of morphed into a mental variant of Miss J