Chapter 2

Yena slammed down her fourth cup of coffee, which was now empty.

Chanyeol hovered by her shoulder, scanning the music sheet she had down in front of her. It wasn’t that hard to memorize, technically, but if she didn’t have everything down flat, Yena panicked. And she definitely didn’t have the third movement of Spring down flat. She could go through the first and second without problem, but the third…

“Chanyeol,” Sehun said, “I think she’s going to beat your record of ten cups.”

“I’m only on my fourth,” she mumbled back. “Going to fifth. I’ll puke if I get to ten.”

“I didn’t puke,” Chanyeol suggested helpfully. “Not that I recommend doing ten cups of coffee, though. I wanted to die and I think I should’ve gotten my stomach pumped or something.”

“You do not want him anywhere near you after he’s passed his fifth cup,” Sehun agreed. “He started playing My Heart Will Go On on his piccolo last time, and do you know how loud a piccolo is? I thought I was going to go deaf. I’m pretty sure the whole hotel heard and I had to take his piccolo and lock it in the washroom with me to stop him, and then he started playing some horror movie theme song on his flute and I don’t even know how it’s possible—”

“Hey,” Chanyeol interrupted, “you know how to play the Barney theme song on your harp. Don’t judge me.”

Sehun scowled, though before he could do something, the door to Yena’s room opened yet again and Kyungsoo strided it.

She had been half expecting to find her roommate, Jo Sumi, Chanyeol’s fellow flutist to be back, though she claimed she wanted to see Beijing. Seeing that their flight back to Seoul was the next morning and there were no more concerts, Sumi was probably going to be back at around 3 in the morning, completely drunk.

“Children, children,” Kyungsoo said. “Settle down. Let Yena study her music in peace and I’ll tell you the story of the hot stranger she said she crashed into today.”

Yena contemplated slamming her head into the table, but she needed the remaining brain cells to memorize the music and she was pretty sure Chanyeol and Sehun being in the room had depleted most of them. She was also pretty sure the main reason she’d screwed up that night was because she kept on replaying the inerasable scene of herself falling down the escalator (with a cello on her back, no less), knocking the papers out of the man’s hands and then freaking out when the train was about to leave. It was very likely the most horrifying moment of her life.

Kyungsoo had just finished narrating the story. “I finally meet someone hot,” he said in his best mimic of Yena’s voice and she cringed, “and then I screw up whatever chance—”

“Hey! I didn’t say that.”

He gave her a wicked grin. “Right, would you rather me repeat you gushing about how good looking he was—”

“You never had a chance in the first place,” Sehun deadpanned. “The only thing that guy is going to remember of you is that one girl who tripped down the elevator with a cello on her back and like, sent his papers flying. I’d rather not be remembered if I were you.”

She groaned again. “Kyungsoo, I hope you’re crushed under your double bass tomorrow.”

He gave her a smile before making himself comfortable on her bed next to Chanyeol. “Are you planning to study all night?”

Yena glared at the notes she’d set in front of her. Her eyes were beginning to ache and threatened to water, which was a sign for her to stop staring at her sheet music. It was one in the morning the last time she’d checked, and while she’d been staying awake mostly due to the coffee, it was beginning to run its course and there was only so much that coffee could do to keep her up. She was going to suffer in the morning from the drawbacks of the four cups of coffee.

The notes blurred in front of her, and she couldn’t quite tell if it was a D or a B. Nothing was going to get even get through her head if she continued on.

“All of you, out,” she grumbled. “I’m going to sleep. I can’t see and I think I’m going to go blind.”

“You’re already blind, though,” Kyungsoo pointed out, and then picked up her glasses from the bedside table. “You’re just going to go more blind. Doesn’t matter anyways.”

She rubbed her eyes and tried to reply that no, she wasn’t blind, her vision was a negative four, though a yawn interrupted her. She still felt exhausted despite the coffee, which meant that she really needed sleep.

Chanyeol got up from the bed and pocketed his phone, which he’d been violently tapping on a moment before. He ruffled her hair once fondly. “We all should sleep,” he said, then glanced back at Sehun and Kyungsoo. “Leave Yena in peace. God knows when all that caffeine is going to kick in and she’ll start losing it.”

She scowled at him. Kyungsoo walked past with a quiet goodnight, which was a bit unlike him, though Sehun paused in front of her with a very Kyungsoo-sque grin lingering on his lips. “I know what you’ll be dreaming of tonight,” he sang. “Though you won’t even have a chance with him in your dreams.”

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