“Alright,” Jinki says. His arms are firmly folded across his chest and his normally cheerful face wears a unusually severe expression. Taemin and Kibum are sitting side-by-side on the couch in front of him. Both of them have unconsciously clasped their hands together in their laps, and they are wearing twin expressions that are a mixture of uncertainty, guilt, and barely supressed nervous giggles.

Jonghyun, however, isn’t even trying to hold back his glee. He leans against the kitchen counter – carefully avoiding the ice-cream container which apparently holds not a delicious dessert, but a behemoth among British spiders (he’ll take Jinki’s word for it, he’s not about to check) – and snickers at the scene in front of him. Jinki doesn’t often put on his listen-to-me-I’m-the-leader hat, but when he does, things always get entertaining.

At least, he’s entertained until Jinki spins around and fixes him with a glare that actually makes him shrink a little. Jinki unfolds his arms to jab a finger at the couch. “Don’t think you’re getting out of this so easily, Kim Jonghyun!”

Jonghyun raises his hands. “Why me? I haven’t done anything!”

“Guilty until proven innocent,” Jinki mutters darkly. He takes Jonghyun’s shoulders and frog-marches him over to the couch, pushing him down next to Taemin with a bump. Outraged, Jonghyun can only stare while Jinki goes over to the room he and Minho are sharing and peers inside.

“Where’s Minho?”

“He went out for a run,” Jonghyun explains. “He couldn’t get back to sleep after these two woke him up with their screaming.”

“We were not screaming!” Taemin protests.

“We were just…requesting a little assistance,” Kibum explains.

“Loudly,” Taemin adds.

Jinki stomps back into the living room to fix the three of them with his best glare. “Fine. I’ll interrogate Minho later.” At the word interrogate, Jonghyun finds his own hands moving into a politely clasped position in his lap. He hasn’t done anything wrong, but the leader sure can be intimidating when he wants. Jonghyun feels Taemin shuffle a tiny bit closer to him. He wants to put a reassuring arm around the youngest, but keeps himself sitting politely.

Is Jinki really mad? Jonghyun knows his friend pretty well, and it isn’t like him to get so worked up over a simple prank. Of course, they are all overtired from the non-stop European tour, and having a massive spider jump out of a perfectly innocent-looking ice-cream container isn’t exactly his idea of a relaxing afternoon. He thinks that Jinki is probably mostly pretending to be mad, to discourage the younger two from getting any ideas about some kind of prank war. But he isn’t sure.

“Now. Start talking. Who left the spider in the ice cream container?”

“Not me,” Jonghyun speaks up promptly. “I was in my room the whole time. You can ask Minho when he gets back.”

“Well it wasn’t me either!” Taemin pipes up. “I have no idea where the ice-cream container even came from. The first I knew of it was Kibum-hyung landing on top of me like he’d been shot out of a cannon.”

“Kibum?” Jinki raises an eyebrow, and the other two look across at him. Is Kibum the one who obtained the mysterious ice cream container that is apparently the home to England’s most enormous arachnid? It hardly seems likely.

Kibum swallows hard and Jonghyun is now 99.9% sure that Kibum was the culprit. But the words that come out of Kibum next make Jonghyun’s mouth fall open.

“It was Minho,” he says. “He put the spider in the ice cream container. We both saw him. Right, Taemin?”

Taemin blinks.

“Well, yes,” he says. “He caught it in our bedroom, but –“

“Yeah,” Kibum interrupts. “He wasn’t even scared! I told him to kill it with fire, but he wouldn’t do it because he said it’s a beautiful creature!” His voice rises in to almost a squeak on the last words, obviously highly indignant about this.

“Minho did it?” Jinki looks as astonished as Jonghyun feels. “Why would he do that to me? I didn’t do anything to him!”

Kibum shrugs eloquently. “Who knows why Minho does anything? We all know he’s not normal.”

“This, coming from the drama queen of the century,” Jonghyun teases, and receives a glare from Kibum in return.

At that moment, the hotel room door opens and Minho walks in, dressed in his running clothes, looking rather damp and windblown. He comes to a halt when he sees the scene in the living room – three members of SHINee sitting in a row, Jinki looming over them like a principal over a trio of naughty schoolboys.

“What’s going on?” He asks.

“You tell me,” Jinki turns and snaps at him.

“What do you mean?” Minho looks taken aback.

Jinki glowers at him. “Of all the mean tricks. Turning my favourite dessert into my worst nightmare. How could you, Minho? I’ll never be able to look at double chocolate raspberry ripple the same way again!” He spins on his heel, flounces away into the bedroom Kibum and Taemin had been using, and slams the door behind him.

Looking mystified, Minho turns to the three members sitting on the couch.

“What have you guys been telling him?”

“He thought the container you caught the spider in was really ice-cream and opened it,” Taemin explains. “And, well, I think he may have gotten the wrong idea about your intentions.”

Minho slaps his hand into his forehead with a loud smack.

--

Jinki has locked the door to the room that had once been Taemin and Kibum’s and will not come out. Minho hovers by the door, trying to explain through the slab of wood that he hadn’t meant to prank Jinki, he just hadn’t wanted to go all the way downstairs to take the spider out at the time, and then he’d forgotten about it by the time he’d decided to go out running, but Jinki is sulking like a pro, and all Minho’s wheedling goes without result. Even Kibum coming over to loudly wonder if perhaps “Mister Huntsman” has left behind in the bedroom a “Mrs Huntsman” and a brood of young “Misses and Masters Huntsman” who are undoubtedly missing their husband and father and might come out to look for him at any moment, has no effect. The door stays firmly closed, and not a sound comes from within.

Before long it’s time to go to the O2 Arena for their concert, and on the short taxi ride Minho tries his best aegyo. “Hyu-ung,” he says pitifully, making his eyes as big and puppy-like as they will go. “Hyuuuung…”

He’s pretty sure Jinki is close to cracking – surely that’s a smile trying to tug the corner of his mouth up, though Jinki stubbornly keeps on staring out of the window at the rainy, grey streets, which Minho is sure can’t possibly be as interesting as him – but the taxi ride is all too short, and when they get to the venue they’re all too busy with the soundchecks and getting ready for the show to try and placate Jinki. Minho decides that by the end of the concert, Jinki will have forgotten all about it.

Unfortunately for Minho, this doesn’t work quite as well as he intends.

They’re up on stage, surrounded by waves upon waves of screaming fans, their light-sticks bobbing and waving like a sea of stars all the way up to the top-most stands. Minho has smiled so much his face is aching. He loves performing so much. He loves people, and he loves giving, and being able to give joy to so many people is the best feeling ever.

There’s a few sections in their concerts between songs where they get to take a break from singing and dancing by talking to the fans, telling jokes or playing silly games. Today, the staff roll a soccer ball onto the stage and they entertain the crowd by playing keep-up, bouncing the ball from foot to foot between them, teasing the ones who let it fall, while the fans scream encouragement to their favourite members and laugh uproariously when someone fails.

Minho is by far the best at keep-up, and during one turn he starts showing off. He bounces the soccer ball from his foot to his knee, up onto his shoulder and off his head, then spins around, intending to catch it on his foot again as it